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Peter Medmenham.’
    ‘That’s the man who lives in the basement of her house,’ Slider said. ‘Concentrate, Norma!’
    ‘Oh, yes. Sorry.’ She’d been distracted lately. Her longstanding engagement to the mysterious Tony was at last nearing fruition: at the Christmas party (which, typically, Tony did not attend) she had announced the date for the wedding.
    The announcement had set the department seething, because nobody had ever met Tony, and the uncharitable had claimed he didn’t exist. Norma was tall, leggy, blonde and glamorous, so the idea that she was a saddo who had to invent a love-interest ought to have been ludicrous; but policewomen who reject the advances of their colleagues have to take what gets dished out. Those she had scorned most cruelly had labelled her a lesbian (and probably fantasised about her in studded leather wielding a whip). Now the same thickheads were saying she was getting married because she was in pod: spite and wounded pride took no account of logic, of course. But even Slider had to admit to a curiosity about what sort of magnificentdemigod Tony must be to have captured his firm’s own warrior princess.
    ‘So, d’you want to see him?’ Norma asked. ‘He’s downstairs, in interview room one.’
    ‘Eh?’ Slider said, startled.
    ‘This Meddlingham bloke.’
    ‘Oh! Yes, I suppose I’d better. Is he alone? He hasn’t got a photographer with him?’
    She grinned. ‘You’re safe. He’s not even sporting a notepad.’
    Peter Medmenham was not at all what Slider had expected. A reporter for a local paper he would have expected to be young and poor; and the name somehow suggested tall and handsome, in the manner of a model in a men’s knitwear catalogue. But what he found in the interview room was a short, plump person of indeterminate age, wearing cord trousers in a silvery-olive shade with a lovat-green lambswool sweater. A tweed overcoat, of the venerable wonderfulness that put it in the loved-family-retainer class, hung from his shoulders. His soft face sported a tan which, in the unforgiving fluorescent light, looked fake, and his pale blue eyes were rimmed with lashes so dark they must surely have been helped, especially as the sparse, carefully tended hair was white – or, to be absolutely frank, pale blue. As Slider paused in the doorway, Medmenham opened his eyes wide and made a little theatrical movement of his hands, first out and then to his chest.
    ‘Oh, don’t!’ he cried in a surprisingly deep, cigarette-husky voice. ‘I know! You’re looking at
this
!’ He touched his head. ‘It’s a
disaster
! Just
enhance
the white, I said – because when all you’ve got is a few poor little bits and pieces like mine, you’ve got to make the most of them – and, lo and behold, out I come, looking like the Blue Fairy in
Pinocchio
! Believe me, this is nothing to what it was like when she first did it. Kylie – that’s the girl’s name, don’t ask me why – said it would wash out, and it
is
doing but, my God! Serves me right for going to a unisex salon, I suppose.
That’s
a bad joke, and so was the salon.’
    ‘Mr Medmenham?’ Slider asked mildly.
    ‘Yes, and listen to me running on! It’s nerves, that’s all. Do you mind if I sit down? My poor feet are killing me. What I suffer with them is nobody’s business! Of course, these shoesdon’t help – but you can’t argue with vanity, can you?’ He had a refined accent, and behind the mascara, his eyes were alert and intelligent. ‘You’re Inspector Slider, are you?’
    ‘Yes, that’s right. And this is Detective Constable Swilley.’
    Medmenham sat gracefully, slipping the coat off over the back of the chair in the same movement, and flashed a very white smile at Norma. ‘How d’you do? My goodness, you look much too glamorous to be a policewoman! Did you ever think of going on the boards, dear? You really should, you’ve got the legs for it. Mind you, your feet wouldn’t thank me. I used to