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already working out a scheme for an improved stereo system plus an update on his CD player combined with high definition digital sound and ultrarefinement of tone, all to be fed through a pair of majestic new speakers in handcrafted mahogany. It would be Mozart as he had never heard him before.
    Mrs. Ransome was sitting contentedly in a cheap cane rocking chair she had found a few weeks earlier in a furniture store up the Edgware Road. It was an establishment that, before the burglary, she would never have dreamed of going into, with garish suites, paintings of clowns and, flanking the door, two life-size pottery leopards. A common shop she would have thought it once, as a bit of her still did, but Mr. Anwar had recommended it and sure enough the rocking chair she’d bought there was wonderfully comfortable and, unlike the easy chair in which she used to sit before the burglary, good for her back. Now that the insurance check had come through she planned on getting a matching chair for Mr. Ransome, but in the meantime she had bought a rug to put the chair on, and, sewn with a design of an elephant, it glowed under the light from a brass table lamp bought at the same shop. Sitting with what Mr. Anwar had told her was an Afghan prayer rug round her shoulders she felt in the middle of the bare sitting room floor that she was on a cozy and slightly exotic little island.
    For the moment Mr. Ransome’s island was not so cozy, just a chair at the card table on which Mrs. Ransome had put the one letter that constituted the day’s post. Mr. Ransome picked up the envelope. Smelling curry, he said, “What’s for supper?”
    â€œCurry.”
    Mr. Ransome turned the letter over. It looked like a bill. “What sort of curry?”
    â€œLamb,” said Mrs. Ransome. “With apricots. I’ve been wondering,” she said, “would white be too bold?”
    â€œWhite what?” said Mr. Ransome, holding the letter up to the light.
    â€œWell,” she said hesitantly, “white everything really.”
    Mr. Ransome did not reply. He was reading the letter.
    â€œYou mustn’t get too excited,” Mr. Ransome said as they were driving toward Aylesbury. “It could be somebody’s sense of humor. Another joke.”
    Actually their mood was quite flat and the countryside was flat too; they had scarcely spoken since they had set off, the letter with Mr. Ransome’s penciled directions lying on Mrs. Ransome’s lap.
    Left at the roundabout, thought Mr. Ransome.
    â€œIt’s left at the roundabout,” Mrs. Ransome said.
    He had telephoned the storage firm that morning to have a girl answer. It was called Rapid ’n’ Reliant Removals ’n’ Storage, those ’n’s, Mr. Ransome thought, a foretaste of trouble; nor was he disappointed.
    â€œHello. Rapid ’n’ Reliant Removals ’n’ Storage. Christine Those by speaking. How may I help you?”
    Mr. Ransome asked for Mr. Ralston, who had signed the letter.
    â€œAt the present time of speaking Mr. Ralston is in Cardiff. How may I help you?”
    â€œWhen will he be back?”
    â€œNot until next week. He’s on a tour of our repositories. How may I help you?”
    Her repeated promises of help notwithstanding, Christine had the practiced lack of interest of someone perpetually painting her nails and when Mr. Ransome explained that the previous day he had received a mysterious invoice for £344.36 re the storage of certain household effects, the property of Mr. and Mrs. Ransome, all Christine said was: “And?” He began to explain the circumstances but at the suggestion that the effects in question might be stolen property Christine came to life.
    â€œMay I interject? I think that’s very unlikely, quite frankly, I mean, Rapid ’n’ Reliant were established in 1977.”
    Mr. Ransome tried a different tack. “You wouldn’t happen to know whether any