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sure he didn’t sit by you deliberately.
    ‘Why would he do that?’
    ‘Maybe because he knew who you were.’
    Jury frowned. ‘He didn’t follow me in; I’d had three drinks by the time he sat down.’
    ‘Maybe he saw you through the glass.’
    ‘Oh, please. Does anyone look at a pub through the window? No, you just go in.’
    ‘Then he went in and he recognized you.’
    ‘Wiggins, this is almost as improbable as the disappearance of Glynnis Gauh and her son. In any event, what did he expect to gain by telling me?’
    ‘That you’d investigate; that you might find them.’
    ‘If that’s the case, why all this pretense?’
    ‘Johnson might have thought it not such a good idea to intrude on a detective superintendent having a quiet pint.’
    Jury shook his head.
    ‘Well, sir, you didn’t tell him who you were; think about that.’ Jury tilted his chair back, crossing his arms over his chest.
    ‘Okay. I’ve thought. What?’
    Wiggins’s sigh was slightly exaggerated. ‘For the same reason. If he knew who you were it would probably change the whole complexion of the meeting.’
    Jury chewed the inside of his cheek, annoyed not so much at Wiggins but at himself. He must be getting crusty; he was gearing up for redundancy, that’s what.
    ‘Mr. Plant called, sir.’
    Jury came off the dole and back to the working-stiff world. ‘Did he? Good. What did he want?’
    ‘Just to tell you he’d be coming up to London this afternoon. And staying at his club’–Wiggins checked his notes—‘Boring’s. He says he’s having dinner with someone this evening and could you get together with him tomorrow?’
    ‘Excellent. It’s just as well as I’m having dinner with’—he caught himself before he said ‘Harry Johnson’–’someone too.’
    ‘Isn’t Boring’s one of those men’s clubs that still won’t admit women?’
    ‘Boring’s will admit them on a certain day, but then they just try to stare the women down.’
    Wiggins was dipping another chamomile tea bag into his mug.
    ‘Don’t you think that’s a bit reactionary not to let women join?’
    ‘No. It’s a men’s club. Let women go off and make a club of their own.’
    ‘There’s the Women’s Institute, I guess.’
    Jury shook his head. ‘That’s not the same thing at all. That’s an organization whose purpose is to concern itself with social issues. It’s not a physical place where you can dodder around and drop in a leather club chair and have your glass of port and newspaper by a fire.’ Boring’s was so pleasant, Jury thought he might join when they tossed him out of here.

7
    Melrose Plant was standing in a late-afternoon shaft of sunlight, in which drifted a somnolent white moth. He had not recognized the little man at reception, but he didn’t want to inquire after Buddings, afraid at what might have transpired there. But he told himself that at Boring’s, the porters never seemed to die.
    The Members’ Room was exactly as he remembered it. Well, why wouldn’t it be? He’d been here last year, hadn’t he? He sat down in the same club chair he had occupied before and looked into what he could believe was the same fire. Nothing changed, time stopped; end of story.

    ‘No,’ said Polly Praed, as they sipped wine and spooned up soup in Boring’s dining room. ‘One dies. That’s the end of the story.’ Melrose shook his head. ‘Wrong. ‘Change’ is an experience in life. Death isn’t.’
    ‘You’re just doing semantics.’ She spooned up her mushroom soup.
    Polly was certainly evidence of time’s not changing. Same amethyst eyes, same unruly dark corkscrew curls, same ghastly mustard-colored suit. He had once told her that color played havoc with her pink-tinged porcelain skin. She had been unimpressed with Melrose’s opinion of her clothes or anything else. Now, if it had been Richard Jury who had told her this, you’d never see her again in mustard-colored clothes.
    ‘What are you writing now?’ Right away,