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parties, at the latter’s home, or for a spur-of-the-moment drink together.
    Hector was not entirely clear about the nature of Maurice’s work at the Gull-Grant Institute. Though he had taken a course in biochemistry as part of his medical training, he was baffled by the obscure language of the scientific papers from internationally respected journals which Maurice now and then showed him with shy pride. He had, however, gathered that his old friend was regarded as a leading authority on the structure of complex organic molecules, and had developed valuable new methods of handling viruses in vitro.
    –And his boss doesn’t know where he is? Ridiculous!
    They had last met the previous week, when Hector had been resigned to a dull evening of baby-minding because his wife was attending a charitable committee-meeting. Maurice had invited himself over, and they had passed a pleasant couple of hours chatting. Memory replayed fragments of the conversation, like bad tape full of wow.
    “Can there have been a gloomier Christmas than this since 1938? How many people out of work–two million, isn’t it? And this crisis brewing in Italy, and the government making all these threats about jailing strikers, which I believe a lot more readily than most of their promises! And all the time inflation running wild: people walking because they can’t afford bus-fare, the shops full of goods and nobody buying anything even though it’s nearly Christmastime, just wandering around and staring with those pitiful looks of envy … You’ve seen ’em!”
    –Pleasant? No, not exactly. We spent too much of the time commiserating about the mess the world is in. But it was a splendid bull-session, anyhow.
    At which point in his musing he reached an intersection and slowed to glance left and right despite being on the major road, for although the snow had stopped this area, unfrequented and poverty-stricken, had not been sanded and the streets were slippery. There, in a narrow cul-de-sac where most of the houses were empty and the front yards sprouted boastful signs about impending redevelopment which had never taken place: a police constable, an ambulance rolling to a halt, and–a specially bad sign–a group of a dozen kids and a couple of women clustered together, watching in silence. Plainly they were very poor. His practised eye noted with dismay the symptoms of osteomalacia, nutritional anasarca, and what, given the fearful price of fruit and vegetables this winter, could all too easily be scurvy.
    –Some child hurt playing a dangerous game in one of those vacant houses?
    He jumped out of his car, shivering in the bitter wind, and shouted as he approached the policeman, “I’m a doctor! Anything I can do?”
    Carrying a blood-red blanket, the ambulance men were heading for a drift of snow piled against a stub of broken wall.
    “I’m afraid he’s past hope, sir,” the constable said.
    “A tramp dead of exposure?” Hector hazarded.
    The policeman lowered his voice. “More like murder, sir, if you ask me.”
    “Murder!” Hector echoed, more loudly than he intended, and one of the kids overheard, a snot-nosed brat of about ten.
    “Yeah! ’Ad ’is ’ead beat in, just like on the telly!”
    And crowed with cynical laughter.
    “Get out of it, you lot!” the constable shouted, and continued to Hector, “Though I’m afraid he’s right. See for yourself.”
    He pointed, and for Hector the world came to a grinding halt. He heard himself say faintly, “Maurice!”
    “You knew him?” the policeman demanded.
    “He’s–he was–one of my oldest friends! I was on my way to call on him! Oh, this is terrible!” Hector stooped at the corpse’s side, and his last faint hope that he might have been mistaken vanished as he looked more closely at the frost-pale features. Swallowing hard, he said, “His name was Post.”
    “Yes, I found a letter on him with that name,” the policeman began, and broke off as, to the accompaniment of