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time. Her mood had changed; she was suddenly withdrawn. I looked at her averted face and applied myself to my plate.
    With one silent companion and one all too busy with other people, I had no recourse but eavesdropping, which is, I confess, one of my favorite entertainments. You can sometimes hear amazing things, especially in a place where there’s enough noise that everyone has to shout, and where most people have a little alcohol in their systems.
    This evening the noise level was almost too high. I could hear little that made sense except the conversation immediately behind me, a diatribe delivered by the rector of St. Martha’s to the police superintendent—I couldn’t remember their names—about the escalating drug problem in Penzance.
    â€œIt’s these raves!” shouted the rector. “As if the parties weren’t bad enough with that frightful noise they call music, there’s this dreadful ecstasy taking over the minds and bodies of our young folk. It’s a scourge, and it’s got to be stopped.”
    I was briefly startled until I remembered that ecstasy was the street name for a drug popular among teenagers, especially at the all-night dance parties called raves. I didn’t know much about any of it, except I’d heard that ecstasy could be dangerous. Had some kids died of it, or was I imagining that part?
    â€œIt’s the clubs,” said the superintendent patiently. “If we could shut them down, we’d be streets ahead of the game, but they move from place to place, and even when we find them it’s not easy to get proof of illegal activity.”
    â€œHmph! Shouldn’t think you’d have trouble finding them, the amount of noise they make.”
    â€œWe can’t be everywhere. If no one complains about the noise, we may never know. Then, too, our young people haven’t much to do here in Penzance. We’d have more juvenile crime if we took away their music and dancing. It’s a knotty problem.”
    â€œIt always was,” Alan murmured, as much to himself as to me. He had freed himself for a moment from conversation with our table partners. “The drugs change with time, the kids involved change. The problems don’t. One is amazed at how people forget.”
    I knew he was thinking about his old case and tried to give him a comforting smile, but he wasn’t looking at me. His eyes were on his plate, but he was, I thought, seeing the body of a young woman in a cave.
    â€œYou’re right,” said Lexa unexpectedly. Her voice was low, but intense. “About drugs, I mean. They destroy people. I know. I could tell you—” She broke off and bit her lip just as Mr. Boleigh appeared at my elbow.
    â€œDo help yourselves to more food if you’d like, but the musicians are ready to begin. I hope you’re having a pleasant evening, Miss Adams?”
    Lexa murmured something appropriate and smiled her practiced smile, but I went on worrying over her remarks about drugs.
    Could we be wrong about her mother? Could she be an addict? The thought flashed through my mind, followed by another even more horrific. Not Lexa herself?
    I glanced at her and immediately dismissed the thought. No. That perfect skin, those clear eyes—those spoke of health, of youth uncorrupted by poison. She looked tired just now, and worried, but she was no addict, not even a moderate drug user. She had said she took no drugs, and I was prepared to believe her.
    Well,
could
she have been thinking about her mother?
    I couldn’t ask. She had moved away from me. Oh, she was still sitting there at the table, her chair crowded close in to mine, but Lexa herself was somewhere else, even as Alan was.
    I moved my hand over to Alan’s. I needed to know that he was there, warm and alive and with me, even if his mind was remote.
    The evening dragged to its conclusion. The musicians were excellent, but string quartets are not my