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right.”
    Jury picked up his coat, once again dislodging the cat from its slumbers — and Molly went with him to the door.
    She was still holding the card, folded and refolded, as if it were a message in a bottle that might give some report of land.

NINE
    â€œG EORGE Thorne.” In the dining room of the White Lion, Macalvie speared a sausage and shook his head. “One and the same. Witness for the prosecution.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make it look good for Sam Waterhouse, does it?”
    â€œHe didn’t do it. Pass the butter, Wiggins.”
    Both Wiggins and Macalvie were having the full house. Jury, who couldn’t stick looking at sausages and bacon and eggs, had ordered coffee and toast. “Who’d have a better motive?”
    â€œSomeone else,” said Macalvie, with perfect assurance.
    â€œBut, sir —” Wiggins began and then stopped when Macalvie shot him a look.
    â€œBoth of you seem to have forgotten one salient detail. It wasn’t Waterhouse that found the kid and tossed a cape over her. Oh, sure. Thorne was ranting on about Waterhouse out for revenge, et cetera. The guy looked like he’d just risen from the grave. Serves the bastard right. Big-deal solicitor.” Macalvie was busy with bacon and a reappraisal of the waitress whose Edwardian looks — black hair rolled upward, slimfigure in ruffled white blouse and black skirt, and porcelain skin — he had already commented upon. “Yesterday, Angela Thorne was ‘acting up’ — her mum’s words — and trying to plead off school by saying she was sick to her stomach and being a pill nobody wants to swallow. Her teacher said the kid had got into a fight because some other girls were making fun of her. They made up this song: ‘Angela Thorne, Angela Thorne, don’t you wish you’d never been born? Kids are so cute, aren’t they?”
    â€œIt was after one when you talked to the Thornes. When did you get a chance to talk to the teacher, for God’s sakes?” Jury imagined Macalvie was one of those cops who never slept.
    â€œAfterwards. Let me tell you, the Thornes don’t go down a treat. The teacher I knocked up around three —” Macalvie’s blue eyes glinted “— you know what that means in American? Anyway Miss Elgin — Julie — didn’t especially enjoy having her door busted down by the Devon-Cornwall constabulary, not with her dressed only in a flimsy wrapper —”
    â€œYou make it sound like a gang rape, Macalvie. Maybe Wiggins could just read the notes.”
    Disinclined as he was to stop eating his boiled egg, Wiggins put down his spoon and took out his notebook.
    â€œPut that away, dammit,” said Macalvie. “I know who said what. So, the kids made up this silly song, mostly, I imagine, because The Thornbirds has been putting everybody to sleep for days now on the telly. You know; it’s that mini-mind soap opera series. Julie —”
    Macalvie could get on a first-name basis pretty quickly, Jury thought.
    â€œâ€” said Angela got a real going over with that pun on her name. None of the kids much liked Angela Thorne. Why?” Macalvie answered his own question. “Because she was sullen, bad-tempered, plain as pudding, wore thick glasses, and was so good at her lessons it even tired out the teachers. Juliesaid the headmistress just wished Angela’d take her O levels and get the hell out. Pretty funny.” Whatever Macalvie was remembering from the night before obviously delighted him.
    â€œNot very funny for Angela. Wasn’t this Julie Elgin a little cut up over Angela’s murder?”
    â€œSure. Scared witless, like everybody else. News travels fast. At midnight parents were calling her to say their kids wouldn’t be going to school. But the point is, nobody liked Angela, including her parents.”
    Jury put down his coffee cup. “Her teacher said