“I’m serious, Jack.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll apply tomorrow, I promise.”

“You won’t need to. I took the liberty of doing it for you. Here.”

She handed him a sheet of paper.

Jack accepted it with misgivings, unsure of whether to be angry at Madeleine’s intervention or glad that she had taken the burden of responsibility from him.

“It’s a conditional acceptance,” he said, reading the short letter twice to make sure he understood what was going on. “They need a day’s observation in order to calculate my sleuthing quotient—if it’s higher than a six point three, they’ll put my name up to the board.”

He turned the sheet over. “It doesn’t say when this observation day will be.”

“I think it’s done on a random basis in case detectives try to ‘spice things up a bit’ with a head in a bag or something,” observed Madeleine. She was quite correct. Desperate Guild-wannabe detectives had been known to borrow cadavers from medical schools and then dump them in a chest freezer for later “discovery” to impress Guild observers.

“Well,” said Jack, “I’m just amazed that I got even as far as a conditional acceptance.”

“That’s easily explained,” she replied. “I told them you were a chain-smoking vintage-Rolls-Royce-driving divorced alcoholic with an inability to form lasting relationships. And with a love of Puccini, Henry Moore and Magritte. And a big pipe.”

“What about a deerstalker hat?”

“No—do you think I should have?”

“Absolutely not. Why did you tell them all that?”

“I had to write something interesting about you. If your investigations are going to be written up in Amazing Crime Stories, you’re going to have to have a few interesting foibles. I don’t think ‘happily married father of five’ quite cuts the mustard these days.”

He sighed. She was right.

“Well,” he said, giving her an affectionate hug, “if I’m going to be a womanizing, pipe-smoking opera fanatic with a vintage car and a drinking problem, I better practice getting into character. I could make a start chatting up that new assistant of yours—what was her name again?”

“Diane? Sure, you could try that. She said yesterday she thought you were really nice.”

“She did?”

“Reminded her of her dad, she said.”

“Hmm. What sort of pipe did you have in mind for me?”

They laughed. The Guild. What the hell. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

“Bums!” said Madeleine, glancing at the wall clock. “I’m late.”

“Late for what?”

“The Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit. It’s on the calendar.”

Jack walked over to look. It was there in black ballpoint. He didn’t look closely enough at these things and was always being caught out.

“Schmoozing or snapping?”

She slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Snapping, you dope. Someone has to take pictures of all the dazzling Reading socialites shaking hands with whatever D-class celebrity Lord Spongg has managed to dredge up.”

“Is that an improvement on the Thames Valley Fruit-Growers Ball, where you were merely photographing ‘low-grade celebrity wannabes’?”

“Of course, dear—it’s called upward mobility. By the summer I could be doing portraits of chinless twerps at the Henley Regatta.”

“Well, you’d better dress up a bit, then.”

“All in good time, husband dearest. Can you take Megan to Scouts?

“Sure. When is it again?”

“Seven,” said Megan, and excused herself from the table.

“What did you do at school, Jerome?” asked Jack when Madeleine had gone upstairs to change into something a little smarter. It didn’t do well to turn up at a charity bash dressed scruffy, even if you were only the photographer.

“Nothing much.”

“Then it’s a bit pointless sending you, isn’t it? Why don’t we just cancel school, and you can stay at home and—I don’t know—just eat chocolate and watch TV all day?”

Jerome perked up at this gold-edged scenario. “Really?”

“No, not really.”

His shoulders slumped. “But school’s sooooooo boring.”

“Agreed. But it’s almost perfect training for a career at Smileyburgers.”

“But I’m not going to work at Smileyburgers.”

“You will if you do nothing much at school.”

“Da-woo!!” yelled Stevie, jumping up and down. In the absence of anything more productive to do, he grasped large handfuls of scrambled egg and squeezed until it oozed between his fingers like yellow toothpaste.

“Yag,” said Jerome, “and you tell me off for picking my nose!”

“It’s not the picking,” explained Jack, who secretly liked a good dig himself and didn’t want to be a hypocrite, “it’s the eating.”

Talk abruptly halted as Ben walked into the kitchen looking very self-conscious in his college orchestra uniform. He was sixteen, gangly and awash in a toxic sea of hormones. He had joined the orchestra less through the love of music than the love of Penelope Liddell, who played the harp.

“It’s those slender fingers plucking on the strings,” he had explained while confessing the object of his adoration to Jack a few days before, “and that concentration! Hell’s teeth! If she looked at me like that, I think I’d explode.”

“Well, mind you don’t,” Jack had replied. “It could be very messy.”

Ben was actually a very competent tuba, but since the tuba player is about as far away as you can get from the harp and the tuba doesn’t exactly ooze macho sexuality—except, perhaps, to another tuba—he had joined the percussion section to bring him closer to the object of his affections. He dragged two heavy cases out from the cupboard under the stairs and put on a parka.

“Do you need a hand with those?” asked Jack.

“Thanks, Dad. My ride will be here soon.”

A car horn sounded outside.

Jack tried to pick up one of the cases, but it was so heavy it felt as though it had taken root.

“What the hell have you got in here?”

“We’re doing Il Trovatore,” Ben explained. “Mr. Moore said we should experiment—so I’m using real anvils and real hammers.”

Between the two of them, they managed to drag the cases across the floor and heave them over the doorstep and down the path to the trunk of the waiting car, which sank alarmingly.

Half an hour later, Madeleine came back down dressed in a strapless red ball gown kept up by nothing but faith. All eyes were on her as she did a twirl for them in the kitchen.

“How do I look?”

“Whoa!” said Pandora who had just walked in. “Maddy’s in girl clothes!”

“Beautiful,” said Megan wistfully, clasping her hands together and holding them at her chin, dreaming of a time when she could dress up in ball gowns, go to parties and be kissed by a handsome prince—although she would accept a knight, if there were problems regarding availability.

“It’s very bright,” was Jerome’s only comment.

“Da-woo,” said Stevie.

“I thought you were the one doing the photographing,” said Jack. “I mean, how do you actually get in your own photographs? Press the shutter and then run around really fast?”

“It is the Spongg Footcare Charity Benefit, darling. While I’ve still the tattered remnants of youth and good looks, I might as well use them to drum up some work. Debs’ parents pay good money for portraits.”

“Well,” said Jack, “just don’t allow yourself to be chatted up by Lord Spongg—you know what a reputation he has.”

“I have every intention of being chatted up by Lord Spongg,” she responded with a smile. “I need all the work he can give me.” She curled a hand around Jack’s chin and neck, brought her lips to his ear and whispered, “These dresses are notoriously tight, and the zips are always faulty. You may have to tear it from my body.”

She kissed him, smiled and withdrew.

“I’ll wait up.”

“Oh, no need for that is there?” she returned playfully.

“Yes.”