Ha'penny by Jo Walton Page A

have your card, Mr. Kinnerson? It’s possible I may think of something else to ask you, and as you said, telephoning you in the office would be more convenient. Someone will no doubt be in touch with you in any case about funeral arrangements for your mother, and about your Hampstead house.”
    Kinnerson took a card case from the inside pocket of his jacket, drew out a card, and handed it over. “Here you are, Inspector. My home number is here as well.”
    Carmichael glanced at it. “Solomon Kahn,” he said. “I knew David Kahn, you know.”
    Kinnerson gave him a quick glance, then looked away. “Did you?” he asked, his voice indifferent. “I met him once or twice, but we never worked together. Solomon Kahn is a big bank, employing a great many people, and he had his own division.”
    “Of course,” Carmichael said, and handed Kinnerson his own card, with the Scotland Yard number. “Well, I apologize again for the distress we caused your wife by our confusion, and I’d like to thank you for answering our questions. Do get in touch if you think of anything else.”
    Kinnerson showed them to the door himself, and stood there until they drove away.
    “Why did you ask who he voted for, sergeant?” Carmichael asked. “He was opening up before that.”
    “Sorry,” Royston said, again. “I wanted to see him crack. He was too smooth altogether, I thought.”
    “Do you think he blew up his mother, or knows who did?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Royston said. “I have a feeling he was hiding something.”
    “A hunch?” Carmichael asked, then laughed. “Not a hunch, because I have exactly the same feeling. The trouble is that what he’s hiding may be something totally innocent. But I’m quite sure he knows something he wasn’t saying.”

5
     
    I kicked off my shoes and flung myself facedown on the bed with the manuscript. I read and memorized and when, every so often, I sat up to take a sip of wine, I saw the roses Antony sent sitting in full bloom next to my mirror. Unfortunately, I didn’t have long in this undisturbed bliss before the phone rang. Mrs. Tring answered it, then knocked on my door.
    “For you, Vi!” she called.
    “How too bloody,” I said, getting off the bed. I heard Mrs. Tring laugh in the hall, which was why I’d said it. I’d spent a few years after leaving home trying to teach myself to swear the way people do, but it never came naturally. I decided eventually that if it was always going to sound affected anyway, I might as well cultivate that.
    The receiver was lying on its side on the table. I picked it up and spoke in my best telephone drawl. “Hello?”
    “Fats? It’s Sid.”
    It was more than a year since I’d spoken to my sister Cressida, and then only casually. I seldom saw the family. I usually kept up with them through Mrs. Tring’s reading of the Tatler and gossiping with Dodo every few months. But I’d been thinking about them, they seemed somehow caught up with Hamlet, with Elsinore, so it hardly seemed strange at all to hear from her.
    “How are you, Siddy?”
    “Thriving, as ever. I need to see you.” The phone made the bray of her voice seem thin.
    “Are you sure you want the hassle with Mamma?” I asked. “You know how she feels.” She had once forbidden the younger ones to see me alone because of the supposed immorality of acting, which could rub off on unmarried girls. Even now she would subject Dodo to days of cold-shouldering every time she saw me.
    “If you’re in the second circle, I’m in the ninth,” she said. The ninth circle of Hell was reserved for traitors. “I don’t give a damn about Ma. Come and meet me.”
    “All right, let’s have lunch sometime,” I said.
    There was a pause at the other end. “I thought you theater people lived in a blaze of wild immediacy,” she said, and although I’d never heard it before I could tell from her inflections that the phrase was a mocking quote from something. “Come and meet me now,