jack of diamonds

“How are you?”

“How am I? I’m still hungry. I told you I was hungry hours ago.”

“Maybe later. We still have to make a decision about tonight,” Sonia said, brushing a strand of hair out of her face as she slipped her notebook back into her pocket. They were walking along George Street, approaching Fore and The White Hart, the local hotel and eatery. The sun was starting to set. Nigel supposed it would be another hour at the most. The east side of the street was Saunders’s pig farm, where they’d just come from; the west side of the street was thin, spindly birch and aspen trees which had lost most of their leaves. The sun came through the trees at an angle, dappling the paving stones ahead of them with light and shadows. The breeze had a bite to it too, but Nigel wasn’t about to tell her he was cold.

She’ll probably tell me I don’t know what being cold is.

“What kind of a decision?” he asked, looking at his watch.

“What time is it?”

“Four. Tea time,” he smiled, hoping she might take the hint. “I’m sure we can get a bite to eat at the Hart. It’s not too late.”

“Not too late? It’s only four o’clock.”

“That’s what time we have it, here in Devon. How long have you lived here?”

“Well, depending on how you feel, we can either put you to bed and wait for what’s about to happen, happen; or we can drive out to Chumley Grove.”

“Chumley? But what about Tea Time?”

“Chernetsov is hosting this year’s Ball. I’m sure there’ll be enough for you to eat there. Look, you can even have my share.”

“In case you didn’t know it, Chernetsov’s Ball is a costume Ball. We don’t have costumes.That might be a problem.”

“There’s a shop in Chumley. I’ve seen it.”

“Yes, Iverson’s. What exactly do you hope to accomplish going there?”

She stopped and looked at him for a moment.

“What do I hope to accomplish? Well, for one thing, we have a suspected thief who may show himself simply because it is a costume party. What better way for someone to slip in undetected? And then there’s Chernetsov. He may have had something to do with this dead Russian. We don’t know. We already know they’ve tried to kill him once or twice—”

“We don’t know that, either. You’re assuming it based on the word of that pig farmer.”

“Isn’t everything we do based on assumption?”

“If you base everything you do on assumptions, you’re not going to get very far. It should be based on facts, and facts alone.”

“I look at it as something more akin to filling in the blanks,” she smiled, and started walking again.

“Filling in the blanks?” he said to himself, and looking up, saw that she was at least ten feet ahead of him. He ran to catch up.

“Sure; you can only know so much. The rest is all guesswork,” she said, when she saw he was beside her again.

“Guesswork? No. It isn’t. Good detection is exactly what it means. You come to your conclusions based on facts, because those facts point to the one and only thing it can be. You come to that conclusion because there can’t be another conclusion. If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and walks like a duck, it probably is a duck.”

“Ever hear of a parrot?”

“Now you’re being ridiculous.”

“Am I?”

They walked in silence for a time, the streets slipping into that pre-darkness chill while the light faded, the wind picked up, with the trees slowly disappearing from view behind the buildings. The sun was setting behind the buildings as well, casting long shadows where George Street melted into Fore Street. Sidewalks lined both sides of the street and she could see the Town Council directly in front of them; St James Church came into view as they turned right, the Baptist Church was across the way.

“All right, you win. I’ll go with you to Chumley. If worst comes to worst, we can spend the night at my place. It’s small, but at least it’s a place to stay for the night if we have to. You don’t really want to be driving out here in the dark, do you?”