Death and the Cyprian Society by Pamela Christie Page A

some kind. We went in through the rear. Ha! ‘Went in through the rear!’ Mus’ remember to tell that one to Bumpy!”
    “Do you recall what street you were in, Mr. Skeen?”
    “No. I jus’ followed the other chaps. In fact, I brought up the rear! Haw!”
    Arabella noted with relief that despite the man’s frequent, idiotic asides, he was beginning to show signs of sobering up.
    “All right,” she said. “And then what happened?”
    “Well, this bloke met us at the door, an’ took us upstairs.”
    She straightened. “What sort of bloke? Do you remember what he looked like? Did you catch his name?”
    “No idea. Shortish. Darkish. Thick-settish.”
    “Did he have any scars? An unusual nose, perhaps, or a glass eye?”
    “Hmm,” said Snoodles, considering. “A ring in his ear. I think. With an odd-colored stone like your notebook: all sort-of pinkish. I took rather a fancy to it, and offered to give him my sister in exchange, but he wasn’t having any of that.”
    “A pink earring,” said Arabella, and she jotted down: “pink sapphire?” and “pink quartz?” “Good!” she said. “Did you notice anything else?”
    “No. It wasn’t him I’d come to look at, if you know what I mean. He took us into a room and shewed us the peepholes we were to use. They were all at about eye level for us, but when we looked through ’em, they were actchully up near the ceiling of the other room, the one on the other side of the wall, so that we were looking down at the couple on the bed. It wasn’t really all that easy to see ’em, though, because we were looking through the wall covering.”
    “Through the wallpaper?”
    “Not paper; Hessian cloth, I think.”
    “And whom did you pay?”
    “Bumpy paid. Because Charley an’ me were skinned, as usual.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Skeen,” said Arabella, rising and dismissing him with a curt nod. She almost said, “You’ve been very helpful,” out of habit, but she didn’t.
    “Bumpy” was the selfsame George Soane whom Arabella had ordered from her house on the night that Charles had disagreed so violently with the escargot. She’d had good cause for her inhospitality, as he had come out to Lustings once with her brother when Arabella was away and, sometime during the ensuing rout, had vomited into Belinda’s work basket. Afterward, Bumpy claimed to have no memory of the incident, which in his opinion should have made everything all right again, and he could not understand why Arabella should go on holding a grudge against him for so long. It had been nearly three weeks ago, now.
    Although the day had turned chilly, Arabella insisted on meeting Bumpy out of doors, as he was known to possess “the most appalling-bad cleanliness habits,” and having just insulted her ears with Penderel Skeen’s brainless “muffin” refrain, she was loathe to do as badly by her nose.
    Readers will recall that the Cyprian Society was going to have one front door facing St. James’s Place, and another facing Little St. James’s Place. Ergo, there could be no rear garden, because no “rear” existed. There was, however, a small strip of land at the side, which intervened between the former hotel and the building next door to it, and here Arabella had commissioned a garden feature, formed on one she had admired in Italy. A rectangle of velvety green lawn was planted down the length of its two longer sides in golden poplar trees, and a marble bench, placed at one of the rectangle’s short ends, faced a marble fountain at the other. Quiet, pretty, and private, this “meditation grove” afforded the perfect spot for quizzing a witness with a foxy reek.
    Arabella had never before had occasion to observe Bumpy in daylight, where his fiery hair, dead-white skin, and scarlet pimples (the famous “bumps” for which he was named, and the sort often referred to as “grog blossoms”) made an arresting impression. But at least this witness was sober.
    “All I can tell you,”