Jimmy was squinting suspiciously about the room, as usual playing the hard-bitten reporter; in a moment he would have his notebook and his pencil out. Phoebe could not remember exactly where she had met Jimmy, or when. It was strange; she seemed to have known him an impossibly long time, yet she knew almost nothing about him; she was not even sure where he lived. He was garrulous, and talked tirelessly on every subject except himself. She wondered at the fact that April had let him know about the door key under the stone. Had others been let in on this arrangement? It struck her that if she was the only one that April had not told, perhaps it was not so strange that her friend had stopped calling her; perhaps April did not think of her as a friend at all, only an acquaintance to be taken up or dropped according to whim. If that was the case, she did not need to be so concerned. She was beginning to feel enjoyably aggrieved, but then it occurred to her that Jimmy, whom April had told about the key and therefore must consider a true intimate, had not heard from her either, nor had anyone else in their circle, so far as she knew.

As if he had read her thoughts- sometimes he showed an uncanny knack of clairvoyance-he asked her now: “How well do you think you know her? April, I mean.”

They were standing in the middle of the room. It was cold, she still had her scarf wound round her throat, and although her hands were thrust deep in the pockets of her coat she could feel the chill tips of her fingers tingling. “As well as anyone, I think,” she said. “Or thought I did. We used to talk nearly every day, you know. That’s why I was worried not to hear from her in the first place.” He was still glancing about, nodding, and gnawing his upper lip at one corner. “What about you?” she asked.

“She was always a good contact.”

“A contact? “

“At the hospital. If there was a story going, some high-up knocking someone down when he was drunk or a suicide that was covered up, I could always depend on April to slip me the details.”