Incredible! The lights were the only visible electrical devices. Gas jets still protruded from the walls. Would they work? (He was unaware of the difference between natural and lighting gas.) An old hot water heating radiator stood in a corner, painted silver. Had her furnace been converted from coal? There were still coal burners around, but he couldn't picture Miss Groloch running downstairs to shovel.

She returned with delicate, tiny china cups on a silver tray.

And cookies, little shapes with beads of colored sugar like his wife had made for Christmases before the boys had grown too old for productions. There was sugar in lumps for the tea, with tongs, and cream. And napkins, of course. Luckily, she came to Cash first. John was too young to know the rituals. Cash had had maiden aunts with roots out of time, leapfrogging a generation into the past. Harald did a credible job of faking it, though, and left the talking to Norm. He nibbled cookies and waited.

"Now, then," said Miss Groloch, seating herself primly at the apex of a triangle of chairs, "slowed you down we have, yes? You won't be having a stroke. But busy I'm sure you are. That last gentleman, Leutnant Carstairs, the criminals said were taking over." There were little soft zs where the th sounds should have been. And Leutnant. Wasn't that German? "Relax that man could not."

"Carstairs, ma'am?" Cash asked.

"A long time ago was that. Years. Now. I can do for you what?"

Accent and rhythm were moving more toward the Missourian, though her compound and complex sentences remained confusing.

There were concepts of feminine delicacy which went with the age into which they had plunged, concepts especially strong as regarded little old ladies. But in their business they weren't accustomed to dealing with murder delicately. "Our officers found a man in the alley last night," Cash said. "Dead."