While Nancy’s four brothers served as ushers their children sat in the front pews, shoving and poking at each other despite the near presence of their aunt’s draped casket. Their harshly whispered insults could be heard throughout the nave until drowned by some melancholy bars from the organ.

I went up to the front to let Mrs. Cleghorn know I was there. She smiled at me with tremulous warmth.

“Come over to the house after the service,” she whispered. “We’ll have coffee and a chance to talk.”

She invited me to sit with her, glancing distastefully at her grandchildren. I disengaged myself gently—I didn’t want to be a buffer between her and the wrestling monsters. Besides, I wanted to go to the back so I could see who showed up—it’s a cliché, but murderers often can’t resist going to their victims’ funerals. Maybe part of a primitive superstition, trying to make sure the person is really dead, that she gets truly buried so her ghost doesn’t walk.

After I’d settled myself near the entrance Diane Logan swept in, resplendent in her silver fox. She brushed my cheek and squeezed my hand before moving up the aisle.

“Who was that?” a voice muttered in my ear.

I gave a start and turned around. It was Sergeant McGonnigal, trying to look mournful in a dark suit. So the police were also hopeful.

“She used to play basketball with Nancy and me; she owns a Gold Coast PR firm nowadays,” I muttered back. “I don’t think she slugged Nancy—she could outplay her twenty years ago. Today, too, come to think of it. I don’t know everyone’s name—tell me which one the killer is.”

He smiled a little. “When I saw you sitting here I thought my worries were over—little Polish detective is going to nab the murderer in front of the altar.”

“Methodist church,” I muttered. “I don’t think they call it an altar.”

Caroline clattered in with the group of people I’d seen in the SCRAP office with her. They had the preternatural earnestness of those who don’t often find themselves at solemn functions. Caroline’s copper curls were brushed into a semblance of tidiness. She wore a black suit designed for a much taller woman—the bunched clumps of material at the bottom showed where she’d hemmed it with her usual impatient inefficiency. If she saw me, she gave no sign, moving with the SCRAP contingent to a pew about halfway up the aisle.

Behind them came a handful of older women, perhaps Mrs. Cleghorn’s pals at the local branch of the library. When they’d passed I saw a thin young man standing in their wake. The dim light picked out his angular silhouette. He looked around uncertainly, saw me staring at him, and looked away.

The self-deprecating embarrassment with which he turned his head brought back to me who he was: young Art Jurshak. He’d made just such an effacing move in talking to the old ward heelers at his father’s office.