Peter Lovesey - Bloodhounds

Jessica too was there already, snappily dressed in a charcoal-gray woollen dress. A wine-red scarf was draped with casual elegance across her shoulders and clipped with a huge silver buckle like a kilt fastening. "Glad you've come," she said, and seemed to mean it. "You're going to make such a difference."

Polly Wycherley waved a small, plump hand from across the room. She had already taken her place inside the circle and was removing things from her briefcase, determined to make amends for her lateness the previous week. "Who are we missing?"

"Only Milo," said Jessica.

"Rupert." Someone else spoke up. Chameleonlike, Sid in his fawn raincoat was standing against a stone wall. He had an uncanny ability to merge with the surroundings. "Rupert is always late."

An entire, unsolicited sentence from Sid. Perhaps he felt more comfortable with no other males present.

The door of the ladies' room opened, and Miss Chilmark came out reeking of some musky perfume. She was no longer complaining about the central heating. "I intend to make a stand on that dog tonight," she announced.

"Bareback riding?" murmured Jessica.

Miss Chilmark hadn't heard. "If it misbehaves, I shall tell Rupert I want it removed, and I expect the rest of you to support me."

A click from Jessica's tongue showed that she, for one, would not be included. "It only shook itself. Poor thing, it was wet. It's not as if it crapped on the carpet."

"You don't have to be vulgar. I was drenched. We had to interrupt the meeting. Don't you remember?"

"Well, it isn't raining tonight, Miss Chilrriark."

"That's no guarantee of anything."

As if she hadn't heard a word about Rupert's dog, Polly remarked, "Milo isn't usually late."

"Hardly ever," said Miss Chilmark, scarcely aware that she had been diverted. She took her place opposite Polly. "Milo and I attach a lot of importance to good timekeeping. We are always the first to arrive."

"Perhaps he's ill," said Polly, fumbling in her case. "Once before when he was ill and couldn't come, he phoned me the evening before. I've got his number in my diary. I can phone him."

"Good idea," said Miss Chilmark. "I'll take over in the chair until you get back. Let's get under way before the dog arrives and ruins it."

"For heaven's sake," said Jessica. "It's ridiculous to phone the poor man. It's only five past seven."

After everyone was seated, there was a short debate about whether Polly would be justified in making the phone call. The consensus was that Milo was a grown-up and didn't have to be accounted for. Jessica gave Shirley-Ann a grateful look that said sanity had won the day, and shortly after, Milo came in, full of apologies. A lorry had broken down on Brassknocker Hill, and the traffic had been held up.

"Have we started, then?" said Miss Chilmark in a tone implying that she would have run the meeting more efficiently.

"I suppose we have," said Polly.

"Because I have a suggestion," Miss Chilmark went on. "I don't know who else has been following the reports of this stolen stamp."

"The Penny Black?" said Shirley-Ann. "Just across the street from here. Isn't it exciting?"

"That isn't the word I would choose," said Miss Chilmark, "particularly as it shows our city in such a bad light, but, yes, that is what I had in mind. I thought for a change it would be an interesting exercise to address ourselves to a real crime."

"We're readers, not detectives," Polly pointed out, quick to suspect that this might be a takeover. "We discuss fiction, not real crime."

"We talk about real crime most of the time, if you ask me," asserted Miss Chilmark. "Rupert is forever haranguing us about what happens on the streets. Well, now that something has happened on the streets that tests the intellect a little, let's see if our experience as readers is any help in solving it."

Jessica said cynically, "You mean set William of Baskerville onto the case?"

"Who's he?" Polly asked vaguely.

"The detective figure in The Name of the Rose."

"Oh, yes." Polly looked annoyed with herself for having to be reminded.

Miss Chilmark said stiffly, "Mock me if you wish, but his methods stand the test of time."

Shirley-Ann wondered if this was the moment to mention-after the put-down she had got the previous week from Miss Chilmark-that she had checked the date of publication of Il Nome della Rose, and it was 1981, a full four years after the first of the Brother Cadfael series. But it didn't seem the right time for settling scores. She saved it up.

"Personally, I think you've made a marvelous suggestion," said Milo, galloping to the support of Miss Chilmark. Theirs was a strange alliance, the elderly gay and the starchy spinster. Apparently, all that they had in common was that they usually arrived before anyone else. "I'm fascinated to know if we can throw any light on the stamp theft. How about the rest of you?"

No one objected, not even Polly anymore, so Shirley-Ann, who was quite fired up, said, "It was extremely clever, if what the papers say is right, dressing up as a window cleaner and climbing through an upstairs window."

Jessica remarked, "Extremely obvious, I'd have said. What intrigues me is why he did it."

"Or she," put in Shirley-Ann, scoring on the rebound.

"Or she. It's the world's most valuable stamp. They're not going to sell it."

"People steal famous paintings all the time," Miss Chilmark pointed out. "They must have a reason."

"Well, there's the theory that a fanatical collector wants to own them. He doesn't do it to make a profit, just to gloat over what he possesses."

"Do such people exist?" asked Shirley-Ann. "Outside books, I mean."

"I'm sure they do. There are too many works of art that have just vanished over the years. And stamp collecting is a lonely occupation anyway. I don't have any difficulty picturing some middle-aged man with a personality defect poring over his collection."

"Or woman," Sid managed to say, and when everyone had got over the surprise there were smiles.

"Actually, very few women go in for collecting," said Jessica. "This acquisitive impulse is a masculine thing."

"Shoes?" Shirley-Ann reminded everyone.

"Hats, too," said Polly. "I have a cupboard simply stuffed with hats."

"I meant useless things like stamps and beermats."

"I don't think the person who stole it is a collector. I think they're going to demand a ransom," speculated Shirley-Ann. "That's what I'd do. Anyone who owns a stamp like that has oodles of money to spare. I'd ask for fifty thousand."

"How would you collect it?" Milo asked, stroking his beard as if the prospect really beckoned. "That's always the problem."

"Oh, I wouldn't handle the money at all. I'd let the owner know that it had to be transferred through his bank to a secret Swiss account."

"Do you have a secret Swiss account?" Polly asked Shirley-Ann in all seriousness.

"No, but with fifty grand as a deposit, I bet any bank would be only too happy to open one for me. I could afford to fly to Zurich and fill in the forms, or whatever."

"It can't be so simple," said Jessica.

"Can you think of anything better?"

Miss Chilmark interrupted the exchange. "Madam Chairman, this is getting us nowhere. When I suggested this as a topic, I had in mind the much more fascinating problem of the riddles-if that is the word-that were on the radio and in the papers, apparently composed by the person who stole the stamp. Couldn't we address ourselves to those?"

"By all means," said Polly, chastened. "Do you remember how they went?"

"I have them here." Miss Chilmark opened her crocodile-skin handbag and took out two press cuttings.

"There's not much point in discussing the first one," said Jessica. "That's been solved by events. What was it… 'J.M.W.T.