LITMIR.BIZ

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      "Once upon a time," he replies. "Once upon a time." And ten minutes later, with the old man tucked under a blanket in front of a warm fire, she's on her way to clean up Mrs. Stewart.

      "Sorry, had a bit of an accident in the bed," says the septuagenarian without getting out of her chair.

      "What a surprise," mutters Trina sotto voce, saying aloud, "Never mind, accidents happen."

      "Do they, dear?"

      "Every day apparently," mumbles Trina as she pulls on rubber gloves and heads for the bedroom.

      Back in Westchester, Daphne Lovelace pours herself a cup of Keemun tea musing, "It's the Queen's favourite," and tries another phone call with Plan B in mind.

      "Allo," answers a foreign-voiced female, once Daphne has been connected to the apartment of David Bliss in St-Juan-sur-Mer on the French Côte d'Azur.

      "Is that you, Daisy?" queries the Englishwoman, recognizing Bliss's Gallic companion, and within seconds she is talking to the man himself: Chief Inspector David Bliss, Scotland Yard detective turned author.

      "David. How's the old novel coming along?"

      "It's not easy, Daphne," he says, but is too polite to add, Especially when people keep interrupting me. Instead he asks, "So, what can I do for you?"

      "Janet Thurgood…" begins Daphne, then she gives a brief account of her meeting with Amelia Drinkwater.

      "Just this once," Bliss warns, once he's taken a few notes. "Try bugging Superintendent Donaldson at Westchester police station if you want anything else. I'm trying to work."

      "David. You sound cross with me."

      He softens with a laugh. "Not really. It's just that I didn't realize how difficult it was to write a book. And the commissioner has only given me a year off."

      "Sorry."

      "Don't worry. I'll make some inquiries and get back to you."

      RCMP Inspector Mike Phillips in Vancouver is also making inquiries. Janet's hasty departure from Trina's basement suite can mean only thing, especially in Sergeant Brougham's mind. "Why else would she have run?" he demands, spreading his hands wide to invite suggestions, but while most ten-year-olds might easily come up with a dozen possible reasons for a person not wishing to be interviewed by the police, Sergeant Brougham has one and doesn't await contradiction. "She shoved him over the top, bet my pension."

      "It was a heart attack," reminds Phillips, but that doesn't stop Brougham.

      "Yeah, well, anyone would have a heart attack if they're chucked down a basement into a fish tank."

      Phillips lays a cautionary hand on Brougham's shoulder. "Dave, think about it. Roddy Montgomery was twice — correction, three times — the size of this woman. You saw her, for Chrissakes, she'd have a job pushing a few grams of pot. How the hell could she have pushed him over those railings?"

      "You just wait till the DNA results come back," continues Brougham, unfazed. "I'd bet my old granny that she was the one who attacked him. She certainly fits his description."

      "So do half the hookers and druggies of Vancouver, Dave. Anyway, the DNA will take at least a week, perhaps two. We'd better find her before that."

      The finding of Janet Thurgood has been on Trina's mind all morning, and with her daily doses of diarrhea and vomit behind her, the homecare nurse flipped through the section on disguises in her private eye's manual and prepared for a sortie into Vancouver's underworld.

      Now she makes a final check of herself in the mirror, as suggested, and smiles at the result. A Yankees baseball cap, a pair of shades, and black lipstick top off her eye-popping luminous orange T-shirt, and a black leather miniskirt decorated with a rhinestone heart over the left buttock tops off a pair of fishnet stockings. The ensemble, confiscated from Kylie's closet, would be fine for a June evening, and she almost makes it to the front door before it dawns on her that it's late November, so she slings on an enormous faux mink that not only conceals most of her costume but makes the baseball cap and shades look ridiculous.

      While Chief Inspector David Bliss might grumble about interruptions to his work, he is not at all ungrateful. In fact, he is quickly discovering that, in common with most authors, he will do absolutely anything other than write. After nearly three months of counting lemons on the tree beneath his balcony, luring gulls with tidbits, and staring for hour upon hour at the undulating sea, he is grateful for a valid excuse to put down his pen and get his teeth into an investigation.

      "So what have you got?" asks Daphne excitedly when Bliss calls back in less than half an hour.

      "Does the name Joseph Crispin Creston mean anything to you?"

      "You mean the Creston chocolate guy?"

      "That's the one," says Bliss, then puts on a deep tone to emulate a fifties TV commercial and adds, "We make the best chocolates in the universe. Just ask J.C. himself."

      "That takes me back a bit," laughs Daphne.

      "Well, I think that was actually Creston Sr. His son is the big boy now when it comes to worldwide chocolate trading. And I mean big. Though it seems he's been switching stock to diet products since the flab-fighters took over the world."

      "He can't lose then, can he?" laughs Daphne. "But what's his connection to Trina's lost woman?"

      "Janet Thurgood," muses Bliss aloud. "And I have no way of knowing if it's the same Janet Thurgood for sure, but Joseph C. Creston Jr. married someone of that name in the late fifties, early sixties. I could probably get someone to dig up the marriage records. Get Trina to find out the date of birth or parents' name of the woman in Vancouver —"

      "Too late, David," cuts in Daphne. "The woman's on the run again."

      "That's it then."

      "But what about the dead babies?"

      "Oh yeah. Well, that's the clue. Creston Jr. and his wife had three children in four years and they all died of cot deaths."

      "Cot deaths?" breathes Daphne.

      "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, it's called now, and doctors are pretty hot at trying to establish the cause, but back in the fifties and sixties it was just accepted that babies sometimes died for no apparent reason."

      Daphne feels a shiver up her spine as the words of Amelia Drinkwater come back to her. "I was told that she murdered them," she says with a suitably sinister tone, but Bliss has no knowledge.

      "There's no record either of them were ever charged with any offence," he says. "But you could ask Superintendent Donaldson to dig up the files locally — if they haven't been destroyed."

      "So, what happened to her? Creston's wife," Daphne wants to know.

      "You'd have to ask him."

      "I might just do that," Daphne replies, her mind beginning to whirl with possibilities as she puts down the phone and searches for Trina's number again.

      David Bliss's number is on the radar screen in London. A criminal record search originating from a foreign source has raised a flag in the criminal intelligence section at Scotland Yard, and he gets a call from the duty commander, Chief Superintendent Michael Edwards.

      "I thought you were supposed to be on a leave of absence," snorts the senior officer.

      "That's correct, sir, working on my novel."

      "Writing a book!" It could be a question, but it's not. It's a sneer, an unspoken disparagement that Bliss catches onto immediately: Whatever next? We're supposed to be running a f 'kin police force not a cultural establishment.

      "New trend, sir, police intelligence," explains Bliss, knowing the other man will steam at the implied oxymoron.

      "How come you're doing criminal record checks then?" snaps the chief superintendent, and Bliss waffles for a few minutes about the possibility of the Creston family being somehow involved in his plot before cutting the

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