Eight Detectives by Alex Pavesi

Author:Alex Pavesi [Pavesi, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781405944984
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

10. The Fifth Conversation

Julia Hart finished reading the fifth story. ‘And with the play of moonlight on the water, there were a few moments when it seemed as if Stubbs was winking at her.’ She lowered the manuscript.

The rain was gone and the sky was a flat, moderate blue, with a few clouds of different shapes and sizes, like a range of hats in a shop window. Grant and Julia were sitting in a quiet churchyard at the top of a slight hill, about a mile along the coast from his cottage; they’d walked up there after lunch. The ground was already dry.

‘That was a bleak story,’ said Julia.

‘Yes, it was.’ Grant lifted his hat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘Ten dead bodies discovered on an island. It’s an homage to my favourite crime novel.’

‘I thought as much.’

‘That ending was particularly nasty, when Sarah killed Charles for no reason.’

‘I suppose it wasn’t entirely unjustified,’ said Julia, ‘given the context.’

Grant shook his head in disagreement. ‘It’s another depiction of the detective as a malevolent figure, an arrogant character who sees themselves as superior to the law.’

‘And it’s another one set by the sea.’ Julia took out her notebook. ‘Is the sea an obsession of yours?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that. It reminds me of my childhood, that’s all.’

Julia spoke hesitantly, remembering his outburst the previous night. ‘Did you grow up by the sea, then?’

Grant looked momentarily lost, watching her pen move back and forth. ‘We had holidays there, that’s all.’ She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t.

‘I think that one’s my favourite,’ she said. ‘In spite of how bleak it is.’

He pulled his hat down over his eyes. ‘I am glad to hear that.’

Julia was watching a pile of rocks, a few yards away from them. She thought she’d seen a snake slithering among them a few minutes earlier. Just a small one. But it could have been a trick of the light.

Grant got to his feet and pushed the hat back up to his hairline. ‘Let’s do some mathematics. I think it’s time I went through the actual definition, don’t you? It’s simple, really.’

Julia looked up. ‘I would like to hear it.’

‘Good.’ Grant found a broken olive branch, lying in the dirt by the rocks. He sat back down and started to draw in the sandy ground between them. ‘This is straight from my research paper, The Permutations of Detective Fiction. Section one, subsection one.’

He drew four circles on the dusty earth, and labelled them S, V, D and K.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked.

She squinted at the shapes, unsure of how to interpret his question.

‘It’s called a Venn diagram,’ he went on. ‘This is one in its embryonic form. Each circle represents a set, or a collection of objects.’ He drew a large oval around the four smaller circles, covering all of them, and scratched a C in the corner nearest her. ‘The sets are all made up of members of the cast. The cast is just the collective name we give to the characters in the book.

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