Kissed a Sad Goodbye

pan, the doorbell rang. He glanced at the clock. Mrs. Singh was early, but he liked promptness in a woman. Wiping his hand on the tea towel, he went into the hall.
    Janice Coppin stood in his open doorway. “Hullo, George. Surprised to see me?”
    “What do you want?” He scowled at her, but she smiled back at him, unfazed.
    “Just a word. Can I come in?”
    “I’m expecting someone.”
    “It won’t take long.”
    “All right, then,” he said grudgingly, and led the way back to the kitchen, where he turned off the fire under the pan.
    “A lady friend?” inquired Janice, taking in the jug of flowers and the carefully laid plates as she sat in one of the kitchen chairs. “George Brent, you old goat.”
    “None of your business, miss,” he growled, but he could’ve sworn he heard admiration in her tone. She wore shorts and a tee shirt rather than her stiff police-lady suit, and looked, George decided, altogether more human.
    “It’s about the dead woman, George,” she said. “The one you found in—”
    “I know which one. How many dead women do you think I’ve run across lately?”
    “Then you remember the sergeant who came to see you?”
    He glared at Janice, not bothering to answer. He’d liked the kind-voiced policewoman, a nice-looking lass with her pretty red hair—but that brought to mind the other one, lying so still in the grass....
    “Sergeant James said you didn’t seem quite sure about where you’d seen the dead woman, George. I thought you might have remembered something else.”
    George didn’t like to admit how much it had been bothering him, especially to Janice Coppin. “I’m not senile, you know,” he said, but he heard the hesitation in his voice.
    “No, of course you’re not,” Janice agreed. “And I’ve not given you credit, have I? For noticing things, and remembering things.”
    “Would you like a cuppa, lass?” he asked, thinking that maybe Janice Coppin wasn’t so bad after all.
    “That’d be lovely.”
    He put the kettle on, and opened the package of Hobnobs he’d bought specially for Mrs. Singh.
    When he’d given Janice her tea and biscuit, she said, “I’ve been thinking, George, that if you didn’t want to say where you’d seen the woman, maybe it was because she was with someone you knew, and you didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. But if we’re to catch her killer, we have to know everything we can about her.”
    George met her eyes, then looked away, fidgeting with the tea towel he’d used to wipe the sloshed tea from her saucer. “You’re an Islander, lass. You know what it’s like, though you won’t remember the best days, before the war.”
    “My mum says she knew everyone when she was a girl, all the neighbors—”
    “Hard to get into trouble in those days,” George agreed with a smile. “Someone would rat on you for certain. We played in the street on fine days, hoops and marbles, not like the things kids do today.”
    Closing his eyes, he could see it all as clearly as if it were yesterday. “The girls had tops with colored paper stuck on them and they looked so lovely when they spun.... And we all played cricket together, girls and boys, while the grown-ups stood round chatting....” He opened his eyes and found Janice watching him intently. “I knew him then. Just a little lad, and I was already in my teens. Who’d have thought things would turn out the way they did?”
    “What things?”
    “The war, his family...” George sighed and shook his head. “But he came back, and I’ve always admired him for that. He never forgot where he came from or what he owed. And he always had a kind word for me and a pint at the pub.”
    Janice held her teacup motionless, balanced in both hands. “Who, George?”
    “Lewis Finch,” he admitted reluctantly.
    “You saw Annabelle Hammond with Lewis Finch?”
    “Was that her name? Like Hammond’s Teas?”
    “Exactly. It’s her family’s business, and she was in charge of it. Where did you see them?”
    George pleated the tea towel. “Once coming out of the Indian restaurant just down the road. He was holding her arm, friendly-like, and she was laughing. You couldn’t help but notice her. Once in the Waterman’s Arms. And another time, in his Mercedes. The windows were tinted but you could still tell it was her.”
    “Recently?” asked Janice.
    “In the pub, a month or so ago. That time outside the restaurant, I’m not certain, except that it was nippy that day. In