Scratch the Surface

people on Norwood Hill have that image of us.”
    “How did he afford that house?”
    “By being a publisher, I guess. How else? Just because you don’t know where people got their money, it doesn’t mean that they’re crooks.” As soon as Felicity spoke, she thought of Uncle Bob’s fireproof box of money. That was a special situation, she told herself. It was one thing to have money in the bank and money to buy expensive houses, and quite another thing to keep a large amount of cash hidden behind a bed.
    “Is something wrong with your lobster?” Ronald asked. “It’s dry and tough. Anyway, what offends me is the assumption based strictly on nationality that someone is a crook.”
    “Felicity, you’re the one who suspects Mr. Trotsky because he’s Russian.”
    “Ronald, whoever stole my books and published them in Russian is likely to be Russian. And it’s possible to be a crook without being a gangster.”
    “The point is, Felicity, that you don’t know.”
    “True enough. For all I know, people suspect me of being a criminal because I live in a big house.”
    “No, they don’t. If they don’t know about your uncle, they assume that you bought the house with your royalties.” Felicity, who was delighted to have people make exactly that assumption, said, “If that’s what they think, they’re fools.”
    “They’re naïve, that’s all. The wannabes who come to Witness meetings think they’re going to be able to quit their day jobs when their first royalty statements arrive. Take Janice Mattingly.”
    “You take her. Ronald, why did she invite that forensics guy with his mummified foot? That thing is revolting. I wish someone else would take charge of lining up the speakers. I don’t know what makes it her job.”
    “No one else wants to do it. Are you volunteering?”
    “Of course not. I’m too busy.”
    “So is everyone else. That’s why Janice does more than her fair share for Witness. Refreshments—”
    “Which she does badly. It’s the worst food I’ve eaten since school lunches.“
    “The newsletter.“
    “Which she is supposed to edit, not to write.”
    “How can she when no one sends her anything?”
    “When Sonya did the newsletter, people sent her things. She plagued us. It worked. Besides, Janice likes doing the newsletter. She’s going to interview me as soon as the police let me talk publicly about the murder.”
    “As you can hardly wait to do.”
    “Admittedly, Ronald. As I can hardly wait to do.”
     

 
    Quinlan Coates’s funeral was a big disappointment. For one thing, instead of attending in solitary dignity, Felicity was dragged down, as she saw it, by Janice Mattingly and Sonya Bogosian, who had insisted on accompanying her. When Sonya called on Friday evening, she said that she and Janice were determined to offer moral support. Felicity was convinced then and remained convinced that Sonya and Janice were merely looking for a pretext to gather material for their books. The nerve! This was Felicity’s very own murder, and Janice and Sonya had no business trying to exact shares to which they weren’t entitled. Had the body been left at their front doors? Certainly not! If they wanted to attend the funerals of murder victims, let them find their own corpses and their own last rites! Quinlan Coates belonged to Felicity, as did his funeral mass, and it was greedy and unprofessional of Janice and Sonya to hone in on, and thereby diminish, another mystery writer’s research opportunity. Moral support, indeed! The hypocrites!
    But there they were, seated on either side of Felicity in the Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola, which was so dishearteningly light, bright, and unmysterious that it could practically have been Presbyterian—and Scots Presbyterian at that. Furthermore, the wholesome young priest now delivering a eulogy about Quinlan Coates’s professional accomplishments, his contributions to the Boston College community, and his extreme devotion to his late wife, bore no resemblance to the elderly, doddering figure Felicity had imagined, a satisfyingly sinister character who kept lapsing into Latin, thus rendering his insinuations about the deceased unintelligible except to Felicity and a handful of Jesuits with whom she would converse over the funeral meats.
    The apparent failure of William Coates to provide funeral meats was another source of disappointment. In neither yesterday’s paper nor today’s had there been any mention of a