Embarrassment of Corpses, An Read Free Page B

was still wearing his belted Burberry.
    â€œMr. Swithin, sir?” A stout, shirt-sleeved policeman behind a counter was waving a mustard-colored envelope at Oliver. “Your belongings, sir, if you’d just sign for them.” He smiled in a macabre manner, showing too many teeth, and Oliver found himself thinking inexplicably of the lyrics to “Mack the Knife.” (Although for some reason, he was hearing them to the tune of “Clementine.”)
    The policeman tipped the contents of the envelope onto the counter and checked them off on a clipboard. “Handkerchief, still rather soggy, I’m afraid, sir.” He smiled again, and Oliver shivered. In the local pubs, P.C. Axelrod was very successful at selling raffle tickets for police benefits. “One pair of braces, pink; one pair of shoelaces; one digital watch; one bunch of keys on an ornamental key ring.”
    He lifted it to his face, with a frown of feigned concentration. “Ah, I see. The young lady’s bathing costume sort of trickles off when you hold it up the right way.”
    â€œIt was a present,” said Oliver weakly.
    â€œWhat’ll they think of next, that’s what I say, sir,” said Axelrod with another smile and returned to the list. Oliver took off his jacket and pulled on the sweater that Mallard had brought him.
    â€œOne diary—rather spoilt by its illegal dip in a municipal waterway; one similarly sodden membership card to what seems to be the Sanders Club; one jelly baby; one small plastic telescope; one red plastic clown’s nose; one tuning fork; and several slips of paper in different colors that appear to me to be counterfeit banknotes.”
    â€œMonopoly money, actually.”
    â€œSome of us just live for pleasure, don’t we, sir?” Axelrod swiveled his clipboard. “Right, sign here.”
    Stuffing his belongings into the pockets of his dinner jacket, Oliver rejoined his uncle. They stepped out into the blazing midday sunshine of Bow Street and walked toward Covent Garden.
    ***
    A nation’s character is the child of its climate, which probably explains why conversing in the open air has never been an English habit. Unlike the squares and marketplaces of Europe, public spaces in England are designed as places to go past rather than places to go to. When reluctant Londoners got their first Italianate piazza, in the seventeenth century, the empty space made them so nervous that they quickly filled it with fruit and vegetable stands and called it Covent Garden, convincing generations of tourists that the English speak better than they spell. Now the original Inigo Jones houses that first framed the piazza have all gone, and its main attraction is the renovated Victorian market building that was eventually built in the middle. Covent Garden’s architectural history always reminded Oliver of the ingenious American company that sells blobs of batter as the holes from long-departed doughnuts.
    A handful of tourists, with Nikes and Nikons, were straggled in a loose, sweating crescent around a young man who was trying to juggle meat cleavers under the portico of Jones’s barnlike church.
    â€œAre you hungry?” Mallard asked Oliver as they stopped to watch.
    â€œNot really.” A cleaver clanged onto the cobbled pavement and skidded into the sunlight. The tourists moved away, to seek the shade of the shops and stalls in the old market building.
    â€œGood,” Mallard continued unpleasantly. “Because I have strict instructions from your Aunt Phoebe to bring you back for Sunday lunch, and I don’t want to. You’re her favorite nephew, although I can’t think why. Personally, it’s part of my daily routine to thank the Almighty that I’m only related to you by marriage. By the way, Oliver, I’m sorry about Harry.”
    Oliver smiled, and not just because he had made eye contact with a big-haired American teenager, who had blushed