Tannat

Series: Mr & Mrs North #3

Well that was an interesting motivation for murder.

I had a lot of fun with this one although Pete (the Norths' cat) only showed up at the end. Pam North is as scattered as usual but manages to intuit several things about the case. The Norths aren't really investigating the case, of course, but Lieutenant Weigand was at their place when he got called in for a girl who collapsed and then died at a rooftop restaurant. Unfortunately, as Mullins (his sergeant) puts in, they always get the "screwy" ones, and lots of people could have put something in her drink.

There were also several humorous notes, like the follow-up to Mullins's pronunciation of "et" in Henri et Paulette:

“That’s your business, isn’t it? Something and Paulette, isn’t it?”
“Henri et Paulette,” Graham said. Mullins looked startled at the pronunciation. “Cosmetics and perfumes and the like. Why?”

Or Pam North's observations about movies:

“You know what it’s like?” Mrs. North said. The others paid attention.
“It’s like coming in the middle of a picture,” she said. “I mean a moving one. There are a lot of people doing things and you don’t know why, or who you’re in favor of and who against. And so you have to just work things out.”
“Just to work things out,” Mr. North said. “I know what you mean. I hate to come in in the middle—never makes sense.”
Mrs. North shook her head.
“I think I prefer it,” she said. “It makes things seem so interesting—so much more interesting than things really are in movies. You can just sit there and imagine, and think maybe it is going to be different. Even when it isn’t, in the end, you’ve had the fun of thinking.”

And how the Norths have started poking fun at themselves and their luck with murders:

“There’s nothing like a murder to break up a party.”
Mrs. North said she was just thinking that.
“You know,” she said, “do you suppose it could be something we do—something wrong, I mean?—All our dinners seem to end like this nowadays. With murders.” Mrs. North looked perplexed. “Do you suppose,” she said, “it could be something about us?”

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