SIX
December, 1919
The house was in a furore. We could hear it from several houses away, and Mr Apostol’s steps faltered.
‘That can’t be good,’ he commented.
I stopped to listen.
The main voice I heard was Clare’s, though I could not make out the words. Many women combine pitch with volume when trying to make themselves heard, and their voices become shrill. Clare’s did not. What she neglected in pitch, she made up in even still greater volume, and her tirade broke over us from a hundred-yard distance in the inexorable bass rumble of an approaching train. That was not the sound of her grief. The woman was out for somebody’s head.
It was not the time to be introducing strangers into the house.
‘All I can think is that Quincey’s come back without an adequate excuse, and his wife is gi
