By the Pricking of My Thumb

Blindly, she reached back, pulling the rough terry cloth towel she kept for drying her hair from the heated towel bar, and, wrapping it Turkish-style around her head, she tucked it in at the nape of her neck. Reaching forward, Suzette used the corner of her thick Turkish towel to wipe a circle clear in the steamed up mirror. She stared at herself, and the reflection she saw was a mixture of her handsome parents, Jason and Amelia Lang. She had her father's thick chestnut hair, her mother's large, green eyes, and lashes that weren't half bad either. She had the same wide, sensuous mouth and well-defined lips as her mother, and good, strong teeth, a product of good, wholesome eating. She guessed, all in all, she had just missed being really beautiful.

She rubbed vigorously for several minutes then tossed her head back and picked up her brush. Her thick chestnut cap fell into place like a shining helmet. Dropping the towel, she stepped on the scale. She decided the eight stones it read were not too bad. Robert and she had had a day on the town yesterday. Lunch at "Ces’t Bon", after which they'd strolled around Portabel Road looking for antique bargains, mainly for cane-bottomed chairs to match the ones they already had. But bargains were getting very hard to find. People were becoming much more aware of what they had, and were selling them for hard brass themselves.

Suzette dealt in old rare books, and had worked for the old established English firm of Berkshire and Stilts. It had been established back in the 1800's, and it had stayed in the Berkshire and Stilts families over the generations.

Stop gathering wool, my girl, and get on with the day, Suzette scolded herself. Wrapping another towel about her slim body, she left the bathroom.

The phone was burring off the hook on the bedside table. Who in the world would be calling now? She looked at her watch. Six forty-five... must be bad news. Throwing herself across the old bed, she answered rather breathlessly "Hello?"

"Suzette, love, hoped I'd catch you before you'd left. I've just discovered- oh, dear, what a nuisance! Someone has just come into the shop and Ed's not here yet. I'll drop you a note in the afternoon post. Cheerie bye, love!" And the phone went dead.

Suzette rolled over on her back, looking at the instrument in her hand. So like Auntie Millacent, she thought. Shaking her head, she replaced the phone in its cradle.

Rising slowly, she dropped the towel and stepped over it. It had been almost two years since the early morning call had come from Paris, informing her that her parents had been killed in that tragic car accident on the little country road outside of the little French village where her grandmother had lived, in Provence.

Suzette was the only child of Jason and Amelia Lang, and she was 26 years old. They had distinguished themselves during the Second World War, and had given evidence at the Nuremberg trials. She remembered her father's diary had been given in evidence, mainly against one S.S. officer, a Colonel Heindrich von Heusen, and his lieutenant, Kurt Schreiler. Both had been convicted of cruel and lascivious acts against the Jews from Poland, to The Hague and to Paris, and Heindrich had been found guilty by the tribunal and sentenced to hang. As he was being led from the courtroom, Heindrich had threatened both Amelia and Jason. Suzette remembered now that an investigation had gone into the car crash after their deaths, with an inquest, but nothing had ever been settled. The case was neither open, nor closed, just gathering dust in someone's filing cabinet somewhere in Paris, she assumed.

Gathering dust! Yes, that's what you're doing, you big, daft thing! Get yourself going or you're going to be late.

She ran down the stairs and hurried across the entrance hall, catching her heel on the corner of a worn, Oriental rug, and pivoted forward, striking her shoulder on a corner of the dining room. Rubbing it vigorously, she said, "Damn! Got to get that thing fixed," and picking up her briefcase, she opened the door, and closed it soundly behind her, and so the day began.