Keiko’s thoughts raced. Then she said, “Come and cook it for lunchtime while I’m running my dry run. And all the people will smell the lovely smell and come downstairs and buy a pudding to take home!”
“A pie,” said Malcolm, slowly. “Puddings don’t keep to sell in the shop.” There was a pause. “So you’re starting your work this morning?” he said. “I saw the sign downstairs.”
Keiko made a gesture of mock panic, but her eyes were dancing. “You could come in and be the first person,” she said. “Your mother seemed a little… but it’s really nothing to be concerned over.”
“I’m already the first person,” said Malcolm, smiling down at his feet again. “Alien spaceships and killer tomatoes. Been there, seen it.”
Keiko laughed in surprise. “I forgot!” she said. “Yes, of course. But Fancy’s taken away my aliens. She said they were too distracting. She’s very firm.”
Malcolm uncrossed his legs and, bending one knee slightly, pushed himself up off the doorframe and stood straight. “Right. You go and push back the frontiers of knowledge, and I’ll go and blanch my kidneys.” He turned and moved away.
Mrs. Watson, it turned out, was the first person. She knocked on the door at quarter to ten, and then put her head round and called along the passageway.
“Shout at me, Keiko my darling, and tell me to get out and come back when you’re ready, but you’ll have to shout at me, for I’m that excited I can’t wait.”
“Mrs. Watson,” said Keiko coming along to the door. “You’re going to be so disappointed. It’s so very dull.” Mrs. Watson’s head disappeared and when Keiko opened the door, she was standing half-turned away on the mat. “But how can I shout at you, when I am so excited myself?” She took Mrs. Watson’s arm, walked her to the living room, and settled her down at the table.
“Now,” she said in a high voice. “Please read the instruction page and then ask me if anything is unclear.”
“Och, away,” said Mrs. Watson. “You tell me about it yourself. You’ll know it all back to front.”
“No, I can’t,” said Keiko in her normal voice. “Everyone has to have exactly the same introduction so that I don’t give more information to some and not others by accident and confound my methodology.”
“‘Confound your methodology’,” echoed Mrs. Watson. “Your mother must be so proud.” She nodded conspiratorially and turned her eyes to the page while Keiko sat in an armchair and pretended to read. When Mrs. Watson looked up, she leapt to her feet.
“Is everything is clear? Good. If everything’s clear, please go on to the sample question. We can talk through this one.”
Mrs. Watson nodded with shrewdly narrowed eyes and read aloud: “Mark the line to show how strongly you agree with the following statement: There’s no smoke without fire. You know what this is like? This is just like a séance. Make the mark wherever you feel drawn to make it. Let yourself be guided, empty your mind.”
“Well,” said Keiko, but bit her lip as Mrs. Watson marked the paper with a languid hand.
“What would you do if people started coming out with real messages,” she said. “Could you use that?”
“Do you believe in the spirit world, Mrs. Watson?” Keiko said, sidestepping Mrs. Watson’s question. She hadn’t put anything in the profiler about such paranormal things, since most British people were supposed to be so rational that they would scoff. And she didn’t want to offend the others.
“I’d like to,” said Mrs. Watson. “I sometimes feel as though there’s someone nearby. Don’t you?”
“Not really,” said Keiko, although she shivered as she spoke. “But I’ve never lost anyone close to me.”
“And long may that last,” said Mrs. Watson. “I don’t recommend it.”
Keiko hesitated. Was Mrs. Watson thinking of her niece Dina? If she was speaking Japanese she would have been able to tiptoe up to the questions, but in English the intrusion would be-
The doorbell rang.
“You run along,” said Mrs. Watson. “I know exactly what to do. You concentrate on the newcomers.”
It was Mr. McKendrick, dressed in a dark suit and black tie. He checked his step for a moment in the living room doorway when he saw Mrs. Watson bent over her paper, and looked rather ostentatiously at his watch.
Mrs. Watson raised her eyes without raising her chin, regarded him over the top of her spectacles. Then taking in his black tie she lifted her head. “Of course, it’s Tam Cleland’s funeral this morning,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard he was gone.”
“Aye, he looked such a tough old goat,” said Mr. McKendrick.
“But Mrs. Mackie was saying there’s nothing at the church.”
“No, it’s the crematorium, just. And no do.”
“Crematorium!” said Mrs. Watson. “He’ll be turning in his grave.” Then she put one hand over her mouth to smother the giggles.
Keiko got Mr. McKendrick settled and took him through the introduction, Mrs. Watson looking up at intervals and nodding. He viewed the mug of biros sternly and reached into his pocket for his fountain pen.
“No smoke without fire,” he said softly. “No smoke without fire. Would that be barbecue smoke? Because this was supposed to be about food, if you remember.”
“The food questions will come later,” Keiko said. “This is just smoke.”
“You’re not allowed extra instructions, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson. “It wrecks the methodology.”
Mr. McKendrick turned slightly away from her and addressed Keiko. “It’s true, you know. I was a volunteer fireman in my younger days. Even when there’s only smoke there’s either just been a fire or there’s going to be a fire. Or if there isn’t, it’s because someone sees to it that there isn’t. So would that be a yes or a no?”
“It’s not a clear yes or a clear no,” said Keiko. “You need to mark the line to show what mixture of yes and no. More yes? More no? Can’t say?”
“Just let your mind drift, Jimmy,” said Mrs. Watson, without looking up.
“And if you don’t know, if you can’t say, you leave it blank?” said Mr. McKendrick.
“No,” said Keiko. “If you can’t say then it would be in the middle. Neither yes nor no. You see?”
Mr. McKendrick nodded, kindly. “Aye well, I suppose that’s why you do a dry run, isn’t it after all,” he said. “To iron out these wee hitches. You’ll need to ditch this one before you get going for real, eh?”
Keiko smiled tightly. “Mr. McKendrick,” she said, “remember these answers are strictly anonymous. You should use one of my pens instead of yours, so that all the sheets are the same.”
Mr. McKendrick moved as though to put the lid back on his pen, then catching sight of Mrs. Watson staring at him, he set the nib down on the paper.
“I’ve nothing to hide,” he said, “and I trust you.”
seventeen
By evening, she had twenty-five completed papers and was sitting at her desk rewriting the instructions-Do not confer during the experiment and Please do not discuss your answers with anyone-when Murray arrived, dressed in running clothes.
“How did it go?”
“Tremendously well,” said Keiko, flopping back down onto the sofa. “But I’m exhausted. Twenty-five people and it might have been more, except there was a funeral.”
“Tam Cleland, yeah,” Murray said. “So now you know all there is to know about the people of Painchton?”
“More than I expected to,” said Keiko with a laugh. “I know that Tam Cleland’s daughter-in-law is to blame for such a small funeral and she’s ‘been through the house and stripped it bare.’ Miss Morrison told me all about it.”
“Miss Morrison.” He nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re fine with her.”