Chapter Six
Thelonious spent the next several days driving about taking photographs and dodging Mrs. Baxter, keeping his evenings reserved for The Drowned Duck. DCI Sidebottom seemed to have taken leave from Little Acre’s bustling social scene, though the other members were all present and accounted for: Fag-stain Man holding court at the bar with his beekeeping sidekick, the Belgians and their belching Russian huddled at their table, the vicar and his wife ignoring each other and drinking like fish, and Lord Nelson romancing any chair leg that would have him. Every time the door opened, Thelonious’s gut went into a clench-lock as he expected his nemesis to walk in, but it kept ending up being a false alarm, resulting in Zimmer-frame Granny or some other soul with nothing better to do tha
