Bleeding Hearts. Lindy Cameron
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hand and The Iliad in the other. "This is two books. You want me to read two books?"
"Ha, ha." Kit would have been worried about Hector's inner life, had she not known that he devoured crime and science fiction novels for breakfast.
"It's good exercise," she said. "Your eyes get to go left and right, left and right."
"You are in a bad mood, aren't you?" he said.
"No. But there will be a test," she said, waving a finger at the books. "You mark my words."
CHAPTER FOUR
"So, what is it we're doing here?"
"For goodness sake Brigit, I explained it in the car on the way over."
"I wasn't listening then, Del. You know I switch off whenever you mention that dreadful Miranda Prentice. Where is she, anyway?"
"She's over there. I'm going over to say hello. You don't have to come."
"Good. Kit and I will stay here with the real people. Do give Miranda my regards though, and tell her I'm just dying to catch up. I'll be leaping off the balcony if she wants to say hello."
Del scowled at Brigit and then smiled sweetly at Kit. "If she even looks like getting off that bar stool, could you do me a favour and knock her out."
"Sure," Kit replied, slipping her arm affectionately around Brigit's shoulder.
Del turned on her heel and tried to weave her way casually through the crowd of over-dressed, barely-dressed and oddly-dressed guests towards the front of the Gallery Bar Gallery where Miranda Prentice was holding court with the evening's special guest artist, Frankie Diajo.
"I'd like to hire you to waste that bitch," Brigit snarled.
"Who? Del?" Kit asked.
"Don't be ridiculous. I mean Miranda."
"Brigie, I'm a PI not a hit person."
"I'm willing to pay top dollar," Brigit offered, swivelling around on the stool. "I'm serious."
"I'm sure you are. What is it with you and Ms Prentice anyway?"
"Bite your tongue, Katherine," Brigit exclaimed, slapping her hand on her ample bosom. "There's absolutely nothing with me and Princess Snooty-Britches. She just takes up valuable space on the planet, that's all. And with the ozone layer being the way it is, we could do with the extra oxygen that her not breathing any more would provide. Ah, a barman," she added, swinging round to face the bar. She ordered two glasses of champagne and then turned back to Kit. "Will you tell me why we're here?"
Kit leaned in and whispered in Brigit's ear. "We're on the lookout for a pickpocket."
"In this crowd?"
Kit shrugged. "The bar, as you know Brigit, is open every night but these special function nights for painters, sculptors, poets and whatnot are only on Tuesdays. And every Tuesday night for the last month several people have 'lost' their wallets or phones. So Miranda asked if I could find out who's responsible."
Brigit narrowed her eyes. "You mean Miranda asked Del to ask you to do her a favour."
"No, actually I don't mean that. Miranda..."
"Oh, you're hopeless, Kit," Brigit interrupted. "How do you expect to make a living if you keep doing love jobs - and for Señorita Skinny-Lips of all people. If these yuppies want to spend their evenings having wanky conversations about these objet not so d'art then they deserve to lose their money."
"I don't think they're yuppies, Brigit," Kit said. It was time to try and change the subject.
"Oh? What are they?
"I'm not sure," Kit replied, gazing around the crowded room. "They might be New Age Bohemians."
"Good god!" Brigit stated, putting her glasses on so she could peer around the room and actually make out people's features. "Why aren't they all wearing berets?"
"Why would they?" Kit asked.
"Isn't that what bohemians do? Wear berets, drink lots of wine and coffee, and have impenetrable conversations that resemble English only in as much as you might find the words in the Oxford dictionary but you need a PHD in something obscure to be able to understand the spaces between them?"
"Ah, no," Kit smiled thoughtfully. "I think it's postmodern deconstructionists that do that. Or maybe Scottish partisans."
"Have the Scots taken up arms? Who are they fighting?" Brigit asked, enthusiastically clenching her fists.
"They're not fighting anybody. Have you had too much to drink?"
"Probably. Actually I must have, because I think that bohemian over there is making eyes at me." Brigit pressed her palm to her cheek. "Oh, silly old me, what was I thinking? It's you she's ogling."
Kit turned and glanced towards the two people standing beside the Gallery Bar Gallery's spiral staircase, an alleged work of art that went nowhere and did nothing, except be what it was. "She's not a bohemian Brigit, she's a journalist. And I think she needs rescuing from that earnest-looking human."
Erin Carmody, reporter for and editor of the St Kilda Star, was looking resplendent in a blood red crushed velvet dress that highlighted her auburn hair and clashed with her purple runners. She was also wearing the glazed and desperate expression of someone who was being bored stupid by an 'expert' in something-in-particular or nothing-much-at-all - in this case a slim, bald man in a dark green frock-coat and white trousers.
Kit sidled up to them just as the - ah, art expert - was explaining to Erin the meaning of a huge painting of sweeping multicoloured brush strokes, entitled Schrödinger's Cat.
"The depth and repetition of colour suggests the movement of time into space," he said.
"It looks more like alternate universes to me," Kit commented.
"Really?" the expert asked, snidely.
"But Stuart," Erin asked, casting a grateful glance at Kit, "who is Schrödinger, and why is there no cat in the picture?"
"You've not heard of Schrödinger?" Stuart asked. "He discovered a now-legendary equation that proved the Big Bang theory."
"Did he really?" Erin exaggerated, as if it was the most amazing thing she'd ever heard.
"Yes. The..."
"No he didn't, actually," Kit interrupted, as politely as possible. "Schrödinger devised a theory that involved a box, a radioactive atom, a phial of poison and a cat. It was an imaginary experiment to show that the everyday laws of physics do not work in the world of quantum mechanics."
Stuart's eyes widened and he began to fiddle with his collar.
"What was the poison for?" Erin asked, getting ready to look appalled.
"To kill the cat," Kit explained. "But only if the atom decayed and the reaction broke the phial."
"That's awful," Erin stated.
"She's a cat person," Stuart said hastily, casting a warning glance at Kit, while Erin tried not to laugh. "It's okay, Erin dear," he cooed. "The cat wasn't hurt."
"There was no cat," Kit said. "It was just a theory, the point of which was that you would never know what had happened in the box unless you looked; hence proving that nothing is real, or has any reality, unless it is observed."
"Aah, I get it," Erin exclaimed, raising her palms to the painting as if she'd had an epiphany. "That explains why the scarlet is not repeated."
"Exactly," Kit agreed, simply because she could.
Stuart looked from Erin to Kit and back to Erin. "Would you excuse me for a second," he said, getting ready to escape into the crowd. "I've just seen Martin."
"Thank you, Kit," Erin sighed with relief. "So, were you baffling the boring-as-batshit