Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

Flight from the Palm Court by Gregor Robinson

A circular appeared: “Music and High Tea at the Palm Court of the Majestic Hotel.” What was the Palm Court? Surely Madame Grumbacher did not mean the windowless lobby, three steps below ground level, which also served as the hotel bar and home of the village dart league? She did. Potted plants were to be placed in front of the pool room door. The reception desk would be obscured by a Chinese screen. The bottles behind the bar would be made more discreet, the yellow bulb that illuminated them unscrewed. I asked Madame Grumbacher: why a Palm Court, when all around were actual palm trees, swaying in the warm sea breezes?

“Never have you ever been to Vienna?” said Madame Grumbacher. “Or Budapest? Perhaps Saint Mark’s, in Venezia? All the best hotels have Palm Courts.”

What about tea? Who would take tea in a gloomy hotel when you could step across the road to the Terrace Bar and have a Goombay Smash under the immense sky, while the surf lolled on the white sand below.

“English people. Europeans. We are getting a better class of clientele. Plus we will also offer rum.”

And who would supply the music?

“A refined lady. From Massachusetts.” Madame Grumbacher leaned towards me. “Mr. Rennison, you have a guest at your home, yes?”

“No. Absolutely not.”

“A distinguished musician. It will be a surprise for the people of the village.”

“It will be a surprise for me.”

“She has appeared with the New Bedford Ensemble, only last month!” Madame Grumbacher stood, triumphant, resuming her full height and her normal booming voice. She slammed my beer on the table. “She will be our first performer. Sunday afternoon. You will be there.”

“There must be some mistake.”

But there was no mistake. Healey came into the bank after lunch to tell me that a Mrs. Arbuthnot would be coming to stay with me. I was not happy. You were at close quarters in that house; I saw myself as an exile, and I valued my privacy. I said: “Why can’t she stay at the Majestic? Or the Inn? Or at the Hotel Paradiso?”

“The rooms in the Majestic smell,” said Healey. “The Inn is expensive The Hotel Paradiso is disreputable — filled with refugees on the way to Miami, drug dealers, Colombians, baseball players, riffraff. Mrs. Arbuthnot is a musician — genteel, I understand.”

I suggested renting a house, but there was no time for that; she would be arriving any time.

“Another thing,” said Healey. “Mrs. Arbuthnot knows Burnett. He arranged the whole thing.” That settled it. The bank paid my rent, and Burnett was on the board of directors.

She arrived the next day, a Monday. I was lunching on my terrace overlooking the harbor. I noticed an immense straw hat coming along the top of the hedge. Then two peacock feathers. She was upon me.

“Mr. Rennison, you’re eating lunch!” One of those East Coast voices, accusatory, accustomed to being paid attention to. “I went to the bank first — naturally — but it was closed. Nice hours you have!”

I moved my chair back from the table. Mrs. Arbuthnot put her hands to her ears (I would learn that the sound of furniture scraping on stone was one of many that bothered her). She wore immense earrings — lime-green elephants — on which I remarked.

“Yes,” she said, “and they shine in the dark.”

I asked if she would like lunch.

“I don’t want to impose.” She picked up a chair, and moved it to the table.

“Punch?” I picked up my own glass for a refill.

“That would be lovely,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “I don’t think there was any rum in my last one.”

“Your last one?”

“At the hotel. I stopped to ask where you lived. Awfully kind of you — having me on such a short notice. I’m touring the islands, giving concerts where I can, arranging my schedule as I go. It’s all very difficult.”

“A sort of cultural ambassador.”

“That is how I think of myself.”

She helped herself to a second spiny lobster tail, the one I had been saving for dinner. She smacked as she ate. When I brought her the drink, she favored me with a smile, but it was too late, I was out of sorts by then — the break in my routine, the interruption of lunch — and I saw nothing in her smile but the cheerful look you notice sometimes on the round faces of the demented, framed by a blonde Dutchboy cut and eye shadow applied with lunatic abandon. She was about fifty-five. Old.

A plane flew overhead. “Why is he circling?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot, not looking up. “Listen how he throttles down. Having a good look, I’d say.” She could tell by the sound of the engine. “Cessna 120, same as mine. Wonder where he came from. Wasn’t at the airport when I landed.”

Burnett’s voice came crackling over the radiophone. I excused myself, went inside to take the call.

“Woman coming to stay — she there yet?” said Burnett. “Awfully sorry.”

I wanted to complain bitterly, but Mrs. Arbuthnot was just beyond the kitchen door; I thought I could hear her smacking from where I stood. Then I heard an actual voice — low, male, sibilant. I picked up the dessert — ice cream and papaya — and pushed the screen door open with my hip. On the terrace was a pile of luggage. And sitting not at the table but on the wooden bench in the shade by the wall, a man of thirty at most, pale, thin, slightly stooped. He held in his lap a hissing cassette machine. The red light was on. He was recording the event.

“My son,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “Lloyd, say hello.”

“ ’Lo.” The fellow stared at me like a dead fish. Not one but two guests, and one of them a bit off.

“Lloyd is taping my concerts,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. “He is into electronics. He is also my radio man and navigator.”

After Mrs. Arbuthnot and Lloyd had taken their things to their rooms, I urged them to walk across the island to the museum and the old cholera cemetery; sometimes a human bone turned up in the sand — always startling to visitors. I cleaned the kitchen and checked the bedrooms. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s suitcases were half unpacked on one of the twin beds. On the night stand table were books, brushes, creams, perfumes, and other toiletries. But in Lloyd’s room there was no evidence of human visitation. Nothing on the floor, on the beds, or on the bureau. I opened the top drawer. There was his clothing, packed orderly and tight, even his shoes, as in a sardine tin.

I heard a footfall behind me, a doe walking on moss.

“See anything you like?” Lloyd stood behind me, his head through the doorway.

I cleared my throat. “Just making sure you have towels.”

“The towels are behind the door.” Lloyd pointed. He was ten years younger than I, but his movements were of someone much older. His gestures reminded me of Ichabod Crane.

I strode past him into the hall. Confidence — that’s what’s wanted in situations like these. Lloyd followed, hands behind back. I said, “Here we have the bathroom,” as though I were an innkeeper showing off the premises.

“Mineral oil in the medicine chest,” said Lloyd. “If you’re constipated, you should use fruits and fiber. Plenty of fiber.”

“I am not constipated,” I replied icily. “The mineral oil was here when I rented the house.” The tour continued to the living room.

“See you like Glenn Gould. I do, too.” He’d been here two hours, yet he’d examined the medicine chest and my cassettes. It occurred to me that his interest in electronics was only the tip of the iceberg. I had read about people like Lloyd. They lived in rooms by themselves. They had binoculars. They kept dossiers on people. One day they went berserk.

I strolled to the bookcase and scooped up the Gould tapes. “My gift to you.” Overdoing it, I know, but a way of atoning for being caught going through his things. I didn’t want to be the object of his fury when he finally snapped. With my gift and his own snooping, I felt I had regained the upper hand. “I thought you were going to the beach,” I said.

“I’ve been to the beach,” said Lloyd. “Came back to check on my equipment.” This sounded ominous, but I let it pass. “Just as well. Mother’s cello has arrived.”

“Mother’s cello?” I had had it in my mind that she was a pianist.

“Couldn’t fit in the taxi, had to get a van. There’s a man here, wants us to go down to the harbor and pick it up.”

We borrowed Drover’s golf cart, the thing he used for picking up vegetables and meat from the freight boat, and drove down to the pier. The cello wasn’t heavy so much as awkward; we finally secured it with ropes to the jitney top. The water-taxi operator stood waiting. Lloyd shrugged and gave me a blank look, so I told the man to put it on my account. At dinner that night Mrs. Arbuthnot said, “I owe you money for the water-taxi.” She said there would be a letter of credit coming from Massachusetts; we would settle later.

My visitors were soon well known in the village. Mrs. Arbuthnot visited every gimcrack souvenir shop, talking, buying (the kind of tourist the villagers loved), delivering circulars about the concert. Lloyd’s appearances were more peculiar. He said little, he dressed somberly, and he went farther afield. The second day he rose early and walked the length of the island. The third, he borrowed a rowboat from the hotel and explored the coves, the hurricane hole, and the mangrove swamps on the lee side. Wherever he went, he carried one of his tape recorders. He had several small cassette players and a large machine with dials and fluttering needles. Madame Grumbacher told me that he spent several afternoons at the bar at the Majestic (the new Palm Court). He was the only person there besides the dart players. The red light of his tape recorder glowed in the gloom. He had a boom mike.

“What do you think you’re doing,” one of the men in the dart league had asked.

“Just testing,” said Lloyd. He stared the man down. “For the concert.”

At the Terrace Bar, he sat on the far side wearing earphones, the boom mike aimed across the pool towards the thatched hut with the bar. It made people edgy. He even ventured into the Riverside, ordered Coca-Cola — Lloyd did not drink alcohol — and sat with a recorder in his pocket. The Riverside was where the drug dealers gathered, the petty crooks and thugs who came in outboards from other islands to play pool and while away their afternoons. The room was silent but for the whirr of Lloyd’s cassette player and the click of the cues, until the bartender told Lloyd to shut the recorder off or have it shoved down his throat. Ti-Paul from the ferry came into the bank expressly to tell me about this incident. “That man you got staying with you — he the police?”

“Does he really look it?” I asked.

“Yeah, well, he better be careful. The boys at the Riverside, they got bad nerves. He spooks them.”

“Tell them he’s just a tourist, good for business.” But I knew what they meant. Mrs. Arbuthnot was rarely in the house; when she wasn’t out “getting to know the villagers — so colorful,” she was at the Methodist Chapel where Madame Grumbacher had arranged for her to rehearse. But Lloyd was in and out like a wraith. He would materialize in the kitchen, on the terrace, in the living room, his tape recorders whirring. Then vanish back into the ether.

Friday was my busiest day, and I was at the bank by eight o’clock. The restaurants, the merchants, the visiting yachtsmen — everyone needed cash for the weekend. Besides, traffic in my bathroom was heavy. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s ablutions took almost an hour, including a bath, a shampoo, and drying her hair with a blower that made the lights fade and the toaster pop. I was glad to be out of the house and at my desk. Winnie came bursting in a few minutes later.

“Mr. Rennison!” Her hair was wild. She was more excited than the time the Russian satellite had turned up on the beach.

“Yes, Winnie,” I said. “What is it?”

She stared at me, goggle-eyed. I thought I might have to go around the desk and slap her, but suddenly she shouted, “Fire! Fire!”

“What? Here?”

“Riverside Tavern!” she said. “The boathouse!”

I noticed something sweet and oddly familiar in the morning air. I followed Winnie out as the fire bell rang — Constable MacMahon pulling the rope, rousing the volunteers. To no avail it turned out: when they went to start the truck, the battery was missing. (Suspicious, people said later.) But there would have been little chance of putting out the fire anyway: the Riverside boathouse was built on piers about fifteen yards out in the lagoon. The catwalk had burned by the time Winnie and I arrived, and the flames were dying down. Thick smoke lay over the harbor. A crowd had gathered along the path. They were laughing, joking.

“Smell it, man!” said Vero, the bartender from the Majestic. He made a show of inhaling, rolled his eyes. Marijuana smoke filled the air. Out in the harbor I saw Schindler, owner of the Riverside, standing on the deck of his cruiser. He wore a long white dressing gown and dark glasses. He stood perfectly still. He did not look concerned to me.

With a crash and a hiss, the floor of the boathouse fell into the harbor. Wild applause from the crowd.

When I returned to the bank after lunch, there was a cardboard box on my desk — a foot and a half long, maybe a foot wide and a foot high, sealed with thick tape.

“Winnie, what is this?”

“Mr. Schindler’s boat boy brought it in for safekeeping. Said you’d know.”

But I didn’t know. I picked the package up. At least fifteen pounds. We had a safe large enough to hold cash for the day, occasionally overnight, and perhaps a few documents.

“Winnie, this parcel will never fit into our safe. You shouldn’t have accepted it.” She shrugged her shoulders. A copy of the receipt she had given Schindler lay on my desk.

“He’s a good customer, Mr. Rennison. You always say to me, we have to treat the customers nice. The customer is always right. That’s what you always say, Mr. Rennison. You do.”

I heard the sound of the Land Rover on the harbor road. An unexpected visit. Burnett was sweating when he came in, although his iron grey hair remained firmly in place. I stood, prepared to accompany him across the road for a glass of the special rum they kept for him, but there were to be no pleasantries: he waved me back to my chair with a flutter of the handkerchief he had been using to wipe his brow. He said, “Go away, Winnie.” When she’d gone, he said to me, “You’ve noticed these bloody airplanes.”

“Airplanes?”

“Bloody gnats circling the island. Spotter planes. Now the police are coming. A bloody swoop.”

We had two kinds of drugs on Pigeon Cay. Bales of marijuana came from Jamaica and Mexico for local use and for shipment elsewhere. And there was the more sinister business of cocaine. Those who speculated about these things — and we did so in low voices; both the cartels and the DEA were supposed to have informants on Pigeon Cay — believed that fisherman picked up packages that were dropped by air or ship along the lee side of the island, down past the sound. The drugs were transferred to speedboats that made the runs to Miami under cover of darkness. You could sometimes hear the rumble of engines at night. From time to time the police made sweeps of the islands — what Burnett was talking about — looking for trawlers, speedboats, anything they could find. But they’d never been here, to Pigeon Cay.

“Explains the fire,” I said.

“Fire?”

“The boathouse of the Riverside burned down this morning.”

“Ah. Actually, Schindler was out to see me last night,” said Burnett. “Don’t like the fellow. Still...”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Wants a favor of some kind. Don’t know what. Sending him along to see you.”

Of course. This was the purpose of Burnett’s visit. He would have heard about the police from Schindler, who would know from his contacts in the government. Everybody was on the take, from the prime minister on down. Burnett wouldn’t want to know about the favor. By then I knew I had already done it.

I called Healey, asked him to come over to my house later. When he arrived, I pointed at the package on the kitchen table. “From Schindler. He wants me to put this in the safe.”

“Cocaine?” said Healey. He was less discreet than the rest of us. I told him I wasn’t able to say.

“What about Burnett?” said Healey.

“You know Burnett — see no evil, hear no evil.” We never said out loud that Schindler was a drug dealer. He was one of the bank’s best customers.

“So, why don’t you put it in the safe?”

“Because it won’t fit unless we open it, if then. And if we open it, we know what it is.”

“Yes. I see your point,” said Healey. “Let’s keep the package under your bed for now. We don’t know for sure that the sweep will happen.”

Saturday night at the club was a special event: Burnett’s talk on Woman in the Modern World. We were behind in these matters. In the cities of North America, lesbians inseminated via turkey basters were having babies with the help of midwives and supportive friends. On Pigeon Cay, the gentlemen were bemoaning the loss of the old rituals — the wife dressed for dinner, martinis at the ready, when her husband came home. I joined Healey, Burnett, and old Tom Hargreaves at the Snug Bar. The conversation turned to the topic of our visitors. Hargreaves said that a view was developing in the village that Mrs. Arbuthnot should stop buying. The shopkeepers had been giving her credit on the strength of her connection with the bank — she was a friend of Burnett’s, and she was staying with me — but the bills were mounting and they were becoming alarmed.

“Stretching a point to call her a friend,” said Burnett. “Had a letter from a chap in Boston. Good cause and so forth — music for natives. Said why not, we’d put her up.”

“We meaning me.” I said. “And there’s two of them.”

“Didn’t know anything about the son,” said Burnett. “Sorry about that.”

“What about those tape recorders?” said Healey. “He’s been all over the island. They think he’s looking for drop sites. They think he’s with the police.”

“Is that possible?” said Burnett.

At that moment the bell rang, the commodore calling the meeting to order.

The Royal Bahamian Police Force arrived on Sunday, the same day as the concert.

“They’re going house to house,” said Lloyd, back from his early morning walk looking in people’s windows. He was more animated than I had ever seen him.

“Impossible,” I said. “That would be illegal. They would need search warrants and so on.”

But when I stopped in at Drover’s to pick up the Miami papers, I saw them, a group of men in shiny black shoes and synthetic jackets coming up the Queen’s Highway from the pier. They wore dark sunglasses. You weren’t supposed to catch their eye, but how could you tell when they wore those glasses. I saw another group, in uniforms, heading out along the road to North Point in a jeep.

Back at my house, I rushed to the bedroom and hauled the package out. I stared at the thing, racking my brains. I looked up; was there a space in the rafters? Not enough pitch — and I couldn’t see a door. Then I thought: the cistern; I would suspend the box on a rope from the roof of the new tank. I grabbed the package and ran into the garden. The trapdoor to the cistern had two metal handles as though you could flip it open, but the door was concrete; it would require a tractor to move it. A plane swooped in low from the west. I stooped over the package, imagining that they might be able to spot it from the air. When the plane was out of sight, I carried the box back into the house, trying to conceal it under my shirt. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Lloyd were standing by the window. They had evidently watched my entire performance.

“Is this the contraband?” said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

“Contraband? What do you mean?”

“Lloyd’s tape recorder.” Lloyd held up a tiny microphone. “Under the chesterfield. He listens to everything. It’s his hobby.”

I gaped at them.

“I must say I am disappointed, Mr. Rennison. Very disappointed. I’d have thought you would go straight to the police. In my opinion drugs are a scourge. You should visit certain parts of Boston, or New Haven.”

“But — you don’t think — if you heard on the tape recorder...”

She held up her hand to stop me. Then she pointed at the box (I saw where Lloyd had learned the gesture), an Old Testament prophet. “So what are you doing? Trying to hide the package?”

There was no point in denial. A brief pause. Mrs. Arbuthnot said, “Tell you what. Let’s put it in the cello case.”

“How on earth? — that would mean opening the package...”

“Let us not be hypocrites, Mr. Rennison. Lloyd will look after it.”

I busied myself with the breakfast. Lloyd came out of the bedroom twenty minutes later, lugging the cello case. It seemed to be bulging, but it was closed. Lloyd became vocal.

“Had to remove the extra strings,” he said, “and the tool kit. But it’s all in there now, packed around the cello.” He tapped the case with the flat of his hand. “I used masking tape. Fifteen little bags, like packages of icing sugar...”

I interrupted him. “Yes, certainly, all right then. How about another cup of coffee, some waffles?”

The police reached our end of the village after lunch, a fat sergeant and four men in uniform, the same group from the jeep I had seen in the morning. Two of the men were smoking cigars.

“Excuse me, sir, a few questions. Mind if the lads have a look around while we talk?” He was English. The soldiers were black.

“You have a search warrant?”

The sergeant removed his hat and scratched his head. He looked tired. “No. No, sir, that we don’t. But the drug squad, they do — every house in the village. They’re concentrating on the obvious places, the bars, the boathouses up the swamp. Very thorough they are. Look everywhere, tear up the floors, they piss in the cistern. Don’t miss a trick. And good with their hands, if you take my meaning. Shall I get them?”

I stood to let the men pass. They glanced in the cupboards, under the beds. Lloyd hovered in the background.

“Lovely view,” said the sergeant, gazing out the double doors to the terrace. “You hear things at night? See boats entering the harbor, like?”

“No,” I lied.

When I first came to Pigeon Cay, I had been amazed at how blind people were to the shadowy world that existed parallel to their own, how they ignored it. I came to understand. You didn’t want the police dragging you in to sign statements. You didn’t want them camped on your doorstep. You didn’t want trouble. Besides, smuggling was deeply entwined in the economy of the islands, always had been. I knew. I saw the money every day.

The sergeant turned to the cello case leaning against the wall. “What’s this, then?”

“A cello,” I rasped. Then, regaining my composure, “it belongs to my houseguest, the distinguished American cellist, Alexandra Amelia Arbuthnot. No doubt you have heard her. She is on tour. She is giving a concert at the Majestic Hotel this evening.”

“Right, let’s have a look.” He motioned to one of the soldiers. I watched frozen, horrified.

The door of the bathroom opened. Mrs. Arbuthnot emerged in a cloud of steam. She wore a long silk dressing gown that clung to her robust figure. Her hair hung wet about her head as though she were a sea goddess. She was armed with the hair dryer. She said, “Do not touch that case.”

“Eh?” said the sergeant.

“The instrument inside that case is two hundred years old. It is extremely delicate. If the damp sea air touches it, untold damage will result. My tour will be in ruins. I am a guest of your government. I shall hold you responsible.” She returned to the bathroom and shut the door.

The sergeant stared after her for a moment. Then he said, “Right, then, we’re on our way. Come along, lads.”

We passed the other group of police as we carried the cello case from my house to the hotel later that afternoon.

“Tell me,” I said to Mrs. Arbuthnot, “are you really a guest of the government?”

“In a manner of speaking. Their representative stamped my passport. By the way, you needn’t wait for us after the concert. There’s going to be a small reception. Madame Grumbacher is giving us dinner.”

To Madame Grumbacher’s credit, the Palm Court looked quite believable. The chesterfields and armchairs had been replaced with round tables and folding chairs. Footlights had been borrowed from Methodist Church Drama Club. The stage was set up in the corner with an upright piano, and a chair and music stand for Mrs. Arbuthnot. Behind the piano was one of several enormous potted palms. There were seats for perhaps seventy-five in the room, and all were taken. Another ten or fifteen people stood at the bar.

Lloyd fussed for about twenty minutes, setting up his machines. Then he vanished.

The police arrived halfway through the concert, five of them, the ones in plainclothes and dark glasses. They stood at the back and surveyed the crowd. A murmuring and shuffling of chairs as people turned. Mrs. Arbuthnot’s cello case lay closed on the floor beneath the piano. After ten or fifteen minutes the police left, clumping along the wooden floor in counterpoint to “Lara’s Theme.”

After the concert, I returned home and had dinner by myself, one of the casseroles that Mrs. Hamish prepared for me twice weekly. I opened a bottle of wine and took my plate onto the terrace. It was a warm night, and windless; the putrid smell of the mangrove swamp wafted across the harbor. At around eleven, I saw two lumbering police boats head out towards the channel. The sweep was over. In the distance I heard the engine of a small plane.

I was awakened in darkness. Something jarred the house. I heard shouting. Someone was throwing things at the walls; any minute they seemed likely to hit a window. I grabbed my dressing gown from the hook. About fifteen boys and men were gathered in the blackness of the garden. I recognized a few of them as from the Riverside. There was the smell of liquor. I saw the flash of pool cues. Someone said, “Where’s the spook, boss?”

There had been several arrests that day among the smaller dealers who hung around Annie’s and the Riverside Tavern. Now the police were gone, and they wanted their revenge.

“It’s four in the morning. Come back tomorrow. You want me to call Constable MacMahon?” This was a hollow threat, and they knew it. I heard a commotion behind me; some of the men had entered the house by forcing the terrace doors. I turned, and the others swarmed past me. The bedroom lights were switched on.

But there was no one there. Madame Grumbacher had spirited them away. Lloyd must have come back during the concert and taken their luggage. Their flight only confirmed the belief that Lloyd had been undercover, that he’d brought the police. But now he was gone, and they were mollified.

Schindler was not. His voice came over the radio first thing in the morning, squawking my name before I had finished shaving. I picked an open channel. “You’re phoning about your documents?” I said.

“My documents?”

“The package. I assumed it was documents, the way it was sealed.”

“Documents? That is what you assumed?”

“That is what I assumed. Were they important documents?”

“Important? Yes. They were important documents, Mr. Rennison. They were vitally important.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. There has been a screw-up. The package wouldn’t fit into the safe at the bank — as I’m sure you must have known — so I brought it home with me. Must have got mixed up with my guests’ luggage.”

“Mixed up?”

“The taxi driver must have loaded it in the van. I presume they took the package with them.”

Silence. As in all the out islands, it was a citizen’s band system. Anyone could listen in, and people often did. Finally he said, “Perhaps they will remember at the airport.” A pause. “They may be searched.”

“Perhaps. But she was traveling in her own plane. An artist on tour you know.”

“How convenient.”

“Yes. You should make a list of those documents — for the authorities. In the meantime, I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”

I did hear something, two days later: a package in the mail with a letter attached.

Schindler wasn’t the only one to take a loss. Drover came to see me, wanted payment for an account of about two hundred dollars. “She said it was all right, you’d look after it.” There were similar stories from Vero at the hotel; the Inn, where Mrs. Arbuthnot had taken Burnett and others for elaborate dinners; from the lady who ran the hat and dress shop; from shops throughout the village. The total came to over a thousand dollars. And then there was a call from the airport: three hundred dollars for airplane fuel. I paid the bills out of my own pocket. I owed her that.