About ten minutes into the dinner, Imogen realised it had been quite a daft idea. She was no detective, and especially she was no Columbo. 'Obfuscating stupidity' was properly not her forte.
Her dinner companions, with the exception of Dr. Nenadovich, were saccharine chummy with Imogen and watching her like a kebab still on the spit, rotating and juicy, mouth-watering after a fortnight of enforced vegan diet. Never in her previous professional experience had she been that obviously 'charmed' and 'hopefully soon corrupted.' Imogen shortly wondered what sort of irregularities one could find in the Buric Construction's paperwork if Mrs. and Mrs. Buric were that interested in having a 'friend' in the Town Hall.
Mr. Buric was a large man with an exceptionally rectangular face. He had dark expressionless eyes and heavy eyebrows. His wife had probably been an exceptionally attractive woman when younger, but as they say handsome is as handsome does. Her skin, even under the heavy makeup, was dull and unhealthy; there were bags under her eyes; and the line of her perfectly outlined lips was bitter and spiteful.
"And have you grown up in our lovely village, Ms. Fox?" Mrs. Buric asked, picking up a leaf of arugula on her fork.
If Fleckney Woulds were indeed 'their lovely village' they would have known, Imogen thought.
"Yes, I have. Born and bred, so to say," she said with an awkward laugh.
Milena Savic, the fifth person present at the dinner was apparently Mrs. Buric's right hand, just as the late Mr. Horvat had been Mr. Buric's. She was an exceptionally skinny blonde of indefinite age, who had the same hungry unpleasant gaze as her immediate boss.
"But how are you handling it?" Dr. Nenadovich suddenly asked, and everyone else at the table looked at her.
She was pensively chewing a slice of peach.
"Handling what?" Mrs. Buric asked.
"The death of your colleague, of course, and his secretary, that poor girl..." The archeologist pensively waved her fork in the air. "Sophia? No, no, that's a wrong Tolstoy's character. Kitty?"
"Kitty Oswood," Mr. Buric said darkly.
He had hardly spoken a word since the beginning of dinner, just kept smiling at Imogen, like a hungry crocodile. Imogen found it discomforting, despite the fact that she had recently discovered that men who spoke little were her cup of tea. She'd hardly had any preference before her affair with the Mayor started, but these days she'd gotten quite good at filling in the blanks. Except, Mr. Buric seemed to be one big blank.
"Well, we're of course devastated. It's simply horrible," Mrs. Buric interjected, and Ms. Savic nodded vigorously confirming. "She was so young. But that hardly affects the business," Mrs. Buric continued. "I don't want to sound callous, but she... was just a secretary, you know."
"But not your friend Matej? He was a crucial part of your business, wasn't he?" the archeologist continued with the subtlety of a Volvo grader with its ripper attached.
"We're absolutely devastated about his death," Mrs. Buric said and looked aside as if overwhelmed.
Ms. Savic copied the gesture exactly, while Mr. Buric's face expressed the same nothing as before.
"So, so tragic," Ms. Savic chimed in.
"But aren't you at least a bit curious? Whodunit, I'm meaning," Dr. Nenadovich picked up her wine glass. "Or... Perhaps, you have your suspicions?"
"No, no, we have no idea who could have done such a terrible thing," Mrs. Buric rushed to reassure.
Imogen hid behind her water glass. It was uncanny how it was never 'I' and always 'we' when Mrs. Buric spoke.
"Perhaps, we should change the subject," Mr. Buric said darkly.
"What if it was a double suicide?" Dr. Nenadovich deftly ignored the man. "You know like those Japanese peeps. I seem to have read it in several novels. Something about cyanide in a specific drink, I think it was orange juice. Lovers who couldn't be together, orange juice, and boom, two bodies!"
The archeologist sing-singed the last word, and if Imogen hadn't been watching the woman's face in shock she would have missed a sharp look the archeologist threw around the table.
"Oh that's horrible!" Ms. Savic exclaimed, her tone mismatching her words. If anything, she looked pensive.
"But Kitty wasn't—" Mr. Buric started, and his wife suddenly covered his hand on the table.
"It's alright, dear," she said and patted the back of his palm. It looked as if she was clawing at it like a cat enjoying a twine-wrapped cardboard scratcher. "I think we can trust Ms. Fox and dear Petra with this secret."
Her chest rose in a tragic sigh, and she exhaled, "It's true. There was... something going on between Matej and poor Kitty. But you see, he was a married man, and with children."
"We didn't approve," Mr. Busic boomed.
"No, we didn't," his wife said in a fake soft tone. "We can understand passion and infatuation, but that's not how we were brought up. That's not our values."
"No, no, that's a daft theory," Dr. Nenodvich interrupted and waved her fork in the air.
The Serbians at the table all twitched as if from a whiplash. Imogen was starting to think that such was Dr. Nenadovich's normal manner of leading a conversation - more with herself than anyone else.
"I take it back! After all, they weren't some mad Japanese teenagers. I doubt a middle-aged Eastern European man would poison himself over an illicit affair. And not the first he's had, I reckon. Had he lived, not his last either I bet." She licked the fork and raised her eyes to the ceiling. "There has to be a better explanation. Poirot would have it, with his knowledge of psychology, you know. But we have our grey cells, don't we? We can do it. Elementary, Data. Oh, that's quite a different franchise, but it suits somehow."
She emitted a thoughtful hum, and Imogen looked around. The three Serbians sat frozen, staring at the archeologist aghast.
"Would his wife do it?" Dr. Nanovich sharply asked Mrs. Buric, and the dark haired woman jerked.
"Lara?"
"Yup. Does she seem like a jealous type? Would she end the two of them in?"
"She surely has temper," Mrs. Buric drew out.
"Was he the father of Kitty's baby then?"
Dr. Nenadovich's nonchalant question caused three events at the table. Mrs. Buric's right arm jerked, toppling a glass of her red wine, making it spill on the table cloth. Mr. Buric barked "What?!" And Ms. Savic gasped and leaned closer clearly to catch every little detail of the gossip.
Imogen knew now why the police filmed their interviews. There were so many little nuances of emotions spilling on the Serbians' faces that she had to whip her head left and write to catch and try to catalogue them in her photographic memory.
"Oh wait, she wasn't pregnant," Dr. Nenadovich said with a jolly laugh. "I must be confusing it with that lovely Australian show I was watching last night. In it there's this winemaker, and he..."
Patra continued her convoluted recollection of last night's episode, while Imogen watched blood slowly return to the cheeks of the Burices while Ms. Savic went back to her salad.
***
"I'll walk you home," Petra said after the two of them watched the cab carrying the three Serbians drive away from the café.
"What a nasty bunch!" she said after a few seconds of silent walking. "We can obviously exclude the blonde, she was here only as an entourage. And have you noticed how everything is 'we?' 'We don't approve,' 'there are not our values.' Like they are conjoined twins, or he's a puppet and she talks with her mouth closed. What are they called, those artists?"
Imogen processed the archeologist's once again twisted statement.
"Ventriloquists?"
"Yes!" Dr. Nenadovich pushed her hands deep into her pockets. "Also, how they jumped at the idea that Kitty and Mr. Horvat were a thing! But we both know it's a lie!"
Imogen nodded.
"Maybe they weren't lying, though," she had to mention. "The fact that he had an affair with Ibaadat doesn't exclude the possibility of him having another one."
"Indeed." Dr. Nenadovich ruffled her blonde bob. "But did you see the panic when I said she was pregnant? Because we all know pregnancy means DNA testing. Which means the father. Which possibly means the murderer."
"What are you saying? That Mr. Buric had a relationship with Kitty and could possibly be the father of her imaginary child?" Imogen shook her head. "He did look almost close to fainting, but wouldn't it be a stretch?"
"Why?" Petra shrugged. "She was an attractive young girl, his employee. And by the way she was his secretary, not the other one's, not Horvat's. I specifically remember that the time I'd met them before she was very close to him. You know what I mean, close."
Imogen knew what the archeologist meant. She was always conscious not to be that close to her boss she had an affair with: to keep physical distance in official circumstances, never touch him, smile at him less.
"I keep thinking about that Mrs. Bradley novel, where a girl picks up a piece of lint off a bloke's lapel because they are having hanky-panky," Dr. Nenadovich said. "And that's how Mrs. Bradley guesses. Because you can almost always guess, you know."
Imogen hoped she wasn't that transparent.
"Say, your suspicions are right," she said. "That doesn't mean he or his wife killed those two poor people. Lying in this situation is natural. You wouldn't start telling everyone you were sleeping with the murder victim, right?"
"No, it doesn't mean they committed a double murder. Which leads us to the only possible conclusion." Petra grinned and rubbed her hands. "We need to do more sleuthing. Do you know anyone in the police?"