They had an egg each, thanks to a neighbour’s generosity. Maude wanted to scramble the eggs to make them go further, but Titus shook his head. ‘No, definitely not.’ he said, ‘Nothing beats a soft-boiled egg. This will be the highlight of my day.’ He’d barely finished it when they heard the car pull up outside. It was a measure of his exalted position in the new branch of Homicide that when they weren’t needed elsewhere, he could call on a car and a driver. As he was leaving, he asked Maude to read The Publicist from cover to cover, and to winkle out of it anything that she thought might shed light on the case. He apologised again for having to work on Christmas Day, and she told him that she wasn’t upset at all — but the family of the driver of his car, on the other hand, might have a different view. On the way to the new police headquarters in Russell Street, he stopped to pick up Joe Sable from outside his flat. As they headed off, Titus asked, ‘That name on your block of flats, “Rosh-Pinah”, what does it mean?’ ‘It’s Hebrew.
