_Don't be scared, Cecil. Yes, I know: this is it._ "Ann came to my apartment about quarter to eight, Mr. Warner. I can't bring back the early part of the conversation too well, except I know it was nothing important. Just usual comments on the weather, I guess--it was a very hot evening, sticky hot. Her suit--the powder-blue--it was summer weight of course, but I remember it looked sort of warm, I think I asked something silly about how could she stand wearing even the jacket in such weather, and--Mr. Warner, do I understand it right, that I shouldn't repeat any of the things she said? It seems reasonable that I shouldn't--after all, Ann's not here to set me right if I misquoted her." "That's how it is, Callista. I'm sure you understand it. Just tell your own side of it--what you did, what you observed, what happened." "Yes, I'll try. There was that small talk for ten minutes or so, and then I was going ahead, very clumsily I guess, telling her about--Jimmy and me. Oh, wait, one thing--I remember that at the start, when she'd just arrived, I was going to offer her a drink, and I didn't because I had a sort of half-memory that she didn't take alcohol. A mistaken memory--likely had her tastes confused with someone else's--but I know that was in my mind, that's why I didn't offer her one." _Cecil, I just invented this: is it any damn good?_ Apparently he was not displeased. "You didn't offer her a drink then or any time, is that right?" "That's right. You see, I--Ann Doherty and I were never really very well acquainted. I knew the Dohertys as neighbors of course, from the time they moved in there, but my mother and stepfather saw much more of them than I ever did. I can't say I really knew Jimmy, either, I--" (_Cecil, please give me a lift with this one_)--"well, I said something like that before, didn't I?" "The episode with him was--really no more than that, an episode?"