“First question! What would your wife never go out without? Gentlemen, please answer clearly into the microphone. Couple One?”
“Handbag,” says Matt promptly into the microphone.
“And your wife said …” Nico consults the paper. “Handbag. Ten points! Couple Two, same question?”
“Fresh breath mints,” says Tim Kenilworth after some deliberation.
“And your wife said … Life Savers. Close enough.” Nico nods. “Ten points! And Couple Three?”
“Easy,” says Ben laconically. “She never leaves without her Smith and Wesson 59.”
“Is that a gun?” says Melissa, looking astonished. “A gun?”
“And your wife said …” Nico consults my writing. “My Smith and Wesson 59. Congratulations, ten points!” He turns to me, his eyebrows raised. “You don’t have it with you now, I hope?”
“I never go anywhere without it.” I twinkle back at him.
“A gun?” persists Melissa. “Are you serious? Matt, did you hear that?”
“Next question!” announces Nico. “You have no food in the larder. Where do you head for a spontaneous meal out? Gentlemen, please answer again. First, Couple One.”
“Er … fish and chips?” says Matt uncertainly.
“Fish and chips?” Melissa glares at him. “Fish and chips?”
“Well, it’s quick, easy.…” Matt quails at her expression. “Why, what did you put?”
“I put Le Petit Bistro!” she says furiously. “We always go there when we want a quick bite. You know we do!”
“I sometimes go for fish and chips,” mumbles Matt rebelliously, but I’m not sure anyone hears him except me.
“Zero points,” says Nico sympathetically. “Couple Two?”
“The pub,” says Tim, after about half an hour’s thought. “I’d say we’d go to the pub.”
“And your wife said …” Nico squints at the paper. “Madame, my apologies, I cannot read your writing.”
“Well, I didn’t know what to put.” Carol looks perturbed. “We never do run out of food. We’d always have a soup in the freezer, wouldn’t we, love?”
“True enough.” Tim nods. “We make it up in batches, you see. Every Sunday during Midsomer Murders. Ham and pea.”
“Or chickpea and chorizo,” Carol reminds him.
“Or plain old tomato.”
“And we freeze the rolls too,” explains Tim, “so it only takes a few minutes in the microwave.”
“Whole grain and crusty white,” puts in Carol. “We do half and half, usually.…” She trails off into silence.
Everyone seems slightly stunned by this domestic catalog, including Nico, but at last he springs back to life.
“Thank you for your wonderfully thorough answer.” He beams at Carol and Tim. “But, alas! Zero points. Couple Three?”
“We go to Dill’s Diner now,” I say. “Is that what he put?”
“Sorry,” begins Nico, “but that is not the answer—”
“Wait!” I interrupt, as a relieved smile spreads across Melissa’s face. “I haven’t finished. We go to Dill’s Diner now, but we used to go to Jerry and Jim’s Steakhouse, until it was blown up by the mob.” I glance over at Ben, who gives an imperceptible nod.
“Ah,” says Nico, peering at the paper. “Yes. Your husband wrote, We went to Jerry and Jim’s till Carlo Dellalucci’s lot blew it up; now we go to Dill’s Diner.”
“Where’s that?” demands Melissa. “Where do you live?”
“Apartment Forty-three-D, West Eightieth Street,” we say in unison. It’s part of the opening titles.
“Oh, New York,” she says, as though she’s saying, Oh, the rubbish dump.
“Blew up, as in exploded?” chimes in Matt, looking impressed. “Was anyone killed?”
“Chief of police,” I say, with a terse nod. “And the ten-year-old daughter he’d only just met, who died in his arms.”
It was the finale to season one. Absolutely major telly. I almost want to recommend it to them all. Except that would slightly defeat the point.
“Question three!” Nico exclaims. “Now the competition heats up!”
By question eight we’ve covered season one, season two, and the Christmas special. Melissa and Matt are ten points behind, and Melissa’s looking more and more tetchy.
“This can’t be true,” she says, as Ben finishes describing our “most memorable day together,” which involved an armed siege, a police chase through the Central Park Zoo, and blowing out the candles on his birthday cake in a jail cell (long story). “I dispute these answers.” She raps on the microphone as though it’s a gavel and she’s a judge. “Nobody has a life like this!”
