Crang Mysteries 4-Book Bundle. Jack Batten

left turn, and north for three and a quarter blocks. I own a duplex that looks across Beverley to the orderly park behind the Art Gallery of Ontario. Two gay chaps named Ian and Alex and their Irish setter rent the apartment downstairs. I live upstairs. The setter’s name is Genet.

      In the kitchen, I took the bottle of Wyborowa out of the freezer and poured an inch and a half into an old-fashioned glass without ice. When I raised the glass to my mouth, I felt nauseated. That wasn’t the reaction Polish vodka customarily induced in me. The bang on the head must have been kicking in on a delayed reaction. I poured the Wyborowa back in the bottle without losing a drop and switched to milk.

      I drank two glasses and took my nausea to bed.

      4

      IT WAS LATER than it was supposed to be.

      I switched on the small black Sony radio on the table beside the bed and heard Peter Gzowski’s voice. Peter Gzowski’s program comes on the CBC at 9:05. My usual waking hour is seven-thirty. I looked at the small black Sony clock behind the radio. It said nine-fifty. Something else was different. I had a headache.

      I put on my maroon cotton dressing gown, a birthday present from Annie B. Cooke, and carried the radio into the bathroom. Gzowski was interviewing a Hungarian movie director who was in town for the Festival of Festivals. Whatever pain reliever nine out of ten doctors would take to a desert island wasn’t in my bathroom cabinet. I filled the sink with cold water and held my face in it. Gzowski thanked the Hungarian movie director and took a break for the ten o’clock news. Who would trust a doctor who’d pack a pain reliever on a trip to a desert island?