It all seemed so garish and stupid.

We were talking about Chloe’s murder again.

“It takes a combination of things to make a murder”, Henry said.

“She was intensely jealous. He was a selfish opportunist. She wound them all up, convinced them it would work. The planning became a kind of adventure.

Besides they were from a different tribe. Sympathy from another tribe is not natural. Small children or infants get it sometimes, but innocents are slaughtered every day somewhere. You should know.”

That’s what Henry McCulloch said, sitting at our kitchen table.  Henry walked over with his black retriever called Maynard, who sits patiently at our door, waiting for him. (Maureen won’t have dogs in the house.)

“You may have learned a lot about struggles for power and the horrors they bring in their wake. But never forget the small furies that drive little people.”

I have got used to Henry’s epigrammatic style. I like it. For instance: “We say nations do not matter any more because we are one species, brothers and sisters and cousins. Not true sadly.”

He has seasoned views.

I have heard him say: “I sometimes wonder if only defeat in a war is capable of  transforming a nation state, re-setting  it on a new course. Otherwise countries just drift away from the main stream, absorbed by past glories, unaware of how irrelevant they have become.”

I assume he is talking about the country we now both live in.