With a tremendous effort, Marc partly opened one eye and looked pleadingly up at her. He managed to force out a few wretched words. "She's ... she's not a ... a shameless wench," he whispered half-hysterically. "She's ... she's a ... a ... a body!"

"I can see that for myself!" Toffee retorted hotly. "And not such a hot one, either, if you ask me. Now, tell her to gather up her flabby old body and drag it out that door, before I practice violence on it. Don't just lie there staring up at me like a wall-eyed clam!"

"But ... but she can't!"

"Sodden drunk, eh?"

"No. She ... she's a dead body." Marc's voice suddenly broke through its bonds and came back with unexpected force. "She's been shot!" he roared. "Get her off me before I lose my mind!"

The angry fire of suspicion flickered one last time in Toffee's eyes, then went out. She leaned down for a better look at the smothering figure. "How sinister!" she breathed.

"Don't waste time on adjectives!" Marc entreated. "Just get the horrible thing off me!"

Toffee forced a slender hand to the woman's shoulder, and with an incongruously dainty gesture rolled it from the distraught Marc. "It makes my spine fairly tingle," she said.

"What do you think it's done to mine?" Marc asked reproachfully, getting to his feet and rubbing the injured section.

Toffee continued to stare at the discarded body. "I do think you could have shown better taste in your choice of victims," she mused. "It couldn't have been a crime of passion, or passion isn't everything I've heard it is." Having satisfied herself on this point, she turned brightly to Marc. "Why did you shoot her?" she asked with honest curiosity.

"I didn't shoot her," Marc denied stoutly. "I only saw it done ... down on the beach."

"Then what's that gun doing here?" Toffee asked, pointing to the corner.

Marc forced himself to pick up the revolver. It looked like the one he'd seen on the beach. Obviously, whoever had hit him, hadn't meant to kill him. It would have been so much easier to have shot him. "Someone's trying to frame me," he said, as though trying to explain this fact to himself.

"I don't blame them," was Toffee's prompt reply. "You're quite a picture in those yellow trunks. They 

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