Silks
Dick Francis

‘Guilty.’

I watched the foreman of the jury as he gave the verdicts. He was wearing a light-coloured tweed jacket over a blue and white striped shirt. At the start of the trial he had also regularly sported a sober striped tie but perhaps, as time had dragged on, the ultra-casual dress of the other eleven had eventually made him feel uncomfortably formal and his shirt was now open at the neck. Unlike most of them, he was grey-haired and upright in his stance. Maybe that was why he had been selected as their foreman...

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The Birthday Present
Barbara Vine

Thirty-three is the age we shall all be when we meet in heaven because Christ was thirty-three when he died. It’s an interesting idea. One can’t help thinking that the people who invent these things chose it because it’s an ideal age, no longer one’s first youth but not ageing either...

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