Jessica Shaw—A.J.

Jessica Shaw—A.J. is a relationship of familiar ease and practical cooperation, especially at Jessica’s gallery. Their closeness invites speculation: Shirley-Ann Miller initially reads A.J. as Jessica’s possible lover, then sees him with her on a secluded towpath and wonders whether he was involved in a criminal scheme. The evidence shows how readily their intimacy fuels those interpretations, while leaving the suspicions themselves unconfirmed.

Gallery Work and Familiarity

At the gallery, A.J. performs tasks that make him seem at first like a volunteer or domestic helper. He carries coffee in on a lacquered tray and distributes bone china cups to potential art buyers, handling the ritual with the confidence of someone who has done it before. Peter Diamond notices that A.J.’s poise and air of self-possession seem at odds with the menial work. Jessica, by contrast, appears content to treat him as part of the household staff, despite having earlier spoken approvingly of him. Their ease with each other is apparent, but its meaning is not yet clear.

The gallery’s public arrangements later reveal a more substantial role for A.J. At a party, he is seated beside Barnaby Shaw and manages the cashbox while Barnaby, with an account book before him, handles sales. Shirley-Ann had suspected A.J. was Jessica’s secret lover; seeing him working alongside her husband complicates that theory. A.J. speaks to Barnaby as an old friend and recounts a recent conversation with Shirley-Ann about his reading. Their relaxed manner together gives Shirley-Ann reason to reconsider what she thought she knew about the household.

A.J. also openly defends Barnaby’s contribution to the event. He explains that the commission from the artists will not cover the party’s cost, but Barnaby is not seeking profit. When Barnaby dismisses his own involvement and says the gallery event is Jessica’s undertaking, A.J. insists that without Barnaby there would have been no party: Barnaby supports it because he wants Jessica to be happy. Shirley-Ann hears no sarcasm in the tribute. The moment presents A.J. not as a rival to Barnaby but as someone willing to affirm the husband’s devotion and his place in Jessica’s work.

Marriage and Suspected Romance

Jessica’s marriage remains a point of emotional uncertainty. When Barnaby is mentioned during a conversation with Diamond, Diamond watches Jessica’s pupils contract and the edge of her mouth turn down. Her reaction is a small but conspicuous change in expression; the passage does not explain it or establish what she feels about her husband. It does, however, sit beside the later evidence of Barnaby’s supportive participation, preventing the marriage from being reduced to Shirley-Ann’s early suspicion about A.J.

At the gallery party, Shirley-Ann revises that suspicion without entirely discarding it. Jessica and A.J. seem close, and their familiarity could look like a concealed affair, but A.J.’s apparent innocence and Barnaby’s tolerance of their company offer another reading. Shirley-Ann admires Jessica’s ability to keep the two men friendly with one another. That conclusion is her interpretation of what she sees, not a definitive account of the relationship: the scenes establish A.J.’s friendship with both Shaws and his cooperation in Jessica’s gallery, rather than naming a romantic attachment.

The Towpath Encounter

The relationship becomes newly suggestive when Shirley-Ann encounters Jessica and A.J. walking together near Sydney Wharf Bridge. Shirley-Ann has gone out along the canal towpath, and the descending steps by the Mercedes-Benz showroom conceal the path from view until she reaches it. She is startled to find the pair approaching. Their meeting in this relatively secluded setting makes her reconsider their closeness: she sees an intimacy resembling that of siblings, without embarrassment or apparent concealment. Jessica behaves as though she has every right to spend substantial time alone with A.J.

That impression unsettles Shirley-Ann because it does not fit her usual way of identifying a hidden affair. She had believed that she could recognize when a married woman was concealing a relationship, yet Jessica shows no obvious shame in A.J.’s company. The scene therefore deepens, rather than resolves, the ambiguity: the two appear exceptionally familiar, but Shirley-Ann cannot confidently categorize that familiarity as romantic.

Suspicion and the Limits of What Is Known

Shirley-Ann’s thoughts turn from intimacy to the Penny Black theft and Sid Towers’s murder. She imagines that Jessica and Sid must have met repeatedly to plan the theft, investigate the Postal Museum, arrange diversions and riddles, and solve the problem of entering Milo Motion’s locked boat. From that imagined conspiracy she asks herself whether Jessica could have carried out the planning without A.J. or Barnaby noticing, or whether either man was involved. These are questions generated by Shirley-Ann’s suspicions; the towpath encounter itself supplies no proof that A.J. took part in the crimes.

The relationship’s narrative force lies in this gap between visible closeness and uncertain explanation. A.J.’s reliable presence at the gallery, his friendship with Barnaby, and his unselfconscious companionship with Jessica support a picture of an established bond that crosses work and private life. At the same time, the novel filters that bond through observers who are trying to interpret it amid a murder investigation. Shirley-Ann’s changing theories make A.J. and Jessica’s familiarity feel potentially incriminating without converting conjecture into fact.