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  ‘Sir?’ Detective Inspector Sloan had just dutifully responded to an urgent summons to the office of his superior. With the Superintendent were a middle-aged couple.

  ‘These are Mr and Mrs Lionel Powell.’ The Superintendent waved an arm in the direction of a solemn-looking pair in their early fifties dressed in conspicuously dark clothes. They were sitting together at the other side of the Superintendent’s desk. A piece of paper and an opened envelope lay on the desk between the two and the Superintendent. Leeyes said gruffly by way of introduction, ‘Inspector Sloan…’

  Detective Inspector C.D. Sloan, known as Christopher Dennis to his wife and family and – for obvious reasons – to his friends and everyone at the police station as ‘Seedy’, was the head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of Berebury Divison of the Calleshire Constabulary. Such crime as there was in F Division usually found its way onto Sloan’s desk rather than the Superintendent’s, so this case – if there was a case, that is – didn’t fit the usual pattern for a start. He turned enquiringly now towards Leeyes and the two strangers.

  ‘Say it again,’ the Superintendent imperiously commanded the man in the dark suit. ‘Tell it just like you told me.’

  Lionel Powell leaned forward and began. ‘My late mother’s funeral is arranged for today at twelve noon at St Clement’s Church at Almstone.’

  Unconsciously Sloan’s eyes strayed towards the clock above the Superintendent’s head. The hands stood at ten minutes to twelve o’clock.

  ‘My wife and I live at the far side of the county and naturally we started off this morning in good time.’ Lionel Powell paused.

  ‘Er – naturally,’ agreed Detective Inspector Sloan. Funerals called for punctuality if anything did: undertakers waited for no man.

  ‘On our way out of the gate I met our postman and so I took the letters – all this morning’s post, that is – from him and put them in my pocket without opening them.’ Lionel Powell gave a little cough. ‘Obviously, Inspector, I didn’t want to delay leaving home – not in the – er – circumstances.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Sloan again.

  ‘However, as we had left in very good time we got over to East Calleshire early. Much too early.’ Powell hesitated. ‘You see, we didn’t really want to present ourselves at the Manor before the – er – proceedings … and our two daughters had arranged to go straight to the church. They were coming independently from London.’

  ‘We were, of course, going back to the Manor after the funeral,’ contributed Mrs Julia Powell, sounding as if she hadn’t relished the prospect. ‘They made it very clear that we were expected there then and that there was no need for us to do anything ourselves…’

  Her husband said swiftly, ‘We were assured, Inspector, that it has always been the custom of the Regiment – the house, that is – for some form of reception to take place at the Manor after a funeral…’

  ‘I’ve heard that they do everything very well over there at Almstone,’ murmured Sloan helpfully. It always behoved a policeman to know his own manor – and Manors.

  ‘Carry on, Mr Powell.’ The Superintendent was getting restive. He started drumming his fingers on his desk and said, ‘Time’s getting on.’

  ‘Since we had arrived outside Berebury in such very good time and did not want to go to the Manor first,’ Lionel Powell obediently resumed his narrative, ‘we – er – decided instead to have a cup of coffee at a roadside café near Cullingoak called Pete’s Place.’

  ‘It seemed the only establishment on that road for miles,’ sniffed Julia Powell. She was dressed in grey with touches of black, the whole set off by a mauve scarf. The ensemble did nothing for her, decided Sloan. She still looked censorious rather than grieving.

  ‘It is,’ said Sloan briefly. Was Lionel Powell going to tell him they’d seen drugs being passed or smelt cannabis being smoked at Pete’s Place? Because, if so, it wouldn’t be news to Detective Inspector Sloan or, very probably, to almost anyone in the county of Calleshire between the ages of twelve and twenty. And he, Sloan, was certainly not going to explain the carefully laid police plans for Pete and his Place to any passer-by, well intentioned or otherwise, civil servant or not.

  ‘It’s not, of course, somewhere we would have chosen,’ insisted Lionel Powell, ‘had there been anywhere else.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ said Sloan. In fact, had the Powells been actively seeking a culture shock they couldn’t have found anywhere better.

  ‘Very insalubrious, we found it,’ said Mrs Powell.

  ‘It is, indeed,’ agreed Sloan hastily. This was not the pace at which the Superintendent liked statements to proceed. ‘So?’

  ‘So, we – I, that is, had time in which to open my morning’s post…’

  ‘And?’ prompted Sloan in a gallant attempt to extract the man’s story more quickly.

  ‘And found that it included a letter to me from my late mother.’

  ‘Ah…’ Sloan’s gaze swivelled round in the direction of the Superintendent’s desk. That explained the letter and its envelope there.

  ‘Posted after her death,’ said Lionel Powell impressively.

  ‘In which,’ contributed Superintendent Leeyes heavily, ‘Mrs Gertrude Powell quite clearly states her belief that someone was attempting to kill her.’

  ‘Someone unnamed?’ asked Sloan.

  ‘Some person or persons unnamed,’ responded Gertrude Powell’s son pedantically. ‘She doesn’t say who or how many in the letter.’

  Suppressing a strong desire to say that the number was immaterial at this stage, it was the fact that mattered, Detective Inspector Sloan moved forward to examine the letter for himself.

  ‘This, I take it, sir, is your mother’s handwriting?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ said Lionel Powell.

  The letter was written on Almstone Manor’s writing paper in a large flowing hand and began, ‘My dear Lionel, By the time you receive this letter I shall be dead…’

  ‘There’s no date on it,’ pointed out Lionel, ‘but as you can see the envelope was postmarked in Berebury yesterday.’

  Sloan read on. The message was nothing if not melodramatic. ‘… killed by an unknown hand under a Pragmatic Sanction I didn’t want, but free at last to join your poor father.’

  ‘Melodramatic to the end,’ said Julia Powell unkindly.

  ‘Do we know, sir, what she meant by Pragmatic Sanction?’

  ‘I don’t, for one,’ said Lionel Powell. ‘Historically it was a political arrangement to ensure the smooth succession of an undivided heritage but I don’t think my mother would have known that.’

  Sloan, matching the man’s own pedantry, asked Lionel if he or his wife themselves had any reason to suppose that someone had accelerated Mrs Gertrude Powell’s demise.

  ‘None whatsoever,’ Lionel Powell came back quickly. ‘The whole idea is perfectly absurd.’

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ said Julia Powell bleakly. ‘Isn’t that enough for the police?’

  ‘Had she been dying, though?’ countered Sloan. As he understood it, all the residents of the Manor were old and some of them were ill, too.

  ‘She had been unwell for some time,’ said Gertie Powell’s son, ‘and the doctor had told us more than once that she wouldn’t live very long.’

  ‘Which doctor?’ asked Sloan. There were doctors and doctors in Calleshire, as everywhere else in the world. And, heretical though the belief was thought in some circles to be, some of them were better – much better – at the practice of medicine than others.

  Very much better.

  ‘Browne,’ said Lionel Powell. ‘Dr Angus Browne. We were told he looked after everyone in the Manor and he seemed all right … that is, we had no reason to suppose he wasn’t.’

  Sloan nodded. He knew Dr Angus Browne – a middle-aged Scotsman from over Larking way – and knew, too, that the doctor was no fool.

  ‘He signed my mother’s death certificate the day she died,’ continued Lionel Powell. ‘I
went over and collected it myself.’

  ‘And the cause of death given on it?’ asked Sloan, noting that the doctor, then, had been happy enough about the old lady’s death to certify it as being from natural causes.

  ‘Chronic renal failure.’

  Sloan looked sharply at Lionel Powell and then glanced again at the clock. ‘Is it a burial or cremation?’

  ‘Burial.’

  ‘I see.’ Detective Inspector Sloan took a deep breath and uttered the very words he had never thought he would ever hear himself use to the Superintendent. ‘I think, sir, this is a job where I am going to need Detective Constable Crosby…’

  ‘Need Crosby?’ echoed his superior officer in disbelief. It was a truth universally acknowledged at Berebury Police Station that young Constable Crosby was an incubus in any investigation: more defective than detective. ‘Are you quite sure?’

  ‘That’s if I’m going to get to Almstone Church in time,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan.

  * * *

  The Reverend Adrian Brailsford had mounted the pulpit at St Clement’s Church at Almstone with a certain lack of enthusiasm for the job in hand. In the ordinary way he found delivering oraisons funèbres no problem, they being as it were part and parcel of his own daily round as the curé of souls in the parish of Almstone in the diocese of Calleford. In fact, sometimes he even quite enjoyed pronouncing them, conscious that not only was he carrying out a last duty towards one of his flock but supporting the mourners, too – and all at the same time as giving full rein to his views on the importance of the Christian message of peace and forgiveness.

  But not this morning.

  ‘Dearly beloved brethren,’ he enjoined them formally, ‘we are gathered here together today to give thanks for the life of Gertrude Eleanor Murton Powell…’

  Adrian Brailsford had hoped at first that the Regimental Chaplain would have come to Almstone to take this service himself, but that khaki cleric was away on active duty with the Fearnshires somewhere in Europe. All he, Adrian Brailsford, Rector of this parish, had been told about that clergyman’s absence was that the Regiment was busy trying to sort out the human cockpit that the Balkans had again become.

  ‘A life,’ he went on, picking his words about Gertrude Powell with minefield care, ‘which we all know was one lived to the full.’ The Rector was well aware that a funeral was usually one of the services at which it was more likely that he had the complete attention of all of his congregation. He could almost feel it from the pulpit now.

  ‘You might say she lived it to the utmost,’ he added.

  The same interest, alas, could not always be felt from those attending some of the other offices of the church. Sometimes, indeed, at children’s services and Harvest Festival time, he wasn’t sure that he had their attention at all. Often enough, too, he felt he was a mere figurehead at such occasions as the Christmas Carol Service.

  Not today.

  Today he had no need to make a conscious effort to stifle any negative thoughts of his own or try to engage the wandering minds of his flock. Today he knew he had the complete attention of everyone present. He laid out his notes on the pulpit rail and turned to address the assembled company on the subject of the life of the deceased.

  ‘It was, of course, only the last few years of that crowded life which she had spent amongst us here in Almstone…’

  It hadn’t been easy for him to find the right words for his encomium. Adrian’s usual wont was to talk first to the relatives about their favourite memory of the deceased and then weave what they had said seamlessly into the fabric of his address, augmenting the tribute as necessary with passing references to the bread of affliction and the waters of sorrow (there being very few people who escaped these two sad experiences in life). However, he had found Lionel Powell notably reticent on the subject of his late mother’s past life.

  ‘Varied,’ he’d said tersely.

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘Especially in the war.’

  ‘I see. Perhaps, then, you could tell me…’

  ‘She did a lot of driving of officers on Salisbury Plain before going out to Egypt with her first husband,’ Lionel had volunteered unhelpfully.

  With which Adrian Brailsford had had to be content.

  Matron, that usually excellent woman, when appealed to in turn, had said judiciously that she had been given to understand that Mrs Gertrude Powell had always lived life to the utmost and had no regrets but more than that she really could not say. Brailsford had seized on the phrase, inviting her to elaborate on it. This, though, Mrs Muriel Peden had signally failed to do.

  Instead she had suggested that some of Mrs Powell’s old friends at the Manor – Captain Markyate, for instance – might like to talk to him about the old days. The residents, she had added drily, usually preferred talking about the old days to any other days.

  This hadn’t been as much help to Adrian Brailsford as it might have been because of the unease he always felt when talking to any of the residents of the Manor. It wasn’t that they ever made him feel actually unwelcome. Merely not one of them. This dated, he was sure, from a sermon one Sunday in which he had preached on pacifism and the importance of turning the other cheek. On his next visit to the Manor a doughty, bedridden old warrior had invited him to inspect a quite different cheek once penetrated by an enemy bayonet.

  When asked by Brailsford about the late Mrs Gertrude Powell, Captain Peter Markyate had hummed and hawed and fussed about with the silver-framed photographs on the mantelshelf of his room while managing to tell the Rector absolutely nothing about the deceased except that she’d been ‘a bit of a goer’ in her day. ‘She used to talk a good deal about a poem she liked called “The Road Not Taken”,’ he said at last.

  ‘By Robert Frost,’ the Rector had helpfully identified it. ‘What about it?’

  ‘Gertie used to say she’d taken both roads.’ He stirred uncomfortably. ‘Well, all roads, actually.’ He paused. ‘And she had.’

  ‘I see,’ said Brailsford, mentally assessing the worth of this as eulogy material.

  ‘Of course, she was good-looking, too,’ Markyate had added warmly. ‘She was very good-looking, then.’

  ‘A widow, I understand,’ said Brailsford.

  Markyate coughed and murmured something very indistinct about Gertie’s first husband, Donald Tulloch, having bought it at Tobruk.

  ‘Ah,’ said the Rector, mentally beginning to compose something sonorous but suitable about sacrifice and death in battle. ‘And her second husband?’

  Peter Markyate stared at his shoes and muttered vaguely that as far as he himself knew no one was absolutely sure exactly what had happened to Gertie’s second husband. He didn’t think there was anyone who could tell the Rector anything about him now. Anyone at all. Gertie herself never spoke of her second husband.

  ‘Mr Powell, you mean?’ said Brailsford.

  Captain Markyate shook his head. ‘No, no, Rector, Hubert Powell was her third husband,’ he said, adding with a sudden burst of energy, ‘Thank goodness.’

  ‘Thank goodness?’ echoed Brailsford.

  ‘He was the one with the money.’

  Chapter Three

  There is no armour against Fate

  ‘Where to, sir?’ enquired Detective Constable Crosby from the driving seat. He was already revving up the engine of the police car in the yard.

  ‘Almstone,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, adding grudgingly, ‘And you can put a shift on if you like.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Crosby slammed the engine into gear and the car roared joyously out of the police compound. Driving fast cars fast was his greatest joy in life. ‘Trouble, sir?’

  ‘Maybe. Can’t say yet,’ said Sloan. ‘As far as I can see the choice lies between its being all about an old lady with an overdeveloped taste for high drama or real mischief.’

  ‘So where’s the fire then?’ asked Crosby, heading the car out of the car park at a speed satisfactory to him if to no one else.

/>   ‘We are going,’ said Sloan precisely, ‘to St Clement’s Church to stop a funeral.’

  ‘That’s new, sir,’ said the detective constable appreciatively. ‘Haven’t done that before.’ He crouched over the wheel, leaving the streets of Berebury behind with speed. He started to hum the tune of ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ under his breath.

  ‘Because Morton’s, the undertakers,’ remarked Sloan bitterly, ‘are probably the only firm in Calleshire not to have a mobile telephone in their business vehicle.’

  ‘Their hearse, you mean?’ said Crosby, treating some new traffic-calming installations rather as a champion skier would deal with a tight slalom in a speed race.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Tod Morton wouldn’t risk anything that might wake the dead,’ said Crosby, executing a stately pas de deux on the narrow country road with a double-decker bus bound for Calleford. ‘Not good for business.’

  ‘And there’s no one in at the rectory to step across to the church with a message,’ said Sloan, explaining to himself as much as Crosby why they had to rush out in this unseemly way to Almstone. ‘By the way, Crosby, in the unlikely event of there being a car following us to the church, it belongs to the son of the deceased.’

  ‘There was one to start with, sir,’ admitted Crosby, ‘but it’s not there any more.’

  ‘I didn’t think … Look out, man!’ Sloan’s shutting of his eyes was quite involuntary as a milk float pulled out of a side turning ahead of them.

  ‘There are some drivers who shouldn’t be allowed on the road, sir, aren’t there?’ Crosby was saying equably when he opened them again.

  ‘There are,’ gritted Sloan, ‘and I am not at all sure, Crosby, that you aren’t one of them.’ His friend Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division was even more sure on this point. He routinely resisted all of the constable’s earnest efforts to transfer from the Criminal Investigation Department to Traffic Division.

  ‘So what’s the hurry then, sir?’ asked Crosby. ‘I mean, Tod’s not going to run off with the coffin, is he?’