Inheritance Tracks E-Book

Catherine Aird

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 340

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Four strangers arrive at the solicitors' office of Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery. They have never met, and have no idea why they have been invited. But they - along with a missing man - are descendants of the late Algernon George Culver Mayton, the inventor of "Mayton's Marvellous Mixture" and each entitled to a portion of the Mayton Fortune. But before they can split the money, the missing man must be found. They begin their search, but then Detective Sloan receives a call that one of the legatees had died following an attack of food poisoning. Now detectives Sloan and Crosby must determine whether the deceased merely ingested a noxious substance by accident, or if the legatees are being picked off one-by-one. And when matters of money and family rivalry are involved, there is almost certainly foul play afoot.

Leseprobe

Inheritance Tracks

CATHERINE AIRD

For Harvey and Oscar Christopher Mytton Thornycroft With love

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONCHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN CHAPTER ELEVEN CHAPTER TWELVE CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHAPTER FOURTEEN CHAPTER FIFTEEN CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHAPTER NINETEEN CHAPTER TWENTY CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE CHAPTER THIRTY CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE ABOUT THE AUTHOR BY CATHERINE AIRDCOPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

The first person to arrive at the solicitors’ office that particular morning was a trim, grey-haired woman with a neat hairdo.

‘If you would come this way, please, Mrs Port,’ said Miss Florence Fennel, leading the way to the waiting room of Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, Solicitors and Notaries Public, of Berebury in the County of Calleshire, ‘and I’ll tell Mr Puckle that you’ve arrived.’

‘I’m a little early, I’m afraid,’ the woman said diffidently, looking round the empty waiting room, ‘but I didn’t want to be late.’

‘Of course not,’ murmured Miss Fennel, who was never late herself.

Mrs Port sighed. ‘And getting into Berebury here from out Bishop’s Marbourne way can be very difficult on market day. The traffic is really awful first thing in the morning.’

Miss Fennel, who didn’t own a car herself, nodded as sympathetically as if she did.

‘So,’ the woman went on, ‘I thought I’d rather be early than late. Especially since I’m not really sure what all this is about.’ Sue Port took a letter out of her handbag and held it up in front of the secretary.

Florence Fennel made no reply to this. She did not normally act as the firm’s receptionist as she was in fact the personal confidential secretary of Mr Simon Puckle, the senior partner in the firm, but today was different.

Very different.

The next client to arrive already had his letter in his hand as he came through the door. He announced himself in a businesslike manner as he approached Miss Fennel, waving the letter in front of him. ‘Clive Culshaw of Culshaw’s Bakery, Berebury,’ he said importantly. ‘I have an appointment to see a Mr Simon Puckle here at ten o’clock this morning.’

‘Yes, of course, Mr Culshaw. If you would just follow me …’

He continued to hold the letter in front of her. ‘And he hasn’t said what this is all about. Just that it’s a matter that might be of some potential interest to me, which isn’t exactly specific.’

Miss Fennel, who had in fact written the letter and knew exactly what it was all about, said nothing to this either. She simply ushered him into the waiting room. Mrs Sue Port, its only other occupant, glanced incuriously at the newcomer, showing no sign of recognition. Instead she returned her gaze almost immediately to the glossy magazine she had been studying.

‘I do hope Mr Puckle won’t keep me waiting long,’ said Clive Culshaw. ‘I’m a very busy man.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Miss Fennel soothingly. As it happened she knew a great deal more about Clive Culshaw and his business than the man realised – including that he was also a very impatient man. ‘I’ll tell Mr Puckle you’re here,’ she promised, closing the door behind her.

The two in the waiting room had been sitting in silence for some five minutes when the door opened again, and a flustered youngish woman hurried in, talking over her shoulder to Miss Fennel as she did so. ‘So sorry to be late,’ she said. ‘I am late, aren’t I? I nearly forgot and then I remembered and thought I would come along and see what’s up.’

Giving a polite nod in the direction of Sue Port and Clive Culshaw, she settled herself into a chair. ‘Morning, everybody, I’m Samantha Peters,’ she introduced herself cheerfully, plonking herself down on one of the hard chairs and looking round. ‘Oh, what lovely magazines!’ she exclaimed. ‘They don’t have these posh ones at my hairdresser’s.’

Neither of the others in the room spoke and so she buried herself in the colourful pages of a well-known weekly devoted to the antics of the newly very rich and therefore famous.

The next person to arrive was definitely late and totally laid-back about it. ‘Don’t know what this is all about,’ the young man said casually to Miss Fennel, pulling a crumpled letter out of his jacket pocket, ‘but I thought I’d better come along and see, just in case there’s anything in it for me. I’m Martin Pickford, if you need to know.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Miss Fennel, who didn’t need to know and, in any case, had documented a great deal more about young Mr Pickford than he could ever have supposed.

‘You never know with solicitors,’ he went on, suggesting that he had already had some unfavourable interaction with them. He sniffed. ‘Slippery fellows, if you ask me, and never on the side of the innocent motorist.’

Since Miss Fennel, loyal member of Berebury’s longest-standing legal firm, could not possibly agree with this sentiment, she again said nothing.

‘Don’t usually get out and about as early as this either,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘I mostly work from home and I overslept. Flexible hours and all that.’

Miss Fennel had already realised this since the young man was unshaven and his hair tousled. Whether he was also unwashed was something about which she was keeping an open mind so far. There was a livid bruise down one side of his face and one of his front teeth was missing. ‘But needs must, I suppose,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘I admit it doesn’t happen often.’

‘If you will just wait in here, Mr Pickford,’ she said, opening the waiting-room door. ‘I’ll let Mr Puckle know that you’ve arrived.’

Whilst all of the existing occupants had looked up as the man entered the room, limping slightly, none of them spoke or appeared to recognise the new arrival, although Clive Culshaw, still making it quite obvious that he was a busy man, did look first at his watch in a meaningful manner and then at Miss Fennel as she closed the door behind her. Even so, it was a little while before Miss Fennel reappeared.

‘Mr Puckle will see you now,’ she announced. Since she had looked at none of them in particular when she spoke, all four people sitting there looked up expectantly. Clive Culshaw had even started to rise from his seat when she added, ‘All of you.’

‘All of us?’ echoed Samantha Peters uncertainly, waving a hand round the room. ‘I mean, I don’t know any of these other people.’

‘Me neither,’ said Martin Pickford, the dishevelled young man who had been the latest to arrive. He peered blearily round at the others and then added uncertainly, ‘At least, I don’t think so.’

‘I’m quite sure I don’t,’ said Clive Culshaw decisively. He brandished the letter he had brought with him again. ‘And the writer of this didn’t say anything about any other people being involved when he wrote.’

‘Nor to me, either,’ said Samantha Peters.

‘I’m sure Mr Puckle will be able to explain everything when he sees you all,’ said Miss Fennel.

‘The operative word being “all”, I suppose,’ mumbled Martin Pickford, clambering to his feet rather unsteadily, the fact that he had a limp becoming more apparent.

‘If you will please come this way,’ said Miss Fennel, not deigning to respond to this, ‘you will find Mr Puckle is waiting for you in his room.’

Mr Simon Puckle was indeed waiting for them in his room. He rose with an old-fashioned courtesy as they entered and shook hands rather formally with each of them in turn.

‘I expect,’ he began pleasantly, ‘you are all wondering why you have been asked to come this morning.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Clive Culshaw, nevertheless casting another furtive glance at his watch.

The solicitor indicated a large folder on the desk in front of him. ‘And how it comes to be that, although I can advise you all that you have a common interest in what I have to say, you don’t, as far as I am aware, know each other.’

‘We don’t,’ said Clive Culshaw flatly, looking round. ‘Not as far as I am concerned, anyway. I don’t think that I have ever seen any of these people here in my life before.’ He didn’t sound as if he regretted this.

‘Nor me,’ said Samantha Peters.

Mrs Sue Port looked round curiously at the other three and then shook her head. ‘I don’t think I have, either.’

‘Can we get on?’ asked Martin Pickford plaintively. He was holding his head in his hands now.

Simon Puckle gave a little cough and cleared his throat preliminary to saying, ‘You and one other person who has been delayed and another man who cannot for the time being be traced have all been invited here as a consequence of the recent death of an old lady called Clementina Henderson.’

‘Who?’ asked Samantha Peters.

‘Never heard of her,’ mumbled Martin Pickford. ‘Or, come to that, anyone else called Clementina.’

‘Me neither,’ said Samantha Peters, looking mystified.

‘Actually,’ admitted Martin Pickford, ‘I thought Clementina was an orange.’

‘That’s a clementine,’ the woman called Susan Port informed him kindly.

‘Perhaps he was thinking of a clementini,’ suggested Clive Culshaw, who had noted the other man’s bloodshot eyes and slight tremor. ‘Martini’s big brother,’ he explained. He had shaken his head at the first mention of the other man’s name and scribbled it now on the back of his letter.

‘Good heavens!’ exclaimed Mrs Sue Port, the older of the two women there, sitting up suddenly. ‘I’ve heard of her. I remember now. I came across the name when I was working on my family history. Clementina Henderson – I don’t believe it. I didn’t even know she was still alive.’

‘She isn’t,’ pointed out Martin Pickford. ‘Didn’t you hear what the gentleman said?’

‘I thought she must have died years ago,’ said Mrs Port, ignoring this. ‘She was so very old.’

‘She was indeed. I can tell you that she was nearly a hundred when she did die almost three months ago,’ said Simon Puckle. ‘In a nursing home in Calleford, as it happens.’ Calleford was the county town of Calleshire and some distance from the market town of Berebury.

‘But who was she?’ asked Clive Culshaw, who obviously prided himself on getting unerringly to the nub of any matter as quickly as possible.

Mrs Port turned to him and said slowly, ‘I suppose she would have been my great-aunt. I think,’ she added uncertainly, ‘that she was my late grandfather’s sister.’

‘But not my grandfather’s sister,’ said Clive Culshaw quickly. ‘I’ve never even heard of her.’

‘You are quite correct,’ Simon Puckle nodded gravely at the pair of them. ‘Both of you.’

‘What does that mean, may I ask?’ asked Martin Pickford truculently. ‘I’m not with you.’

‘It means,’ said Simon Puckle, ‘that she was Mrs Port’s great-aunt but not Mr Culshaw’s.’

‘How come?’ asked Martin Pickford, clearly puzzled.

Simon Puckle tapped the file on his desk. ‘The late Clementina Henderson was the cousin of Mr Culshaw’s great-grandmother who was called Horatia.’

‘Was she really?’ Clive Culshaw sat up and began to look quite interested. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard of her – Horatia, I mean. In fact,’ he frowned, ‘I think I must have seen the name on our family tree at some time. It’s quite a strange name, isn’t it? After Horatio Nelson, I suppose, and one that you wouldn’t easily forget. My son got really interested in looking everyone up when he compiled the tree, but I’m afraid I was too busy to go into it all.’

‘Quite so,’ murmured Simon Puckle. He indicated the file on his desk. ‘Horatia Culshaw predeceased Clementina Henderson many years ago …’

‘I’m not surprised,’ interjected Martin Pickford, ‘if Clementina nearly hit a hundred. Not many people do that.’

‘But it is a consequence of her death,’ carried on the solicitor imperturbably, ‘that all of you here have an interest in a residuary trust.’

Martin Pickford lifted his head at this and looked at the solicitor. ‘Sounds good to me, but how come? I mean, if we’ve none of us heard of her.’ He waved a hand in Sue Port’s direction. ‘Except this lady here, of course.’

Simon Puckle pointed to the file on his desk again. ‘You are all, one way and another, descendants of the late Algernon George Culver Mayton.’

Samantha Peters, the young woman who had arrived late, sat up suddenly and said that that name rang a bell with her. ‘Mayton, I mean. I don’t know why, though,’ she said, clearly puzzled. ‘But it does.’

‘Quite possibly,’ said Simon Puckle.

Clive Culshaw sat up, too, and looked round at the others. ‘Does that mean we all – we four here that is – are all in one way and another related to each other?’

‘Distantly,’ said Simon Puckle. ‘You four are, and also with another relative who, as I said, is on his way here now, and the missing man. The one we can’t trace.’

Martin Pickford gave a short laugh. It sounded like a seal barking. ‘It’s the six degrees of separation that you hear about, that’s what it is.’

‘In fact, there do happen to be six degrees of separation as far as your family descent is concerned,’ said Simon Puckle sedately. ‘Six generations from Algernon Mayton to you.’

Samantha Peters was still frowning. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard the name of Mayton before. My mother said my father used to mention it a lot, but I wouldn’t know. He died just before I was born, you see, and in any case it was all rather a long time ago.’

‘That is more than likely,’ said Simon Puckle, opening the folder on his desk. ‘I have your birth certificate here, Miss Peters. Let me see now, you are the daughter of William Charles Peters …’

She nodded. ‘That’s right, and my mother was Gladys Ivy.’

‘As it happens, Miss Peters, your mother’s name is irrelevant since the trustees are only concerned with the descendants of William Peters who are of full age.’

‘Men only, is it, then?’ said Martin Pickford.

‘By no means, Mr Pickford.’ The solicitor pointed to the file. ‘As it happens, your involvement comes through your mother – your late mother, that is. It is your father who doesn’t come into it.’

‘Alive and well and living in the south of Spain,’ said the young man. ‘With my stepmother, as it happens. God help him.’

Simon Puckle, like a coachman gathering the reins of a four-in-hand, came back to his narrative. ‘Your father, Miss Peters, would have been Algernon Mayton’s great-great grandson.’

‘Really? I don’t remember my father, of course,’ said Samantha Peters, looking up, a little surprised. ‘He died very suddenly, asthma, I think it was – but before I was born. He was a bit older than my mother, too.’

‘That is so.’ Simon Puckle opened a file. ‘His death certificate, a copy of which I have here, has the cause of death down as status asthmaticus, with your mother recorded as present at his death.’

Samantha Peters nodded. ‘That would figure. That’s when my mother came back to live with her parents here in Calleshire and had me.’

‘Naturally,’ went on the solicitor, ‘in the circumstances, extensive enquiries have been made into all of your families …’

‘What circumstances?’ asked Clive Culshaw immediately.

‘Anything to ramp the bills up,’ muttered Martin Pickford, lisping through the gap in his front teeth.

‘The circumstances involved in the winding-up of Algernon Mayton’s family trust,’ said Simon Puckle.

‘And who, may I ask, was this Algernon Mayton?’ asked Clive Culshaw.

‘I’ve remembered who he was now,’ interrupted Mrs Port. ‘My father told me once. He was my great-great-great-grandfather and he was the inventor of “Mayton’s Marvellous Mixture”. He made his fortune out of selling coloured water in vinegar. At least,’ she looked a bit abashed, ‘that’s what I was always told as a child. I don’t know if it was true or not.’

‘“What I tell you three times is true”,’ quoted Martin Pickford, lifting his head. ‘That’s what it says in The Hunting of the Snark, anyway. Lewis Carroll, if you want to know.’

‘I’m not sure that I do,’ said Clive Culshaw crisply. ‘Perhaps we could get on.’

‘I agree. This is getting interesting.’ Samantha Peters turned back to the solicitor. ‘Please do carry on, Mr Puckle.’

Martin Pickford, who had perked up at the mention of the word ‘fortune’, sunk his head back in his hands again.

‘Algernon Mayton left his money to his descendants,’ said Simon Puckle, tapping the file on his desk, ‘but he put it in a trust that was not to be wound up until the death of the last of his great-grandchildren.’

‘This lady’s great-aunt Clementina?’ divined Clive Culshaw swiftly.

‘Exactly,’ said Simon Puckle, adding ‘wound up per stirpes, of course.’

‘Sounds painful,’ said Martin Pickford.

‘That’s herpes – shingles,’ said Samantha. ‘I’m a nurse,’ she explained.

‘You know, I thought I’d seen your face before,’ said Martin Pickford with a certain satisfaction. ‘Berebury Hospital? Accident and Emergency Department? Saturday nights?’

‘Could be.’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Since it’s where I usually work.’

Simon Puckle saw Mrs Susan Port looking up at that, too, and nodding. He made a note.

‘But what does it mean?’ asked Clive Culshaw. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘Per stirpes means that the next generation inherits equally but their children inherit only in proportion to their parents’ share,’ explained the solicitor fluently.

Clive Culshaw lifted his head sharply at that, started to speak and then obviously thought better of it. Simon Puckle made a note of that, too.

Samantha Peters frowned. ‘So if one of them has four children and the other has only two, the four children have the same amount to divide between them as the other family’s two?’

‘That is so, Miss Peters,’ said Simon Puckle.

‘It doesn’t matter to me, as it happens,’ said Samantha. ‘I’m an only child and so was my father. His parents had been killed in a car crash when he was a little boy and so he didn’t have any brothers or sisters either.’

‘But naturally,’ said Simon Puckle, ‘the condition per stirpes could be highly relevant to some of you and to what I am about to tell you.’

‘I haven’t got any children,’ said Mrs Port, ‘so that bit doesn’t matter to me either.’

‘That is correct.’ Simon Puckle nodded. ‘But what does matter to you, Mrs Port, is that you are an only child yourself and therefore you won’t need to share your inheritance with any siblings or, failing them, their issue.’

Before he could say anything more, Clive Culshaw suddenly murmured, ‘The Mayton money.’ He rolled the words round his tongue as if he could taste them and said it again. ‘The Mayton money. It’s coming back to me now, too. I’d forgotten all about it.’

‘What about it?’ asked Samantha Peters.

‘Something my mother mentioned once.’ Clive Culshaw looked suddenly alert. ‘She told me that there was money about in the family, but our particular branch wasn’t likely ever to get its hands on it. I’m not sure as a child that I really believed her.’

‘Sounds to me as if you should have done,’ remarked Samantha Peters.

‘I didn’t believe in Father Christmas either,’ put in Martin Pickford. He grinned, the gap in his front teeth now very evident. ‘It sounds to me as if I should have done, too.’

‘Yes,’ went on Clive Culshaw, ignoring this, ‘the phrase “the Mayton money” does ring a bell, Mr Puckle, but I just couldn’t place the name at first.’

‘The Mayton money,’ echoed Martin Pickford, latching on to a word he understood even when patently not himself. ‘How much money?’

The solicitor put his elbows on the desk and steepled his fingers in front of him. He said, deliberately imprecise, ‘Quite a considerable sum.’

‘What does that mean?’ demanded Clive Culshaw. ‘Can’t you quantify it?’

‘Not at this stage,’ said Simon Puckle, ‘and certainly not until all the legatees have been found.’

‘And divided by four?’ asked Clive Culshaw instantly. ‘No, five. You said there was someone who was going to be late.’

‘Well, not five exactly,’ said the solicitor. ‘Therein lies the problem.’

‘Problem?’ Culshaw stiffened. ‘What problem?’

‘Not with Great Aunt Clementina’s death, I hope?’ said Sue Port anxiously. ‘She was so very old, and I’d heard a long time ago that she hadn’t been well. I’d always assumed that she’d died ages ago, but I’d lost touch with her family – I suppose they’d be my second cousins, wouldn’t they? They weren’t exactly local, either.’

‘Quite so,’ responded Puckle. ‘No, no. There was no problem with her cause of death. We checked, of course …’

‘Of course,’ muttered Martin Pickford, sotto voce. ‘More fees.’

Simon Puckle carried on. ‘And we established that she died of natural causes, duly certified by the registered medical practitioner in attendance at the nursing home where she died.’

‘Problem with what, then?’ demanded Culshaw.

‘With the rest of the legatees,’ said the solicitor.

‘The rest?’ Martin Pickford looked round at the other three. ‘Are there more of them, then?’

‘More of us,’ Sue Port pointed out.

‘There is, as I said, another of Algernon Mayton’s descendants who has been delayed by traffic problems on his way here, and yet another one whom we can’t trace, as of now.’ The solicitor gave another little cough. ‘I was rather hoping that perhaps one or other of you might know of him and thus be able to help us in finding him. We’ve tried all the usual channels, of course.’

‘Of course,’ echoed Martin Pickford sardonically. ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’

‘But what I have to tell you,’ continued Simon Puckle, unfazed, ‘is that unfortunately we haven’t been able to trace him. Not at this point, but it was felt that, even so, the rest of you should all now be advised of the position.’

‘Does it matter?’ asked Samantha. ‘That you can’t find him, I mean.’

‘It certainly does,’ insisted the solicitor. ‘As far as the trustees are concerned, no distribution of the assets – the considerable assets, as I said – in the Mayton Trust can take place until all the legatees are found.’

‘Alive and well, I suppose?’ growled Culshaw.

‘As it happens,’ said Simon Puckle unexpectedly, ‘that is not so important.’

‘Dead or alive, then,’ said Martin Pickford, giving a hiccup.

‘As far as the winding up of the Mayton Trust is concerned,’ Simon Puckle answered him smoothly, ‘either will do.’

‘Fe, fi, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman,’ said Pickford, his speech a little slurred. ‘Or don’t I?’

‘His name,’ said the solicitor urbanely, ‘is Daniel Elland, and we haven’t been able to find him anywhere.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘Ah, Sloan, there you are.’ It was first thing in the morning and Police Superintendent Leeyes looked up from his desk at his subordinate, sounding surprised. He had somehow contrived, as usual, to make Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan feel invisible until then, in spite of his standing there in front of him.

‘Yes, sir.’ Since he hadn’t been invited to sit, the inspector stood.

‘I thought you were supposed to be tied up with the Faunus and Melliflora case.’

‘Not until Friday, sir. That’s when it comes to court.’ Faunus and his partner in crime were a notorious pair, professional criminals both of them. The court case was the culmination of months of hard police work and Sloan was due to give evidence at their trial.

‘Good,’ grunted Leeyes. ‘That means you’re free now. So what can you tell me about a sudden death yesterday over at Bishop’s Marbourne?’

‘Nothing, sir,’ replied Sloan truthfully. ‘In fact, I didn’t even know that there’d been one.’

‘I’ve had a letter this morning from a solicitor about it, which in my experience is pretty quick off the mark for the legal profession.’ Leeyes picked up a piece of paper from his desk. ‘Apparently the deceased was a Mrs Susan Port.’

Sloan shook his head. ‘The name doesn’t ring a bell at all, sir. Nothing’s come my way about it this morning. Not yet, that is.’ Detective Inspector Christopher Dennis Sloan (always known as ‘Seedy’ to his friends and family) was the head of the Berebury Force’s tiny Criminal Investigation Department and as such all crime in ‘F’ Division fell within his remit. He asked now, ‘Should it have done, sir?’

‘I couldn’t say – not at this stage, anyway – but Simon Puckle, this solicitor from Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, seems to have a bee in his bonnet about her death. They’ve never been ambulance-chasers, have they? That outfit?’

Since the firm had been practising in Berebury high street since long before ambulances appeared on the world scene, the inspector said that they hadn’t. ‘As you know, sir, they’re a firm of long-established family solicitors of good repute.’

The superintendent waved the letter in question in his hand. ‘Their senior partner, Simon Puckle, wishes to know if the cause of Mrs Port’s death has yet been ascertained since he understands that in some cases sudden deaths are referred to the police.’

‘And has it, sir?’ asked Sloan pertinently. ‘Been referred, I mean.’

‘No, not yet,’ said Leeyes, the letter still in his hand, ‘unless this counts as doing so.’

‘Good point, sir,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan. In his experience, buttering up the superintendent never did any harm.

‘It would seem from this letter,’ carried on Leeyes, still waving it about, ‘that the woman is said to have died following an attack of food poisoning. Or so the writer of this has heard.’

‘Ah,’ said Sloan. There was, he knew, quite another meaning to the common expression ‘food poisoning’. That was ‘eating food that had been poisoned’.

‘Exactly, Sloan,’ said Leeyes as if he had been reading his subordinate’s mind.

‘And I take it that the family want to sue someone?’ concluded Sloan. ‘That is, if they’ve asked a solicitor to act for them quite so smartly.’

‘No, Sloan, on the contrary,’ Leeyes came back on the instant, ‘it doesn’t seem like that at all. Firstly, apparently there isn’t any immediate family around the deceased to instruct him to sue anyone – she was a childless widow – and secondly, it is Simon Puckle himself who has a professional interest in her death as,’ the superintendent applied himself to the letter again and read aloud, ‘“a trustee of the estate of the late Algernon George Culver Mayton”. Ever heard of him, either?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nor me,’ said the superintendent.

‘And what does the deceased’s general practitioner have to say about it?’ enquired Sloan, himself interested now. In his experience, solicitors’ letters usually followed any action rather than initiated it. ‘Unless she died in hospital, that is.’

‘That’s just what you’ll have to find out, Sloan. You’d better make sure everything’s in order in case there’s anything in it for us.’ Leeyes laid the letter back on his desk and leant back in his chair with the air of a man having done his share.

‘Or for Simon Puckle, I suppose,’ said Sloan slowly.

‘Him too,’ said Leeyes. ‘And you can take that young fool, Crosby, with you.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Sloan stoically. Detective Constable Crosby was not the brightest star in the police firmament – more a hindrance in any investigation than a help, in fact.

‘He should have been assisting Sergeant Perkins today,’ said Leeyes, ‘but she won’t have him at any price.’

‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan warily. The redoubtable Woman Police Sergeant Perkins, always known as Pretty Polly, was considerably outranked by the superintendent but she held a trump card in her dealings with him and he knew it. It was called ‘Women’s Rights’.

‘Extra help is all very well in its way, I suppose,’ grumbled Leeyes, ‘but of course that’s only if it knows what it’s doing.’

‘Or does what it is told,’ supplemented Sloan, who knew the detective constable in question only too well himself.

‘Sergeant Perkins,’ sighed the superintendent, man to man, handing Simon Puckle’s letter over to Sloan, ‘said she was a very busy warranted police officer with a full caseload and not a babyminder.’

‘What’s up, sir?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby, easing the car out of the police station yard and into the stream of traffic swirling around in the road outside.

‘A sudden death,’ said Sloan, telling him to head out to Bishop’s Marbourne, one of the smaller villages in the rural hinterland of Berebury. ‘We want a Pear Tree Cottage in Church Lane there.’

He brightened. ‘Suspicious, then?’

‘Too soon to say, Crosby. Much too soon, although,’ he added fairly, ‘a local solicitor has written to tell us that he has worries on that account.’

‘So who’s bubbled?’ asked Crosby as he threaded the police car through the main street of the town.

‘“Bubbled”, Crosby?’ Detective Inspector Sloan had long ago decided that one of the signs of early middle age was not grasping the new argot prevailing among the younger element in the force.

The constable translated. ‘Spilt the beans, then, sir.’

‘If it weren’t for the fact that solicitors, like priests, aren’t supposed to, Crosby, I would say it was Simon Puckle himself.’

Crosby then used an old expression that Detective Inspector Sloan did understand for all that it came from the racetrack. ‘That’s a turn up for the book, sir.’

Sloan agreed it made a first for him, too.

The detective constable changed the engine down a gear as the traffic ahead thickened. He pointed out a couple of rough sleepers huddled in the doorway of a derelict building as they passed. ‘The woollies have been told to move them on, sir. The mayor doesn’t like them.’

‘And the uniformed branch doesn’t like being called woollies,’ Sloan came back smartly. ‘Remember?’

‘You’d think those two over there would be up and about by now, wouldn’t you, sir?’ said Crosby, swiftly changing the subject. ‘Like us,’ he added virtuously. He wasn’t at his best early in the morning.

‘Rough sleepers have nothing to get up for,’ Sloan reminded him absently, reverting to the matter in hand. ‘The solicitor has also asked if we would be permitted in due course to give him any information about the death.’

‘And are we, sir?’

‘No. We wouldn’t if we could and we can’t anyway,’ said Sloan pithily. ‘Not at this stage. Not until after a post-mortem or an inquest, either of which there will have to be, Crosby, unless the deceased died of natural causes. And if it’s an inquest then the whole caboodle will be in the public domain, newspapers and all. We’ll soon find out.’

No one answered the door at Pear Tree Cottage but the sight of the police car in the road and the sound of Crosby’s knocking soon produced the next-door neighbour. Detective Inspector Sloan explained who they were.

‘I’m Doris Dyson,’ said the woman, jerking her shoulder in the direction of the house next door. ‘You’d best come along home with me.’

Sitting round the woman’s kitchen table, Sloan got out his notebook and asked, ‘What happened?’

‘Food poisoning, the doctor thought at first,’ she began, ‘that is to say, we all thought it was food poisoning in the beginning. It had almost cleared up and then poor Sue took a turn for the worse.’

‘Did anyone else have it?’ asked Sloan.

Doris Dyson shook her head. ‘No. Well, not me or my husband, anyway. I never heard about anyone else being ill like Sue was.’

‘Funny that,’ said Crosby.

‘But you ate in her house sometimes?’ persisted Sloan.

‘Course I did, Inspector. Well, not ate, exactly, but I’d go over to her for a cup of coffee and a biscuit in the mornings every now and then,’ the woman sniffed, ‘and she’d come over to me for a cup of tea and a piece of cake some afternoons. She was a friend, you see.’

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded gently. In his book that was probably as good a definition of friendship – well, neighbourliness – as you could get these days. ‘Tell me about her.’

Doris Dyson brightened immediately. ‘Oh, she was ever so nice. She’d come to Bishop’s Marbourne to retire two or three years ago. Always wanted to live right out in the country, she said, so she bought herself this little cottage next door to me with a big garden and got really stuck in.’

‘Gone native,’ muttered Crosby, who wasn’t enamoured of green fields himself.

The woman ignored him. ‘Started to grow her own vegetables, bake her own bread, take up quilting. You know the sort of thing.’

Sloan did. It was the daydream of many a hard-pressed worker in a city.

‘Not that this year has been good for gardens. Too much rain for most of what she’d planted.’

Crosby yawned.

‘Then,’ said Doris Dyson, ‘when she wasn’t in the garden, she’d sit in front of that there computer of hers for hours. Doing her family tree, she said she was.’ The woman sniffed again. ‘Can’t understand it myself. If we wanted to do that – hubby and me – all we’d have to do is go over to the churchyard and read the gravestones. We’re both Bishop’s Marbourne people, you see, and we’ve all been buried there since for ever.’

Crosby yawned again. Wider this time.

‘She got a dog, too, to make sure that she went for a walk every day.’ Doris Dyson’s face clouded over. ‘But that was a mistake. He wasn’t properly trained and pulled her over a couple of times. She broke her wrist the last time. Very upset about Todger, she was – that was just about the time when she became so ill all over again.’

‘Man bites dog, no problem, dog bites man, the dog it was that died,’ said Detective Constable Crosby almost – but not quite – under his breath.

‘I reckon having to have Todger rehomed didn’t help,’ said Mrs Dyson austerely, ‘not with her having all those pains in her tummy and being so sick with it all time after time. Not that she would have been in any fit state anyway to take Todger out for his walk, although I would have done that for her if I had had to.’

‘I expect,’ said Sloan, ‘that you did all you could for her.’

‘Changed the sheets, anyway – she was perspiring something remarkable for all that she complained of being cold all the time. And of having to run to the bathroom all the time, too. Night and day.’

‘I get the picture.’ Sloan nodded. ‘And then what?’

‘I made her go to the doctor and he gave her something for food poisoning – gastric upset, he called it at first. She got a lot better after that and we thought it had all cleared up.’ Her face drooped. ‘And then, blow me, it all came back again quite sudden and she had to go back to the doctor.’

‘Which doctor?’ asked Sloan.

Detective Constable Crosby, a young man with a low boredom threshold, muttered, ‘They’re all witch doctors. They should wear pointy hats.’

Doris Dyson, not understanding, ignored this and replied to Sloan. ‘Dr Browne, of course. He sees to everyone round here.’

‘And what did he say?’ asked Sloan. Dr Angus Browne’s surgery was going to be the next port of call for the police, but he didn’t say so.

‘Like what we had thought – still some form of food poisoning, although he couldn’t say what. Not without doing some tests.’ Doris Dyson sniffed once more. ‘It’s what the doctors say all the time these days, isn’t it? Won’t make up their minds without them now.’

Detective Inspector Sloan nodded gravely. In his book that was an improvement on the past. His own grandparents had lived at a time when pathology wasn’t advanced enough for any tests for some dire conditions that exist, let alone be reliable, or for there to be a cure for those same dire conditions, once diagnosed.

‘Anyways,’ said Mrs Dyson, ‘whatever they were he didn’t get the results back in time to prescribe anything useful.’

This was something Sloan did understand. Many of his own cases had been held up because forensics hadn’t got back to him quickly enough for his liking. The fortnight that seemed commonplace to the police laboratory to report results nearly drove him to despair. The importance of keeping up the heat of an investigation was something those bench-bound boffins just didn’t seem to comprehend.

‘Then what?’ he asked now.

‘She got worse,’ said Doris Dyson lugubriously. ‘Much worse. She started to feel the cold so much that I had to bring some of my own blankets over from my place for her, not that the weather had turned or anything. I piled them on top of her, but even then she still complained of being cold. Then …’

‘Then?’ prompted Sloan.

‘She started not being able to sleep. Time and again she went all night without dropping off. The doctor gave her something for that, too, but it didn’t work either. That’s when I started to get worried. Not that not having slept a wink all night seemed to make her tired. That was the funny thing.’

‘I’ll say,’ said Crosby, himself always notably irritable after a bad night.

‘We could none of us understand that,’ she said.

‘Go on,’ said Sloan.

Doris Dyson drew breath and said impressively, ‘Then quite suddenly she went into meltdown.’

‘Meltdown?’

‘She started to see things that weren’t there,’ said Mrs Dyson.

Detective Inspector Sloan metaphorically sat up. ‘What sort of things?’

‘Animals, mostly, she told me, and in ever such bright colours. Not,’ Mrs Dyson went on, ‘proper animals, mind you, but weird ones.’

‘Such as?’ prompted Sloan.

‘Such as lizards with horns in funny places, men with tails and eggs with people’s parts sticking out of them. Bats, everywhere, with swords coming out of their mouths, too. She said it was like a painting by someone – I can’t remember the name now – it sounded like Bosh, and if you ask me pure bosh it was. But she said it was the colours that really frightened her.’

‘On the magic mushrooms, was she?’ asked Detective Constable Crosby with an informality that Sloan, officially his mentor, could only deplore. It was no way to begin a delicate line of questioning.

Detective Inspector Sloan might have taken the query amiss, but Mrs Dyson didn’t.

‘That’s what I wondered,’ she said frankly, ‘seeing as how that was how young David from the pub behaved after he’d been on them for a bit. Don’t know exactly what, but David had certainly been on something. He saw elephants.’

‘Sounds to me as if she was away in La-La Land,’ scoffed Detective Constable Crosby.

Sloan had to make a heroic effort not to remind the constable that his opinion hadn’t been sought, deliberately postponing a reproof until they were alone. It was the duty of a police officer to listen, not to pontificate, a fact that it seemed Detective Constable Crosby had not yet grasped.

‘They had to stop young David from the pub from jumping off the belfry tower,’ Mrs Dyson informed them. ‘In fact, I did ask her if she’d been mushrooming. Plenty of ’em in the woods round here – good and bad. Being from the town she wouldn’t have known one from t’other.’

‘And?’ said Sloan.

‘She did say she’d gathered some mushrooms but not lately,’ said Mrs Dyson. ‘I told her next time she had to ask me before she ate any of them.’

‘Goes with the territory,’ said Crosby, who had not long ago been on a course on the effects of hallucinogenic drugs. ‘Jumping off high places, I mean.’

Doris Dyson’s face hardened and she said tonelessly, ‘Then she took a real turn for the worse and we had to send for Dr Browne in a hurry. She’d climbed up on her kitchen roof – it was one of those cat-slide ones that you can get up easily − and she was talking gibberish. The doctor came straight out here and said he’d get her into hospital at Berebury immediately, but before the ambulance arrived, poor Sue had slipped down off the roof, fallen and died. Just like that, poor thing.’