‘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, that 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.’