Read Online Last Respects by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online

way, Frank,’ she said hastily. ‘You know that. That side of things isn’t important.’ She essayed a slight smile. ‘Besides there are plenty more pictures where that one came from.’
    â€˜You can say that again,’ said Frank Mundill ruefully.
    â€˜Sorry, Frank,’ she said. ‘It’s just that I’m still a bit upset …’ Her voice trailed away in confusion. Collerton House and all its pictures—in fact the entire Camming inheritance—had come from Richard Camming equally to his two daughters—his only children—Celia Mundill and Elizabeth’s mother, Marion Busby. Celia and Frank Mundill had had no children and Marion and William Busby only one, Elizabeth.
    When she had died earlier in the year Celia Mundill had left her husband, Frank, a life interest in her share of her own father’s estate. At his death it was to pass to her niece, Elizabeth …
    â€˜There’s no reason why Peter shouldn’t have had a painting if he wanted one,’ she said, embarrassed. ‘It isn’t even as if they’re worth anything.’
    Mr Hubert Cresswick of Cresswick Antiques (Calleford) Ltd had confirmed that when he had done the valuation after her aunt’s death. Very tactfully, of course. It was when he praised the frames that she’d known for certain.
    â€˜It’s just,’ she went on awkwardly, ‘that I never thought that his having that particular one would be the reason why it wasn’t there on the wall, like it always was.’
    â€˜I should have mentioned it before,’ he mumbled. ‘Sorry.’
    â€˜No reason why you should have done,’ she said more calmly.
    What she really meant was that there were a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t have done. Peter Hinton’s name hadn’t been mentioned in Collerton House since he’d left a note on the hall table—and with it the signet ring she’d given him. ‘Keep off the grass’ ring was what he’d said as he slipped it on his finger.
    It didn’t matter any longer, of course, what it was called. Elizabeth had returned the ring he’d given her—in the springtime, ‘the only pretty ring time’—the one with ‘I do rejoyce in thee my choyce’ inscribed inside it, to Peter’s lodgings in Luston.
    That devotion hadn’t lasted very long either.
    Frank Mundill picked up the sketch Mrs Veronica Feckler had left on his desk and appeared to give it his full attention. He said ‘I suppose I’ll have to go down and look at her timbers …’
    â€˜You will,’ she agreed, her mind in complete turmoil.
    Elizabeth Busby hadn’t known whether to laugh or to cry. On impulse she had gone out into the garden, swept up a bunch of her aunt’s favourite roses—Fantin-Latour—and walked down to the churchyard by the river’s edge.
    She cried a little then.

CHAPTER 6
    How can I support this sight!
    The pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital Management Committee was a fast worker. Nobody could complain about that. He was also a compulsive talker—out of the witness-box, that is. His subjects were in no position to complain about this or, indeed, anything else. His assistant, Burns, was not able either—but for different, hierarchical, reasons—to voice any complaints about the pathologist’s loquacity. Should he have been able to get a word in edgeways, that is.
    In fact, Burns, worn down by listening, had retreated into a Trappist-like silence years ago. Detective-Constable Crosby, normally a talker, didn’t like attending postmortems. He had somehow contrived to drift to a point in the room where, though technically present, he wasn’t part of the action. It fell, therefore, to Detective-Inspector Sloan to maintain some sort of dialogue with Dr Dabbe.
    â€˜You’ll be wanting to know a lot of awkward things, Sloan,’ said