Read Online Past Tense by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online

William Wakefield of The Old Post Office, Staple St James, would inherit.’ He looked interrogatively at Joe Short. ‘Presumably he is the husband of the Mrs Janet Wakefield who made the funeral arrangements and was the person the deceased gave as her next of kin?’
    â€˜That’s right. And it makes sense. As I said, his grandfather, a William, too, was a brother of Granny’s and the only one of the family who kept in touch with her after…after…’
    â€˜Shall we say the “disruption”?’ The solicitor was more used to dysfunctional families than most and had found over the years that this word – carefully selected from the history of the Scottish Church in the nineteenth century – had come in very useful.
    Joe Short grinned. ‘I couldn’t have put it better myself.’
    â€˜So this William Wakefield, or failing him, any heir male of his body, would have become the residuary legatee,’ resumed Simon Puckle punctiliously.
    â€˜That figures, doesn’t it?’ said Joe Short, suddenly rising and putting out his hand. ‘Thank you.’
    â€˜I take it you’ll be staying at the Bellingham for a little while?’ said Simon Puckle.
    â€˜Just a very few days. I have to get back to Lasserta as soon as I can, the firm having been so good,’ said Joe Short from the doorway. ‘But first I’m going over to Kinnisport to look up an old boy called Sebastian Worthington who came to the funeral. I want to talk to someone who really knew Granny well and he seemed to fit the bill.’
    And then he was gone.
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    The bridge across the River Alm at Billing was situated at the lowest point downriver at which it had been possible to build a bridge with the tools, materials and know-how around in rural Calleshire in 1485. Its pointed stone piers had deflected the waters of the Alm between the arches ever since.
    What the piers of the bridge hadn’t done today was to deflect the body of a fully clothed girl through them and into the mainstream. Instead, some vagary of the current had caused her body to fetch up in a little patch of still water near the northern bank.
    â€˜Bream,’ spluttered one of the fishermen, when Detective Inspector Sloan arrived. ‘We were fishing for bream.’
    Sloan nodded. People said the oddest things when under stress. This man was clearly stressed. His friend was a bit more composed. ‘I got a hook into her clothes, Inspector,’ the other fisherman said, ‘though it seemed a bit disrespectful.’
    Sloan was reassuring. ‘You did the right thing. Looking for her lower down the river would have been more difficult.’
    â€˜And then we hauled her out,’ said the first man, adding anxiously, ‘hope that was all right, too?’
    â€˜In case the river took her away again,’ explained his friend. ‘It could have done. Easily. The Alm can come up quite quickly when it has a mind to.’
    â€˜After heavy rain upriver,’ supplemented his companion. ‘And you don’t always realise here downstream when that’s been happening. Takes time to get here does heavy water, but when it comes, it comes down sudden.’
    â€˜I know you’re not supposed to touch a body…’ The first fisherman still needed reassurance.
    â€˜It’s better than letting her go out to sea,’ said Sloan firmly. ‘Now, both of you keep well back and let me have a proper look…’
    Not only the two fishermen but Detective Constable Crosby, too, kept their distance as the detective inspector advanced carefully towards the body of the girl. He judged that she was aged about twenty-four or -five and certainly hadn’t been in the water long. She was wearing a very light coat over a blouse and brightly coloured summer skirt, strands of auburn-coloured hair falling wetly round her face. As far as he could see at first glance there was no sign of