Read Online Stiff News by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online

equally between all her heirs of the body female whether legitimate or not and then their heirs.’
    â€˜That’s you.’
    â€˜And any other children she may have had.’
    Julia sat up very straight. ‘You mean we – you – won’t get everything?’
    â€˜Not if she had other children.’
    â€˜Children?’
    â€˜The more the less merry,’ said Lionel neatly. The memoranda which emanated from his desk at work were renowned throughout the department for their pithiness.
    â€˜But we don’t know…’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜So, Lionel,’ her voice had sunk to almost a whisper now, ‘as things stand we may never know.’
    â€˜That, my dear, is precisely what I am afraid of.’
    â€˜But that means…’
    â€˜It means,’ he interrupted her harshly, ‘that it’ll take years and years to prove one way or the other and that in the meantime we’ll be at the mercy of every Tom, Dick and Harry of a claimant.’
    She gave a bibulous half-laugh. ‘Tommy, anyway.’

Chapter Seven
    Some men with swords may reap the field
    â€˜What I want to know, Sloan,’ said Superintendent Leeyes grumpily, ‘is who precisely is having who on?’
    â€˜That, sir,’ murmured Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘is something I can’t begin to say.’ He was telephoning back to Berebury Police Station from the pathologist’s office at the hospital mortuary, a draft copy of the post-mortem examination report in his hand.
    â€˜Don’t trust me, I’m a doctor,’ misquoted Leeyes with relish.
    â€˜Not,’ Sloan qualified his own last remark, ‘at this stage, anyway.’
    â€˜And I suppose,’ said Leeyes, ‘that our friendly neighbourhood pathologist is hedging his bets as usual?’
    Sloan addressed himself to the telephone; he found for some reason that he was doing this standing to attention. ‘All I can say, sir, is that Dr Dabbe has reported that the cause of death as certified by the deceased’s general practitioner would appear to be correct.’
    â€˜That,’ remarked Leeyes trenchantly, ‘wasn’t what the deceased said in her letter. She said she was going to be murdered.’
    Sloan forged on. ‘The pathologist confirms that the late Gertrude Powell had at the time of her demise been suffering from chronic renal failure and hypertension as stated.’
    â€˜Suffering from,’ said Leeyes gnomically, ‘is not the same thing as dying from.’
    â€˜Indeed not,’ agreed Sloan, continuing his reading aloud. ‘In addition to the foregoing he states that the deceased also had had some osteoarthritis and arteriosclerosis which, however, were not contributory factors to her death.’
    â€˜Bandying words, as usual,’ pronounced the Superintendent, ‘that’s what he’s doing.’
    â€˜Furthermore, Dr Dabbe says he has removed organs and tissue for analysis.’
    â€˜Buying time,’ said Leeyes uncharitably.
    â€˜But until the histology is known,’ quoted Sloan, ‘the report cannot be completed.’
    â€˜Will not be completed,’ said the Superintendent, ‘is what he means.’
    Sloan said nothing. For one brief inglorious academic term the Superintendent had attended an evening Adult Education course entitled ‘English as She is Spoke’. His premature departure from the class had come, after a preliminary skirmish over the gerund, as a direct result of a total inability to see eye to eye with the course tutor on the proper use of (to say nothing of the difference between) the words ‘will’ and ‘shall’.
    The sentence which the unlucky teacher had chosen to illustrate the correct usage was ‘I shall drown and no one will save me.’ He had unfortunately contrasted this with the less grammatically correct ‘I will drown and no one shall save me.’
    It