Read Online Stiff News by Catherine Aird - Free Book Online Page A

was at this point that the dominie had parted company for ever with Superintendent Leeyes. That worthy had insisted that since this latter sentiment perfectly expressed the real intention of all the suicides in the River Calle whom he had ever known, the meaning was quite clear and thus could not possibly be bad English whatever the teacher said …
    â€˜So where do we go from here, Sloan?’ his superior officer was asking now.
    â€˜Back to the Manor at Almstone, sir, for a word with the Matron there,’ said Sloan. ‘After, that is, I’ve seen Dr Angus Browne over at Larking.’
    â€˜There’s a sight too many medics about for my liking,’ Leeyes sniffed. ‘They always agree with each other too much and if they don’t, they don’t ever say.’
    â€˜There is just one other thing, sir…’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜I’d like some background on one of the other residents there. A Judge Calum Gillespie.’
    â€˜Never heard of him.’
    â€˜Nor me, sir.’
    Leeyes brightened. ‘An impostor?’
    â€˜Seeing as he’s now ninety I expect it’s only a case of his having been before our time, sir.’
    â€˜I collect senile judges, Sloan, and blind and deaf ones.’
    â€˜I suspect that this one’s just plain old,’ said Sloan, touched by a certain melancholy.
    *   *   *
    Judge Calum Gillespie was indeed old, and the blue veins on the backs of his hands stood out rather like the blue veins do in ripe cheese and certainly those hands were very unsteady, but he was not blind, deaf or senile. Nor had he forgotten the interrogation skills he had learned long ago.
    First, looking rather like an elderly tortoise, he thrust his neck out of his collar and let his gaze travel slowly round his sitting room, resting in turn on each of the three other men there. Then he regarded the little gathering for a long moment before speaking.
    â€˜And why, pray,’ he asked at last, ‘was Mrs Powell’s funeral stopped?’
    Hamish MacIver shook his head. ‘Blessed if I know, Calum.’
    Walter Bryant inched his electric wheelchair backwards. ‘Nor me.’ He frowned. ‘Funny business, altogether.’
    â€˜Don’t understand it at all,’ murmured the Brigadier.
    Captain Peter Markyate sounded peevish. ‘Gertie always was totally unpredictable. Always.’
    â€˜I don’t see what that’s got to do with it,’ objected Walter Bryant. ‘It’s not her fault that she died.’
    â€˜I take it, gentlemen, that it’s not anyone’s fault that she died.’ The Judge continued his scrutiny of the faces of the other three men. ‘Is it?’
    â€˜No, no,’ they chorused.
    â€˜Am I to understand then,’ said the Judge, ‘that the doctor issued the death certificate in the ordinary way?’
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ nodded the Brigadier, easing his gammy leg from one position to another. ‘At least, we didn’t hear that he didn’t.’
    â€˜Not like with Maude Chalmers-Hyde,’ said Captain Markyate.
    Walter Bryant nodded. ‘You know, don’t you, Calum, that Dr Browne didn’t write one when she died?’
    â€˜Wouldn’t do it,’ chimed in MacIver. ‘Not even when the family pressed him.’
    â€˜They couldn’t have found anything wrong with Maude’s death, though, at the post-mortem,’ said Walter Bryant, looking round at the others, ‘could they? I mean anything wrong, apart from what she had been suffering from.’
    The Judge turned his basilisk stare on the man in the wheelchair. ‘Was there anything else wrong to find?’
    â€˜No, no,’ said Walter Bryant hastily. ‘I’m sure there wasn’t.’
    â€˜Dr Browne wasn’t sure,’ said Judge Gillespie ineluctably, ‘so why should you have been?’
    Bryant looked flustered and covered his