A Going Concern (2 page)

Of one thing, though, she was sure. It had been before she, Amelia, had become known within the family as ‘poor Helena's girl'.

‘I couldn't say, miss, I'm sure,' said Tod Morton. ‘All I know is that her doctor told the solicitors that Mrs Garamond had died and they told me.'

Amelia Kennerley suppressed a strong desire to add ‘and they went and told the sexton and the sexton toll'd the bell'. Quotations from parodies of ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?' were even less appropriate to the situation than those from
Hamlet
.

‘And I told Mr Fournier … that's Mr Edwin Fournier,' continued Tod Morton, who not unnaturally had no means of knowing what was going through her mind.

‘Mr Fournier?'

‘He's the parson out at Great Primer,' replied Tod. ‘Sorry, miss, I didn't quite catch what you said then.'

A feeling akin to hysteria had almost overwhelmed Amelia. She struggled for the right words. She must say something that had no connection at all with Cock Robin. ‘What did Mr Fournier say?'

There was a pause at the end of the continental telephone: a longer pause than she had expected. It couldn't be surely – could it – that Tod Morton – he sounded quite young over the telephone – was also trying hard not to say:

Who'll bear the pall?

We, said the wren,

Both the cock and the hen,

We'll bear the pall?

It wasn't.

When he did reply to her, Tod Morton seemed to be choosing his words with unusual care and he reported something quite unexpected. He said: ‘When I told Mr Fournier that old Mrs Garamond up at the Grange had died and could he take the funeral service …'

‘Yes?'

‘He said to me, miss, that it was both his Christian duty and his legal duty under English canon law to conduct Mrs Garamond's funeral in a seemly and Christian fashion with a service from the Prayer Book …'

Even Amelia, inexperienced in these matters as she was, thought this an unusual reaction by a man in Holy Orders to the news of the death of one of his parishioners.

‘And,' continued Tod, ‘he said seeing as he was therefore bound to do so, do it he would.' The undertaker sniffed. ‘If you were to ask me, miss, it sounded to me a bit as if he was miffed about something and that he'd sort of rehearsed what he was going to say against the time, like.'

Somewhere at the back of Amelia's mind she thought she remembered that burying the dead was one of the Contrary Virtues; the Contrary Virtues had been a puzzle to her at Sunday School until she got it into her head at last that they were called ‘Contrary' because they were the opposite of the Capital Sins and not just plain awkward like in ‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary'.

‘Mr Fournier …' Tod Morton began a second time.

No, she thought again, burying the dead wasn't one of the Contrary Virtues after all. Surely Burying the Dead was one of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy? Like Harbouring the Harbourless …

‘Mr Fournier did say …' persisted the undertaker.

And, thought Amelia, surely the rector couldn't say he wouldn't bury her great-aunt, could he? Anyway, evidently he hadn't because Tod Morton was saying something else now …

‘Mr Fournier,' Tod Morton had finally succeeded in getting her full attention, ‘did say to me that he was equally bound by canon law to allow someone else to take the burial service in his church if we wanted another clergyman to do so.'

‘And do we?' enquired Amelia, beginning to wonder if perhaps after all the telephone call from England was an elaborate hoax: or even a student rag.

‘We might,' responded Tod Morton frankly, ‘but the late Mrs Garamond didn't.'

‘Oh?' This conversation, decided Amelia, wasn't anything to do with ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?' after all. It was pure
Alice in Wonderland
, that's what it was.

The undertaker was still talking. ‘Mr Puckle told me that the late Mrs Garamond had asked specially in her instructions for Mr Fournier to take the funeral service.'

‘Did she, indeed?' said Amelia. ‘And does that mean that she knew that the rector wouldn't want to take it, then?' Like Alice she was finding that everything was getting curiouser and curiouser.

‘I couldn't say, miss, I'm sure.'

‘So?'

‘So we've provisionally fixed the funeral for today week, miss, like I said. If it's all right with you, that is …'

‘It's all right with me,' Amelia Kennerley heard herself saying aloud, ‘but what about its being all right with everyone else?'

‘Ah,' said the undertaker down the telephone line, ‘the late Mrs Garamond left precise instructions about that, too.'

‘Tell me …' commanded Amelia. There was clearly a little more to all this than met the eye.

‘Very precise instructions,' said Tod Morton, proceeding to spell them out to her.

Her friend Mary-Louise had watched Amelia's face as she had listened intently, thanked the speaker, and then replaced the telephone receiver with a very thoughtful expression indeed. ‘And what was all that about?' she asked Amelia.

‘My great-aunt's died.'

Mary-Louise was the holiday party's language specialist and immediately said: ‘“The young die sometimes, but the old always die.” That's an old Breton proverb.'

Amelia restored the telephone instrument to its resting place on the
étagère
, took a deep breath, and said: ‘Listen …'

Mary-Louise gave her her full attention.

‘And,' finished Amelia presently, ‘there's a notice of her death and funeral to be inserted in the principal London newspapers and two Scottish ones as well as in the three Calleshire local papers …'

‘Naturally,' said Mary-Louise, affecting a knowledge-ability she didn't really quite have yet.

‘And the
Journal of the Courant Club
,' finished Amelia.

‘The what?'

‘The Courant Club.'

‘Never heard of it.'

‘Nor me, until this minute,' said Amelia. ‘Apparently it's the house magazine for present and past employees of an outfit that she and Uncle William used to work for in the war. Some big firm or other that had something to do with manufacturing dyestuffs.' She pushed the
caquetoire
out of the sunlight and into the shaded part of the sitting room before sinking on to it. ‘I say, Mary-Louise, do you know that Great-Aunt Octavia had actually drafted the death notices for the newspapers herself and left them with her solicitor all ready prepared?'

‘Now that,' said Mary-Louise respectfully, ‘is what I call really cool.'

‘Everything there, the undertaker said, except the actual date of death.'

‘Of course,' said Mary-Louise. ‘I mean, you wouldn't know what date to put, would you, unless it was suicide …' Her voice trailed away as she was struck by an uneasy thought. ‘It wasn't, Amelia, was it?'

‘No,' said Amelia. ‘I asked him. He said the date was blank.'

‘Ah,' Mary-Louise gave a little sigh. ‘I'm glad about that.'

‘She also left,' went on Amelia doggedly, ‘a list of those people who were to be asked back to the Grange at Great Primer after the funeral.'

‘Such as …' That wasn't very well put, decided Mary-Louise, but she knew what she meant.

So, it seemed, did Amelia Kennerley.

‘Such as the police,' said Amelia neutrally.

TWO

Oh, that a linnet should die in the spring!

‘Who, sir?' asked Detective Inspector C. D. Sloan.

‘You, Sloan,' barked Superintendent Leeyes.

‘Me, sir?' said Sloan, who had just been summoned to his superior officer's room at ‘F' Division Headquarters in Berebury.

‘You heard me,' growled the superintendent.

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Sloan hastily. So, probably, had half the police station. The detective inspector, known to his wife and family as Christopher Dennis and, for obvious reasons, as ‘Seedy' to his friends and colleagues in the Calleshire Constabulary, was still mystified.

‘Probably nothing to it, of course,' said Superintendent Leeyes largely, ‘but we can't afford to take chances these days. Things aren't what they used to be.'

‘No, sir.' Sloan was on safe ground in agreeing to that. He was head of the tiny Criminal Investigation Department of the Berebury Division of the county of Calleshire and all reports of such crime as there was there found their way on to his desk. ‘Nothing to what, sir?'

‘To this very odd invitation to a funeral that I've been trying to tell you about,' replied the superintendent unfairly. ‘Some old lady's been and gone and left word with her solicitor that when she died the police were to be invited to her funeral.'

‘Why?' enquired Detective Inspector Sloan.

‘She didn't say why.'

‘Sorry, sir. I meant why me in particular,' responded the detective inspector carefully. ‘Do we actually know if crime is involved in any way?'

‘We don't know anything, Sloan,' rejoined Leeyes testily. ‘Yet, that is. We've only just heard from her solicitor. What I'm saying is that you'll have to go along to Puckle, Puckle, and Nunnery's yourself and find out if they know anything more.'

‘Yes, sir.' He had, after all, had even odder assignments in his time.

‘And, if they do know anything more,' he added heavily, ‘whether they're prepared to tell you, which isn't the same thing by a long chalk.'

‘No, sir. Very good.' Sloan reached for his notebook. ‘Today week, I think you said the funeral was. In the afternoon.'

‘Half past two,' the superintendent said. ‘You can take Constable Crosby with you,' he went on, immediately spoiling any suspicion of magnanimity by adding, ‘at least that'll get him off our backs for the afternoon.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Sloan rigidly. Detective Constable William Edward Crosby was the youngest and most jejune member of the Force in the whole of ‘F' Division and usually an incubus in any police operation which did not involve driving fast cars fast.

‘And there's one good thing about going to a funeral,' rumbled on Leeyes, ‘that'll be a help to you both in the circumstances.'

Sloan looked up. ‘Sir?'

‘It isn't like a wedding where the ushers ask you whose side you're on the minute you walk in through the church door.'

‘No, sir.' Crumbs of professional comfort cropped up in the strangest of places.

‘Now that can be tricky,' said the superintenent, veteran of many a family reunion. ‘At least at a funeral you can sit wherever you like in the church.'

It was something that Detective Inspector Sloan had not considered before.

‘But if I were you, Sloan …'

‘Sir?'

‘I'd sit right at the back and keep my eyes skinned.'

‘Yes, sir.' In the interests of his own Criminal Investigation Department, Sloan tried another tack with the superintendent. ‘Has … I mean, sir, is it known if … er …, anything had occurred to the deceased that should … um … specifically call for our presence?'

‘Not as far as we know to date.' The superintendent tossed a flimsy message-sheet in Sloan's direction. ‘That's all the paperwork that's reached us so far.'

‘Thank you, sir,' he said expressionlessly, picking it up.

‘Next Friday afternoon, then, Sloan, at St Hilary's church, Great Primer … let me have your report in due course.'

‘Yes, sir.' The detective inspector paused while he folded the paper away and then said: ‘Was she by any chance ever on the Bench, this old lady?' In theory, all lay magistrates were totally detached from all policemen but it wasn't a perfect world and inevitably relationships were formed over the years of working together in the same courts. This was something that those acting for the defendants did not like at all.

‘No, Sloan, she wasn't,' responded Leeyes smartly. ‘I've just had that checked out myself with the magistrates' clerk.'

‘It was just a thought, sir.'

‘She might well have been, though,' conceded the superintendent, whose mind was following a train of reasoning that would doubtless have upset the Lord Chancellor's Department as well as nearly every defence counsel in the land. ‘The Assistant Chief Constable tells me that Mrs Garamond was a bit of a nob in her own right – what the wine people call
Edelfäule
.'

‘Pardon, sir?' This last must have come straight from the superintendent's Wine Appreciation classes: he was a great one for attending Adult Education evening courses on all manner of subjects – the more recondite the better.

‘Noble rot, Sloan. Noble rot.'

‘Ah.'

What the assistant chief constable – that most well connected of men – had actually said was that the late Mrs Octavia Garamond was one of the few surviving members of the old school, coming as she did from the ancient Scottish family of Harquil-Grasset. That was before he had quoted something melancholy of G. K. Chesterton's about the last sad squires who ride slowly down to the sea; but Superintendent Leeyes had grasped the essentials.

‘He said something else, too, Sloan.'

‘Sir?'

‘That it was an interesting old church out there at Great Primer …'

‘Really, sir?' said Sloan politely.

‘From a police procedural point of view, that is.'

‘How come, sir?'

‘You may well ask,' grumbled Leeyes, who didn't hold with having toffee-nosed assistant chief constables in the Force anyway.

‘Stolen chalices?' advanced Sloan. The aristocratic assistant chief constable wouldn't have found wayward clergymen interesting, that was for sure.

‘Something historical,' sniffed Leeyes, spiritual brother of the late Henry Ford.

‘Sir?' Perhaps, then, thought Sloan, in days gone by the luckless incumbent out there at Great Primer had been sent to gaol for offences against the Public Worship Regulation Act of 1874: heinous activities like lighting candles where lighted candles there should not be. Their lecturer at the Police Training College had insisted to a disbelieving class of young policeman that ritualism had always been good for a real parochial dust-up …