Little Knell Read Online Free Page A

too?’ asked Sloan, puzzled. He ran his mind’s eye down the list that reposed on his desk, new every morning, of missing persons in Calleshire. As he remembered it, the names comprised those of a confused elderly gentleman who had gone absent from an old people’s home in Kinnisport – and without his false teeth, too, which his carers considered significant; a young woman who hadn’t been seen since a tiff with her boyfriend – the boyfriend had been interviewed and would be interviewed again if she didn’t turn up soon; and a now-not-so-young woman who hadn’t been observed by the constabulary on her usual beat on the streets of Luston for the last six nights.
    â€˜That’s the trouble,’ said Leeyes.
    â€˜I don’t quite follow, sir.’
    â€˜The coroner says,’ the superintendent mimicked the carefully modulated tones of that august official, ‘that acting on information received…’
    â€˜What!’ Sloan exclaimed. ‘Sorry, sir, but…’
    â€˜I thought you wouldn’t like that, Sloan,’ observed the superintendent with a certain melancholy satisfaction.
    He didn’t. That phrase, ‘acting on information received’, was one of the police’s best lines; not usually one of the coroner’s.
    â€˜Mr Locombe-Stableford says,’ went on the superintendent, ‘he’s been informed that a body has been moved within his jurisdiction in East Calleshire, but without his knowledge or consent.’
    â€˜And the name of the deceased?’ asked Detective Inspector Sloan, getting out his notebook. As far as he was concerned, any of the three souls on this morning’s list of local missing could have turned up anywhere in Calleshire as dead bodies rather than as living persons.
    Or none of them.
    â€˜Nobody knows the name for certain,’ said the superintendent enigmatically.
    â€˜An unidentified body…’ began Sloan.
    â€˜But I am told,’ continued Leeyes, ‘that ever since anyone can remember he has been known as Rodoheptah.’
    â€˜Would you happen to know how that was spelt, sir?’ Sloan metaphorically licked the tip of his pencil and waited.
    â€˜No,’ said Leeyes.
    â€˜Is it known, then, where the deceased was removed from, sir?’
    Leeyes squinted down at a piece of paper on his desk. ‘Whimbrel House, Edgewood Hill, Staple St James.’
    â€˜Colonel Caversham’s?’ Sloan looked up, surprised. ‘But it’s weeks and weeks since he died. Quite a famous old boy in his time…’
    â€˜Not as long ago as this body,’ said Leeyes grimly. ‘It’s an Egyptian mummy.’
    â€˜But…’
    â€˜But our Mr Granville Locombe-Stableford insists that as far as he is concerned a mummy is nevertheless still a body.’
    â€˜Within the meaning of the Act, I suppose,’ supplemented Detective Inspector Sloan, not sure exactly where this got them. He, himself, was still trying to concentrate all his working hours on the sudden and worrying upsurge in drug dealing in rural Calleshire. Knowing that the stuff was coming in by sea hadn’t really got them much further.
    â€˜Precisely,’ agreed Leeyes eagerly. ‘That is until the remains have been duly certified by a registered medical practitioner as being only of archaeological interest.’ Leeyes completed the coroner’s grounds for jurisdiction in a manner that left no room for doubt about his opinion of them.
    With an effort, Sloan wrenched his mind off the drug scene. ‘So…’
    â€˜So, Sloan, as far as the coroner is concerned, technically, an offence was committed when the body was moved from where it last was.’
    â€˜I see.’ Sloan cast about in the back of his mind for the exact nature of this offence. If anyone was going to be charged with it, he, Sloan, would first have to find out under which particular ancient statute that