Slight Mourning Read Online Free Page A

with the present.
    The first thing which she did, observed by both Sloan and Cynthia Paterson, was to consider the church flowers, and then to leave her pew to tweak a piece of wayward greenery back into place. Actually, Cynthia Paterson, no mean flower arranger herself, thought the arrangement much better as it was before but Marjorie Marchmont evidently felt it lent nothing to her decoration. She rammed the adjacent flowers even farther into the vase and then went back to her place.
    What Sloan also noted was that—the family apart—all the guests at Saturday night’s fatal dinner party were now assembled in the church. He ticked them off mentally: there should be eight. There was the professor—he’d seen him come in with the doctor and his wife, that was three; the Daniel Marchmonts, who’d just arrived—you couldn’t miss her—must be fifteen stone if she was a pound—five; the Renvilles—now there was a good-looking woman—he didn’t know what to make of them yet—seven; they were sitting next to the gardener woman—Miss Paterson—a proper village spinster if ever he saw one—that made eight.
    They’d all assembled at Strontfield Park just before eight o’clock on Saturday evening. Bill Fent had died as near to midnight as didn’t matter. Those were the only fixed points in time that Sloan had.
    He’d done his level best to winkle a few more out of the pathologist. That had been on Tuesday. And it hadn’t been easy.
    â€œSloan, I can’t be expected to say for sure,” Dr. Dabbe had said cagily, “when the deceased took whatever it was he did take until we know exactly what it was he took, can I?”
    â€œNo, Doctor.” It was the only answer.
    â€œAll I’ve got to go on until I have the analyst’s full report is that there was something there which perhaps shouldn’t have been.”
    â€œNo more than that, Doctor?”
    â€œNot yet, Sloan. When we know exactly what it was he took …”
    â€œOr had given,” pointed out Sloan soberly.
    â€œTrue. Your pigeon that one, of course,” said the pathologist, who also fancied himself a countryman. “On my part …”
    â€œYes, Doctor?”
    â€œI might go so far as to say that I think it was a narcotic that he’d taken, and that it was unlikely that he’d had it very early that evening or the effects would have been apparent before he set off to take the old boy home.”
    Sloan nodded.
    â€œThere’s one more conclusion that we can draw while we’re about it, Inspector …”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œThat if substance ‘X’ had emetic qualities …”
    â€œEmetic?”
    â€œSick-making.” Dr. Dabbe grinned. “If it did …”
    â€œThen,” concluded Sloan for him, “the deceased didn’t take it until after dinner. I quite agree. We’d heard that he ate his dinner all right.”
    â€œHeard?” chortled Dabbe robustly. “I know for sure, Sloan. I had a look.”
    That slightly earthy aspect of the case was also troubling someone else.
    By Sloan’s side in the church Detective Constable Crosby stirred. Raw, brash, and the constant despair of the entire complement of the Berebury Police Station, the superintendent had been quite right about Crosby. No one would take him for a policeman. The constable’s conception of “plain-clothes” was a piece of natty gent’s suiting, and Sloan could only call his choice of a tie for a funeral conspicuously unsuccessful.
    â€œSir,” he whispered now, “what will they do with the bits afterwards?”
    â€œBits?” inquired Sloan bleakly.
    â€œHis innards. The bits they put in jars. They aren’t being buried today with the rest of him, are they?”
    â€œI should hope not.”
    â€œWell, then …”
    â€œIf there’s anything in them that