Some Die Eloquent Read Online Free Page A

for weeks now, and with Malcolm being away until Thursday …’
    â€˜But –’ his wife cut him off short – ‘you told me that Dr Paston gave you a death certificate.’ Mrs Wansdyke never encouraged mention of business detail. In fact she spent quite a lot of time trying to pretend to herself and her circle of friends and relations that her husband wasn’t actually in anything so commonplace as business at all. Messrs Wansdyke and Darnley, she was wont to insist, were really more like scientific researchers than plastics manufacturers.
    â€˜So he did,’ said George Wansdyke. ‘Yesterday.’
    â€˜Well, then …’
    â€˜And it said something which he told me meant that she’d gone into a diabetic coma.’
    â€˜That’s doctors for you all the time,’ said Mrs Pauline Wansdyke, momentarily diverted. ‘Dressing everything up in words nobody can understand. Why couldn’t he say what he meant?’
    â€˜He did,’ said her husband mildly.
    â€˜Your aunt died from her diabetes.’
    â€˜And that’s exactly what he put on the death certificate,’ said George Wansdyke.
    â€˜In Latin, though,’ his wife came back at him swiftly.
    â€˜They all do that.’ In Greek actually, but he did not say so.
    â€˜Showing off,’ pronounced Mrs Pauline Wansdyke.
    George did not argue.
    Mrs Wansdyke returned like a homing pigeon to her original point. ‘They can’t do a post mortem if they’ve got the death certificate.’
    â€˜Can’t they just!’ responded George vigorously.
    â€˜Well, can they?’
    â€˜I don’t suppose for one moment,’ declared George Wansdyke, businessman, ‘that they are doing anything at all that they haven’t the authority to do.’ A working life spent – as a first priority – in satisfying an assortment of government departments, the Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue, sundry local authorities, the Patents Office, and the Value Added Tax Commissioners had taught him only too well that there was invariably the power packed behind the punch. It was only in the jungle of private enterprise that you had to make sure first that you could see the colour of the other person’s money, so to speak.
    â€˜But …’ began Pauline Wansdyke.
    â€˜These sort of people,’ he said ruefully, ‘don’t need to exceed their authority. They’ve got all they need and plenty more where that came from. For all I know the coroner can still clap people in the Tower.’
    â€˜The coroner?’ murmured Pauline Wansdyke. ‘What’s your aunt got to do with the coroner?’
    â€˜Nothing that I know about,’ said George grimly. ‘Yet.’
    â€˜Well then, why should he want to put anyone in the Tower?’
    â€˜What I meant was,’ explained George, immediately regretting his flight into imagery, ‘that it seems to me that the coroner in England can do pretty well what he likes.’
    â€˜Oh, I see. George …’ Pauline Wansdyke made up in pertinacity what she lacked in comprehension.
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜Where does the coroner come in, then?’
    â€˜Someone must have asked him for a post mortem.’
    â€˜Not you?’
    â€˜Not me,’ said George Wansdyke. ‘And I’m her sole executor.’
    â€˜Briony wouldn’t have done, surely?’
    â€˜No, not without telling me. Anyway, she’s a nurse and she was sure that Beatrice had died of her diabetes.’
    â€˜I know. She said so straightaway yesterday. So why all the fuss if they know already?’
    â€˜You don’t seem to have got the point yet,’ said George tightly. ‘It isn’t the medical people being in academic doubt about the cause of death and wanting to find out so that everything’s neat and tidy.’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜No,’ said George. ‘Otherwise they’d have