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Calleford. In fact, sometimes he even quite enjoyed pronouncing them, conscious that not only was he carrying out a last duty towards one of his flock but supporting the mourners, too – and all at the same time as giving full rein to his views on the importance of the Christian message of peace and forgiveness.
    But not this morning.
    â€˜Dearly beloved brethren,’ he enjoined them formally, ‘we are gathered here together today to give thanks for the life of Gertrude Eleanor Murton Powell…’
    Adrian Brailsford had hoped at first that the Regimental Chaplain would have come to Almstone to take this service himself, but that khaki cleric was away on active duty with the Fearnshires somewhere in Europe. All he, Adrian Brailsford, Rector of this parish, had been told about that clergyman’s absence was that the Regiment was busy trying to sort out the human cockpit that the Balkans had again become.
    â€˜A life,’ he went on, picking his words about Gertrude Powell with minefield care, ‘which we all know was one lived to the full.’ The Rector was well aware that a funeral was usually one of the services at which it was more likely that he had the complete attention of all of his congregation. He could almost feel it from the pulpit now.
    â€˜You might say she lived it to the utmost,’ he added.
    The same interest, alas, could not always be felt from those attending some of the other offices of the church. Sometimes, indeed, at children’s services and Harvest Festival time, he wasn’t sure that he had their attention at all. Often enough, too, he felt he was a mere figurehead at such occasions as the Christmas Carol Service.
    Not today.
    Today he had no need to make a conscious effort to stifle any negative thoughts of his own or try to engage the wandering minds of his flock. Today he knew he had the complete attention of everyone present. He laid out his notes on the pulpit rail and turned to address the assembled company on the subject of the life of the deceased.
    â€˜It was, of course, only the last few years of that crowded life which she had spent amongst us here in Almstone…’
    It hadn’t been easy for him to find the right words for his encomium. Adrian’s usual wont was to talk first to the relatives about their favourite memory of the deceased and then weave what they had said seamlessly into the fabric of his address, augmenting the tribute as necessary with passing references to the bread of affliction and the waters of sorrow (there being very few people who escaped these two sad experiences in life). However, he had found Lionel Powell notably reticent on the subject of his late mother’s past life.
    â€˜Varied,’ he’d said tersely.
    â€˜Ah!’
    â€˜Especially in the war.’
    â€˜I see. Perhaps, then, you could tell me…’
    â€˜She did a lot of driving of officers on Salisbury Plain before going out to Egypt with her first husband,’ Lionel had volunteered unhelpfully.
    With which Adrian Brailsford had had to be content.
    Matron, that usually excellent woman, when appealed to in turn, had said judiciously that she had been given to understand that Mrs Gertrude Powell had always lived life to the utmost and had no regrets but more than that she really could not say. Brailsford had seized on the phrase, inviting her to elaborate on it. This, though, Mrs Muriel Peden had signally failed to do.
    Instead she had suggested that some of Mrs Powell’s old friends at the Manor – Captain Markyate, for instance – might like to talk to him about the old days. The residents, she had added drily, usually preferred talking about the old days to any other days.
    This hadn’t been as much help to Adrian Brailsford as it might have been because of the unease he always felt when talking to any of the residents of the Manor. It wasn’t that they ever made him feel actually unwelcome. Merely not