Free Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird

friend as well as her doctor, Inspector. He’d been very good to her over the years over this chronic complaint of hers.’
    â€˜Diabetes,’ said Briony Petforth rather crossly. ‘Why doesn’t everyone say so and call it what it was?’
    â€˜Quite so,’ said Sloan. ‘And?’
    â€˜My children get a small sum between them,’ continued Wansdyke. ‘In trust, naturally, seeing that they’re under age.’
    â€˜Naturally,’ concurred Sloan. Trust Laws might seem a contradiction in terms but they knew all about untrustworthy trustees down at the police station. The medievalists had done better still. They used to put the just judges on one side of a painting and the unjust ones on the other.
    â€˜It won’t amount to much, of course,’ said Wansdyke. ‘Another eighth.’
    â€˜Of course,’ echoed Sloan, reserving judgement on this.
    â€˜Briony gets the same as well as the house.’
    Detective-Inspector Sloan did some mental arithmetic out loud. ‘Four eighths make a half, sir, don’t they?’
    â€˜They do,’ said George Wansdyke reluctantly.
    â€˜That leaves a half,’ said Sloan.
    Wansdyke coughed. ‘That goes to Briony’s brother, Nicholas.’ He spread his hands open and apart in an age-old gesture. ‘If we can find him, that is.’
    Briony Petforth looked up. ‘The dog’s missing too.’
    However Dickensian an impression the coroner’s office gave to the casual visitor it still sported a telephone. Mr Chestley’s personal secretary was middle-aged and competent. The calls she allowed to be put through to her employer were only those she knew he would want to take. To all other callers he was either ‘engaged with a client’ or ‘in Court.’
    â€˜Mr Chestley,’ she said now, ‘I have Dr John Paston on the line.’
    â€˜Put him through,’ he said immediately – as she had known he would. There was a pause. Then: ‘John …’
    â€˜That you, Chestley? Paston here. What’s all this about my death certificate for Beatrice Wansdyke?’
    â€˜No problem,’ said the coroner.
    â€˜I’ve had the relatives round my neck and I can’t get hold of Dabbe.’
    â€˜No problem,’ repeated the coroner. ‘Your friend and medical colleague, the pathologist, says she died of diabetes, too.’
    â€˜That’s a relief,’ said Paston frankly. ‘For a moment I thought …’
    â€˜Doctors have been known to differ,’ said the solicitor mildly. ‘Especially after death.’
    â€˜I was afraid I might have missed something,’ said the general practitioner. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be and I’ve got a lot on my mind.’
    â€˜If you have missed anything,’ the coroner said drily, ‘it wasn’t anything that the pathologist could find.’
    â€˜Shouldn’t have wanted to slip up with her. The nephew’s wife is a first-class menace. Besides, Beatrice was a decent sort.’
    Both men, professional realists, knew that the latter was very much a secondary consideration compared with the former.
    â€˜Of course,’ said Chestley, ‘Dabbe did a lot of hedging about in case anything shows up in his tissue testing.’
    â€˜Pathologists,’ said the general practitioner, ‘are getting as bad as solicitors at that these days.’
    â€˜Nothing’s as certain as it used to be,’ countered Robert Chestley profoundly. ‘The law has always known it. Medicine’s just catching on.’
    â€˜The patient doesn’t like his physician to share his uncertainty with him,’ responded Paston. ‘I’ve tried it and I know.’
    â€˜Dabbe does let you have a copy of his report, doesn’t he?’
    â€˜He does but I dare say it won’t surprise me now. She was getting all sorts of signs and symptoms that