Free Little Knell by Catherine Aird Page A

crossed his features. ‘Had to hold them ourselves.’
    Sloan cocked a professional ear. ‘My sort of trouble or yours?’
    â€˜A couple of mares got out of the animal sanctuary over there and created merry hell with motorized traffic on the road to Larking.’
    â€˜Horses and cars don’t mix,’ said Sloan profoundly, echoing, had he but known it, the sentiments held by that old horse soldier, Colonel Caversham.
    â€˜They’ll have to mend their fences at the sanctuary,’ growled Harpe, pushing his plate away, ‘or they’ll have more trouble.’
    â€˜Only literally,’ said Sloan neatly. Alison and Jennifer Kirk had more friends and supporters in Calleshire than most people. The Sloans’ own cat, Squeak, had come from the Calleshire Animal Sanctuary as a rescued kitten. Sloan pushed his chair back. ‘Well, Harry, I hope your driver survives.’
    â€˜Talking of surviving,’ riposted Harpe unkindly, ‘I’m surprised that that young driver of yours hasn’t come to grief yet.’
    â€˜Crosby?’
    â€˜Him.’
    â€˜Luck, I expect,’ said Sloan mordantly.
    â€˜Or the devil looking after his own,’ said Inspector Harpe, still determinedly superstitious.
    *   *   *
    â€˜Fractured skull, Dr Meadows says, does he, Inspector?’ Dr Dabbe shot a quizzical glance in the direction of the door leading from his office to the mortuary. ‘Well, Steve should know, shouldn’t he, Ruth?’
    The radiographer, who was clutching some X-ray photographs under her arm, nodded energetically. Detective Inspector Sloan was standing, his notebook at the ready, while Burns, the pathologist’s perennially silent assistant, was hovering between office and mortuary in the manner of an old-fashioned butler. They were all gowned and masked, and had been offered the opportunity of opting out of being present at the postmortem in case remnants of dangerous diseases were still lurking in the mummy case. None of them had, although Detective Constable Crosby had removed himself to the furthest corner of the room.
    â€˜And, of course,’ said Dr Dabbe genially, ‘there’s a very famous precedent.’
    â€˜There is?’ Detective Inspector Sloan pulled himself together and tried to take a proper interest in the past.
    â€˜In the year 1352 BC , give or take a year.’
    â€˜Really, doctor?’ The pathologist was as bad as Happy Harry. Sloan didn’t like to say – not yet – that it was the present that was so very pressing.
    â€˜Tutankhamun, too, so it is said, Sloan, received a fatal blow to the back of the skull…’
    â€˜Did he, doctor?’ The original occupant of the mummy case might have been Egyptian but the present one wasn’t.
    â€˜In a place on the cranium where an accident is most unlikely.’
    â€˜We’d call that suspicious circumstances, all right,’ conceded Sloan, his mind still on the here and now but keeping the police end up withal.
    â€˜Probably while he was asleep, or at any rate lying down,’ said the pathologist. ‘Upon his secure hour, as Shakespeare put it so well. I’ve always found the murder of Hamlet’s father very interesting, Sloan. That ear poison…’
    â€˜Some other time, doctor, please,’ pleaded Sloan. ‘Some other time.’
    â€˜Right.’ He picked up a hand microphone and started dictating into it the fact that in view of the nature of the subject of the examination, all present had consented to be present and were clad in their extra-special precautions outfits.
    â€˜Dr Meadows thought you might like some straight X-rays in situ, Dr Dabbe,’ said Ruth, a trifle shakily. ‘And I could do some A and P ones for you now but not an encephalogram, of course.’
    â€˜A and P?’ queried Sloan quickly. He had a rooted objection to being excluded from the shorthand of