Free Mrs. Malory and Any Man's Death by HAZEL HOLT Page A

Annie died—he and the family are away for a few days—but I’m sure if you rang the practice, they’d advise you—”
    “It’s the responsibility,” Judith went on. “As I said, I’d be happy to hang on to the keys, but I would like to know . . . well, what’s going to happen.”
    “Do we know what the result of the postmortem is,” I asked, “and if there’s got to be an inquest? If there is, I suppose the police would have to be involved.”
    “No, we haven’t heard,” Maurice said. “We’re waiting for Lewis—I don’t suppose they’d tell us, would they?”
    “I’d be happy to give them to the police,” Judith said, “if that’s what they want. I had been going to go in there to water the plants, but now—well, I don’t think . . . I mean, she had some really nice potted plants, and it would be a shame just to let them die. But I don’t like to actually go in, not with Annie—you know . . .”
    “It is awkward,” I said. “I have those letters of hers—her grandfather’s, that is. She gave them to me for the Book, but now . . .”
    “Oh, you’ll go on with the Book,” Judith exclaimed. “It’s what she would have wanted. Don’t you think so, Maurice? Oh, you must go on!”
    “It’s really a question of who the letters belong to now,” I said, “and, if I do go on with it, Annie said there are other things she had that ought to go in as well. I really don’t know what to do about them.”
    “It seems to me,” Maurice said, “that there’s not much that we can do until we know what’s in the will—I suppose she did make a will?” He looked at me inquiringly.
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose she must have done, though often people don’t.”
    “There’s the cottage,” Maurice said thoughtfully. “That was Annie’s. I mean, it belonged to her mother and she left it to her. Her father was in the army, killed in the war, in North Africa I think it was, though Annie never talked about it. So there was a widow’s pension and her mother used to work at the hotel and, then, Annie was earning. I never knew the mother, of course; she died before we came here. Anyhow, as I was saying, there’s the cottage. That must be worth quite a bit—properties in the village are fetching ridiculous amounts. I was just saying to Margaret the other day, it’s lucky we bought this place when we did; we certainly couldn’t have afforded it now!”
    “Of course,” Judith said, “Mere Barton is a very desirable village—do you know I heard that Pitlands Farm sold for the best part of a million—and there isn’t any land now, just the house!”
    “So who gets Annie’s cottage, then?” Maurice said. “If there are no relatives—and what if she didn’t make a will? Does the government get it?”
    “Oh, that wouldn’t be fair,” Judith said indignantly, “coming and taking people’s property like that. They couldn’t, could they?”
    They both looked at me as if being the mother of a solicitor gave me some sort of legal competence.
    I shook my head. “I really don’t know . . . ,” I began, when the door opened and Lewis came in.
    We all turned to him eagerly and Maurice said, “Now, here’s somebody who can tell us what’s what.”
    “Have they had the result of the postmortem?” I asked.
    He nodded. “Yes. It’s as we thought—food poisoning.”
    “Do they know what caused it?” Maurice asked quickly, anxious, no doubt, for the reputation of the shop.
    “It seems to have been some sort of fungus,” Lewis said.
    “Oh well!” Maurice said, visibly relieved. “We might have known it! All those toadstools and stuff she used to gather in the woods—”
    “I was always nervous about her eating them,” Judith broke in. “Time and again I said to her, ‘Annie, are you sure they’re safe?’ but she never listened to me. Once, she gave me some in a bag, told me to fry them just like proper mushrooms. Well, I thanked her, of course, but when I got