Free Mourn not your Dead by Deborah Crombie

night?”
    “I was in my room, but Brian saw the pandas go by, lights and sirens. He called me down to help with the bar, then he went straight across the road, but they wouldn’t let him through. ‘There’s been an accident’ was all they’d tell him, and he came back in a right state. We didn’t know until Nick Deveney sent a constable over to make arrangements for you that it was the commander, not Lucy or Claire.”
    “And that made a difference, did it?” asked Gemma, thinking how much people revealed unwittingly, just by the construction of their sentences, their emphasis on certain words.
    “Of course it did.” Geoff sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Like I said, it’s a small place, and everybody knows everybody, especially neighbors. Lucy’s a nice kid, and Claire... everyone likes Claire.”
    Odd, thought Gemma, if Claire Gilbert was so well thought of, that she had leaned on Will Darling rather than accepting comfort from a sympathetic neighbor. “But not Alastair Gilbert?” she asked. “You didn’t mind so much about him?”
    “I didn’t say that.” Geoff frowned at her, their pleasant camaraderie definitely damaged. “It’s just that he’s not here —I mean he wasn’t here—what with his job and being in London most of the time.”
    “I knew him,” said Gemma, putting her elbows on the table and propping her chin in one hand. She wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it to Kincaid, then shrugged. She hadn’t felt inclined to volunteer anything remotely personal.
    “He was my super at Notting Hill when I first joined the force,” she continued. Geoff relaxed, looking interested and settling more comfortably into his chair, as if Gemma’s admission had put them back on equal footing. Sipping her tea, she said, “But I didn’t really know him, of course— there were more than four hundred officers at Notting Hill, and I was too lowly to come to his attention. He might have spoken ten words to me in all that time.” The man she remembered seemed to have little connection to the body sprawled so messily on the Gilberts’ kitchen floor. He’d been small and neat, soft-spoken and particular in his dress and his diction, and had occasionally given little pep talks to the ranks about the importance of rules. “ ‘A tight ship,’ my sergeant used to say. ‘Gilbert runs a tight ship.’ But I don’t think he meant it kindly.”
    “He did like things his way.” Geoff broke another biscuit in two and popped one half into his mouth. Indistinctly, he said, “He was always on the outs with the village council over something, wanting them to enforce the parking restrictions round the green, things like that.” The second biscuit half followed the first, then he refilled both their cups. “And he had a row with the doctor a couple of weeks ago. If you can call it rowing when no one raises his voice.”
    “Really?” Gemma sat up a bit. “What about?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t actually hear it. It was a Saturday, see, and I do some odd jobs for the doctor. When I went up to the kitchen door to ask her about the compost, he was just leaving. But something had happened—you know how you can tell sometimes, like bad feeling stays in the air. And Doc Wilson had that tight-lipped look.”
    “Her? I mean she?” said Gemma, trying to sort out her cases.
    “This is a very feminist village—lady doctor and lady vicar. And I don’t think the commander got on with either of them.”
    Gemma remembered that Gilbert’s manner to the women under his command had bordered on condescending, and he’d been notorious for overlooking female officers for promotions.
    “I can’t wait to meet them,” she said, toying with the idea of stealing a march on Kincaid by interviewing the doctor.
    “This afternoon?” Geoff studied her with concern. “You look all in, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
    ‘Thanks.”
    Her evident sarcasm made Geoff blush. “I’m sorry. It’s just