Passing Strange by Catherine Aird Page A

leaves?”
    â€œReading them,” said Pearson on the instant. “Isn’t that what she was doing? And charging for it into the bargain.”
    â€œShe had a crystal ball,” said Ken Walls stolidly. “I saw it, remember? When I went in there for my ten pennorth.”
    Detective-Constable Crosby, having completed his examination of the area where the tent had been, widened his search.
    Fred Pearson and Ken Walls, nothing loath, extended their area of interest too.
    They saw the constable pick up and label first a drinking straw and then a short length of binder twine.
    â€œDo you think,” began Pearson, “that that binder twine’s what –”
    â€œNo,” said Walls repressively, “I don’t.”
    â€œHe’s found a couple of empty cigarette packets now,” observed Pearson in the manner of a radio commentator at the races.
    â€œI’m not surprised,” said Walls stoutly. “You know that Almstone’s never going to win the Best Kept Village Competition.”
    â€œNo.” Pearson turned to the constable and asked him curiously, “Will those things be of any use to you?”
    â€œToo soon to say,” answered Crosby importantly. He added a phrase dinned into him at the Police Training School. “But the Forensic Scientist is only as good as the material provided for him.”
    Pearson nodded. Everyone knocked scientists.
    â€œâ€™Course,” remarked Walls conversationally, “if the police do get stuck over a search they can always call in the Potato Marketing Board.”
    â€œCome again?” said the constable. If the police were at a loss the popular press did not as a rule call for the Potato Marketing Board to be brought in. Not that Crosby had noticed, anyway.
    â€œBig Brother,” contributed Fred obliquely.
    â€œThe Potato Marketing Board?”
    â€œAlways watching,” said Fred.
    â€œBy aeroplane,” said Ken.
    â€œThey take photographs,” said Fred.
    â€œWhat of?” asked Crosby.
    â€œPotatoes,” said Ken simply.
    â€œChecking,” said Fred, “that you haven’t got more planted than you’ve said.”
    â€œOr less,” put in Ken. “That’s as bad.”
    â€œNot too little, not too much …” began Fred.
    â€œBut just right,” said Ken, demonstrating that advertising slogans can and do enter into the language of men.
    â€œIt’s one way of keeping tabs on things, I suppose,” said the detective-constable. “We usually manage to do it from the beat but it takes all sorts.” He picked up something else and regarded it curiously.
    â€œThat’s a horse-shoe nail,” Walls informed him. “Don’t see many of them about these days.”
    Crosby labelled that too, and put it in a bag. He cast about again.
    â€œNothing else, is there?” said Pearson, still supervising all the constable’s activities.
    Crosby picked up some lengths of what looked like long dead grass that were lying on top of the ground. He held them in his hand for a long moment.
    Ken Walls enlightened him. “That’s funeral wheat, that is.”
    â€œFuneral wheat?” The constable’s mind spun towards wreaths.
    â€œFuneral wheat,” said the countryman flatly, “is wheat that has died rather than ripen.”
    â€œI don’t believe it,” said Herbert Kershaw.
    â€œAt the Flower Show,” said Mrs Kershaw.
    â€œI just don’t believe it.”
    â€œEileen Milsom said it was true. She told me.” The Milsoms at Dorter End Farm were the Kershaws’ nearest neighbours.
    â€œHow does she know?” challenged Kershaw immediately. “If it isn’t a Horse Show Eileen Milsom doesn’t go to it.”
    â€œCedric lent them his lorry for the tents.” Mrs Millicent Kershaw was accustomed to having to back up her statements with chapter and verse. “He heard when he