Passing Strange by Catherine Aird Page B

went down to see if they were ready for the lorry.”
    â€œThat doesn’t make it gospel,” said the farmer irritably. His first action after criticizing the bearer of bad news was to disbelieve it.
    â€œIt makes it likely,” said his wife without rancour. “Besides, Eileen’s not one to exaggerate.”
    â€œBut who on earth –” he opened his hands wide – “would want to kill Joyce Cooper?”
    Mrs Kershaw tidied away some of the accoutrements of her flower-arranging and said she didn’t know.
    â€œJoyce Cooper of all people!” exclaimed Herbert Kershaw.
    â€œWho would want to kill anyone?” shuddered Mrs Kershaw. She was a stiff woman of immaculate grooming. Her flower arrangements reflected this. They tended to be formal set pieces, faultlessly executed.
    â€œAnd why?” demanded Kershaw. “Tell me that!”
    But this Mrs Kershaw couldn’t do either.
    Her husband began to pace up and down the large farm kitchen while his wife busied herself between larder and sink.
    â€œIt’s only a cold supper tonight, Herbert, because of the Show.”
    He acknowledged this with a gesture of indifference, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Cedric Milsom …”
    â€œWith Eileen at the Cullingoak Pony Show,” said Millicent Kershaw swiftly.
    Too swiftly.
    â€œAll the time?” queried Kershaw.
    â€œMost of the time,” qualified Millicent Kershaw. “Eileen says he was there most of the time.”
    â€œHe doesn’t usually go to Shows,” observed her husband. Cedric Milsom’s proclivities lay not with the horses but with the ladies.
    â€œI don’t think he strays too far in the afternoon,” said Millicent Kershaw. She was an unimaginative, literal-minded woman. As far as she was concerned the only reason that the Adam and Eve and Serpent scenario in the Garden of Eden had been played in daylight was the purely practical one of the difficulty of portraying temptation on canvas in darkness.
    But Herbert Kershaw was thinking about something else. “There was someone strange at the Show, Milly.”
    â€œA stranger, you mean?” she said, putting out a salad. “There must have been plenty of those. It was very crowded.”
    â€œBoth a stranger and someone strange,” he said enigmatically.
    â€œWho?”
    â€œMaurice Esdaile. I saw him there myself.”
    â€œWill you have cider tonight, dear?” She cast her eye over the meal. “Who’s Maurice Esdaile?”
    â€œMaurice Esdaile,” said her husband, “is the leading light of the firm of Mitchell Esdaile, Ltd; property developers.”
    â€œOh, them … I’m sorry, it’s only cold chicken.” She tweaked a piece of lettuce into better shape from sheer force of habit – flower-arranger’s habit. “Why shouldn’t he come? If they’re going to build all those houses down by the Priory he’s entitled to come to village things, isn’t he?”
    â€œI suppose so.” Herbert Kershaw frowned heavily. “But what on earth did Joyce Cooper want to go and get herself killed for?”
    There had been another car standing beside the police car, one which Detective-Inspector Sloan recognized without difficulty.
    Dr Dabbe had arrived. By the time Sloan got back to where the Fortune Teller’s tent had been the Consultant Pathologist to the Berebury District General Hospital was staring down at the body.
    â€œNasty,” he said to Sloan. “Very nasty.”
    â€œYes, Doctor.” Sloan hadn’t put his notebook away. Not with the name of Mellows in it.
    The doctor’s assistant, Burns, was recording the temperature of the atmosphere.
    â€œYou can cry ‘Murder’ all right, Sloan,” said the pathologist immediately.
    Sloan nodded. Dr Dabbe never forgot that the Police Surgeon was first and foremost an arm of the law.
    â€œAll right if I go