Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird

young doctors were bad enough these days but he really didn’t know what the police force was coming to.
    To say that Superintendent Leeyes was displeased by the news of the result of the post mortem examination was an understatement.
    Detective-Inspector Sloan was sitting in the Superintendent’s office now. There had been a tacit – definitely unspoken – agreement between police husband and policeman’s wife that he was going back on duty.
    Leeyes was inveighing against all forensic scientists in general but medical ones in particular.
    â€˜It’s always the same with pathologists,’ he complained. ‘When you don’t want them to find something they go and do, and when you do want them to come up with the goods they don’t.’
    Sloan maintained a prudent silence. Abstract truth was not a concept that appealed to the Superintendent at the best of times. And this was not the best of times. While it was not the worst of times either, it did not seem as if the Superintendent considered it was the age of medical wisdom.
    â€˜So Miss Wansdyke died of her diabetes, did she?’ he rumbled after a moment. Perhaps it was the epoch of incredulity.
    â€˜Dr Dabbe couldn’t find anything else, sir.’
    â€˜He would if he could,’ conceded Leeyes illogically.
    â€˜He’s doing a drug screen, of course.’
    â€˜Of course.’ That went without saying. Drug screens were routine in this day and age.
    â€˜They may discover something in some of the other specimens they’ve taken.’
    â€˜Disappointing there being nothing to find at autopsy.’ Leeyes grunted. ‘I should have thought there was bound to be more to her dying than natural causes.’
    â€˜Seems a pity to die with all that money,’ Sloan agreed with the unspoken sentiment and then added a witticism of his own. ‘All this and Heaven too.’
    â€˜Something doesn’t fit, Sloan,’ said the Superintendent severely.
    â€˜No, sir.’ Sloan was quick to agree.
    â€˜Doesn’t feel right.’
    â€˜No, sir,’ he said immediately. He didn’t discount instinct. He never had. Hunch was half-way to detection. Always had been.
    â€˜Doesn’t smell right either,’ pronounced Leeyes.
    â€˜No, sir.’ You used all your senses in police work.
    â€˜On the other hand I don’t see that we can do a lot more about holding things up.’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜So,’ said Leeyes generously, ‘you can just step round and tell the coroner we shan’t be standing in his way at all any more over the burial order.’
    His office was not the only thing Dickensian about Mr Robert Chestley. He was one of Her Majesty’s Coroners for the County of Calleshire and a practising solicitor. The man himself gave the impression of barely having left a hard butterfly-wing collar behind. A gold-rimmed pincenez contributed to a general aura of the nineteenth century, which was reinforced by the decor of an office in which little had been changed since his grandfather’s day.
    Detective-Inspector Sloan was not deceived.
    Unseen legal scale fees kept pace with the rise in the cost of living practically of their own volition. There was no need for any other changes.
    â€˜You,’ said Mr Chestley, Notary Public and nobody’s fool, ‘have come about the late Miss Beatrice Wansdyke.’
    Sloan agreed that he had.
    â€˜Constable King’s away,’ grumbled the coroner. Mr Chestley himself never took holidays. ‘He usually sees to everything.’
    Sloan concurred with that too. They were all agreed that the coroner’s Officer was a useful man to have around at a death. He saved the beatman a lot of routine work, devilled for the coroner and became – thank goodness – very skilled indeed at handling bereaved relatives.
    â€˜Your Superintendent,’ said the coroner with emphasis, ‘prevailed upon me to