Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird Page A

order a post mortem examination.’
    He and Superintendent Leeyes were old adversaries. They had had several notable clashes in the past – usually over the duties of the Coroner’s Officer. This unfortunate policeman existed in a sort of leaderless no-man’s-land. Hostilities had broken out over this more than once.
    â€˜Subject to my direction,’ the Superintendent always insisted.
    â€˜Subject to my direction,’ the coroner would invariably counter.
    â€˜His office derives from the parish constable,’ Leeyes would respond. ‘My pigeon.’
    â€˜His office derives from the parish beadle,’ Mr Chestley would reply, ‘and that’s older. My pigeon, I think.’
    â€˜Historical duties too obscure to be recorded,’ said Leeyes nastily on more than one occasion. The ancientness of the coroner’s own office always rankled with him. Sir Robert Peel had been so unconscionably late on the scene.
    â€˜Jervis on Coroners …’
    â€˜The Police Act 1964 …’ Superintendent Leeyes never gave up.
    â€˜Useful to have a police officer around in case a crime has been committed,’ the coroner would throw in.
    â€˜If you need a detective –’ Leeyes always came back smartly at that one ‘– we’ll send one round.’
    â€˜The job calls for a trained man.’ The coroner – a pillar of the legal profession – always had a riposte for every rebuttal.
    â€˜Waste of police manpower,’ had figured in Leeyes’s broadside in response to that.
    â€˜If a job is worth doing,’ quoted Chestley, ‘then it’s worth doing well.’
    â€˜No man can serve two masters.’ Leeyes did not hesitate to fall back on primary sources when it suited him.
    Then someone – the Chief Constable, probably – had called ‘Pax’ and a state of armed neutrality had been resumed.
    â€˜So,’ said Mr Chestley to Detective-Inspector Sloan now, ‘I ordered a post mortem, the body being within my jurisdiction.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Sloan. It was the latter point that mattered with coroners, though he never knew why.
    â€˜That post mortem examination confirms the cause of death as certified by the deceased’s usual medical attendant.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Sloan again.
    â€˜Can you now give me any valid reason why I should not issue a Pink Form B?’
    â€˜No,’ said Sloan uneasily.
    â€˜I take it, Inspector, that Superintendent Leeyes had felt – er – a pricking of his thumbs.’
    â€˜Information received,’ said Sloan tersely. Formal language was a refuge really, not an imposition: a cloak for that which was better not explained. ‘From persons about the deceased.’ The quaint archaism covered a multitude of hidden sources.
    â€˜Pink Form B,’ expounded the coroner pedantically, ‘is of course a superior category of medical certificate of the cause of death.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Sloan, surprised at the law’s homely touch. Down at the police station forms had numbers, not colours and letters.
    â€˜Though,’ Mr Chestley continued his lecture, ‘as it happens, the result of the autopsy confirms the cause of death as certified by the registered medical practitioner who attended the deceased in her last illness.’
    â€˜Dr Paston,’ said Sloan for simplicity’s sake.
    â€˜The fact of confirmation is irrelevant,’ continued the coroner, adjusting his pince-nez.
    Not in Sloan’s mind, it wasn’t, though he did not say so. Corroboration was the word the police used for that and they could always use as much of it as they could get in the Criminal Investigation Department of any Force in the country.
    â€˜â€¦ though,’ Mr Chestley immediately added a rider, ‘no doubt a comfort to the member of the medical profession concerned.’
    â€˜Dr Paston,’ said Sloan