Village Affairs by Cassandra Chan Page B

had one,” replied Astley-Cooper promptly. “Never saw him about with anyone.”
    “Perhaps he was having an affair with the vicar’s wife,” suggested Marla.
    Astley-Cooper laughed. “That’s right,” he said. “She was alone on Sunday night—the vicar was up here, playing chess.”
    “No,” muttered Bethancourt. “She’s the wrong size.”
    The others did not hear him.

    Forensics reported that Bingham’s fingerprints in his car were overlaid by smudges. Translated, that meant gloved hands. The various medicine bottles found in his cabinet had contained heart medications, and the three loose tablets corresponded with the sedative found in Bingham’s body at the postmortem. This was Seconal, a powerful sleeping pill, and one which forensics thought incompatible with the heart medications. Other than that, they had little to report.
    “Do you want me to look into the sedative, sir?” asked Gibbons. “It looks rather as if he had borrowed them.”
    Carmichael sighed. “Yes,” he replied, “you had better see Dr. Cross, however unlikely it seems that the Seconal was prescribed.” He frowned. “I wonder why Bingham was using it.”
    “Forensics says it’s mostly prescribed as a sleeping tablet.”
    “I don’t mean that, Sergeant. I meant, why did he take it on the evening he died? It seems an odd thing to do if he was, as we’ve speculate, spending the night with his girlfriend.”
    “That’s true, sir,” agreed Gibbons, frowning as well. “Perhaps something upset him and he used it to calm down?”
    “Yes,” said Carmichael, a little doubtfully. “That’s no doubt it.”
    “At least,” added Gibbons, “we now know something about her.”
    Carmichael raised a bushy brow. “We do?” he asked.
    “Yes, sir. We know she has trouble sleeping and has a prescription for Seconal.”
    Carmichael chuckled. “Probably true enough,” he said. “Well, off you go, lad. I’ll stay here at the station and try to get hold of the London solicitors. Even if this death is eventually ruled a misadventure, we don’t want to leave any loose ends. And,” he added appreciatively, “this is certainly a pretty part of the country in which to spend a few days.”
    He glanced out the window, though in fact Constable Stikes’s office looked out on the car park, with only a hint of the hills to be seen above the tops of the buildings opposite.
    “It is that, sir,” said Gibbons, agreeing automatically. The beauties of the Cotswolds had not entirely escaped him, but in his current state of depression, he had paid them scant heed.
    Dr. Cross’s consulting rooms were also in Stow-on-the-Wold, not very far from the police station. Gibbons found them easily enough, but once arrived there he was forced to wait almost twenty minutes while the doctor finished seeing a patient. He attempted to pass the time by chatting with the nurse—a thin, middle-aged woman with a mouth like a slit—but she did not respond to his overtures. With a sigh, he settled back in his chair and fell to contemplating the perversity of women in general. He was really quite relieved when at last he was called into the doctor’s inner sanctum.
    Dr. Cross was a short man with white hair and a brisk manner. He was plainly appalled at the sedative mentioned by Gibbons.
    “Certainly I did not prescribe it for him,” he said tartly. “Do you think I would have kicked up such a fuss at the autopsy if I had? With his heart condition that sort of thing could kill him. In fact, it did.”
    “Was he aware of that, do you think?”
    “He was aware of his heart condition. I don’t believe I ever specifically warned him against Seconal, but why should I? So far as I am aware, he had no trouble sleeping. And that’s something people usually tell their doctors.”
    “I understand,” said Gibbons, trying a new tack, “that you had advised him to cut down on his smoking and drinking?”
    “I advised him to give up both,” answered the doctor