Past Tense by Catherine Aird Page B

light in the sitting room with a gloved hand and looked first towards the mantelshelf, taking in the fact that there was no note propped against the clock on there nor, indeed, lying prominently on the table.
    The deaths of suicides who didn’t leave notes behind – preferably addressed to the coroner, who could decide for himself whether to read them aloud at an inquest – could remain inconclusive and everyone unhappy. Sometimes hurting the living was only what the dead had in mind.
    There was no sign of disturbance in the sitting room, he noted methodically, or in any of the other rooms on the ground floor. The spare, simple furnishings and their surroundings had the unpolished look of belonging to someone who had their real being somewhere else. Although there was a pot plant on the table there was a shower of pollen under it that had not been dusted off.
    Still wearing the rubber gloves that were mandatory these days, Sloan picked up the telephone and dialled the code designed to record the number of the last incoming call. Someone unknown had telephoned Lucy Lansdown just before ten-fifteen the night before, leaving no number.
    â€˜Crosby,’ he said, ‘you go and check upstairs. See if the bed has been slept in for starters…’
    Sloan made his way into the kitchen. It was neat and clean, with what looked like yesterday’s supper dishes washed and stacked in a drying rack beside the sink. He pulled open the odd cupboard and saw nothing out of the way. Standing on the work surface was a tin of cocoa, a mug ready beside it. He went back to the sitting room as a clattering on the stairs heralded the return of Crosby.
    â€˜Bed not slept in, sir,’ he reported. ‘Everything seems OK up there otherwise.’
    â€˜It looks as if she went out of her own volition, at a guess sometime after a telephone call a little after ten o’clock last night,’ murmured Sloan, ‘but whether that was in response to that particular call or not remains to be seen.’ He looked round the room again. ‘Can you see a handbag anywhere?’
    Crosby took a good look round and then shook his head. ‘No, sir.’
    Sloan said, ‘Then I don’t think there’s anything more here for us just now…Wait a minute, though, Crosby, wait a minute…’
    â€˜Sir?’
    There was a little stool beside a fireside chair with a pile of magazines on it, topped by a copy of the local paper. Sloan had stooped and looked at it more closely.
    The Berebury Gazette was opened at the page carrying the notices of deaths and the announcements of funerals. The time of that of Josephine Eleanor Short at the church at Damory Regis the day before was ringed in black ink.

Chapter Nine
    â€˜Come in, sit down and say that again, Sloan,’ barked Superintendent Leeyes. He was sitting in his office behind his desk on which lay only a flimsy message sheet. His pencil hovered over this but he wasn’t actually writing anything on it. Two telephones sat at his elbow, both silent for a wonder.
    â€˜After your message, sir,’ repeated Detective Inspector Sloan, ‘we visited the house in Berebury of the missing person whose name you gave us, that is a young woman called Lucy Lansdown.’ Sloan took a chair and got out his notebook. ‘Formal identification has not yet been carried out but the visible characteristics of the deceased match the description we have been given of this Lucy Lansdown.’ Checking the DNA and tracing dental records was all very well, thought Sloan, but they took time. Those could and would come later. After Dr Dabbe had done his work.
    Leeyes grunted. ‘Go on.’
    â€˜We’re keeping the probable identity under wraps, sir, for the time being and at least until we’ve traced any relatives.’
    Leeyes grunted again. ‘House keys?’
    â€˜There were none with the body and no handbag has been found yet. It was a