There was mail for me the next morning.  A hand delivered letter.  I picked it up after I had closed the door of the outer eight by ten office, skirted the table and chair and pushed open the door marked “PRIVATE.”Behind the door lay my office which was a bigger room than the reception office and I immediately made myself a black coffee with the small travel kettle I kept in the bottom drawer of my desk with the water from the communal kitchen.  I parked myself behind my desk, sipped the coffee from the chipped mug, ordained with the badge of Arsenal Football Club and opened the envelope.  With the letter was a cheque for my services.  It was quite a substantial fee.  I immediately read the letter:OXMARKET ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY87 CHANDOS AVENUEOXMARKETSUFFOLKIP14 2NS01445-752028

She came immediately and I studied her attentively in view of DI Silver’s revelations.  She was certainly beautiful in her white dress with a rosebud on the shoulder.  She was holding a matching clutch bag that was covered in silk rosebuds.I explained the circumstances that had brought me to Chandos Avenue, eyeing her very closely, but she showed only what seemed to be genuine astonishment, with no signs of uneasiness. She spoke of Captain Godden indifferently with tepid approval, it was only at the mention of John Kately did she approach animation.“That man’s a crook,” she said sharply.  “I told the Old Man so, but he wouldn’t listen – constantly investing money for his plumbing business.”“Are you sorry that your father is dead?”She stared at me.“Of course.  But over the years I’ve learnt to keep my emotions in check, so I don’t indulge in sob st

After the helicopter had left, the man who had replaced Zoë as Oxmarket’s local GP, joined us and gave us all the information that I required.  Ian Hammond had been found lying near the window, his head by the marble window-seat.  There were two wounds, one between the eyes and the other, the fatal one, on the back of the head.          “He was lying on his back?”          “Yes.  There is the mark.”  He pointed to a small dark stain on the floor.          “Couldn’t the blow on the back of the head have been caused when it hit the floor?”  DI Silver asked. Much to her annoyance I had sent Kimberley off to use the many facilities available to the guests within the restored grand Neo-Jacobean mansion.  They varied from a twenty metre p

We entered the imposing circular dining room, and stood for a few moments at the wide double-doored entrance.  I casually looked around and could almost smell the affluence in the room from the few guests already seated for lunch. The room was filled with round tables, covered with immaculately white tablecloths and fresh flowers in the centre of each, beneath bright crystal-like chandeliers.  Even the gleaming cutlery appeared to be silver. The head waiter greeted us and led the way to one of the smaller tables in a comparatively quieter part of the dining room.  Once we were seated the head waiter barely waved a hand and a waitress dressed in a creamy white blouse and a slim black skirt with dark tights arrived with the menus and I ordered a large bottle of sparkling mineral water.           We perused the menus in silence until the waitress returned with the water and poured two glasses.&

Mortuaries were places where the dead stopped being people and turned instead into being bags of meat, offal, blood and bone.  I had never been sick at the scene of a crime, but the first few times I had visited a mortuary the contents of my stomach had fairly quickly nearly been rendered up for examination.           Eventually, the body bag was brought into the post-mortem room and the corpse of Vasily Kutziyez was laid out on the autopsy table, beneath the hum and glare of powerful halogen lighting.  The room was antiseptic with a stinging aroma of chemicals.  Voices were kept muffled, not so much out of respect but from a strange kind of fear.  The mortuary, after all, was one vast memento mori and what was happening to Vasily Kutziyez’s body would serve to remind each and every one of us that if the body were a temple, then it was possible to loot the temple and scatter its treasures and reveal its preciou