A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L. Sayers, Jill Paton Walsh

certainty that any letter would ever reach him. She laid it aside, put on her coat, and having asked Mrs Trapp if anything was needed at the village shop, and put the ration-book into her gas-mask case, she went out for a walk.
    Her way took her past the undertaker’s shop, and she went in.
    ‘Are you looking for Archie?’ enquired Fred Lugg, who was behind the counter, with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, and his folding rule in his hand. ‘Or have you come to have a chat with me?’
    ‘I wasn’t hoping to be a customer of yours just yet,’ said Harriet.
    ‘Of course not, my lady, heaven forfend,’ he said. ‘But I thought you might want to ask me a question or two, seeing as you’ve taken over the murder from Superintendent Kirk.’
    ‘Goodness, who told you that?’ asked Harriet.
    ‘Isn’t it true, then?’ he asked. ‘It’s all over the village.’
    ‘I agreed to help with one or two simple enquiries,’ she said.
    ‘Well, then, how can I help?’ he asked. ‘Or were you after asking Archie about that young besom who was done to death?’
    ‘Would Archie be able to help, do you think?’ said Harriet, stalling.
    ‘No doubt he could tell you how she got her nickname tormenting young men,’ said Fred bitterly. ‘But isn’t anyone going to ask me anything? I mean, Lady Peter, there was I, the only citizen in the whole place who was supposed to be out in the open, and a murder was committed right under my feet, so to speak, and nobody asks me a blamed thing about it!’
    ‘Of course, Mr Lugg, you were on the church tower!’ said Harriet. ‘In the moonlight. Well, did you see anything?’
    ‘The tree is the problem,’ he said. ‘You know, that big yew tree by the lych gate. It blanks off just that bit of the Square where it happened. So I didn’t see it happen, no. But I saw people walking about, one side of the tree, and the other side of the tree, passing it by on the other side. When everyone was supposed to be in the shelter.’
    ‘You’d better tell me who you saw, Mr Lugg. Or if you don’t want to tell me, you could tell the police.’
    ‘I don’t mind telling you, Lady Peter. I saw all your people from Talboys, making their way along to the shelter. Not Mrs Trapp, now I come to think of it. She must have decided to absent herself. And I saw you and that young pilot who has being staying with you, coming along and meeting them; well, no, I ought to be strictly accurate, I saw you going towards them, and then I saw you all turn back towards the Crown. Except for your pilot friend, he went off by himself, after he saw you safe inside. There were RAF men walking about everywhere. There were several cars and two RAF trucks went off, one towards Lopseley, and one towards the Broxford aerodrome, and then that Wendy came running along in a big hurry.’
    ‘She wasn’t at the dance, so she was coming from the farm to join the air-raid practice,’ said Harriet. ‘Or so I have been told.’
    ‘Hmph.’ He said, ‘The thing is, I saw her going behind the tree from the right, and I didn’t see her coming out from behind it to the left.’
    ‘Well, no,’ said Harriet. ‘She would have been struck down behind the tree, from a viewpoint on the tower. So the very important thing, Mr Lugg, is who else did you see moving around there?’
    ‘I wasn’t keeping a watch on the street,’ he said. ‘I was supposed to be watching the rooftops, and the sky, in case of fires or parachutes.’
    ‘So you didn’t see everything – you couldn’t if you were doing your job?’
    ‘Just so. When I didn’t see the wretched girl coming out from behind the tree, I just thought she had moved on while I had my eyes elsewhere.’
    ‘That’s very natural,’ said Harriet. But she was mystified, because he was so clearly het up about something. ‘So did you see anyone else around after most of us had taken shelter?’ she asked.
    ‘I certainly didn’t see my son Archie!’ he said. ‘But I