Death of a Friend by Rebecca Tope Page A

bit of shopping in Newton Abbot. Sunday I never went anywhere, so far as I can recall. You’d need to be more precise.’
    ‘Who told you about your brother’s death?’ Phil asked suddenly.
    ‘Aunt Hannah. She phoned me first thing this morning. I offered to go to her, but she told me not to. I don’t go there any more. Haven’t been there for years.’
    ‘Why not?’ asked Phil baldly.
    Frank’s expression changed. His cheeks darkened and he turned his face away. ‘Just a silly family thing,’ he muttered stiltedly. ‘Too late to mend it now. I speak to Hannah now and then, but the old man won’t have me in the house.’
    Den stirred, feeling somewhat left out of the interview. ‘Could you elaborate on that?’ hesaid. ‘We’d like to know exactly why you’re not welcome in your own family’s home.’
    ‘Look at me,’ Frank invited. ‘You’ve seen them, I suppose?’ Den nodded. ‘Everything clean and neat and ladylike, if I remember rightly. I don’t fit in. It goes back a long way.’ His head sank even further into his shoulders and both detectives waited in silence for more. Frank attempted a rueful smile; it was a horrible failure. ‘These things happen,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘I think we’ve all forgotten what it was about by now.’ His flush deepened further, but his lips clamped tight against any further explanation.
    ‘But you saw Charlie from time to time?’ Phil said.
    ‘He came over here every few months. In spite of his lunatic ideas, I liked to keep up with him.’ To Den’s watching eyes, Frank suddenly became a near replica of his father, racked by an identical sadness. He took a deep shuddering breath before whispering, ‘I’m really going to miss him.’
    Phil became brisk. ‘You’re not married, are you, Mr Gratton?’
    The man smiled bitterly and shook his head. He cast a long look around the room. ‘No,’ he conceded. ‘I’m not married.’
    Phil nodded as if satisfied and wrote quickly in the notebook. Then he raised his head. ‘Onelast thing. I take it you’re a good horseman?’
    ‘Me?’ Frank responded with a slight nod of his head. ‘I can ride anything. There isn’t a horse alive that’s not putty in my hands. I love them, you see. Wife, family and friends, my horses are. Anyone’ll tell you.’

CHAPTER SEVEN
    The Quaker Meeting House was an unimpressive Victorian building, with a more modern two-storey extension that provided accommodation for the Wardens. Inside the front door, leading off a small hallway, were a kitchen to the left and a dusty book-lined room to the right. Directly ahead was the Meeting Room itself. This was fitted with wooden benches on all four sides, arranged in gently-rising tiers. An old oak table stood in the middle of the room, covered with a lace cloth, a vase of flowers placed dead centre. Heat was provided by ugly storage heaters crammed into any available space, with a further set of convector heaters high up on the walls. These had been switched on a few minutesearlier and were crackling and spitting as they expanded.
    On Friday morning, at the special meeting for Charlie Gratton, Den Cooper entered by the front door and stood conspicuously in the hallway, utterly at a loss. He was a few minutes late. Ahead he could see the large Meeting Room already dotted with people. Nobody seemed to be on any sort of door duty, so he edged slowly forwards, wondering how many iron Quaker rules he could unwittingly contravene in the next hour.
    He recognised three faces as he entered the room: Hannah and Bill Gratton, he on the corner of one of the lower benches and she at the back of the tier facing him; and Alexis Cattermole on the second row facing the door. Six others were also present, scattered around the room.
    Hannah and Alexis both looked at him, Hannah with a gaze of unsurprised acceptance; Alexis with narrowed eyes and obvious resentment. He sat close to the door, crossing his legs and trying to shrink in size. The