Funeral Music by Morag Joss

Partly from the wine, partly from James camping things up and partly from a need to relieve the day’s tension, they got a bit giggly. They took in trays of food to the drawing room and ate off the low table round the fire, while the cat lay on the hearth, stoned on Whiskas.
    ‘Want mustard? It’s got beer in it,’ James said, helping himself. ‘I say, isn’t this frightfully Famous Five? Look, heaps of lettuce,
pommes savoyarde
, wild boar sausages, some olives and yummy French bread, lashings of Cabernet Sauvignon. Not to mention a murder. Rather a gruesome puzzle, what? Of course it’s not funny,’ he added, answering Sara’s look, ‘but I wonder what it’s all about? The speech got anything to do with it?’
    Sara snorted that Sawyer had certainly upset people very badly, but nobody could be driven to
murder
because of it.
    ‘Ah, but,’ James intoned portentously, ‘it
seems
impossible, but all kinds of things
seem
impossible, don’t they? Ancient echoes. What about those curses that people used to throw into the bath? Chuck us the guidebook.’
    He leafed through it.
    ‘Listen to this. “May the person who has stolen from me become as liquid as water.” No,
listen
. “May my enemy sink like lead.” “May the goddess Sulis afflict him with maximum death.” See?’
    Sara stared with mocking goggle-eyes and went, ‘Ooohoooh!’
    ‘No, listen, it’s all very powerful stuff. It
is
. Don’t you think there could be a link?’
    ‘Well, Watson, there could be, but I’m not sure Bath CID will go for it,’ Sara said.
    She regaled him with a scurrilous account of Detective Sergeant Bridger, and James, suddenly an expert on police procedure, said, ‘Oh, but he’s very junior. He certainly won’t be in charge. They’ll have to interview all the museum staff, at the Assembly Rooms as well as the Pump Room, and the caterers, as well as everyone who was at the do last night. That’s well over five hundred people, for a start.’
    ‘But why?’ asked Sara. Suddenly it seemed serious again. ‘Surely they’ll find whoever broke in without going through all that? They must have surveillance cameras. Or someone may have seen him get in, or heard him. He would probably be drunk, about to trash the place. I bet it was just some drunken yob with one of those combat knives.’
    ‘Think so? I mean, you arrived first thing and George was opening up as usual. He obviously hadn’t come across a break-in or any malicious damage. He must have found everything just as he expected it.’
    ‘Well, yes, I suppose so. Including the alarms,’ Sara said. ‘The alarm is set every night by the person locking up. George, or whoever’s opening up, switches it off. If it hadn’t been set, he would have been in a bit of a state this morning. But he was perfectly relaxed.’
    ‘Well, who
was
locking up last night?’ James asked. ‘Because if they locked up in the usual way and set the alarm, whoever it was either left Matthew Sawyer, or Matthew Sawyer’s body, inside.’
    ‘But it was Matthew Sawyer who was meant to do the locking up,’ Sara said. ‘Olivia mentioned it when she was saying good night. So what then? Who actually
did
lock up? The murderer must have done it.’
    ‘That’s if the alarm was set. Suppose George was behaving as usual because he wasn’t surprised to find the alarm switched off? Because
he’d
done the murder? Oh, but wait, no, because if he’d done the murder and left the alarm
off
, so that the police would think the murder was done by someone who
didn’t
know how to set the alarm, then part of that trick would be acting all surprised when he “discovered” the alarm off in the morning. So he couldn’t have done it. Could he?’
    ‘Don’t. You’re getting me all confused,’ Sara said, sniggering. ‘Anyway, I think it’s all horrible. When I think of the last people going off home, never thinking of what they were leaving him to. You stayed till the end, didn’t you? Looked