Some Die Eloquent by Catherine Aird

of the kitchen.
    When she came back he told her about the dog.
    â€˜Poor thing,’ she said, distressed. ‘Whoever would want to do a thing like that?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’ He stuffed a cushion behind his head and said what was uppermost in his mind. ‘It’s not a lot to go on – a dead dog.’
    â€˜And a quarter of a million pounds,’ she reminded him.
    â€˜The family are all carrying on as if she’s only left twopence ha’penny,’ said Sloan.
    â€˜Perhaps they really don’t know.’
    â€˜For my money,’ said Sloan with a fine disregard for metaphor, ‘someone somewhere does.’
    â€˜And she did die naturally,’ said Margaret Sloan.
    â€˜The dog didn’t,’ said her husband obliquely.
    She shuddered a little. ‘Whose money will it be, then?’
    â€˜You’re as bad as the Superintendent.’ Sloan stretched his legs out in front of the fire. ‘He keeps on asking that, too, only he doesn’t put it quite so nicely.’
    â€˜Gain usually comes into evil somewhere, doesn’t it?’ she said.
    â€˜Yes, my love.’ He was quite willing to go along with that: in fact he didn’t know of any policeman who wouldn’t be. If gain didn’t come into evil, then what you had instead wasn’t crime at all but a suitable case for treatment – medical treatment.
    â€˜Immediate gain, that is,’ she said seriously, sitting down, too, by the fire. She stared into the flames for a moment and then said, ‘There’s something sinister in one of the nursery rhymes about growing rich, isn’t there?’
    â€˜Been doing your homework, have you?’ he teased her, casting about in his mind for the allusion. ‘Ready for you-know-who?’
    She smiled wanly and quoted, ‘“When I grow rich, Say the bells of Shoreditch.”’
    â€˜â€œThe Bells of London Town”,’ he said. Nursery rhymes were uncannily prescient. Then something stirred in his own childhood memory. ‘The Old Bailey comes into that, too, doesn’t it?’
    â€˜â€œWhen will you pay me?”’ she sang softly.
    â€˜â€œSay the bells at Old Bailey”,’ he completed the couplet in a lower register.
    â€˜Trust a copper to remember that bit,’ she said, her turn to tease.
    â€˜Plenty of debts to society have been paid at the Old Bailey in its time.’
    â€˜We shouldn’t be joking about all this, should we?’ she said quickly. ‘Not with Miss Wansdyke and her dog both lying dead.’
    Somewhere in one of the books they had had handed out to them at the ante-natal clinic had been some advice about how a couple should comport themselves during the wife’s pregnancy. They shouldn’t move house, for instance, nor indulge in great arguments. Whims, however bizarre, should be indulged. Strange fancies for out-of-season strawberries or fresh oysters should be pandered to. Layettes should be prepared, but – and the good books stressed this – pregnancy was no time for philosophical doubts. The profundities of life should be allowed to take second place to the most profound experience of all living.
    He gave a huge yawn and deliberately steered the conversation towards more neutral ground. ‘There’s one funny thing, though, Margaret …’
    â€˜What’s that?’
    â€˜The family have gone all quiet about the main beneficiary, Nicholas Petforth, Briony’s brother. They say they don’t know where he is.’
    â€˜Perhaps,’ she said consideringly, ‘he’ll come home again now that there’s something to come back for.’
    â€˜There! What did I say?’ He gave her an affectionate grin. ‘You’re really as bad as the Superintendent after all.’
    â€˜Me?’ she said indignantly.
    â€˜All he does is concentrate on who gains.’ He stretched his legs out before