Sure and Certain Death by Barbara Nadel Page B

crimes are horrible, truly horrific, but we’ve got other corpses we can’t account for too. We get them every day. Our boys and the wardens find them all over the place.’
    ‘Not skinned!’
    ‘Not generally, no,’ he said. ‘But Mr H, you know that the more things like this are talked about the more worried people get, and that ain’t good for no one. We’re doing our best, but . . .’ He shrugged again. ‘Keep your sister close and soldier on is what I say.’
    In other words I was to try and think no more about it. That was going to be hard, considering the fact that the following day was Dolly O’Dowd’s funeral.

Chapter Seven
    A ggie is a better person than I am. Come the following morning she was helping Nancy get herself dressed for Dolly O’Dowd’s funeral. I did my job with the horses and the carriage and making sure that all my lads were as clean and tidy and respectful as they could be. But I couldn’t comfort Nan. Later, down in the yard, Aggie watched the boys load the coffin into the hearse with me and then she said, ‘Frank, Nancy’s a silly bitch, but she knows it and . . .’
    ‘Ag, I need time,’ I said to my younger sister as I climbed up on to the box.
    Aggie sighed and then went inside the shop with Arthur and Walter to retrieve the few bunches of flowers that had arrived for Dolly O’Dowd. I noticed when she came out that she was reading the cards on the flowers she was carrying, but I was still shocked when I heard her swear.
    ‘Christ!’
    I looked down from my perch on top of the hearse and saw that my sister’s face had turned a very pale shade of grey. Arthur, looking over her shoulder, was wrinkling his nose in what looked like disgust.
    ‘Aggie?’
    She looked up at me and said, ‘God help us, Frank, someone didn’t like poor old Dolly!’
    I jumped down off the hearse and joined Arthur in looking over Aggie’s shoulder. In one hand she had a small bunch of daffodils, in the other a rather larger posy of violets. It was in the middle of the violets that my sister had found a card that simply said, Jealous cat .
    ‘Jealous cat? What does that mean?’ Arthur said.
    Aggie, who is accustomed to various run-ins with Arthur’s less than quick interpretation of things, said, ‘It means that she is or was jealous of somebody and she was a cat, meaning she was vicious with it.’
    ‘Oh.’ Arthur was silent for a few seconds before he said, ‘I always thought that Miss O’Dowd was a nice quiet lady.’
    ‘Well, she was,’ Aggie said. ‘To us and to my sister, but . . .’
    I didn’t hear anything more of what Aggie was saying, because by that time I was running back inside the shop. In spite of the fact that Dolly’s sister, Nan and what looked like another couple of old spinsters were sitting down in the office, I went up to Doris at the desk and said, ‘Where did all the flowers come from?’
    Alarmed at my sudden and I have to admit probably red-faced appearance, Doris tipped her head towards the mourners and said, ‘Mr H!’
    ‘Doris, where did the flowers come from?’ I said. ‘I need to know! It’s important!’
    Nan, who was giving me a funny look by this time, said, ‘Frank . . .’
    ‘Well, Mrs Bentham of course brought the big bunch,’ Doris said to me as she simultaneously smiled at Dolly’s sister. ‘Miss Nancy had the daffs and . . .’
    ‘What about the bunch of violets?’ I said as I looked, I knew in vain, at the other women in the room. ‘Where did they come from?’
    ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t have brought violets,’ the older of the two said, while the other one just looked at me with undisguised fear in her eyes.
    ‘The violets?’
    I turned back towards Doris and looked her in the eye.
    ‘Oh, they come early this morning,’ she said. ‘A well-wisher must’ve slipped them in through the front door just after I opened up. I come back from making myself a cuppa and there they was on the floor beside Miss