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hanging on to them until the very last.
    â€˜But no immediate signs of anything being taken,’ repeated the superintendent.
    That was puzzling too. ‘I take it, then, that the matron has good reasons for wondering why this should have happened?’ said Sloan, opening his notebook at a new page.
    â€˜Yes and no,’ said Leeyes unhelpfully. Ever since the superintendent had attended an evening class on philosophy he had been inclined to equivocation. It had been the tricky proposition that a Japanese Noh play in a knot garden was not a special variety of the double negative that had made the greatest mark on the senior policeman.
    â€˜Ah,’ said Sloan, still waiting for elucidation.
    â€˜Mrs Linda Luxton – she’s the matron there – got back from attending an elderly resident’s funeral to be told about a broken pantry window and signs that a search might have taken place.’ He grunted. ‘Actually she thinks the intrusion was during the night and has reason to believe it was in the room of the same resident that had died but she says she hasn’t the remotest idea why.’
    â€˜Signs?’
    â€˜A broken vase…that sort of thing.’
    â€˜Someone looking for something in the dark,’ concluded Sloan. ‘And in a hurry,’ he added, since professional searchers seldom left signs of their incursion.
    â€˜Exactly. But the matron hasn’t a clue about what it could have been.’
    â€˜Therefore she doesn’t know whether or not they found whatever it was they were looking for,’ murmured Sloan, half to himself.
    Leeyes said, ‘No. At least, not yet.’
    â€˜I’ll go round there, sir, and see what I can do,’ promised Sloan.
    â€˜And as far as I’m concerned, Sloan, you can take that detective constable of yours with you when you go.’ He sniffed. ‘That man’d cause trouble in an empty room.’
    Sloan sighed. It was true that Detective Constable Crosby was by no means the brightest star in the constabulary’s firmament but he didn’t see why it was that he, Sloan, should always have to be the one to do the puppy-walking of the constable.
    â€˜Keep me in the picture, Sloan,’ went on Leeyes, waving a hand dismissively. ‘Can’t have this sort of thing going on in a toffee-nosed place like that. Unsettling for the inmates.’
    Detective Constable Crosby’s reaction to a visit to the nursing home was different but instant. ‘That’s what they call God’s Waiting Room, isn’t it?’
    Â 
    Janet Wakefield could hardly wait to get home from the Almstone Towers Hotel and telephone her friend, Dawn. Avid for detail, Dawn listened spellbound to Janet’s account of the start of the funeral.
    â€˜And then,’ said Janet dramatically, ‘you’ll never guess in a thousand years what happened next…’
    â€˜So why don’t you tell me now and save time?’ said Dawn.
    â€˜This man came and sat beside me in the front pew and said he was Josephine’s grandson!’ exclaimed Janet.
    â€˜I thought you said she wasn’t married,’ objected Dawn.
    â€˜That’s the thing,’ said Janet eagerly. ‘She hadn’t been…’
    â€˜But she’d had children, though?’ deduced Dawn.
    â€˜One. A son.’
    â€˜Without telling anyone?’
    Janet paused and considered this. ‘I don’t really know about that. My Bill didn’t know, I’m certain about that, but of course my in-laws – his parents – might have done. I don’t know and it’s too late to ask them now since they died before Bill and I were married.’
    â€˜Cool,’ said Dawn. ‘For those days, I mean,’ she added hastily, mindful of several of their mutual friends who were single mothers without being in the least bit cool – quite the contrary, in fact.
    â€˜Very,’ said Janet,