The Body Politic Read Online Free PDF Page B

abroad.”
    â€œBut it may not be,” reasoned Sloan. “You wouldn’t have brought it here to show me unless there was a chance that it wasn’t nothing, would you?”
    A pedant might have had some trouble with that convoluted statement, but young Tod Morton knew exactly what Sloan meant. “No,” he agreed at once. “That’s true. I wouldn’t.”
    â€œSo?”
    The matchbox still lay on Sloan’s desk between the two men. Tod Morton, though, made no move to open it, but instead continued with his narrative. “So I showed it to Dad.”
    â€œAnd what did he say?” Tod’s father was the grandson of the eldest son in the firm of Morton and Sons and knew the undertaking business backwards.
    â€œThat you can’t be too careful these days.”
    Sloan nodded. It was a philosophy that had held good through the ages and doubtless helped account for the business longevity of Morton and Sons as well as many a more famous House.
    â€œWhat with umbrella guns and that sort of thing,” added Tod.
    Progress took strange forms: Detective Inspector Sloan would be one of the first to admit that. “And what,” he enquired, “did you do after that?”
    â€œTried to find out what the guy—the client, that is—was supposed to have died from.”
    â€œAh.” Sloan jerked his head. “And that’s sometimes easier said than done, I suppose.”
    â€œIt wasn’t difficult, Inspector.” Tod looked surprised. “The funeral director collects the medical forms from the doctors so he sees the cause of death then, but I had a word with Fred Tompkins anyway.”
    â€œWho’s Fred Tompkins?”
    â€œThe mortuary porter at the hospital.”
    â€œGood idea,” said Sloan warmly. Administrators and doctors never told anybody anything in case it was used in evidence afterwards. In Sloan’s experience, not only did ward-maids and hospital porters usually, but not always of course, have the beans—well, some of them, anyway—but, more importantly, were nearly always prepared to spill them if they had.
    Especially to an old friend.
    â€œFred said,” carried on Tod Morton, “that this guy had snuffed it from a heart attack. Not anything out of the ordinary.”
    â€œOr we’d have heard,” responded Sloan with confidence. “And there haven’t been any coroners’ inquests in Berebury for a couple of weeks now.”
    â€œNot even medically unusual, Inspector,” said Tod, waving a hand to encompass the whole Police Station. “Let alone your sort of unusual.”
    â€œAh.” The medically unusual was only interesting to the Criminal Investigation Department if it arose from illegal homicide in any shape or form. Or criminal negligence. Nature could do her worst and leave the police unaffected. And often did.
    It was funny how people never thought of her as Mother Nature then; that was when they remembered the “red in tooth and claw” bit.
    â€œThe only thing that was at all out of the way was that this guy Ottershaw had just come back from abroad.”
    â€œHad he?” That might well put a different complexion on what was in the matchbox. “Whereabouts abroad?”
    â€œThe Middle East,” Tod Morton said. “He worked in the Sheikhdom of Lasserta.”
    â€œI see.” Sloan drew a doodle on his notebook.
    â€œMining engineer, he was.”
    â€œIt would say so on the cremation form, I suppose,” said Sloan.
    â€œNot only that,” said Tod expansively, “but Fred said that the wife had told the doctors that he worked with some odd metal out there.”
    â€œLasserta.” Sloan cast about in his mind for whatever else came from the Middle East as well as crude oil. He had heard that they mined something else unusual in that part of the world and nowhere else, but he couldn’t now remember what it