The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries Read Online Free PDF Page B

include the happy couple and twenty-three if you wanted to be particular and include the corpse. Certainly the two girls should have been on hand to start pouring the sherry when the guests returned from the church pretty much on time. As it was, the guests were proving themselves perfectly well able to pour their own drinks and the girls were only just emerging into the Great Hall from the kitchen, flush faced and flustered. There was a pause whilst they noticed the dead body, noticed that everyone was looking at them and became very nervous. Eventually one, a mousy, hesitant sixteen year old with a propensity to blush managed to answer the queries.

    “Well, we’d set everything up, and Maureen told us to come into the kitchen. Then Ken suggested we all took a sip of the champagne, just to drink Miss Mortimer’s health, like... I mean Mrs Latimer...”

    “I presume that the fellow in the chair wasn’t there when you finished setting up?” queried Rupert.

    “No, he weren’t. I’d have noticed him for sure ‘coz he’s a funny colour.”

    “How long were you out of the Great Hall for?” asked Paul Mayfield.

    “Well, just a minute of two...well, maybe ten. We was all ready early. We meant to be back in by twelve-thirty when you was all due back.” The girl glanced awkwardly at the clock which showed twenty-five to one.
     
    Rupert shrugged. “The DJ was here first thing to set up some of his equipment, but he won’t be back until this evening, so I doubt that he saw anything. Ten minutes is all it would take to lug a body in here, and if no one was about at that particular moment to witness the event then it’s anyone’s guess who it was that did the deed. The question is: why? And who is the fellow anyway?” He gazed quizzically at the corpse as if hoping it would deliver up an answer, his amiable, intelligent but rather ugly face expressing bemused interest.

    The corpse itself, sprawled in ungainly but casual attitude upright in the chair suggested a tall, bony man of perhaps sixty. The face was discoloured and hideous in death and it was difficult to deduce whether or not the man had been more attractive in life. The clothes were of rather good quality tweed, the shirt fine linen, perhaps suggesting their owner had been a well-to-do man of decent taste.
     
    The group of people-who-are-interested had been joined by sometimes lawyer, Simon Forrest, and a dishevelled looking man with a ruddy face.

    “Have you solved the crime?” asked the dishevelled man, prematurely.

    “Well, we don’t know a crime has been committed,” said Rupert, reasonably. “For all we know, he sat down feeling a little unwell and passed away.”

    “Yes, but as I have pointed out,” said Paul Mayfield, “he may well have died of natural causes, but he didn’t do so in the last twenty minutes – that corpse is post rigour mortis, of that I am certain.”

    “Perhaps someone put him here as a joke?” suggested the man with the ruddy face. “A rather black joke,” he added seeing the expressions on the other’s faces.

    “Assuming he did die of natural causes,” Rupert said, turning to Simon Forrest, “what are the laws concerning the disposal of a dead body? Has a law been broken here?”

    “Well,” said Simon, thoughtfully, “not really my area of expertise, but whilst it is generally recognised that a corpse has no rights, the failure to dispose of a dead body properly is an offense; there are questions both of what is decent and respectful as well as public health issues to be considered. Also, unless someone has already ascertained how he died, a post-mortem would be required. And,” with a spark of legal remembrance in his eyes, “it is a crime to hold a body as security for an unpaid debt!”

    “The latter not an issue,” commented Rupert, “but we will need to call the police.”

    “Is there any urgency? Can’t we stick it in the corner and worry about it after we’ve eaten?” suggested