Death's Own Door (Hardcover)

Jack Graig can't be here.

His uncle had died only a week ago. He couldn't have come back to England in that time, surely? And Rufus Moorcroft had only been an uncle, not a father. They wouldn't have sent him home on compassionate leave for an uncle. She felt angry while she stood, knelt, sat, sang and prayed angry with herself for giving way to a sentimental impulse, angry with fate, and most of all angry with Jack Graig for having the gall to turn up after all these years.

The mourners followed the coffin and the priest into the sun-filled churchyard. Edith had wondered whether they would allow Rufus Moorcroft to lie here. She and Randolph Haughton fell in at the end of the procession which wound between the gravestones to a part of the churchyard near the northern boundary. There were few headstones here, and a pair of trees, a whitebeam and a yew, created a partial screen. Perhaps this was where they put people like Rufus Moorcroft.

She kept on the fringe of the crowd around the open grave, making sure that she was behind Jack Graig. Probably he wouldn't know her from Adam or, rather, from Eve, but she did not want to put it to the test. She recognised the perpetually frowning features of old George Shipston, the senior partner of the solicitors' firm in Castle Street. Another familiar face belonged to a middle-aged woman in a squashed felt hat.
`Morning, Mrs Thornhill,' said a man's voice at her shoulder.
Startled, she turned her head. `Brian.'
Detective Sergeant Kirby smiled at her and raised his hat, a new bowler which had left a welt across his forehead. He wore a dark suit with padded shoulders which made him look broader than he was, almost like a spiv. The gay green pattern of his tie clashed with the green silk handkerchief peeping from the breast pocket of his jacket. He was bursting with colour and energy, like an exploding firework.
`Just keeping a watching brief,' he said. `Not the only one, either.' He had a Londoner's voice, perhaps a generation removed from pure cockney. His eyes flicked away from her, and she followed his gaze to a plump, elderly man trying half-heartedly to suppress a phlegmy cough on the other side of the grave. `Know who that is? Ivor Fuggle, works for the Post.'

Kirby murmured the words in such a low voice that only she could hear him. He smiled and nodded, as though they were casual acquaintances, and moved a yard or two away. Edith had been a policeman's wife for long enough to know exactly what he had been saying, both with and without words.