"We can't be quite sure but I should imagine Arbican summoned Grace Jenkins over to Calleford for a conference. You can imagine the sort of thing. 'Henrietta's coming home—she's twenty-one next month—got to be told—modest celebration' and so forth."
Henrietta winced.
"That would explain the Sunday best that so puzzled Mrs. Callows and Mrs. Ricks," said Sloan, "and her catching the early bus into Berebury and the last bus back. Berebury to Calleford is a very slow run, you know. The bus calls at all the villages on the way."
"He wouldn't have her to his office, surely?"
"No. I expect he took her out to lunch, then put her on the bus back which he knew would get her into Berebury after the five fifteen to Larking had left."
"So he knew she would be on the seven five?"
"That's right Then he drives himself cross country. It's a much shorter run. First he goes through the bureau and then waits in the pub car park until the bus gets in. He would be able to see her get off. All he has to do then is to time her walk until she's near enough to the bad corner for it to seem like a nasty accident."
"Which it wasn't," said Henrietta.
"No, miss."
"Inspector." The Rector spoke up. "What was Arbican's motive in all this?"
"Gain," said Sloan succinctly. "Carefully calculated and very expertly carried out. Unless he confesses we shall never know whether he contrived the deaths of Henrietta's father and mother. It isn't impossible and they fell very smartly after the legal arrangements had been completed, but there is another death we do know something about now…"
"Cyril Jenkins, you mean?"
"Him, too, sir," Sloan said to the Rector, "but that was afterwards. This one was before Grace Jenkins was killed."
It was very quiet in the Rectory drawing room.
"Who was that, Inspector?"
"A certain Miss Winifred Lendry, sir."
"I've never heard of her," said Mr. Meyton.
"I don't suppose any of you have." Sloan looked round the room. "It is her death that makes us realise that this was all a long term plan. Miss Lendry was Arbican's confidential secretary until she was killed by a hit-and-run driver last autumn."
It was on the Thursday morning that Constable Crosby picked up the telephone and handed the receiver to Detective-Inspector Sloan.
"For you, sir. The Kinnisport police."
"Good morning," said Sloan.
"About this Major Hocklington," began his opposite number in Kinnisport. "Do you want us to watch him for ever? I've had a man posted outside his house for days now and the old boy hasn't stepped out of his wheelchair once…"
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Catherine Aird had never tried her hand at writing suspense stories before publishing The Religious Body —a novel which immediately established her as one of the genre's most talented writers. A Late Phoenix, The Stately Home Murder, His Burial Too, Some Die Eloquent, Henrietta Who? and A Most Contagious Game have subsequently enhanced her reputation. Her ancestry is Scottish, but she now lives in a village in East Kent, near Canterbury, where she serves as an aid to her father, a doctor, and takes an interest in local affairs.