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Why is he locked up in the undertaker’s as if he had the plague?’
    Dr Blackstaff had known this was coming. ‘He told me several times over the last few years that he didn’t want any procession of people peering in at him when he was gone.’
    The doctor was not prepared for the next salvo.
    ‘When did he tell you? What were you doing? Were you in this house or in his?’
    ‘I can’t remember exactly where it was,’ the doctor said, ‘not exactly. But he certainly said it.’
    ‘You can’t remember where you were when my brother said such a strange thing? You can’t remember?’ Augusta Cockburn’s voice rang with scorn.
    ‘Mrs Cockburn,’ the doctor said in his most authoritative tones, ‘believe me, in the course of my professional duties, I have a great many confidential conversations with my
patients. I carry around in my head all sorts of wishes and requests relating to what people want to happen when they die. I cannot be expected to recall exactly where I was on each and every
occasion.’
    ‘But you might have muddled them up, might you not, doctor? Somebody else might have told you they wished to remain locked up in their coffin like a criminal. If you can’t remember
where you were, how can anybody be sure that you’ve got the right person? Somebody else might have told you they didn’t wish to be seen.’
    Dr Blackstaff shook his head. ‘I know I am right,’ he said.
    Nothing, absolutely nothing, could have prepared him for the next blast.
    ‘Are you a beneficiary under my brother’s will, Dr Blackstaff? Has he left you a lot of money?’
    Blackstaff turned bright red. Augusta Cockburn thought this denoted guilt. In reality it was anger that such a question, such an imputation, be directed at him.
    ‘No, to the best of my knowledge, I am not, madam. And now, if you will excuse me, I have patients to see to. The living have rights as well as the dead. I wish you a very good morning,
madam.’
    With that the doctor picked up his bag and strode from the room.
    Augusta Cockburn stared at the doctor’s departing back. She continued to stare at the door long after he had gone. She was not a bad woman, Augusta Cockburn. She had loved her brother. She
loved her family, except, of course, for her lying husband. But the circumstances of her life brought out all the worst aspects of her character.
    She picked up the latest edition of the Grafton Mercury, lying on the table in front of her. She wondered if there was anything about her brother inside. She gave a little cry when she
came to Patrick Butler’s favourite paragraph. Charles John Whitney Eustace one of the richest men in England. An enormous portfolio of shares. Mother an American heiress. She read it again.
She knew her brother was rich but not as rich as this paper said he was. It definitely did say he was one of the richest men in England. How did they know that, the people in this little backwater,
miles from civilization? How did this twopenny-halfpenny scandal sheet, the Grafton Mercury, filled with information about the price of pigs and meetings of the parish councils, know it? Had
all of Compton known it? Did the money, heaven forbid, have anything to do with his death?
    Augusta Cockburn stood and stared out of the window at her late brother’s garden. A couple of robins were hopping energetically on the lawn. A light rain was falling. She hadn’t
believed the butler. She hadn’t believed the doctor either. Dr Blackstaff might have been a more professional liar than McKenna or McKendrick or whatever the wretched man was called –
doctors have to lie every day of their working lives, she thought – but there was something suspicious about his story too.
    One phrase kept echoing round her head. One of the richest men in England. Maybe she could move house again, back to a proper address. One of the richest men in England. She could provide
properly for her four children. She could pay off all the debts her wretched