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‘Thank goodness you’ve come,’ she said fervently. ‘We can’t do anything with Helen …’
    Sergeant Perkins was unsurprised. Her daily round was fairly evenly divided between those who were very glad indeed to see the police arrive and those who most definitely weren’t. As far as she was concerned both groups meant work.
    â€˜And whatever we say to her,’ said the Lady Captain, ‘she won’t stop crying.’
    â€˜I understood,’ began Sergeant Perkins, looking round, ‘that there were two women players involved …’
    The Lady Captain pointed to another door. ‘Poor Ursula Millward is in the cloakroom, being sick. She saw the face, too.’ She shuddered. ‘Or, rather, what was left of it.’
    â€˜But no one else has seen the – er – deceased?’
    â€˜No other Lady member,’ the Lady Captain assured her. ‘I can’t tell you about the men.’
    Polly Perkins took another look at Helen Ewell. Her comforters, like those of the unfortunate Job, didn’t appear to be having much success. ‘Did everyone know that the ladies would be playing this morning?’ she asked.
    â€˜Oh, yes,’ said the Lady Captain intelligently, ‘but most people only knew that it would be ladies playing, not that it would be the Rabbits’ Competition.’ She gestured out of the window in the general direction of the course. ‘It’s for absolute beginners, you know. Very few experienced players
risk getting in the bunker behind the sixth. They usually play short to be on the safe side.’
    â€˜And how exactly would everyone else know it would be the ladies playing?’ Sergeant Perkins contrived to keep a weather eye on the door to the cloakroom, while from time to time watching the face of the young woman still babbling incoherently to her audience.
    â€˜There was a notice outside the Clubhouse reserving the first tee for the ladies between certain times.’
    â€˜And what if the men had wanted to play then?’ enquired Sergeant Perkins with genuine interest. In her usual world of battered wives and victims of rape and child abuse simple notices saving anything from men for women didn’t carry overmuch weight.
    â€˜They have to start at the tenth tee and play the last nine holes before the first nine,’ said the Lady Captain confident that the rule of law applied at the Berebury Golf Course.
    â€˜And,’ enquired the policewoman, ‘does the way to the tenth pass the sixth green?’
    â€˜Oh, I see …no, no, it doesn’t. Nowhere near. Ah, here’s Ursula Millward now.’
    Sergeant Perkins took a statement from a pale but resolute Ursula Millward before turning her attention to Helen Ewell. Banishing all her audience save the Lady Captain, she pulled up a chair half beside, half in front of that young woman, announced that she was a police sergeant and waited in silence. This technique, honed on real victims of real injuries, worked in the end.
    The only trouble was that it didn’t add anything to what the police already knew.
    Â 
    The first tee of the Berebury Golf Club was not the only place where news of the shutting of the course had not been well received. They weren’t happy in the caddies’ shed either. A
course closed to players had unwelcome financial implications for some.
    â€˜Had you been going to go out today?’ someone asked a tall thin man called Shipley. ‘Before they shut everything down to everyone, that is.’
    â€˜Shut it down to everyone except Bobby Curd, you mean,’ growled Fred Shipley morosely. ‘I bet he’ll get in as usual.’
    Edmund Pemberton, still new to the game, piped up ‘Who’s Bobby Curd, then, that he gets to go out and we don’t?’
    â€˜Bobby Curd,’ Fred Shipley informed him, ‘is the man who deprives you and me of our rightful perks on the