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elastic too, but he held his peace. Heroin, considered purely as a substance, was morally neutral. Possessing it wasn’t legal. Supplying it to others was a crime of the first order. But that wasn’t the pathologist’s concern just now.
    â€˜I think it might have been more fast living and fast dying with that poor fellow in there,’ said Dabbe. ‘He was nothing but a living skeleton.’
    â€˜Not slow dying, then,’ said Sloan, who had come across other victims of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. ‘Rattling with pills…’
    â€˜I’m told that this man chose one last fling, expense no object, instead…’ said Dr Dabbe.
    â€˜And who would blame him for that?’ said Sloan.
    â€˜Makes the certification a bit difficult, though,’ said Dabbe jovially. ‘A two-horse race, you might say.’
    â€˜Two-horse, doctor?’ The pale horse of the Apocalypse which was Death, Sloan knew about. He searched his memory for the other three – War, Pestilence, Famine.
    â€˜Aids and alcohol,’ said Dabbe neatly. ‘I think it was the strong drink that got him in the end. Not your problem, of course, Sloan, this poor fellow.’
    â€˜No, doctor.’ One thing which life on the beat had taught Sloan very early on was the great importance of not taking on matters which were not his problem. ‘Now, about this mummy at the museum…’
    â€˜I think,’ said the pathologist briskly, ‘that the best course of action would be for me to get our medical imaging people to take one of their portable X-ray machines over there and take some pretty pictures of your mummy for Mr Locombe-Stableford.’
    â€˜That would be very helpful,’ said Sloan. It would give him breathing space to think about where that consignment of heroin would have been going, had it come ashore at Edsway in the hands for which it had been intended.
    Dr Dabbe stroked his chin. ‘A bit of non-destructive testing should get things started nicely.’
    â€˜And that,’ said Sloan, ‘should keep the museum people happy, too.’
    The doctor reached for a notepad. ‘I’ll have a word with Steve Meadows and ask him to get in touch.’
    â€˜Meadows … I don’t know that name.’
    â€˜You wouldn’t, Inspector. He’s the slowest driver in Calleshire.’
    Sloan refused to rise to this. ‘And?’
    â€˜And he’s our friendly neighbourhood radiologist, too.’
    Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. ‘An X-ray report should satisfy the coroner, all right.’
    It wasn’t one of his more accurate forecasts.
    *   *   *
    â€˜I think,’ said Marcus Fixby-Smith to Hilary Collins after the two policemen had gone on their way from the museum, ‘that this little local difficulty over Colonel Caversham’s bequest is something our Howard ought to know about, don’t you?’
    She nodded energetically.
    â€˜I’m sure, anyway,’ said Fixby-Smith, ‘that he would want to know that the police have been here.’ They were standing in the institution’s Roman Room where the curator was resting his elbows on a handy stone sarcophagus. ‘Straight away, if not actually sooner.’
    His assistant hastened to agree with him.
    â€˜After all, you might even argue,’ drawled Fixby-Smith, ‘that dealing with outside trouble is what the Chairman of the Museums and Amenities Committee is for.’ Marcus Fixby-Smith could deal with inside trouble at the museum himself any day, but he was very strong on self-preservation in an outside world he perceived as naturally hostile to arts administrators.
    If Hilary Collins saw any inherent contradiction between this statement and Fixby-Smith’s frequent assertions that all the town council’s committee chairmen were useless ornaments, she did not see fit to say so at this moment. Instead she said