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night.’
    â€˜And it didn’t?’
    â€˜No, sir. She said that she went out to look for it herself but she hadn’t been feeling very well so she didn’t go far.’
    Policeman and pathologist both looked up at that.
    Dr Dabbe spoke first. Medically. ‘She wouldn’t have been feeling very well anyway if she was already on her way to a diabetic coma.’
    â€˜But she didn’t know how it was that the dog had got out?’ said Sloan, thinking quickly along quite another tack. A law enforcement one.
    â€˜No, sir,’ said Crosby.
    The pathologist shot the detective-inspector a shrewd glance. ‘Have we the same thing in mind, Sloan?’
    â€˜Ransom?’ responded Sloan.
    â€˜It’s a growth industry.’ Dabbe waved an instrument in the air. ‘First cousin to sky-jacking.’
    â€˜Children in Italy …’ It was something, he supposed, that there were national traditions in crime, and that Great Britain did not always lead the way.
    â€˜Dogs in England,’ said the pathologist, a cynic if ever there was one. ‘We’re a nation of animal-lovers.’
    â€˜It might just have been an accident,’ said Sloan, ‘the dog getting out.’
    â€˜It is a truth universally acknowledged,’ said the doctor drily, ‘that a middle-aged woman in possession of a fortune will attract people anxious to part her from it.’
    Sloan coughed. ‘Would you say that an Airedale dog could be someone’s – er – hostage to fortune?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Dabbe simply.
    â€˜She was very upset,’ contributed Crosby, ‘especially when we told her that we hadn’t got her – er – Isolde.’
    â€˜We’ll look for a note,’ conceded Sloan. ‘Just in case someone got ideas about ransom. Can’t very well do more than that at this stage.’
    â€˜No.’ The pathologist went back to his work and in a matter of moments was totally absorbed again in what he was doing. Detective-Constable Crosby settled himself against a nearby bench while Sloan considered Miss Wansdyke and her curiously great wealth. It was some little time before Dr Dabbe straightened up and began peeling off his rubber gloves. He continued, however, to address the microphone which hovered – like Damocles’s sword – above the neck of the post mortem subject.
    â€˜Right, Rita. That’s all. Get it typed out, will you, and I’ll sign a copy for the coroner.’ He tossed his gloves into a linen basket. ‘It won’t tell him much, Sloan.’
    â€˜No?’
    â€˜I can’t find anything except the diabetes.’ He turned his back on Sloan while his assistant, Burns, undid his gown from behind. ‘Of course she’d got the usual signs you’d expect to find going with that condition in a woman of her age.’
    â€˜Change and decay?’ Sloan’s mother was a great church-goer.
    â€˜Ever present, old chap, but no other cause of death that I can see. Poison’s always a problem, though, in forensic medicine.’
    â€˜Yes, Doctor.’ And it was, too. That, as every policeman – and pathologist – knew, was where the undetected homicide lay. Nearly always.
    â€˜Naturally we’ll take a look at the bits and pieces that Burns here has got in his jars,’ said Dabbe a trifle unscientifically, ‘but there are certainly no signs that lead me to suspect anything out of the ordinary in the way of what the lawyers call noxious substances.’
    Burns drew a white sheet up over the body of Beatrice Wansdyke.
    â€˜And no other natural causes,’ said Sloan, trying to keep his mind clear, ‘besides the diabetes.’
    â€˜Just the diabetes,’ repeated the pathologist, tossing his gown into the linen basket after the gloves. ‘From my point of view there’s no doubt at all what she died from, even though someone somewhere may