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deceased is concerned let me tell you that though it’s usually a case of “ashes to ashes” the dust will have to wait for it.’

Chapter Five
    Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down
    Mrs Muriel Peden surveyed the dining room of the Manor with a practised eye. She was trying to judge to a nicety the right moment to give the signal for the first course to be cleared away. This was not easy because on the whole her charges were quick drinkers and slow eaters.
    For instance, to her certain knowledge Miss Henrietta Bentley, who was still toying with the last of her salad, had already put away two glasses of champagne and one and a half of a good white wine carefully chosen by the Cellar Committee.
    Miss Bentley, quite unaware that it was she who was delaying the proceedings, was bending an ear towards little Mrs McBeath.
    â€˜I just don’t think it’s quite nice, that’s all,’ said Mrs McBeath, greatly daring.
    â€˜It’s a very fine wine,’ said Miss Bentley, draining her glass appreciatively – but not alas attending to her plate. ‘An Australian Chardonnay, unless I’m very much mistaken.’ The Manor’s Cellar Committee had recently ventured out of France and into another hemisphere.
    â€˜Not the wine. I meant,’ twittered Mrs McBeath, ‘our having this luncheon with poor Mrs Powell not yet in her grave.’
    â€˜Thrift, thrift, Horatio,’ boomed Miss Bentley, daughter of a First World War general and in her day the headmistress of a famous girls’ school run on strictly military lines.
    Little Mrs McBeath, who didn’t recognize the quotation, shied nervously away. Fearful that the formidable Miss Bentley might be expecting a suitable response, she scuttled across the dining room and happened to fetch up alongside Mrs Maisie Carruthers, who was being closely questioned by Clarissa Powell.
    â€˜What was Granny really like?’ asked that young woman with every appearance of genuine earnestness. ‘That’s what we want to know.’
    Mrs Carruthers considered this carefully, searching for an epithet that was both truthful and suitable for a member of the deceased’s family who was of tender years. ‘Fun,’ she said at last, suppressing all mention of a certain occasion in wartime Cairo. That had been the evening when Gertie had set out to respond to a bet and prove that Egyptians weren’t the only girls who could belly dance. ‘Your grandmother was always fun.’
    Maisie’s son, Ned, would scarcely have recognized her as the shrivelled little old lady he’d last seen languishing in the hospital. Clutching an elegant ebony-handled cane, and dressed in her best, Maisie Carruthers’ whole appearance now projected a lively interest in the world.
    â€˜In what way exactly?’ persisted Clarissa, misguidedly imagining that fun then was so very different from fun now. ‘Do tell me.’
    â€˜Cheerful,’ hedged Maisie Carruthers. ‘She never let things get her down did Gertie.’ She herself was feeling remarkably bobbish just now especially as, wise in her generation, Matron had sent in the hairdresser that very morning.
    â€˜What things?’
    Here Maisie Carruthers became vague. ‘Oh, husbands and that sort of thing.’
    â€˜Tell me more,’ commanded Clarissa as the diminutive Mrs McBeath decided to leave them both in favour of a less hectic conversation with the Rector.
    Across the room Clarissa’s sister, Amanda, was chatting up Brigadier MacIver. He was giving her a man’s view of the deceased. ‘Your dear grandmother was a great character, my dear. And a sad loss to us all at the Manor…’
    â€˜Do tell me all about her,’ pleaded Amanda. ‘Please.’
    â€˜Just as the Regiment was diminished all those years ago by the death of her husband in action,’ said the Brigadier sonorously.
    â€˜Which husband?’ asked Amanda,