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the health club launch, I had wandered into a wake. Dumbo.
    I ought to leave, but… the wine was doing wonders for my shattered nerves – and persuading me that my vision of galloping senility was an over-reaction – so I would, I decided, stay and finish the glass. I might be an intruder, but it would’ve been a crime to let such liquid pleasure go to waste.
    I knew who had been buried at St. John’s, Dursleigh’s parish church, earlier that day and who would be the reason why so many pillars of the community had congregated – Duncan Kincaid. No residents’ lounge ‘bites and drinkies’ for him, an up-market farewell in sumptuous surroundings was just his style. At one time, Mr Kincaid had owned a fair number of the shops along the High Street: the newsagent’s, the bookshop, the bakery, the dry cleaner’s, the ironmonger’s and a tearoom which is now the Tandoori. Then, as he’d approached retirement age, the self-styled ‘king of the village’ had begun selling off his businesses, one by one, to the Patels. An act which had caused much muttered consternation amongst Dursleigh’s less ‘inclusive’ denizens. We may be only twenty-five crow-winging miles from central London, but ethnic minorities are still minor.
    ‘Have you heard the reason why Duncan had his heart attack?’ a woman nearby said to her companion, in a cut-glass Surrey voice, a voice unhindered by volume control.
    I was born and bred in Dursleigh and, apart from five years near Manchester and eleven in the cosmopolitan climes of Kensington, have lived here all my life, but I don’t possess the blah-blah accent nor the piercing tones. They come with family money, private education and impenetrable self-confidence. Usually. The speaker oozed confidence. Short, with a corseted bosom you could bounce bricks off, and bouffant, stiff-lacquered silver hair, she was headmistressy. The type who marches around dispensing orders and laying down the law. I didn’t recognise her, though others amongst the gathering were familiar. There was the lady mayor of the borough, our M.P., a Conservative, of course, several councillors, one of which was the dubious Mr Vetch, and an assortment of shopkeepers, including the Patel patriarch and his four tall, good-looking sons.
    ‘No, Beryl. Do tell.’
    ‘He was on the golf course with Peter and a couple more chaps when he claimed an eagle three on the long par five. Puffed out his chest and strutted. You know what Duncan was like.’
    I did. I’d interviewed Duncan Kincaid a few years back when he had paid for a clock to be erected on the village green. A tubby sort wearing a blazer and tasselled loafers, with sparse strands of grey hair combed meticulously across his scalp, he had regarded himself as the big enchilada and taken great delight in telling me about his business acumen and the rip-roaring success he’d made of his shops, on and on and on. That said, the man had been affable and was generous. Always the first to put his hand into his pocket if funds were needed for the village football team or the brass band or some such thing. He had also been the founder, and mainstay, of the Dursleigh village fête which takes place every July.
    ‘Duncan said he didn’t want to boast, but wasn’t he a clever fellow?’ Beryl continued. ‘Declared it had to be a  cause for a celebration, a black-tie dinner at the Club House with him and her –’ a scathing glance was cast across the room to an elegant blonde in a wide-brimmed black hat ‘– holding court. At that point Peter interrupted and told him he’d actually played four shots. Well, Duncan went wild. Called Peter a liar –’
    ‘Never!’
    ‘To his face. And vowed he’d always been jealous of him.’
    This time the blonde received a look to kill. She was the widow, Tina Kincaid, Duncan’s second wife. I’ve seen her emerging from dress shops – correction, fashion stockists – in Dursleigh, laden down with stiff parchment bags. And