“A misunderstanding? Is that what you’d call it? I’d say it was plain bloody vengeful evil. And what do you mean, ‘before someone gets hurt’? Haven’t you heard? One of us is more than hurt already—he’s dead. As I see it, we were a group of one murderer with a deadly gripe against five of his ex-mates. Now those mates number four.”

“Four? Hang on a minute, Dickie—who’ve we lost?”

“We’re down by a corporal. Ernest’s a goner. It happened two years ago, right here in town. It was in the local paper, but it didn’t make the London Times, so you probably missed it.”

Oily listened as Dickie filled him in on events in Cambridge two years before and gave a moment’s respect for the dead before responding. “Poor old Ernest! Still . . . two years back, you say? Why the gap? It’s more than twenty years since . . . since—”

“Our little spot of bother?”

Oily grunted. “If you like. And why the sudden rush? I doubt his death’s connected. Look, leave this with me. I can have it all verified and examined. I have the expertise and the secretaries to sit for hours with their ears to the telephone. Ernest, eh? Can’t say I’m surprised to hear he’s not the man responsible for all this hysteria. He never had the belly for killing when it was legitimate—he’s hardly a likely candidate to have set up as a self-appointed slaughterer once the Queen stopped paying his wages! Though there were bits of army life he didn’t despise. Something of a spit-and-polish merchant, I seem to remember. Obeyed every rule you could chuck at him to the letter. He was always meticulous about observing the Armistice and joined the Royal British Legion when it was set up in . . .”

“1921, it was. The only one of us who bothered to sign on. I checked the lists at the library. You should start frequenting the public libraries, Oily. It’s splendid for keeping tabs on world and local events while keeping warm and dry. It’s a good way of keeping track of old friends.”

“You say the police found no one they could pin it on?”

“No, his death remains a mystery. His murder, rather. There were clear indications that he’d been done in. I had a quiet word with one of the PCs on the case. Somebody’d grabbed him by the ears and bashed his head against the nearest hard surface.”

“Sounds like a drunken altercation to me.”