‘But he’s a murderer, too!’ said Jonathan. ‘On that motive alone he must be! Look here, how about this for a reconstruction? Bill decides to marry. He may even have got married. It certainly seems as though he did. He doesn’t tell Tiny. The reason he doesn’t we don’t know. Bill thinks a married man ought to insure his life, but he knows he’s not a good bet from the Company’s point of view. Right, says Tiny, (not realizing, of course, that Bill is married), let me go and be vetted. I can give my own name, which is William, so there’s no catching us out on that. Meanwhile, if I conk out, you can collect the boodle in the name of William Fullalove, and, as everybody knows you as Bill, there you are, as right as a trivet, same as me if I’m the lucky bloke.’

‘Very nice,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘Bill was the sound life and Tiny the uncertain one, and Bill it was that died.’

‘All right. That doesn’t affect my argument. Take it the other way round. Bill takes out the policy under the name of William, and the insurance doctor, perhaps a bit dubiously, passes him. Well, the other one is still sitting pretty. Either of ’em can be William Fullalove: Tiny because it’s his name, and Bill because everyone not in the know thinks Bill is the shortened version.’

‘I should like to be there when the lawyers interview this woman who claims to be the widow,’ said Mrs Bradley with apparent inconsequence.

CHAPTER 12

Enter Two Gravediggers

‘Benigne he was, and wondrous diligent,

And in adversitee ful pacient.’

Geoffrey Chaucer

The woman who had come to claim Bill Fullalove’s property was named Carol Letchworth Fullalove, and was less than thirty years old. Local gossip suggested that she would have difficulty in proving her case, unless her marriage lines were quite above suspicion, but once she had come and gone – for she returned to her home in Portsmouth after spending a couple of nights in Cirencester – talk and speculation died down and Tiny merely shrugged when her name was mentioned.

His knee mended, and soon he was able to reduce his two sticks to one, and limped only very slightly as he went upon his lawful occasions. He was not asked to the manor house any more as a visitor. If he came, it was strictly on business connected with the estate, and he interviewed Jonathan alone and always in the library.