“Well what I’m doing isn’t for a child and a dog.”

“I’m not a child, and Sergeant Dog missed qualifying as a police dog only through his extreme good nature. We won’t be in the way.”

“I’m being met.” Mrs. Sugden groaned. “It’s all arranged, and no mention of an entourage.”

“Well, you can say that you had to bring your daughter and the dog.”

Mrs. Sugden opened her mouth to object that Harriet would not pass as her daughter, but Harriet did not give her time.

“It will be more natural to have me with you. No one would suspect a person of investigating a crime if that person had a young relative with her. And a villain would think twice about having a go at us with Sergeant Dog at our side.”

Harriet decided against saying that in case of an emergency she would be able to run for help. Mrs. Sugden couldn’t run for toffee.

“The telephone –”

“Rosie Sykes was very keen to practise answering it.”

Chapter 37

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Old Mrs. Dell had fallen into step with me when we entered the church of Holy Trinity. Benjie, Gertrude and Eliot Dell made their way to the front of the church. Mrs. Dell wanted to be closer to the centre, and on the end of an aisle. “I hate to hear my stick clicking on the tiles,” she had said, “and to slow everyone down.”

Given that this was a funeral, I thought people would not mind being slowed down, but did not say so.

The vicar, whom everybody knew had only recently returned from burying his father, looked tired and drawn. He seemed to be going through the motions, like a man with only half his mind on the task.

This changed when he began to speak about Mrs. Farrar. He glanced down at a sheet of paper where he must have had notes of what to say. He forgot it was there, looking at the congregation, with a glance of approval, as if he had only at that moment realised that the church was packed.

“We are here today to pray for the soul of Helen Farrar, whose blameless and virtuous life was brought to an untimely end. We will pray for the repose of her soul, and remember her as we knew her.

“Mrs. Farrar married late in life but even so was a widow far longer than she was a wife.”

That gave me pause for thought. Someone who married late would have to lose her husband very quickly in order to be a widow for such a length of time. Perhaps there was a story there.