"But I thought you were so sure?"
"So I was. But—this is preposterous, Wimsey! Besides, think what a scandal it would make!"
"Why should it? You are the executor. You can make a private application and the whole thing can be done quite privately."
"Yes, but surely the Home Office would never consent, on such flimsy grounds."
"I'll see that they do. They'll know I wouldn't be keen on anything flimsy. Little bits of fluff were never in my line."
"Oh, do be serious. What reason can we give?"
"Quite apart from Oliver, we can give a very good one. We can say that we want to examine the contents of the viscera to see how soon the General died after taking his last meal. That might be of great assistance in solving the question of the survivorship. And the law, generally speaking, is nuts on what they call the orderly devolution of property."
"Hold on! D'you mean to say you can tell when a bloke died just by looking inside his tummy?"
"Not exactly, of course. But one might get an idea. If we found, that is, that he'd only that moment swallowed his brekker, it would show that he'd died not very long after arriving at the Club."
"Good lord!—that would be a poor look-out for me."