“There is no hiding anything from you detectives. Yes, I have promised myself the rustic treat of a funeral. In the scholastic profession such thrills are rare; they make us retire at sixty nowadays. My lot is cast amidst the young; I see ever fresh generations succeeding to the old, filling up the gaps in the ranks of humanity; and I confess that when one sees the specimens one sometimes doubts whether the process is worth while. But do not let me cast a gloom over our convivialities. Let us eat and drink, Mrs. Davis’s ‘shape’ seems to say to us, for to-morrow we die.”
“I hope I oughtn’t to have gone,” said Angela. “I’d have brought my blacks if I’d thought of it.”
“Without them, you would be a glaring offence against village etiquette. No, Mrs. Bredon, your presence would not be expected. The company needs no representatives at the funeral; more practical, it sheds golden tears over the coffin. For the rest of us it is different. Mr. Eames pays a last tribute to his diocesan benefactor. Mr. Brinkman, like a good secretary, must despatch the material envelope to its permanent address. For myself, what am I? A fellow wayfarer in an inn; and yet what more is any of us in this brief world? No, Mrs. Bredon, you are exempt.”
“Oh, do stop him,” said Angela. “How did you come down, Mr. Eames?”
“By the midday train, a funeral pageant in itself. Was Mr. Mottram much known in the neighbourhood?”
“He is now,” replied Mr. Pulteney, with irrepressible ghoulishness. “The victim of sudden death is like a diver; no instinct of decency withholds us from watching his taking-off.”
“I don’t think he had any near relations living,” said Brinkman, “except young Simmonds. He’ll be there, I suppose; but there wasn’t much love lost between them. He will hardly be interested, anyhow, in the reading of the will.”
“By the way, Mr. Brinkman, His Lordship asked me to say that you will be very welcome at the Cathedral house, if you are detained in Pullford at all.”
“It is extremely kind of him. But I had wound up all Mr. Mottram’s outstanding affairs before he came away for his holiday, and I don’t suppose I shall be needed. I was thinking of going up to London in a day or two. I have to shift for myself, you see.”
“Have some coffee, Eames,” suggested Bredon; “you must need it after a tiring journey like that.”