And in cases of sudden death, however natural, oddities have importance. When he first came in contact with B Seven he was so divorced from his professional self, so detached from the world at large, that he had considered the matter as any other sleep-sodden civilian would. B Seven had been for him merely the young dead occupant of a whisky-sodden compartment who was being mauled about by a furiously impatient sleeping-car attendant. Now he became something quite different; he became The Subject Of An Inquest. A professional matter; a matter bound by rules and regulations; a matter to be proceeded with circumspectly, with due decorum and by the book. And it occurred to Grant for the first time that his abstraction of that newspaper might be held, if orthodoxy must be pushed to its furthest point, to be a little irregular. It had been an entirely unintended abstraction; an accidental purloining. But it had, if one had to be analytical about it, been a removal of evidence.
While Grant was debating the matter, Laura came back from the kitchen and said: ‘Alan, I want you to do something for me.’
She took her mending basket and brought it over to a chair beside him.
‘Anything I can do.’
‘Pat is sticking in his toes about something that he has to do and I want you to talk him into it. You’re his hero, and he will listen to you.’
‘It isn’t about presenting a bouquet, by any chance?’
‘How did you know? Has he talked about it to you already?’
‘He just mentioned it this morning on the loch.’
‘You didn’t take his side, did you?’
‘With you in the background! No. I expressed the opinion that it was a great honour.’