Stately Homicide Read Free

address and where to pick the stuff up while I was about it. Saved a lot of time an’ trouble. Born to be caught, that was me.’
    Jurnet smiled down at the small, spruce figure with real affection.
    â€˜If it’s any consolation, all of us over at Headquarters were always properly grateful. The Superintendent often said where would our figures for convictions obtained be, if it weren’t for good old Perce?’
    The little man’s face glowed with pleasure.
    â€˜Did he say that?’ With a shake of the head: ‘All the same, I should ’a’ listened to my Mollie. “Percy Toller,” she always said, “you’re as much cut out for a burglar as I am to be Miss World.”’
    Jurnet said: ‘Never saw a Miss World yet could hold a candle to Mollie.’
    Percy Toller beamed, his false teeth white and gleaming.
    â€˜Wait till I tell her what you said! She’s always had a soft spot for you, Mr Jurnet, you know that. Always says you treated me a bloody sight better ’n I deserved.’
    â€˜My pleasure.’ Jurnet accepted the compliment with becoming grace. ‘So, if it isn’t the silver you’re after, what are you doing here at Bullen Hall?’
    â€˜Conservation, Mr Jurnet,’ the other returned with dignity. ‘Preserving our national heritage. We got a nice little bungalow in the village, Mollie an’ me, and, I mean, they’re always asking for helpers, so here I am. All the upper crust hereabouts go in for it, and I don’t mind telling you we’ve met a very nice class of people. I’m not boasting, Mr Jurnet, when I say Mollie and me are very well thought of here in Bullensthorpe.’
    â€˜So you should be.’
    â€˜Winters, when the Hall’s closed to the public, we have lectures to learn about the Bullens and the Appleyards so’s we can answer questions people ask us – and as I’m doing History and English Literature for the Open University, it seemed right up my alley.’
    â€˜You’re doing an Open University course! You’re never!’
    â€˜In’t it a scream?’ The retired burglar appeared to take no offence at the other’s tone of disbelief. ‘Percy Toller, B.A. – that’ll be the day! But Mollie says she don’t see why not. You know what, Mr Jurnet?’ The little man looked at the detective with eyes trusting as a child’s. ‘A man got a wife what believes in him and gives him a belief in hisself, there’s nothing he bloody can’t do once he puts his mind to it.’
    Reminded with a sudden pang of Miriam, Jurnet elected to change the subject.
    â€˜I can’t imagine what put it into your head I look anything like that bloke up there on the wall.’
    â€˜Evidence of my own eyes, Mr Jurnet!’ Percy Toller contemplated the portrait of Anne Boleyn’s brother with the air of a connoisseur. ‘It’s the Valentino look,’ he pronounced finally. ‘You both got it. You know, don’t you, Mr Jurnet, that’s what they call you, down at the nick?’
    Jurnet frowned. His dark, Mediterranean looks were a sore trial to him. Bad enough to have your mates call you, even if it was carefully behind your back, after some brilliantined gigolo of the Twenties. But to think that the clients, the villains on the other side of the counter, had cottoned on to it as well!
    â€˜How come he’s Bullen and she’s Boleyn?’ he demanded. ‘Didn’t they know how to spell their own names, in those days?’
    â€˜Bloody sight more sensible than we are. Spelled a word any way that took their fancy. What’s the difference, long as you could read it?’ The retired burglar studied the portrait further. ‘It’s the nose, Mr Jurnet, and those eyes. Smouldering. Very romantic, if you don’t mind me saying so. Not English.’
    â€˜Well, I am –’ pushing away ancestral