Neither task appealed to a man of his temperament. One required action and the other thought. Both were anathematical to Constable Mason. His working… - Catherine Aird

Really,’ she exclaimed, stumping into the kitchen and plonking herself down on the nearest chair, ‘this place is getting worse than Nightmare Abbey. Whatever next?’

A grammatical purist might have wondered why Miss Bentley hadn't said ‘whoever’ rather than ‘whatever’ but the former headteacher belonged to the Superintendent Leeyes school of taking bad news as a personal affront rather than as an occasion for sympathy for the victim.

Jezebel didn't drive up in a chariot.

What condition?’

‘He's got a bad heart as well as the leg injuries he got in the war which put him in his wheelchair.’

‘Ah.’ If there was one thing which every policeman knew it was that families were bad for every medical condition, but especially for heart ones. Legs were less important.