Police at the Funeral

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This story, the characters in it, and the bridge in the Grantchester Meadows, are figments of the author's imagination, and have no reference to real incident, living people or topographical facts.

When one man is following another, however discreet may be the pursuer or the pursued, the act does not often pass unnoticed in the streets of London.

There were at least four people who realized that Inspector Stanislaus Oates, only lately promoted to the Big Five, was being followed down High Holborn by the short, squat, shabby man who yet bore the elusive air of a forgotten culture about him.

The Inspector walked with his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, his collar turned up until it almost met the brim of his battered trilby. His shoulders were hunched, his feet were wet, and his very gait announced the dejection which he felt.

There was very little to show the casual passer-by that the square man, who might have been a bookmaker's tout, was following the Inspector. He himself would have been astounded to know that anyone had guessed that he was aware of the policeman's existence, but old Mrs Carter, who sells flowers outside the Provincial Bank, recognized Mr Oates and observed his trailer, and wondered what he was up to, aloud, to her daughter who was waiting for the 'late extra' Evening Standard van, and getting her high-heeled shoes full of water from the stream which was sweeping down the gutter.

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