Charity Ends At Home

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One of the most notable examples of what a former mayor of Flaxborough described, with unconscious felicity, as “the venereal institutions of this ancient town” was its coroner, Mr Albert Amblesby.

He had endured in his office through four reigns. Only the oldest citizens could recall his appointment. It had been canvassed as a political favour by a group of local dignitaries whose affairs during the first world war had prospered through the shrewd advice of the junior partner in the firm of Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby, solicitors. What the advice had been, there was now no means of learning. The beneficiaries had long since departed, as had murmurous, lugubrious lawyer Sparrow and his dim brother. Even rumour, once pungent with questions about fraudulent cattlecake contracts, selection board bribes and a military highway that got no further than the staithes of the Flaxborough Docking Company, had thinned and dissipated on the wind of time. As for Albert Amblesby himself, he had forgotten the circumstances of his preferment together with many, many other things. His only certain knowledge was that he was clever enough to have awakened that morning to the lovely discovery that one person on whom no inquest could yet be called was Her Majesty’s Coroner for Flaxborough and District.

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