He himself had called them, Mildred being incapable of doing anything other than scream hysterically. Garten’s name and the fact that he was Matthew Glendale’s son in law ensured that the most senior police officers in Skelmore were in attendance, in fact Saracen had noted that officers of junior rank seemed to be markedly absent during the proceedings. This raised a question in his head that might have developed into paranoia had Mildred not already conceded that she had fired the weapon. The confession however, had been made amidst loud protests that ‘it really hadn’t been her fault,’ that the gun had ‘gone off’, and that ‘if it hadn’t been for that swine,’ meaning Saracen, her husband Nigel would still be alive. Saracen feared that the police might lean towards the welfare of the establishment and so it proved to be. Rest and sedation were prescribed for Mildred while open hostility was the order of the day for him. As the seemingly endless round of questions proceeded Saracen could sense that the police were determined to interpret Garten’s death as being accidental, the tragic outcome of a domestic accident while he himself was an interloper who had somehow precipitated the whole sorry affair.
