Impasse

The doctors called me at 8:21 and asked me to come into the hospital.  Julie was still in her private room with the guard on the door, and her baby was now in a private room in the maternity ward, also with a guard on the door, but for different reasons.  No-one was allowed in to see the baby unless they went in pairs, as apparently it was having odd effects on people.  I couldn't say I was all that surprised.
The receptionist at the desk caught my eye as I came in and told me that I was to go to the fourth floor and the John Philcock room.  I nodded, though I was expecting just to go to the maternity ward which I thought they'd named after some suffragette.  I considered using the lifts, but when I stopped outside them and pushed the buttons I noticed that the lifts had been named as well – clearly some NHS mandarin had over-ordered on signage – and these were the Icarus lifts.  I decided that boded ill for anyone using them, and opted for the stairs instead.
The stairwell had plenty of glass, and I could see the hospital car-park as I spiralled round and up, with occasionally glimpses of the smoking garden for the nurses and recidivist doctors.  At first, I'd not expected to see anyone in the smoking garden except maybe the odd porter or student, but at times it looked like there were more staff outside smoking than there were inside working.  A junior doctor had looked at me with eyes as old as some of the things I'd found in the desert when I'd asked him about it and told me to think about the stress they were under and the likelihood of finding a bar anywhere in the hospital.  I did think about it, and decided that the smoking garden would be my preference too.
The John Philcock room turned out to be a meeting room of some kind.  The floor tiles were cold and icy-blue, the light was a fluorescent strip that flickered just on the edge of vision, the table was formica-topped and too low and the chairs were old wooden school chairs and both too low and too wide.  I could only imagine that they'd originally been constructed for a class of midget Billy Bunters.  No-one was sitting down when I knocked and entered, and the only thing on the table was a manilla folder with some A4 pages inside.
The doctors were patient and careful, but the upshot of the conversation was that they wanted me to take Julie home with me.  I explained that I'd sooner volunteer as a major-organ donor, and asked why they wanted to separate her from her baby.  That's when they all looked at each other and tried not to answer.
They also, it seemed, wanted me to agree to a nil-by-mouth order, followed by a nil-by-any-route at all order, all of which would be carried out under extreme secrecy.
I sat on the table at that point, struck by a memory from the desert.
I found out quickly in the desert that it's very important to keep an eye on the weather.  When the wind blows it might be a gentle breeze that sometimes even cooled you, but it could evaporate sweat much faster and use up your water dangerously fast.  And if it was stronger than a breeze then you would be wise to consider finding shelter, for it doesn't take long for the wind to pick up loose sand, and then at best you get a skin-peel that would cost an arm and a leg in a Harley Street clinic, and at worse you would lose an arm and a leg to the highly abrasive qualities of lots of tiny grit being hurled at you at thirty miles an hour.  I had my tent of course, but when I could I would pitch the tent in the lee of a dune, or sandstone, or on one occasion in the hollow trunk of an enormous tree that I think must have died before the desert even came into being around it.  And crouching there inside my little protective skin while hostile nature howled around me, it occurred to me that this was life in the midst of death.  No sooner had I thought that than there came a tapping on the taut nylon fabric of the tent.  I nearly had a heart attack.
I lowered the zip cautiously and found that there was a man outside, his face cut and bleeding, his clothes tattered, and a nylon rucksack on his back.  He wasn't carrying a weapon, and he had four days stubble, so I took a chance and let him inside.  He gasped a little, sat down heavily opposite me, and took his rucksack off.
He either said his name was Dane or told me that he was a Dane, but I wasn't paying a lot of attention as the zip was getting stuck at the top and not quite closing.  I struggled with it a little while he talked about a motorcycle repair shop in Stockholm for some reason, and finally I gave up and accepted that there might be a small trickle of sand coming into the tent.  I looked back over at my guest.
He gave me a sepulchral smile and asked me how I intended to die.
And so, for the next hour and a half, until the sandstorm died down and I could leave the tent, we talked about the merits and demerits of the forms of death that we knew, arguing for and against pain depending on the circumstance, and bringing the circle to closure: we were life in the midst of death, talking about death in the midst of life, and accepting, at least for the duration of the conversation that there was no separation of the two.
When the wind finally dropped from a howl to a moan, then to a whimper, I left the tent to stretch and eyeball the horizon, to see if this was the eye of a storm or a storm in a teacup.  And I stared at the motorcycle that my guest couldn't possibly have ridden across the desert or that could have survived the abrasive embrace of the storm.
I told the doctors the truth; Julie had left me and attempted to abort the baby all of her own accord, and that I didn't believe it was mine.  They shifted their feet and fiddled with their lighters and agreed that the baby wasn't mine.  I offered to sign the papers, but they pointed out that I couldn't do that while Julie was in the hospital, and so I left the room at an impasse.  It felt familiar.

Stormclouds

"We all learn something new every day," said Playfair, his words gravid with irony.  He half-smiled, showing more teeth than was perhaps necessary.  "Now, tell me what we know about this magician."
"Not much, so far," admitted Alf looking down at the table.  "I've got Jamie trying to track his parents down, 'cos like you says, everybody has them, but we've not had much luck so far."
"Well, who did he know in Little Haversham?" asked Playfair.  "Did he live in Little Haversham, or did he have more sense?  Wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, goat he was unnaturally attracted to?"
"Here!"  Alf got a little agitated again.  "There's no need to be talking like no-one would want to live here!  He did live in the village, he's got the big house at the end of Beechwood Drive.  Lived there pretty much by himself, didn't have that many visitors.  Didn't keep any goats."  There was a touch of emphasis on the last sentence that Playfair was oblivious to.
"Have you sent anyone out there to look round the place yet?  This Jamie, perhaps?"
"Not yet," said Alf.  "He wasn't killed there and he lived alone, so I didn't see that there was much point breaking into his house before we'd found any relatives."
"Pets?"  Playfair leaned back on two legs of his chair again.  "Visitors?  There's always a reason to investigate, even if it's only thinking that you can smell gas."
"That might be how you do things up in the City," said Alf, "but we're a little more civilised down here."  Miss Flava had to suppress a snigger at the look of blameless innocence that crossed Playfair's face.  "No-one's been round to his house.  When we track down his parents, or his next of kin, we'll take it to the next stage."
"Too slow!"  Playfair's chair slammed back down to the floor and he leapt from it as though he'd been launched.  Alf flinched away from him, and Miss Flava straightened up and looked alert, ready to stop whatever her boss had in mind.  "This is a murder investigation, not a run-of-the-mill death!  The killer isn't going to be hindered by niceties like this.  If he's after something that Stormy owned he's probably already broken into the place, if there's any clues left in there that might tell us who he is then he could be pouring petrol all over the curtains right now and giggling to himself over a box of matches.  You're not thinking like a murderer, you're thinking like a police officer!"
"That would be because I am a police officer," said Alf slowly.  "When did you decide that the killer was a man, Sir?"
"Probabilities favour it being a man," said Playfair.  "And you've not told me that he exclusively associated with women, or was surrounded by nurses and protectors who were all women.  In fact, ignoring the indirect reference to his mother, I don't think you've mentioned any women in his life at all."
"So you think it was probably his father what did him in then?"
"Statistically that would be a good place to start," said Playfair.  "But you can't find his parents, so unless he killed them first and their bodies are rotting in his house, which you won't search until you've found his parents, we're probably looking at someone else.  What did he do?  What did he do when he wasn't being Stormy the Spellcaster?  Where did he drink?  Who did he talk to?  Why can't you answer any of these questions?"
"Why won't you just shut up?" said Alf, and in the silence that followed he looked a little sheepish.  "Well, perhaps just give me a chance to answer," he said.  "We're working on it, Sir, we were going to ask his parents when we found them."
"Right," said Playfair.  "If you find them.  Ok, enough.  Miss Flava, come on.  Let's go look at this house, maybe that'll provide me with some answers to my questions."
"Er Sir, I can't condone you breaking and entering–" started Alf, but was cut off by Playfair walking past him.
"Then don't," he said.  "But it won't be breaking and entering because it's police business, and I'm on the case."
As he opened the door and walked out Miss Flava stood up and laid a little white business card down in front of Alf.
"The list on the front are the people who are expecting you to complain about him," she said.  "The address for all of them is on the back."

The Great CumuloNimbus

Playfair's chair clattered back to the floor on all four legs, and he leaned diagonally forward across the table towards the office.
"A magician?" he said, his voice raising slightly.  "As in, a stage magician?  Someone who does card tricks, or someone who does grand illusions? Grand Guignol, even?"
"Isn't that a type of sausage?"  When Playfair refused to answer, or even to remove his gaze from the officer's face, he continued after swallowing hard.  "He calls himself the Great CumuloNimbus and he does a lot of illusions and disappearances.  He made the town-hall disappear last year, and the year before that he made the Mountgarden's garden bloom in winter.  Just for the one night, mind you.  He's very good."
"Did he bring the town-hall back again?"  It was impossible to tell if Playfair was being sarcastic or not, and the officer decided not to chance it.
"Yes, it came right back, right after the show.  Just like it had never been away," he said.
"At least he keeps the place tidy then," said Playfair sitting back at last.  "How many of his shows have you seen?"
"Uh, well, I don't know," said the officer.  "I mean, he usually does one every Christmas, and there's often a summer one, unless he's travelling of course, but then he'll usually do a Spring one before he goes then... and of course, he's a local boy, so you try and show a bit of support, don't you?"
"Do you?" said Playfair.  "You certainly sound like a fan.  Are you bothered that he's dead, then?"
"Now look here," said the officer, his voice getting gruff.  "Anyone dying round here is a cause of bother.  You can come here with all the attitude you want, and think that we have pigs living round the back and no internet connections, but we still do the job, and we do it right."  He rose to his feet while he was talking.
"I'm sure Playfair didn't mean–" said Miss Flava trying to step tactfully in before Playfair could speak again, but the officer cut her off.
"I'm sure he did mean it."
"I still mean it," said Playfair.  "And I'm glad that you're bothered that he's dead, as it means you'll have looked all the harder into who might have killed him.  So what you need now is someone who didn't know the victim, who can stand back with a little bit of objectivism and help sift the wheat from the chaff.  Or the pigs from the sheep, or the shit from the sherbert, or whatever else you might sift out here beyond the barricades."
"...Ayn Rand?" asked Miss Flava.  The officer sat down, looking a little calmer, although also a little puzzled as people tended to be after one of Playfair's monologues.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "Very odd woman.  I recommend you study her."
Now it was Miss Flava's turn to get annoyed.  "What, so I can be a very odd woman too?"
"No.  So that you don't end up like her."  Ignoring the look of fury on Miss Flava's face he faced the officer again.  "Look,... er... whatever you name is, from the report I've read, and I know that it's incomplete, you have a murdered magician and so far no suspects.  That can't possibly be right; if nothing else he must have had parents, and most murders are family affairs.  You've done a lot of digging, you've turned up a lot of evidence–"
"Tortoise shells," muttered Miss Flava, still fuming, but Playfair ignored her.
"–and now it's time to find out what that evidence is telling us.  I've been sent to help out, and that's what I'm going to do.  Now, tell me all about Stormy the Magician."
"Who? And my name's Alf, Sir."  The Sir was delivered meaningfully, with a strong intimation that it could be taken away again just as quickly.
"The Great CumuloNimbus," said Playfair not quite patiently.  "CumuloNimbuses are stormclouds."
"I never knew that!" said Alf.

Interview room A

"Bugger what?" said Playfair, still emptying pockets.  He'd found one that appeared to contain just a large amount of lint, which he happily strewed over the counter.
"What?" said the officer behind the counter.
"It sounded like an instruction," said Playfair.  "And given that we're out in the blasted wastelands here, I wondered if you were expecting it to be followed."
"What?"
"Playfair, I think he believes that you're you," said Miss Flava, marvelling at the junk in her boss's pockets, and also noting that he'd not produced any other card than an Oyster card, despite producing about five different ones when interviewing the priest earlier.  "Can you stop emptying pockets and let's get on?"
"Dead bodies don't get any deader," said Playfair, but it was relatively gentle.  He stirred the large pile of junk on the counter  and fished the string and sealing wax out of it.  "I don't want the rest," he said.  "You have a bin, I suppose?  Or does it all get fed to the pigs?"
The officer behind the counter went pink, but picked up a plastic waste-bin lined with a translucent white plastic bag and swept everything Playfair had dropped on the counter into it.  He put it back down on the floor, then leaned on the counter, his fingers interlinked in front of him.
"This is about that man what they found in the church, isn't it?" he said.  "You'd probably better come into the interview room then.  Door over there, it's not locked."  He pointed, and Miss Flava looked, and nodded.  "I'll just have to get Henry out from the back-room to man the counter.  We don't like not having an officer visibly on duty."  If Playfair noticed the jibe he paid it no attention.
The interview room was rectangular and cold.  There was a table with two plastic chairs on one side and a third on the other.  A couple of sheets of white A4 copier paper lay scattered on the desk, and a cheap plastic pen was on the floor under the table.  Small windows, high-up, let in a begrudging amount of rather grey light and the room smelled of disinfectant.
"Now the murder happened in the church," said Playfair, sitting on the single chair and leaving Miss Flava to choose which of the other two chairs she disliked least.  She opted for the blue one, leaving the orange one free.  "That will cause them problems, spilled blood can deconsecrate churches if I remember right."
"I think it takes a fair amount of spilled blood," said Miss Flava.  "But I don't think he meant that the murder took place inside the church building, just on the church grounds."
"Then he should say so!"  Playfair leaned back, balancing the chair on two legs.  He wobbled.
"Who should say so?" The officer from behind the desk came in, closing the door behind him.  He pressed a switch on the wall next to the door.  "Just letting people know that the room's in use," he said.  "Probably don't need to lock you in, heh?"
"You should say so," said Playfair.  "You said that the murder happened inside the church, while the report I've read says that the body was found in some woods.  That would be what I like to call a discrepancy."
"The body was found in the woods," said the officer sitting on the free chair.  He seemed uncomfortable sitting on the same side as Miss Flava, and shuffled and scooted his chair round until he was at the end of the table, facing both of them.   "But it looked like he'd been murdered several times over, and then dumped in the woods.  For him to bleed out like that, we think he must have been murdered quite close by, and the only building nearby is the church."
"You see–" started Miss Flava, but Playfair leapt in and spoke right over her.
"I've not seen the coroner's report yet.  What do you mean, he was murdered several times over?"
"Well, strangled, stabbed, beaten and hanged," said the officer, looking apologetically at Miss Flava as he tried to acknowledge that she'd been speaking first.  "It seemed a bit excessive if you ask me."
"Perhaps he was well-hated?"  Playfair was being a little flippant, but the meaning was clear.
"Not that we've been able to find out.  His name was Iain MacLeod, and up until three days ago he was drawing a capacity crowd to the Mountgarden theatre every weeknight.  Seems like he was a pretty popular guy."
"He was an actor, then?"
"No.  He was a magician."

Little Haversham Police Station

Little Haversham Police Station had a car park that was three times larger than it needed to be for the number of cars in it so Miss Flava pulled easily into a space that was one of a bank of six.  She turned the engine off, and looked at her boss, who had unbuckled his seat-belt but so far not got out.  Since he often managed to get the passenger door open before she'd finished parking, she was wondering what the matter was.
"The barrier should have been down," said Playfair.  The barrier to the car-park had been up, allowing anyone to come in and park.  Or, as Playfair was now considering, come into and plant bombs underneath police cars.
"I think that's more of a London worry," said Miss Flava.  "Out here I don't think they have to worry too much about terrorists.  Lost livestock, pensioners, and a lack of traffic wardens seem to be Little Haversham's main concerns this year."
"If you start sloppy you stay sloppy," said Playfair.  "And that applies to many areas of life."
Miss Flava got out of the car rather than ask him what he meant by that, and he slowly followed suit.  The car-park was black tarmac with painted white lines, and a space near the door had the letters CC painted in front of it.  There were six cars already there, not counting her own, and they all lined up neatly as close to the door without infringing on the labelled space as they could get.  Four were patrol cars, and the other two were unwashed and looked as though they hadn't been driven in a while.  Three sides of the car-park were lined with trees, with the fourth side being the side of the police-station and the short drive they'd come up.  Birds sang and whistled in the trees, and there was a rustle and a scamper that might have been squirrels.  Miss Flava found herself feeling oddly relaxed.
Playfair strode across the car-park and examined the door in the side of the building.
"Locked," he said, with some satisfaction.  "Though I think I can probably get it open if you've got a credit card...?"
"No, Playfair," said Miss Flava.  "Let's go round to the front desk and introduce ourselves.  You're not here for an inspection, we're here to solve a murder."
Playfair looked a little disappointed, but fell into step alongside Miss Flava as they walked round the building to the front door.  His gaze constantly swept the path, the side of the building, and the fence that separated the drive from the road, but didn't find anything else to comment on.  The front doors opened with a squeak, and Playfair rang the bell on the counter several times with the flat of his hand.  The officer who'd been stood at the front desk had to wait, with his mouth open, until the ringing died away.
"I'm right here, Sir," he said, his voice indicating disapproval.  "There was no need to ring the bell, was there?"
Miss Flava cringed inwardly.  Telling Playfair off might have worked, but asking him to agree with the telling off was an invitation to an argument.
"I was testing it to see if it worked," said Playfair.  "I know what you provincial lot are like, you put a dummy bell on the counter and then all go off down the pub for lunch, and lunch ends slightly after your shift."
"I wasn't at the pub though," said the officer, with what Miss Flava felt was commendable patience.
"And the bell worked, so there's two surprises in two minutes," said Playfair.
"What can I help you with?"
"Detective Inspector Playfair," said Playfair, producing his Oyster card from his pocket and looking at it as though it had deliberately become the wrong card.
"Now him I can't help you with," said the officer.  "You'll have to sort that out yourself."
"No," said Miss Flava while Playfair sorted the contents of his pockets onto the counter.  'He is DI Playfair, and I'm Miss Flava."  Her warrant card appeared like magic, while Playfair had only managed to find string and, by the looks of things, sealing wax.
"Oh," said the man behind the counter, his face visibly falling.  "Bugger."

Janus day

Jermander walked towards the Singleton Quad not really paying attention to the things around him.  He knew most of the buildings on the way, and they were predominantly lecture halls and administrative buildings, so there wasn't very much activity either inside or outside of them.  He automatically detoured away from the Dragonlair, where Gorillamumps's Chancellor lived, but everyone did that.  The Chancellor was much-rumoured, much-feared, and never seen.  He skirted a small cluster of Mushroom Pups, the young of the Fungi from Yuggoth.  They smelled strange to him, a kind of chemical, preservative odour that made him think of embalming fluid gone somehow wrong, and when he was a bat they had a completely different shape in sonar than they did to his eyes.  They were otherwise popular though, as they always had the latest versions of the latest gadgets.  Sometimes ahead of the shops.  Finally he felt the ground vibrating through his feet and knew that the Left-aligned Ancients of MuMu were having one of their late-night chanting sessions.  He sat down to think.
Janus day.  Janus day was tomorrow, and he'd not even considered what he was going to do for it.  He had a vague memory of someone, a teacher probably, telling him that Janus day was also known as New Year's Day, but he couldn't remember which of the many New Years that the humans celebrated it was.  He rather hoped it was the one with the colourful paper dragons and fireworks as it was very easy to find prey on that one, but he had a feeling it was one of the duller ones instead.  For the undead, and the students at Gorillamumps, Janus day was something else entirely.
On Janus day lots of the portals and doorways between worlds opened.  Exactly which ones opened depended on the year, or more precisely, the Earth's location relative to everything else.  There were some that always opened: the portals to the Astral Realm were hard to keep closed at the best of times and impossible on Janus Day, and the Elemental and Astrological Houses were just as keen.  Some hardly ever opened: the portal to the Minion Realm opened once every thirty years and so the Minion Market only happened that frequently too, but equally the doorway to the Throne of Elder Things only opened once every fifty-thousand years and no-one really wanted to be around when that next happened.  The problem was never so much things coming through, as being able to push things back, and fifty-thousand years was a long time to improvise a prison for.  They still had another twenty-thousand years to wait before they had a chance to push all the humans back to where they came from, after all.
Normally Jermander liked to celebrate Janus day by hopping up to the fourth dimension and meeting up with his extended family; in the fourth dimension they could all travel just a short distance from anywhere in the world and meet up, making it very convenient.  Sometimes he and his cousins would pop over to the Elemental realms and borrow a couple of Elemental Pets to let loose in the houses of enemies and friends as a little Janus day prank, and sometimes everyone would just drink heavily until closing hour, and then they'd try and remember the way home.  Someone would always get lost and end up on the wrong continent, and Jermander looked forwards to the letters from home telling him who'd done it this time and how long it had taken them to get back.
This year was his first at Gorillamumps though, and he really wanted to do something that would let the campus know that Jermander was here, that he was someone to keep an eye on, that he was going places.  The Blistermas Herpes prank was a good start, but he couldn't stand out in the open and claim that one, he'd have to let people work it out for themselves, and although underground praise was good, it wasn't enough.  What could he do for Janus-day that would be remembered for years to come?
Still musing he turned himself into a bat, and felt dizzy for a few moments.  Thankfully, this time it wore off, and he fluttered up to the eaves of the dormitory of the Left-aligned Ancients of MuMu and listened in to their conversation.
"...the cobordism of souls necessarily requires an unbarrelled space and a pointed group," said a deep, resonant voice.  There was a noise like the tapping of a wooden stick on paper.  "In fact, the homological integral over seven fractal dimensions doesn't exist unless the group is pointed."
"Are you really integrating with respect to a Solomonic Seal?" asked another voice, which though just as deep had feminine qualities.  "Is that completely justified?"
Hah! thought Jermander.  I should totally find a Solomonic Seal and let that loose on the campus!
A moment later he fluttered down from his perch in the eaves and transformed back into himself on the lawn.  As usual, his clothes transformed back with him but in piles on the ground, and he had to hurriedly dress himself before anyone looked out of a window and saw him.  But that was it, that was what he could do for Janus day.  Go the Astrological Houses and 'borrow' Taurus for the day and leave him on campus while he went drinking!

Knowing what to ask

"Did you see all those tortoise shells?" said Miss Flava as they drove away.  Calamity, sat on the back seat, barked now and then, mud still sticking to her nose.
"Yes," said Playfair.  "But Bartle barely noticed them.  What did you say he was?"
"A Reverend," said Miss Flava.  "You've got the case notes already, you only just read them!  You're... in fact, you're sitting on them now!"
"Oh really?"  Playfair didn't sound interested, but he did pull the notes out from underneath himself, tearing them only a little in the process.  He made a show of going through the pages once again while Miss Flava peered at the road names and traffic signs and tried to work out where she was.  For a small village, Little Haversham seemed to have a lot of very short streets.
"Can you believe where that idiot has parked!" she snarled as she braked hard coming round a corner to find a midnight blue, sleek, sporty-looking car several inches out from the kerb and dangerously close to the corner.  "See, Playfair, this is what traffic wardens are for!  Stopping people doing idiotic things like this!"
"That's not enough to justify their existence," said Playfair flatly.  "The Nazis did good deeds now and then as well, you know."
"You're never comparing traffic wardens to the Nazis!"  Miss Flava braked again just so she could stare at her boss in wonderment.  "What the hell have traffic wardens ever done to you?"
"It says here that Bartle is a Reverend," said Playfair innocently, "but it doesn't tell me what church he's part of.  Did no-one think that was important?"
Miss Flava gently eased her foot back on to the accelerator and the car moved forward again.  At the cross-junction at the top of the street she finally spotted the road she was looking for: Potsdam Drive, about fifty yards the wrong way down a one-way street.  Looking for traffic, and finding that they were the only car on the road, she indicated and drove down the one-way street regardless.
"He's attached to St. Samuels," she said.  "That's the church we saw, in whose grounds the body was found.  I think it's a C of E church."
"Hmph." Playfair shuffled the papers again.  "Just because he's using a C of E church doesn't mean he's Anglican.  A lot of those happy-clappy places use churches that have been sold off, and you sometimes have to look pretty closely to find out just what you're walking into.  I want him checked out properly, get me some background on him."
"We could just ask him, of course," said Miss Flava.  "We're in Little Haversham, I've no idea if they've heard of the internet this far outside of London."
"Fine, write it down as a question for later, then," said Playfair.  "By the way, you're going the wrong way on a one-way street."
"Not any more," said Miss Flava, making her turning onto Potsdam Drive.  Astonishingly, given how short all the other streets had been, this stretched into the distance.  She kept her speed low so that she could see hidden entrances; there were lots of trees and high hedges on the sides of the road.
"Also," said Playfair, and Miss Flava mentally sighed a little.  Her boss had clearly found things wrong in the investigation of the case so far, and not only would she hear about it now, she'd have to step in when he started on the luckless souls who'd not met his standards.  "Also, it says here that the body was found in the woods next to the church, not on the church grounds."
"The woods actually belong to the church," said Miss Flava.  "Though woods is perhaps a bit generous, it's more of a large copse."
"The corpse was found in the copse," said Playfair, gazing off into the distance again.  "I wonder if that's just coincidence.  You should have turned there, by the way."
Miss Flava restrained a snarl, having just spotted the sign announcing Little Haversham Police Station half-hidden behind a hedge, and too late to turn in.  She braked, and started a three-point turn.  This was not how she'd hoped to arrive.