Who's sorry now?

this funeral so delayed? Didn’t the victim die quite a long time ago?”
    ”Yes, but his mother had recently moved and had lost track of which box the deeds to the two lots were stored in. Poor Edwin has been on ice at a funeral home.”
    ”Poor guy. Why are both of us going?”
    ”Because I need to be supportive of his mother and you need to eavesdrop at the grave site and later at Mrs. McBride’s house to listen to what his friends are saying.”
    The funeral was well attended by his old friends. Dennis, the closest to Edwin, brought along his oldest son. The only one missing was Mario, which wasn’t a surprise.
    Howard wondered why, since Edwin had served in the Great War, there wasn’t a military presence. He should have had at least six men in Army uniforms in attendance, even if they couldn’t fire a final salute as the coffin was lowered. He supposed Mrs. McBride hadn’t known she could have sent him off that way.
    Mrs. McBride managed to hold herself together well with only a few tears when she threw a handful of dirt on the coffin. Howard filled the back of his car with the flowers to take back to the house.
    Mrs. McBride had already made friends with her new neighbors and two women were there with casseroles, bread and butter, salads, and desserts. They left as the funeral party crammed into the small house. In spite of being in suits instead of uniforms, Walker and Parker still looked like The Law. While Walker set out the flowers on tables and the fireplace mantel, Parker moved around the room introducing himself. After dessert was finished and Dennis’s wife was helping Mrs. McBride put away the leftovers, Walker and Parker made their farewells to Mrs. McBride.
    When they were back in the car, Walker asked Parker if he’d heard anything interesting.
    ”I don’t know if it’s relevant, but that tall Swede Dennis was telling one of the others that he’d gone to Voorburg to visit McBride some months earlier. McBride had written to him, asking him to visit him at the train station.”
    ”Well, well. He didn’t say anything to me about that,” Howard replied. ”But I hadn’t thought to ask when they last met in person.”
    ”Dennis was saying how bad he felt for Edwin. Wearing old clothes, aging so much. He took Edwin to lunch at Mabel’s and bought him a good meal and paid for it. He even forced a couple of dollars on him to buy some new shirts. Edwin seemed happy to be in Voorburg and had made some good friends.”
    Howard thought about this for a while. ”I wonder if Edwin also mentioned an enemy? He probably didn’t even know he had one and wouldn’t have mentioned it anyway.”
    Deputy Parker said, ”I was a little surprised to hear about Dennis visiting. But I think it just means that Dennis was a loyal friend.”
    ”I think you’re right,” Howard said.
    After a weekend of soliciting more signatures for the mail project, Robert dropped in at the jail Monday with his petition and asked the chief of police, ”Want to sign this?”
    ”I sure do.” He wrote his name clearly so it would be legible.
    ”Arnold Wood is every bit as nasty as you said,” Robert declared. ”When I suggested Susan Gasset as the postmaster—or postmistress—he went haywire. So many men are out of work, he said, that the job should go to a man.
    ”I stomped on him by saying it’s the men who have all run off to greener fields, not the women, who stay home, cook, and take care of the children. Winchel backed me up and told Wood he could easily be replaced on the town council because of his rudeness. Wood blundered out saying what bastards we all are.”
    ”That doesn’t surprise me in the least. Poor Serafina.”
    ”Who is Serafina?”
    ”Arnold’s downtrodden wife. Portuguese, I think. At least she’s from Massachusetts and there are a lot of Portuguese there. In spite of the fact that wheat and corn flour ran short because of drought in the Midwest, she found a source in South Carolina for rice flour and barley flour, wherever that’s grown. While Arnold and his fat kid are sprawled out listening to the radio, she’s in the kitchen making rolls that she takes to Mr. Bradley, the greengrocer. Though why he’s called ‘green’ I have no idea. He sells all sorts of things, from bread to toothpaste and postage stamps. He can only sell her rolls if he puts a bit of icing on them, they’re so bland. Or so he says. Serafina must have been a beauty in her day. She’s heavy now, but she