Nobody's Perfect

by Douglas Clark

  “What does Mrs Pallot do when she’s not cleaning the office?”

  “All sorts of things. She’s a vulgar old thing, but she fetches and carries the directors’ coffee and tea trays and washes up the glass and china in their dining-room. It’s always kept separate from the restaurant crockery. I think she also cleans the dining-room itself.”

  “Did she come up at lunchtime yesterday?”

  “No, because she knew Mr Huth wouldn’t be in in the afternoon.”

  “And at five fifteen?”

  “Yes, she came. And I sent her off because I wanted to scoot myself.” She looked up at him apologetically. “I do seem to have made a mess of things, don’t I?”

  He said, “How were you to know?” He got to his feet. “I shan’t want to see you again today. If I were you I’d go home now, get to bed early, and come in all freshened up in the morning.”

  “I’ll ask Dr Mouncer if I can go.”

  “You’ve got my permission. You won’t need his.”

  “Thank you ever so much.” She gathered her large handbag under her arm and stood up. “I do feel a bit like a lie down.”

  Masters and Hill went into the P.A.’s office.

  Masters said: “Look into the business of that cigar. Go through the stubs in the ashtray. See if they all come from the same stable. I’m looking for an odd man out. And inspect that drug bottle, too. Inside and out. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Masters left the P.A.’s office and crossed the vestibule, leaving the lifts and the single office door on his right, the washrooms on his left. He went through the swing doors into the open plan office. He asked the first girl he saw to direct him to Miss Parker. She pointed out the door to the financial secretariat: the first on the right past the swing doors he had just come through. Inside he found Miss Parker and four other typists working under her direction.

  Masters’ immediate thought was that Joan Parker was the most attractive woman he’d met in years. She was really lovely: not at all the sort of girl whose good points had to be summed up before he could decide whether she was or was not worthy of attention. She was dark, tall and slim, with a figure well enough defined to rouse his heterosexual instincts the moment he saw her. He thought nobody could ever mistake her for a boy, but he reckoned she was the sort Shakespeare must have had in mind when he wrote parts for girls-turned-boys. She had healthy brown skin and violet eyes. She was alive and acute. He rarely shook hands. Never if he could avoid it. But he found himself wanting to touch this woman. He made a point of holding out his hand. He sensed the soft strength of her fingers and wrist. Automatically he noticed that she was wearing no ring. He wondered how a woman so attractive had managed to fight off covetous males for so long. She grinned — definitely grinned — as though she guessed his thoughts. He felt foolish because of it. She was a teaser, he thought, but he reckoned she would play fair. He liked his own conclusion.

  Masters half perched on her desk. The other girls were pretending to ignore him, but he noticed they’d stopped typing and become busy in spurious but silent activity with their copy. Joan Parker looked up at him with a grin in her eyes which showed she’d noticed the silence, too.

  He said, “You’ve heard Mr Huth was found dead in his office this morning?”

  “It’s been the sole topic of conversation,” said Joan Parker gravely, her eyes still making a mockery of her attitude.

  “I’m interested in anybody who could have visited him yesterday morning.”

  “On an Association meeting day? Nobody would dare to visit A.A. on a meeting day” There was still the leg-pull in the look she gave him. He damned her eyes and looked away.

  “There’s no list of callers, and Miss Krick says she admitted nobody but Dr Mouncer. But Miss Krick was away from the office from time to time, so somebody could have called without her knowing. It is quite important that I should make sure when, and for how long, Miss Krick was absent. Some of you ought to be able to help me.”

  “Poor Kricky! She must be in a stew. We all feel very sorry for her, although she’s not really our personality of the year. Is she so prostrate she can’t give you the facts?”

  He said: “Why don’t you like her?”

  Joan Parker didn’t answer directly. She swivelled in her chair and looked at the other girls in turn, inviting them to speak.

  “She’s a cow,” said one. “Pure Jersey,” added another with a giggle. “I expect this has turned her milk sour.”

  “She’s a bit prim, you know,” said Miss Parker. “And so terribly proud of being the chairman’s PA.”

  Masters said, “She’s given me a list of her absences. One of her visits yesterday morning was to see you.”

  “That’s right. One of the financial minutes at the last board meeting was a bit of a porridge because my chief hadn’t used a brief. Her shorthand note was verbatim, and though it was a bit muddling for anybody who didn’t really understand the point being made, she should have been able to sort it out herself. But she’s so afraid of making a mistake!”

  Masters said, “That roughly equates to what she told me.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Miss Parker sarcastically.

  “Exactly when did she come?”

  Miss Parker grimaced. He thought that even when pulling a face she was attractive: as endearing as a pickle of a kid in a mess. “Now you’re asking. In the middle of the morning some time, but exactly when …” She finished with a shrug of the shoulders and a pout which meant she could help him no further.

  “It was five to ten,” said a voice behind Masters. He turned and saw a girl, wearing spectacles, who had not spoken before. She coloured under his gaze as he waited for her explanation.

  “There was a tour of the Printing and Despatch Department for some of us who’d never been round it. I was just getting ready to go when Kricky came in. I had to be on the first floor at ten.”

  Masters nodded approvingly. “How long did she stay?”

  “Don’t ask me. I went out then to get a lift.”

  “Does anybody know?”

  “I should say less than five minutes,” said Miss Parker with certainty.

  “Longer than that, worse luck,” said the girl who had called Miss Krick a cow. “She came and yapped at me for ages after she’d seen you. You went into Mr Barraclough’s office then, remember.”

  “Of course I did,” said Miss Parker, with what Masters thought was a rather forced smile at the girl. “What a little memory-box you are, Dilly.” He thought he detected a touch of annoyance in Miss Parker’s voice. She turned to him.

  “You see how easy it is to forget, Chief Inspector. Dilly is Miss Krick’s typist. She lives in here because there isn’t room in A.A.’s suite. She bashes out the non-confidential copy. There’s reams of it and Miss Krick often drops in, bearing files clutched to her matronly bosom.”

  Masters said to Dilly, “How long did she stay with you?”

  “Long enough to read through seven foolscap pages of type. She gets mad about typing mistakes, or even rubbings out, and when you’re doing a report on medical things there are so many words you don’t know how to spell you make mistakes because you get out of rhythm. Do you know how to spell diarrhoea? I always have to look it up because I’m sure its been spelt wrong in the copy. And there’s lots of other words like it.”

  Masters said, “Cheer up. I’d have the same difficulty. How long would you say it took her to proofread the seven pages? Fifteen minutes?”

  “And the rest,” said Dilly. “Don’t forget she was looking for mistakes. She didn’t find any but she was jolly careful.”

  “So if we say at least twenty minutes in all we should not be overestimating?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “There now,” said Joan Parker gaily. “We’ve solved part of your problem. Does it help?”

  “Who knows?” said Masters, standing up.

  “And if you did you wouldn’t say.” She walked across the room with him to the door
. He thought she moved like a graceful animal. He could imagine firm, unobtrusive muscles just rippling under the brown skin. He hoped he’d have an excuse for meeting her again.

  *

  “What about the cigar?”

  Hill handed Masters an envelope. “There was one of a different make. Only half smoked. You can see he stubbed it out. It looks like a stick of celery. I’ll have it analysed.”

  “And the bottle?”

  “It’s a funny thing, but this bottle’s only got Huth’s prints on it.”

  “Has it definitely been wiped?”

  “Must have been. And quite recently. The people in the factory and whoever handled it before Huth got it must have left some traces. Now there’s no sign of them, and there’s no blurred prints of Huth’s such as you’d expect if he’d been handling it for several days.”

  “I half expected it. But just to make sure I’ll ask the char if she dusted it, when I see her. If she didn’t, it shows that somebody definitely tampered with the bottle, and presumably with the drug it contained.”

  Hill said, “I don’t think they did. That’s the second point. This bottle’s never had any pills in it. I turned it upside down and swept it out with a clean camel-hair brush. D’you know what I found?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Bottles that hold pills get some of the substance rubbed off and deposited on the sides. This one’s as clean as a new pin.”

  Masters took the biggest of the easy chairs, and filled his pipe. “Well,” he said, “at least you’ve confirmed it’s murder and not suicide. Look up Dr Mouncer in the internal phone book and tell him I’d like to see him, here. Now.”

  2

  Dr Mouncer, the Medical Director, was short, thick-set and, Masters thought, aggressively well groomed. Masters put him down as in the middle forties, for though what remained of his hair was still jet black and smooth, he had quite a large bald pate. His jowls were just beginning to sag, faintly purple and suggestive of good living. He wore, like Torr, rimless spectacles, which bit deep into the bridge of his nose, giving him a hawklike ferocity. Unlike Torr, he was dressed soberly in a navy blue chalk-stripe suit with an R.A.M.C. tie. When he came into Huths’ office he had a small cigar alight in his hand. His shoes were bulled so that the toecaps gleamed like patent leather. Masters’ first impression of him was that in any field he cared to make his own, Mouncer would be a force to be reckoned with. Masters supposed that as Medical Director, Mouncer would have to be a practical as well as a theoretical doctor of some standing, with a load of business acumen to help him commercially and politically.

  Mouncer said, “I decided to keep my distance until you came to me. I’m in charge of the Company, of course, now that A.A.’s gone; but knowing how you work, I thought you would appreciate it if I didn’t interfere.” He sounded deliberately supercilious.

  Masters’ immediate thought was that here was a clever bastard. Mouncer had orientated that statement to make him feel beholden by using the word appreciate, and wrong by the subtle suggestion that the police should have approached him, not sent for him. Masters had met the trick before. Others had tried to influence him by verbal manœuvre before this. Mouncer, he thought, would have had a lot of practice. His position probably depended on his ability to influence doctors to use products which were, in some cases at least, no better than those of competitors. Masters decided to give no ground.

  “You wouldn’t have been allowed to interfere, doctor. Help, perhaps, but not interfere. I sent for you because I want some information. My sergeant will be recording our conversation. I suggest we sit down.”

  Mouncer hitched his trousers fastidiously at the knee, and then leaned back with his cigar.

  Masters said, “We’ve found a bottle marked Nutidal. Do you know how and why Mr Huth had it?”

  “Certainly. Or to be more precise, I can suggest why a Nutidal bottle could have been found here. I prescribed Nutidal for A.A. a week ago.”

  “Is it usual for a doctor who isn’t in practice to prescribe?”

  Mouncer used the handkerchief in his sleeve to polish his spectacles. He wasn’t to be rushed into any reply. Masters waited.

  “It is unusual,” Mouncer said. “However, A.A. was a special case. I’d like you to understand that he had a particularly astute mind. And though he was neither doctor nor pharmacist, it follows that, for a layman, he had an extensive knowledge of medicine, disease symptoms, drug indications and the like — learned over the years spent as a senior executive in the pharmaceutical industry. So, although I was a little concerned when I visited his office last Monday morning to hear that he was ill, I was not in the least surprised to learn that he had carried out a self-diagnosis of cystitis.”

  “Bladder trouble?”

  “A layman might call it that.” Masters thought he sounded snotty and wondered whether he was being so because he was trying to hide something, or whether he was just arrogant by nature. “A medical man would call it a urinary tract infection. It’s not the most difficult disease in the world to diagnose. A.A. would easily recognize that he had the classic symptoms of U.T.I. — frequency and dysuria.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “To you? That he was urinating more often than was his custom and he was suffering pain when doing it.”

  “Why didn’t he go to his family doctor?”

  Mouncer laid his cigar carefully in an ashtray and gently flicked the front of his waistcoat before replying. Masters wondered whether the pause was being used by the doctor to decide what answer to give or just how best to put it.

  He said at last, “I don’t know how much you’ve managed to learn about A.A.’s character in the past few hours. Probably not much. So I’ll tell you a few things about him. Above all, he was kind. But he was also a proud man. He would be sympathetic with anybody who was ill and, of course, his life’s work was devoted to providing drugs to alleviate sickness. But he regarded any form of illness in himself as a weakness. That’s point one to remember. A.A. also had a streak of pure Victorianism in him. He was very correct in company. He had a sense of humour, but it had to be clever verbal wit to interest him. A dirty story left him unmoved — even embarrassed.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He always gave me the impression that when he heard a vulgar story he thought it was being told against himself.”

  “Can you explain that attitude?”

  “I couldn’t begin to. His Victorianism worked in another way, too. I’m positive that subconsciously he would regard a urinary tract infection as the sort of disease that men like him couldn’t possibly contract. He was wrong, of course, because no disease is a respecter of persons, but I’m convinced that was the reason behind his visit to me. Mention of his own waterworks to a family doctor would be taboo. So he consulted me — because he could tell me what was wrong, and so he didn’t have to undergo an examination. That’s point two. Do you find it hard to believe?”

  Masters shook his head and said, “I met a case like this in the mass a fortnight ago.”

  “In the mass?”

  “I was invited to present the prizes at a boys’ school. It was a new building with all the latest gadgets laid on. The headmaster told me that the kids wouldn’t use the showers at the end of the gym. Frightened to undress in public, he said. Same mentality as Huth, I suppose.”

  “Exactly. Some small children get these complexes and then grow out of them. A.A. never seemed to have done so.”

  Masters was trying to square this information with Miss Krick’s story of occasional seduction. He couldn’t manage it. He said to Mouncer, “What did you do about his complaint?”

  “What any responsible medical man in my place would have done. First of all I tried to persuade him to visit his own physician, and when I saw I was getting nowhere, insisted on having a urine specimen for investigation.”

  “Why?”

  “Because frequency and dysuria can be signs of quite a number of diseases
under the group-heading of urinary tract infections. Some are mild, but they can lead to others which, if not treated properly, may in turn result in severe damage to the kidneys. You may have heard of pyelonephritis?”

  Masters nodded. Mouncer was beginning to sound a bit more human now he was on medical topics. He went on, “I have a small laboratory here, so it’s an easy matter to test a sample with the standard sensitivity discs. But as it take twenty-four hours to do the test fully, I immediately put him on a course of our own urinary antiseptic, Nutidal. I could have changed later if the need arose. In the event, Nutidal discs were effective against whatever pathogens were bothering him. I suspect they were common E. coli bugs, so I confirmed the course of Nutidal next day.”

  “Did you give him the drug from your own stock?”

  “I don’t keep a stock of any drugs. I know better than that. But I knew A.A. would want to avoid any rumour that he had the disease, so I ordered the bottle to be sent to me — where it would cause no comment — and handed it on to him myself in this office.”

  “How many did you give him?”

  “Fifty-six. Eight a day for a week.”

  “Taken how?”

  “Two, four times a day. After meals usually, but it’s immaterial so long as the complete course is taken. As I expected, the Nutidal cleared his symptoms in a couple of days, but I insisted, as he well knew I would, that he take all fifty-six to guard against the emergence of resistant strains of the bug.”

  “When were they due to finish?”

  “He started halfway through last Monday, so he would take four that day, eight on each of the succeeding six days, and the final four by lunchtime yesterday. I’ve not been told how, or even when, he died, but as he was alive at lunchtime yesterday, the bottle you found should be empty.”

  “I don’t know when he died either. But I know he was poisoned.”