A Dead Question

by Gerald Hammond

‘I was told in no uncertain terms to leave it alone. The order came from the Assistant Chief Constable (Crime) and was conveyed by his depute. Of course I checked. My sister-in-law attends the group practice. Can you imagine the scream that would go up if we were found to be harassing such a man on no stronger grounds than a few words uttered when he’d taken a drink? And against orders? Yet Constable Dodson here is sure that the Doctor is guilty of something and I’m sure he’s right. I can feel it in my water.’

  Honey refused to contemplate anything to do with Detective Superintendent Blackhouse’s water. ‘But why me?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve checked up on young Dodson here,’ said Mr Blackhouse. ‘I’m told that he can keep his trap shut and I know that you can do the same. If I start to set up an inquiry into the Doctor, how long would it be before word got back to him, his friends and my bosses? On the other hand, you’re away from the office. You’re intelligent—’

  ‘Thank you, Sir,’ Honey said, ‘I shall treasure that remark.’

  Mr Blackhouse’s face fell into its customary expression of intolerant peevishness. ‘Don’t interrupt. And don’t you be flippant, my girl. I was going on to say that you live next door to the man, so you must be able to see his comings and goings. And you must know a lot of people who know him. You have a dog that can sniff out drugs or a dead body in the most surprising places. I can borrow Dodson from Traffic and let you have him for a month or two to do your running around – we can give it out that he’s teaching kids how to cross the road or something. You have a computer. Any facility that you want, ask me and I’ll see if I can manage it without cooking up a storm, though I’m not too optimistic about that. I’m not expecting you to make a case against him,’ the Detective Superintendent said generously. ‘Just give me an honest and reasoned opinion as to whether there’s anything to be dug up. I’ll take it from there. Do we have an understanding?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Honey said.

  ‘Good, good. Keep me posted, word of mouth only. Don’t get up. Dodson can see me out.’ The Detective Superintendent rose with an effort to his feet and stood looking down at Honey. He seemed about to say more to her but in the end he just nodded and turned away. ‘I’ll take the car, Dodson. You can come back by bus when the inspector’s finished with you.’ The room looked a little bigger after he had left it.

  *

  When Dodson returned from speeding the Superintendent on his way, he was looking dazed. ‘Come back in,’ Honey said, ‘and sit down.’ She thought that the Constable looked rather young. This, she had heard, was usually to be taken as a sign that she was getting old, but perhaps he really was young. ‘How long have you been on the Force?’ she asked.

  ‘Just under two years, Ma’am. Er, what do I call you?’

  ‘Ma’am will do. Or Mrs Laird. Or Inspector. Guv’nor, if you like. When I get to know you better, we’ll see.’ Honey began to pack up her books. ‘I do not usually encourage grumbling among those younger than and junior to myself, but if you wish to point out that we have been landed with an impossible task and nothing whatever to undertake it with, I shall not object.’

  Dodson thought for a few seconds and then grinned suddenly. ‘I would only be repeating what you just said, Ma’am.’

  ‘True. You may not know it, but you have just passed your first test. In a minute I’m going to go into the sitting room and put my feet up. Doctor’s orders, but I shall also occupy the time with a little thinking. I’ll organise some lunch shortly. Meantime, you can use my computer – you can use a computer?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘Use it to write out a statement, as you told it just now but including every last detail that you can think of. We’ll build our files in this computer and keep nothing on paper for the moment. First, let’s think. You say the Doctor had been drinking but was in control of himself?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘But the drink had had some effect on him?’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’

  ‘What effect?’ Dodson looked blank. ‘Drink takes people different ways. Was he happy? Sleepy? Aggressive? Giggly? Lachrymose? That means tearful,’ she added.

  Dodson looked insulted. ‘I do know what lachrymose means, Ma’am. It comes from the Latin for tears. But I don’t think that he was any of those. His colour was up but he was quite steady on his feet. I’ve never heard his voice at any other time but he didn’t sound as if he was having any difficulty with his words. He just looked like a man who’d lowered his guard because he was relaxing with a dram.’

  Honey looked at him for a few seconds but he accepted her regard passively, without fidgeting. ‘You didn’t have much to go on. The man came to the door with a glass in his hand and said a few words. You only had a few seconds of his body language and his tone of voice to go by.’

  ‘I heard him say plenty in the car and in the station.’

  ‘But by then his mood would have changed and so would your perception of him. You’re sure that his first mood was not a joking one?’

  ‘Ah!’ Dodson caught up. ‘You mean, was he in the sort of mood that when he opened the door and saw two coppers there his impulse was to say, “They’ve come to take me away, ha-ha,” meaning it as a joke. That’s what you mean?’

  Honey tried not to lose patience. She reminded herself that Dodson had newly come from Traffic. He was a Woodentop. ‘That’s just what I mean. Think about it. If you’d stopped him when he was driving and he said, “It’s a fair cop” in that tone of voice, would you have thought that he was joking? Or that he was in fear of the breathalyser? Think carefully. It’s important.’

  ‘I can see that, Ma’am.’ Dodson thought about it. ‘No, Inspector. Definitely not joking. He was surprised and for a moment he was horrified. He spoke without thinking, but it wasn’t a joke.’

  ‘And he hinted at prison? That suggests something serious. Any first offence short of GBH only nets you probation and community service these days, provided that you make enough of a show of contrition. But we shouldn’t lean too heavily on that,’ Honey said. ‘He may have known that he was exaggerating. Or it may have to do with something that’s no longer illegal – I don’t suppose that he keeps pace with changes in the law. Now think. It was when your partner referred to the Doctor’s wife that he suddenly realised that you didn’t know what he had been talking about?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘That needn’t be significant. But Doctor McGordon’s wife left him a year ago. She is or was a stout blonde woman – I use the past tense not because I think she’s dead, although it’s a possibility that we shouldn’t forget, but because she may have managed to take some weight off. I never knew the McGordons but I suddenly stopped seeing her around and the word among the neighbours was that she had walked out after a disagreement and gone to her sister in Canada.’

  Dodson registered enlightenment. ‘Oh my God! If he’d killed her, that would explain his fear; and his relief when my partner asked if we should tell his wife. It told him how little we knew.’

  ‘That’s so,’ Honey said. ‘But don’t get too hung up on that idea. There are other explanations.’

  *

  Honey had the nap on which those who watched over her – her nannies, she often called them when she was out of patience with being mothered – were wont to insist. It had been her custom to take a light lunch, little more than a snack in a crusty roll, but in view of her condition June insisted on serving a proper meal of a thin soup, cold meat with three vegetables and a syrup tart. Dodson, who ate with her, could hardly be fobbed off with less and seemed to feel that he had struck lucky. The meat was venison, the healthiest of meats; Honey’s father had sent them a haunch. Dodson little knew that Honey’s real fancy would have been for a pickled herring with peanut butter and a pomegranate, but she knew that any such eccentric desire would have triggered endless argument, followed by searches for those and other exotic and out-of-season foods.

  Over lunch Honey studied, approved a
nd later shredded a printout of Dodson’s report. ‘It’s quite possible,’ she said, ‘that whatever the Doctor has on his conscience is something quite unrelated to his profession; a hit-and-run, perhaps. In fact, that’s quite a possibility and we’d better keep it in mind. One can’t visualise a doctor driving a getaway car. A deliberate venture into crime would seem out of character, but a hit-and-run would be quite on the cards. But I think our only possible modus operandi will be to consider what temptations surround a practising medic and we’ll try to eliminate them one by one. Unless you have any better ideas?’

  Dodson looked blank. Apparently the idea that he might be expected to think and even to come up with original thoughts was a new one to him and not one that was encouraged in Traffic. ‘No Ma’am. Except perhaps to trawl through unsolved crimes, looking for one that might fit. There’s murder of his patients for gain, Shipman-style.’

  ‘And maybe practising euthanasia.’

  Dodson had initially been terrified of Honey. She was not only his senior but she was also a woman; and not only that but she was beautiful, high ranking and blessed with the special glow by being pregnant. These factors added up to an intimidating figure. The discovery that she was both considerate and possessed of a sense of humour had gone a long way towards relaxing him. ‘Drugs,’ he added. ‘And abortions.’

  ‘I doubt if abortions are a very profitable sideline, in the present state of the law, but we’ll keep them in mind. And bearing false witness in a claim for compensation against an employer or an insurance company.’

  ‘Carrying on with female patients,’ Dodson said.

  ‘That’s very good. Make a list and leave it on the computer and we can both add to it as we think of things.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am.’ There was a silence as each tried to imagine other temptations to which a doctor might be exposed. Dodson broke it. ‘After that, is there anything else that I could be getting on with?’ he asked.

  Honey stopped thinking about doctors’ temptations and gave way to one of her own. Pippa, the Labrador, needed walking. June was just starting her half-day and would be going out to meet her boyfriend. Honey, now that she was carrying an extra person around with her, was much less enamoured of walking than usual. Her gynaecologist, who had at first urged her to carry on as normal, had then ordered her to bed during the period in which her foetus was believed to be in danger and had at last allowed her to resume real life but taking it easy, with plenty of rest and no periods of stress.

  ‘You’ll be visiting here quite a lot over the coming period,’ she said. ‘We don’t want people to start thinking I’ve taken a lover.’ (Dodson blushed and looked away.) ‘You could be the dog-walker while I’m still carrying this bump around. If you go past Doctor McGordon’s house, there’s a lane goes into the farmland. You could walk up past the back of his garden. Let Pippa sniff around a bit. She has a talent for finding dead bodies, although the only candidate for that particular category disappeared many moons ago. You can do that?’

  Dodson jumped to his feet. ‘Of course, Mrs Laird.’

  ‘Her lead’s hanging in the hall.’

  *

  June was in a hurry to clear the dining room and get away. Honey paused in the study to add ‘Baby-trafficking’ to the list of temptations and then settled in the sitting room with her feet up, thinking. She dozed for a few minutes. When she snapped awake, the next step was clear in her mind. She only had to reach out her hand to pick up the cordless telephone extension. She keyed in the number from memory and held the phone several inches from her ear.

  The phone was answered immediately with a reiteration of that number in a high and penetrating female voice. Honey flinched but persevered. Kate Ingliston was the most garrulous woman for miles around and with the loudest voice, but she lived opposite to Dr McGordon and she always knew all about everybody. On the other hand she had a heart of gold, Honey kept telling herself.

  Honey submitted to the beginnings of an inquisition about the progress of her pregnancy. (Was there no woman, she wondered, who could accept the fact of her condition without wanting a kick by kick account of it? And no man who wouldn’t make a bolt for the fresh air when offered any such insight?) When she managed to seize on a break in the flow, she said, ‘But why don’t you come over for a cup of tea? It seems ages since we had a good gossip.’

  ‘I’ll be over just as soon as I’ve finished this letter to Gwen in Cleveland because I must get it away today so that it’ll reach her before she goes on holiday.’ This was the shortest sentence that Honey could remember hearing her utter. ‘She’s going on a cruise to Mexico and through the Panama Canal and she wanted to know about what tours to take and so on, because you’ll remember that Phil and I did that cruise a few years ago and some of the side-trips are marvellous but some are the absolute pits and you can get stuck at a mosquito-infested roadside for hours waiting for a coach because the train has derailed or something.’

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ Honey said. On her way to the kitchen she detoured into the study and added ‘Malpractice’ to the list that Dodson had begun. She was not quite sure what malpractice might comprise. She rather thought that it might be one of those omnibus words designed to encapsulate anything otherwise missed. She would look it up later.

  What else might a doctor be tempted – or bribed – to do? She thought that Munchausen By Proxy Syndrome was a predominately female aberration. But serial killing? Bodkin Adams and Harold Shipman sprang to mind – and wasn’t there some reason to believe that Jack the Ripper had been a doctor? – but there could be many, many more lurking unrecognised and unsuspected in the dark corridors of murder, simply because the odds are stacked in favour of a murderous physician, who has the knowledge, the means and the privilege of writing death certificates. It came to her that doctors were often required to give evidence in cases of accident or injury. A few seconds of consideration satisfied her that this could be a fertile field. She put ‘Bearing false witness’ on the list.

  Chapter Three

  Honey had expected that anyone as verbose in speech as Kate Ingliston would require more than average time to write a letter, but it seemed either that her letter must already have been near completion or else that the lure of a good gossip outweighed the ‘scribbler’s itch’. Honey placed her tape recorder on the shelf below the coffee table and she had hardly carried a tray laden with the best china, the teapot, sugar, milk and a plate of sweet biscuits before the lady was at the door. Honey glanced quickly around. The sitting room, which was decorated in muted tones, the strong colours being imported with the furniture and pictures, looked immaculate. She had no wish to come second best in the house keeping stakes. She switched on the tape and went to admit her guest.

  Kate was thin with brown hair that arranged itself in tight curls. Any pretence at beauty that she might have had was spoiled by an oversized nose. A sensible person so burdened would have made a joke of it but Kate was sensitive on the subject of noses. She had developed a knack of arranging herself so that the apparent size of her nose was at a minimum and the subject was best avoided altogether whenever she was present. Unfortunately, as Honey had discovered, there were many synonyms for nose and they seemed to leap forward, pleading to be used, whenever Kate was present. Kate’s everyday clothes came from the medium price range but were so hastily chosen in colour, cut and style that Honey longed for an excuse to take her in hand. Honey was always saddened that such a good accent should be allied to such a strident voice. During the week, Kate was a makeover waiting to happen.

  On most weekends, the caterpillar became a butterfly as she and her husband sent the two children to stay with an unsuspecting grandmother and left for one of the more luxurious country hotels. Among their friends, they made no secret of the fact that they would be joined by one or more other couples for a weekend of golf and sex. For those occasions, Kate would be made up with great care and dressed in the latest and best; general opinion was that she put herself in
the hands of an image specialist to choose her party wear and design her make-up. Honey could only suppose that, on those occasions, Kate had the sense to speak little if at all. It was hard to imagine the most dedicated lover remaining inflamed with passion while being battered by that voice.

  As soon as they were settled in the sitting room, Kate returned to her queries about the state of health of Honey and her foetus, interspersing the replies with stories from one or other of her own pregnancies. Honey had been enjoying the process and looking forward to the moment of birth, but she was beginning to regret ever having set foot on that road. She was, however, soon offered the chance to turn the conversation in the direction that she wanted it to take.

  ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, not quite truthfully, ‘I get very bored. Of course, your house has a better outlook than mine does. This room only looks across the street to a house that’s empty all day. You look over Dr McGordon’s garden and past it to all the hills.’

  ‘It’s a nice view,’ Kate agreed, ‘and I can look at it for long enough, especially in the morning when I’m looking at the sunlit side of things. There’s always something happening even if it’s only a couple of rabbits having it off, which I must admit doesn’t take them very long. But you must have the same view from the back of this house.’

  ‘I only have the kitchen, the dining room, a bathroom and one bedroom facing that way. And you look over the Doctor’s garden, which always seems to have something in flower. We only have one tiny room facing that way.’

  Kate made a face dismissive of all species of flora. ‘But flowers never seem to do anything very much, I mean I know that in fact they’re copulating like mad at certain times of the year but never when I’m looking at them and anyway I can’t see a pair of hydrangeas having it off ever being much of a turn-on, can you?’

  ‘Not a lot, no.’ Honey gave up trying to lure the conversation to where she wanted it to go and adopted more direct tactics. Kate’s conversation so often seemed to gravitate towards sex. ‘You used to be pally with Mrs McGordon, didn’t you. Wasn’t she the gardener in that family?’