by Colin Watson
“Do you reckon old Meadow was knocked off?”
Purbright looked up. His expression was one of agreeable surprise, almost of gratitude.
“Ah, I knew if I waited long enough I wouldn’t be left alone in that lunatic surmise. You’ve come to join me, have you, Sid?”
Guessing that he had fortuitously said the right thing, the sergeant gave a self-congratulatory grin and gazed at his feet.
“Come on and sit down, then. Let’s see what we can make of it all. If anything.”
Purbright shifted his chair along a little and collected into a tidy group the reports and notes that lay on his desk.
“Tell you what,” he went on. “You can be a stand-in for the Chief Constable. He’s the one I ought to be talking to, but I’ve neither the heart nor the nerve at the moment. By the way, do you know where Bill Malley is?”
“He went over to the hospital about half an hour ago. I believe he’s seeing the deputy coroner as well.”
“Good. That means they’ll be getting on with the post-mortem. Everything is going to depend on that. We’ve nothing else. Not a damned thing. So if Heineman doesn’t manage to turn anything up, we can all go home.”
“You said Dr Bruce thought it was a natural death. He did examine him, didn’t he?”
“As far as he could in the circumstances. He was only giving an opinion. Incidentally, do you know anything about Bruce?”
“Not a lot. He hasn’t been here very long.”
“How long?”
“About eighteen months, two years. They reckon he’s a bit of a live wire. From what I hear, he’s been doing all the donkey work.”
“I wonder,” said Purbright, ruminatively, “if donkeys ever kick.”
“That’s mules.”
The inspector shook his head.
“I don’t know—the whole trouble is that the very idea of a respectable doctor being cunningly assassinated in his own surgery is so bloody far-fetched that one can’t help being fascinated by it. The sensible thing is to reject it out of hand. Damn it all, there isn’t any evidence. None at all. And yet that only makes the notion more attractive, somehow. You see now, don’t you, why I don’t dare discuss this with the chief? He’d think I’d blown a gasket.”
“He wouldn’t be very sympathetic,” Love agreed.
While lighting a cigarette, Purbright glanced at one of the sheets before him.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” he said, “if only there were somebody who by any stretch of imagination qualified as a suspect. But just look at this miserable bloody list. They’re the only people who were anywhere near the man at the time.
“Bruce, the overworked assistant partner. Disliked Meadow, certainly. He’d have had access to poisons and the knowledge to use one that would produce symptoms consistent with a fatal onset of Meadow’s blood pressure trouble. What does he gain, though? Junior partners aren’t heirs apparent; he doesn’t automatically take over the practice. Anyway, there’s the hell of a long gap between dislike, or even strong resentment, and the sort of hatred that makes people murder one another.”
“Perhaps,” Love suggested, “he was after the old man’s missus. Doctors are devils for that sort of caper.”
Purbright regarded him sternly for a moment. “Have you met Mrs Meadow?”
The sergeant shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
“There are oddities enough in this business, Sid, without your adding to them. However, now that you’ve mentioned the wife, I’m reminded that we know very little about the domestic background. Mrs Meadow can’t be ruled out, strictly speaking, any more than Bruce can. She’s part of the clutter, if you see what I mean. She had opportunity, probably knowledge and means. Temperament?—possibly. Motive?—we’ve no idea, and we’re not likely to find out with her help.
“The receptionist, Pauline Sutton. Out. I think we’re safe there, at any rate. Then there were three patients who actually consulted Meadow, also a youngish girl who came and went without seeing him, a traveller from some pharmaceutical firm who was waiting to see him but only went into his room when the doctor was either dead already or as near as dammit, and finally our venerable friend, Miss Teatime.”
“Yes, what was she after?” asked Love.
“She didn’t confide in me, but I’d guess that she intended to tackle Meadow about his remarks at the Winge inquest. He hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to boost the herb trade.”
“It’s just as well for her,” Love said, “that she didn’t get in to see him before he kicked the bucket.”
“Decidedly. The same applies to the rep, for that matter—what’s-his-name, Brennan.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No, but I rang him last night at the Roebuck and told him he was likely to be called as a witness at the inquest. He promised to keep himself available.”
“When is the inquest, by the way?”
“That’s what I’m waiting to hear now. I assume Malley will have fixed it with Thompson. Right, where were we?” Purbright looked again at his file.
“The patients,” Love reminded him.
“Yes, the three who actually went into the consulting room. The last three people to see Meadow alive. One private. Two National Health. Any significant distinction there, Sid, in regard to homicidal tendencies? One man, two women. There you are—what a chance for applied psychology. You’ve talked with Leadbetter. You’ve talked with mother Grope. I’ve talked with Mrs McCreavy, and I make you a present of the information that she’d have neither the guile nor the guts to kill a sick chicken. Right, then. You’ve got the facts. Spot the murderer. I pass.”
Love watched Purbright throw himself back in his chair and draw a final desperate mouthful of smoke from his cigarette before reaching out and angrily stubbing it in the ashtray.
“Of course, it could be,” Love ventured, with the air of advancing a novel and utterly comforting proposition, “that Dr Meadow died of natural causes after all. I mean... well, I only asked about the other because you seemed worried.”
Purbright stared, opened his mouth and closed it again, scowled, then at last relaxed into a posture of weary acceptance.
“Yes, you’re perfectly right. This is just so much pointless, time-wasting speculation. Sheer self-indulgence on my part. It comes to something when we start trying to catch a criminal before we know there’s been a crime.”
“I expect you had a hunch,” suggested the sergeant, kindly. Hunches, his reading of fiction informed him, were perfectly permissible excuses for queer behaviour in the upper ranks.
“That’s nothing but another name for pre-judging an issue,” Purbright retorted, ungratefully. “The only sensible course now is to wait for the post-mortem report.”
“What happens if it’s negative?”
“It won’t be.”
Purbright suddenly slapped the desk with his hand.
“Look, Sid—we’ve been messed about for weeks by citizens with the staggers who attack women. We don’t know how many, probably we never shall know. The only one we’ve nailed—or who nailed himself, rather—had been getting a certain drug from Meadow. Another man on the drug was known to be acting along similar lines, if not so violently. But now, to use your phrase, he’s cooled off. Harper confirms that, by the way. And why the change? Obvious. Meadow stopped the drug. Who was it who actually caught and must have recognized one of these Crab characters? Meadow. Why did he keep quiet? Again I think the reason’s obvious. It was one of his own patients—and probably an influential one, at that. Leadbetter? He lives just off Heston Lane, near where the Sweeting girl was attacked. I know Perce Leadbetter. It’s only by the grace of God and relatives that he hasn’t got a record for indecent assault. I didn’t tell you that when I asked you to see him, but I thought you knew. And it’s a hundred to one that Perce’s reason for turning up at Meadow’s surgery last night was to ask for another supply of pep pills.”
“Pep pills?” Love clearly considered such th
ings alien to respectable medical practice.
“Well, what else can they be? They certainly got old Winge’s tail wagging. And I’d like to know how many others were on Meadow’s list. Never mind that, though. What is perfectly clear is that Meadow got cold feet when Scorpe had a go at him during the inquest. He put out no more prescriptions.”
“Yes, but...”
“But what?”
“I thought Meadow was supposed to have blamed that herb stuff for what happened to Winge.”
“So he did—in public. But he didn’t believe it. If he had, he wouldn’t have stopped issuing his own prescriptions. He knew what Heineman was talking about, all right, and it scared him.”
There was a knock on the door. The head of Detective Constable Pook appeared.
“Come in, Mr Pook, come in. What have you got to tell us?”
Pook stepped carefully and quietly to the desk, ran his eye quickly over the hand-written foolscap sheet he was holding, and delivered it to Purbright with a little flourish.
“Miss Loder’s statement, sir.”
“Ah, yes.” The inspector began to read Pook’s round, painstaking script. He had that expression of calm approval which schoolmasters learn to adopt lest they discourage the thick but eager pupil.
Soon, however, the feigned interest became genuine. It livened into urgent concern. He read quickly to the end, then darted back to earlier passages, re-reading, checking.
He looked back at Love.
“You didn’t tell me this girl works at the Meadows’ place.”
The sergeant stared incredulously. “She doesn’t!”
“Oh, yes, she does. She was on her way to post some letters for Mrs Meadow when she got jumped.”
Purbright turned to Pook, on whose stiff, stern face was a faint flush of pride.
“She was quite sure, was she, that there was nothing sexual about the assault? I mean, she would know—she’s not dim or anything?”
“No, sir. Quite intelligent, I thought.”
“He just grabbed her arm”—Purbright glanced down at the report—“and shoved her into the hedge. That’s the hedge near the post box, is it?”
“Yes, sir. It runs along by the Goodacres’ front garden. It’s the tall, yellowish one, rather neglected.”
“I know.”
The inspector read aloud: “He did not do anything more to me. I was frightened and a bit scratched with being pushed into the hedge. I was lying half through it and I could not get up at first. It took me perhaps half a minute to get up. The man had gone. I had heard a car. I think it must have been the car he had been hiding behind when I came along. I picked up the letters which I had dropped. I posted them and went back to Mrs Meadow’s.”
There was a pause.
“Those letters,” Purbright said. “Did she say if any were missing?”
“No, sir.” Pook sounded a little querulous.
“Well, he must have had some reason for knocking her over, mustn’t he?”
“But surely, sir, it’s the same fellow who’s been doing this sort of thing all over the place.”
“I doubt it. This man was waiting for her. He knew where to wait—by the post box nearest her employer’s house. And he made no attempt to molest her sexually. Another thing—she says here that he’d pulled a scarf up over his face. That’s not in line with the other cases. Then there’s her description of him, such as it is...middle-aged, powerful build, movements very quick... None of the other women saw anybody like that, did they, sergeant?”
Love started, then said no—no, they hadn’t.
Purbright continued to look at him, brows raised, happier now, inviting the sergeant to share his cheerfulness.
“You see? Meadow. Always back to Meadow, always this link. And you talk about natural causes, sergeant?
He lifted the phone. “Get me Flaxborough nine-three-six-three, will you, please. I shall want to speak to a young woman called Pauline Sutton, if she is there.”
Pook silently and respectfully bobbed his farewells and tip-toed from the room. As he was closing the door behind him, he heard the inspector greet Miss Sutton with considerable geniality. Now what? Pook said bitterly to himself. He was a grudging man.
“You may remember, Pauline,” Purbright was saying, “that there was some conversation yesterday evening between you and Mr Brennan concerning letters. I was not eavesdropping, you understand, but I did overhear the odd word. Now then, something has happened which may make what you were saying very important. I want you now to repeat it to me as precisely as you can recall it...”
Chapter Sixteen
Old Dr James stood at the window of the front office of Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby, solicitors, and stared gloomily at a passing parade of cars. It was the funeral procession of Alderman Steven Winge.
After the big square hearse, canopied with flowers and driven by a long, top-hatted man with a statuesque dedication that seemed quite unconnected with the vehicle’s mechanical controls, came three black limousines. Exactly identical with one another, they bore the same family resemblance to the hearse, whose pace they emulated like obedient sons, as, curiously enough, did their drivers to the petrified personage in the lead.
Following the limousines were two or three less opulent but still fairly expensive cars. Thereafter, the mourners’ transport became progressively less splendid—presumably in ratio to the standing and expectations of the occupants—until it terminated in the regrettable presence of the travel-stained baker’s van of some third cousins from Cardiff.
Dr James shook his head. He remembered the days of plumed horses and rows of bare-headed, silent spectators.
“Poor old Steve Winge,” he said, partly to himself, partly to the two men who stood behind him. “There was a time when the whole council would turn out to see an alderman off. They’d have followed on foot. Robes. The Mace. I wonder sometimes what has happened to our sense of occasion.”
He turned round.
“Sad. Don’t you think so, Thompson?”
The deputy coroner looked up from fiddling with a key ring and said yes, he did think it was sad, funerals nowadays were little better than disposal parties.
Sergeant Malley, who unwillingly half-filled what little space had been left in the little office by a welter of Victorian lawyers’ furniture, hoped that this sort of talk would not go on much longer. The inspector, he knew, was in an oddly impatient frame of mind; he wasn’t going to relish the news that after taking a look at Meadow’s body old James had blithely signed a certificate of natural death.
“You’ll not recall,” Dr James was saying, “when Bert Amblesby took over as coroner.”
It was a safe statement. Neither Malley nor Thompson had even been born at that remote remove of time.
“His partner, Zeke Sparrow, died the following year, and, do you know, there was black crepe all the way down the High Street. Fourteen carriages. Think of that.”
“People don’t have the time any more,” said Thompson. He was thinking that he was running a bit short of that commodity himself just then.
“Time? It’s respect they lack, not time. Did you notice what was happening out there?” Dr James indicated the window with a nod of his silver-white head. “There were cars overtaking and cutting in. One actually hooted at the hearse.”
The sergeant stole a look at his watch. Strictly speaking, he was at the disposal of the deputy coroner, but Thompson seemed to lack courage to break away from the reminiscences of his elderly colleague. That was the trouble with doctors, Malley told himself. They’d cheerfully knife one another at a safe distance, but as long as an outsider was looking on they were too busy being mutually respectful to bloody breathe.
“Shocking business, young Meadow passing away like that,” observed Dr James. It was the fourth time he had made the remark since he had held a mirror that morning to the lips of the peaceful and still handsome corpse in the hospital morgue and murmured: “Gone, by Jove—not a glimmer.”
/> Dr Thompson’s sigh was a fraction too vigorous to have been prompted by sympathy, but old James did not appear to notice.
“Better than lingering after a stroke, though, some might say. I don’t know. Very difficult question. My word—what a cramped little office this is. Don’t you find it cramped, eh? I’ll bet the sergeant here does.” Unexpectedly, the old man grinned.
Malley smiled back and seized his opportunity.
“I rather think they’ll be expecting me back at Fen Street,” he said quietly to Thompson, “but there is just one thing, sir, I’d like to be clear about when I see the inspector.”
“And what is that, sergeant?”
