‘Don’t you remember, sir? Gilroy’s had some stun gas stolen two attacks back. Theirs was a veterinary variety and they were trying to put the monkeys out of action so that they wouldn’t escape—’
‘And the animal rights activists alleged they were trying to get them and not the monkeys. I remember all right,’ agreed Sloan bitterly. ‘They tried to sue Gilroy’s for common assault and it was a near thing with the Bench.’
‘You never know with magistrates,’ said Crosby profoundly.
‘No,’ said Sloan. Perhaps his own lessened faith in the magistrates was just a sign that he’d been a policeman too long. ‘Tell me, do you have any other candidates for interview after Christopher Granger?’
‘There’s that Darren Clements and his little lot,’ said Crosby promptly. ‘I’ve never seen a man look more like a ferret myself. I reckon, sir, that he was after something at Gilroy’s, all right.’
‘Trouble?’ suggested Sloan. He’d never known a trouble-seeker yet who didn’t rationalize his goals and animal rights were as good as any.
‘This Cardigan thing that keeps cropping up,’ said Crosby. ‘Perhaps there was something in it for him and his pals too.’
‘As far as I can gather,’ said Sloan mildly, ‘all the trials for the Cardigan Protocol were being done on human beings.’
Crosby dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘That pompous businessman whose old mother died yesterday—’
‘Gordon Galloway.’
‘He had something funny written on his walls.’
‘Anti-animal research slogans.’
Crosby nodded. ‘Well, I saw that young lady doctor with the hair, like you said, sir.’
‘Dilys Chomel.’
‘She did have a call about Muriel Galloway,’ said Crosby, ‘within earshot of Darren Clements. She was stitching him up in Accident and Emergency when they sent for her from the ward because Mrs Galloway had died.’
Sloan stared out of the police station window for a long moment. There was a thread running through the tapestry of all the activity round about Dr Meggie’s death that seemed, wherever they looked, always to be pulling their attention back to Cardigan—or was it to Gilroy’s Pharmaceuticals?
‘And someone, Crosby,’ he said, ‘don’t forget, notified us that Muriel Galloway had been on Cardigan. A woman, switchboard thought.’ Where did Muriel Galloway come into all this, even if her death had been what Dr Dabbe had been pleased to call natural? He didn’t know yet but he would find out.
‘Don’t forget, sir, that it was a woman, too, who rang the Kinnisport Hospital switchboard about Dr Meggie not coming in yesterday morning,’ said Crosby. ‘That stuck-up telephonist there is sure about it. Mind you,’ he sniffed, ‘I reckon she’d have gone to the stake if it would have helped Dr Meggie. Proper heart throb he must have been.’
‘Some people get like that about doctors,’ said Sloan wisely. ‘Don’t ask me why. They never get crushes on policemen. Now, do you have anyone else in mind for questioning?’
‘The doctor’s daughter,’ said Crosby without hesitation. ‘Anyone could have got back to their house in Kinnisport from Willow End Farm, taken in the milk bottles or whatever and then got to the golf course in the ordinary way.’
‘Links,’ said Sloan unfairly.
‘Links, then,’ said Crosby, ‘before eight o’clock.’
‘And where would she have got the stun gas?’
‘Personal-defence canister,’ said Crosby. ‘You can buy ’em anywhere you like on the Continent. Or, since her old man was a medico, perhaps he had some chloroform.’ Suddenly Crosby contrived to look extremely worldly wise. ‘And you’re not going to ask me about motive, sir, are you?’
‘No,’ said Sloan. There had been too marked an absence of references by Bunty Meggie to ‘O My Beloved Father’ for that. ‘And should we be talking to anyone else at all, do you think?’
‘The Merry Widow,’ said Crosby without hesitation.
‘Any reason?’
‘Sorry, sir. I meant to tell you. I had a word with Puckle, Puckle and Nunnery, like you said.’
‘The deceased’s solicitors?’
‘That’s right. They said that Dr Meggie had drawn up a will written in expectation of marriage.’
‘Ah—’
‘But not signed it.’ He drew breath. ‘Sir, she might not have known whether or not he’d signed it—’
‘True.’
‘And she could have had an assignation over at Willow End Farm with the deceased.’
‘How would you account for the message by the bed?’ enquired Sloan with interest.
‘A blind,’ said Crosby largely. ‘Assignations have to be mysterious, don’t they? And that address would fool the daughter.’
‘And Mrs Glawari,’ mused Sloan, thinking aloud along quite different lines, ‘could have known Paul Meggie had a very poorly patient at Willow End Farm at Larking because he could have told her.’
‘Perhaps they always met there,’ said Crosby. ‘Romantic spot, down by the river and all that.’
There had been nothing romantic in Sloan’s eyes at the scene that had met him by the little river at Willow End Farm. Nothing at all. Just a man dead in middle age, the good car and the expensive suiting mere artefacts to an untimely end. Sloan had to admit, though, that the little clearing in the willows beside the stream would have been a good place for a secret meeting.
‘And her motive?’ he asked. ‘Dr Meggie could have told Mrs Glawari he wasn’t going to marry her after all,’ said Crosby. ‘You know, sir, laid it on heavy that he couldn’t leave his daughter on her own after all.’
‘It’s a thought, Crosby, especially with hell having no fury like a woman scorned.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that, sir, but I can’t see any Prince Charming coming for our Bunty,’ said Crosby frankly. ‘Not with those legs.’
‘No.’ Sloan had to concede that White Knights were likely to be thin on the ground as far as the muscular Miss Meggie was concerned.
‘And I guess the other lady wouldn’t have liked the daughter coming first.’
‘Definitely not.’ Sloan stood up to go. ‘Puts a whole new meaning on the expression femme fatale, doesn’t it, Crosby? Come on, let’s go.’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
What you want is comfort, reassurance, something to clutch at, be it but a straw. This the doctor brings you.
While Saturdays were admittedly not usually working days at Gilroy’s Pharmaceuticals—except for those who monitored the animals—this particular Saturday morning found both George Gledhill and Mike Itchen at the firm at Staple St James. Detective Inspector Sloan had been assured that it would be no trouble—positively no trouble at all—to meet him there with their side of the Cardigan Protocol reference numbers.
‘Have you got those figures from Dr Meggie’s car all right?’ Sloan asked Crosby as they approached the old mansion.
‘Copies, like you said,’ answered Crosby. ‘Forensics are still playing with the real ones.’
Sloan grunted. He wasn’t at all sure at this stage how they would be able to tell whether or not the figures had been dollied up. Or, if so, who by. But there were specialists enough in the Force who could work out anything. There were some financial frauds these days that were so clever that policemen had to go to business school to learn how to work them out. By comparison research results shouldn’t be a problem.
‘There’s only Paul Meggie’s fingerprints on them,’ Crosby assured him.
‘That’s something, I suppose,’ said Sloan in a world where very little else seemed straightforward.
‘Oh, and one thumb print of his secretary’s on the top page.’ He screwed up his face in an effort of recollection. ‘Forensics said to say there’s no sign of any of the figures having been messed about with but they’ll have another look to make sure.’
If Sloan knew Forensics they would have put it more elegantly—let alone more scientifically—than that. ‘And you�
�ve found both Muriel Galloway and Abel Granger on the list?’
‘Named with a number beside them.’ Crosby patted the parcel under his arm. ‘And some notes of how they were doing.’
‘Badly,’ said Sloan, since he wasn’t a doctor and saw no need either to mince his words or to hedge his bets.
‘All it doesn’t say,’ said Crosby, ‘is what was in that stuff he gave them.’
‘Perhaps we shall find out,’ said Sloan none too hopefully.
Both chemists were waiting for the policemen in the front entrance hall.
‘I thought we’d adjourn to the conference room,’ said George Gledhill as they clattered over the imitation classical black and white marble floor tiles. ‘No one else is using it today.’
He led the way along a downstairs corridor and into a vast room built in the Anglo-French Renaissance style. There were Doric columns in scagliola at the far end and on one of the side walls a mahogany and brass scoring board.
‘Used to be the billiard room,’ explained Gledhill.
‘Designed to keep the young gentlemen of the house away from the maids.’
‘And the maidens,’ contributed Itchen.
‘Quite so,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan austerely. ‘Now, we have here a note of Dr Meggie’s records and would like to know if the two patients who died yesterday and who were on the Cardigan Protocol had been having the test substance or the placebo.’
George Gledhill projected eagerness to help but it was Mike Itchen who unfolded the computer printout. ‘If you can tell me the numbers on Paul Meggie’s list—it’s his first series, you understand.’
Crosby ran his finger down the paper. ‘Galloway, Muriel, 4203.’
Itchen said ‘Placebo,’ and Detective Inspector Sloan wondered then why it was that the police had an anonymous telephone call about her being on the drug programme and someone saw fit to write anti-research slogans on her son’s garage door.
‘And Granger, Abel, 3940,’ read out Crosby.
‘Ah,’ said Mike Itchen. ‘Granger was on the real McCoy.’
‘They both died,’ observed Sloan drily.
‘They were both going to die anyway,’ countered Gledhill swiftly.
‘They had nothing to lose, you see,’ Itchen came in antiphonally.
‘Paul Meggie always hand-picked his candidates for any research he did. That was what made him the best man for this job,’ said the Chief Chemist.
‘Conscientious and discriminating,’ supplemented Itchen like a Greek chorus.
‘So Cardigan didn’t do Abel Granger any good, then,’ said Sloan. He was beginning to think it hadn’t done Dr Meggie any good either but that was something different. ‘And so,’ he added, rather like the converse of a theorem, ‘perhaps not having it did Muriel Galloway no harm, would you say?’
‘Does—did—Dr Meggie put anything about that in his notes?’ asked Gledhill circumspectly.
Sloan peered over Crosby’s shoulder. ‘Only that they both suffered an immediate and appreciable weight loss. Nothing more.’
Gledhill nodded sagely. ‘That would help in heart failure, of course. Always does.’
‘Less work for the heart to do,’ chimed in Itchen, almost on cue.
‘You understand, Inspector, that we should have liked a little more positive feedback from Dr Meggie than that.’ The Chief Chemist leaned back in his chair. ‘Here at Gilroy’s we’re at the leading edge of medical research.’
‘I appreciate that,’ said Sloan, unmoved. As far as he was concerned he was at the cutting edge of a search for a murderer and in his view edges didn’t come more cutting than that.
‘Now, we’d be all right,’ lamented Gledhill, ‘if we concentrated only on late-stage medicines.’
‘Drugs for the dying, you mean?’ asked Crosby suddenly coming to life.
‘No, no.’ Gledhill smiled thinly. ‘Late-stage medicines are where nearly all of the groundwork has already been done and the efficacy proven.’
‘Sometimes,’ volunteered Itchen, ‘they call them “me too” drugs.’
‘Riding on someone else’s research when the patent’s expired,’ explained Gledhill, ‘or taking out a licence.’
‘Not Gilroy’s, though?’ said Sloan, registering the fact that the firm wished to be considered as pure as driven snow.
‘Not Gilroy’s,’ said Gledhill firmly.
‘Here,’ declared Itchen, ‘we only do pure chemistry.’
‘And original research,’ chimed in George Gledhill. ‘We don’t go in for generic competition at all.’
‘And,’ said Sloan gently, ‘are you going to tell me the active ingredients of Cardigan now or are we going to have to get it analysed ourselves?’
‘We’ll tell you,’ said Gledhill without hesitation. ‘No problem there.’
‘It’s mainly an alkaloid from an Argentinian plant of the family Rutaceae called fagarine, which we’re combining with one of the angiotension converting enzyme inhibitors,’ reeled off Itchen.
If he was hoping to blind the two policemen with science he had failed. Crosby looked bored and Sloan had had that manoeuvre tried on him before by even cleverer people than these two.
‘We’re hoping that it will aid atrial fibrillation,’ added Gledhill, ‘but it’s early days still—’
Sloan’s mother, a great churchwoman in her day, always insisted that to the pure all things were pure. Sloan wasn’t at all sure that Gilroy’s Pharmaceuticals—pure scientists that they might be—came into that category. It wasn’t that reservation, though, that stopped him leaving Gledhill and Itchen the copy of Dr Meggie’s trials results when they asked him to.
It was the smell of fear caught by his fine-tuned detective nostrils.
It wasn’t Saturday that was different for Mrs Hannah Glawari. It was morning. Her toilette was a lengthy affair and it was apparent that the arrival of two policemen had interrupted it. She had a vaguely dishevelled air about her as she showed them into the parlour.
She essayed an apologetic smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s a little early for me, officer.’
‘We’re sorry to trouble you, madam, but there are one or two points we’d like to clear up.’
While Mrs Glawari was clearly not naive enough to believe this, she entered into the spirit of polite enquiry. ‘Of course,’ she murmured. ‘Do sit down.’
‘As you know,’ began Sloan, ‘we’re looking into the death of Dr Paul Meggie.’ He didn’t know why ‘looking into’ seemed so much more anodyne than ‘investigating’ but it did.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Mrs Glawari with a certain emphasis not lost on Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘What is it exactly that you want to know?’
‘Whether you have a car—’
‘A little runabout, Inspector.’
‘And whether you know the spot where Dr Meggie was found.’
She shook her head. ‘I know,’ she said with a certain dignity, ‘that people often go to a place with happy associations when they wish to end their lives, but the more I think about it the less like Paul that seems anyway—’
‘And what we should also like,’ Sloan said, ‘is a tape-recording of your voice.’
‘My ordinary speaking voice?’ she asked a little uncertainly.
‘Just that, madam. Crosby, the tape machine, please.’
Dilys Chomel spent her Saturday morning in an agony of indecision. Dr Byville’s patient without her spleen was now going downhill rather rapidly and it was frightening to see. The house physician’s dilemma was whether or not to telephone Dr Byville and tell him so.
This would undoubtedly call down his wrath and result in scorn being heaped about her head. Unfortunately, Dr Byville was available and on call this weekend which meant she couldn’t very well ring the more approachable Dr Beaumont instead—which was a pity. That would be a breach of medical etiquette—far more dangerous to her leaving testimonial than the deaths of any number of ill patients.
Sister Pocock wasn’t a lot
of help either. She belonged to the old school which regarded all young doctors as ignorant and foolish. As far as she was concerned, if Dr Byville had said the patient was going to die, then die the patient would. She even preached to her nurses that there was no disgrace in finding a patient dead ‘as long as you don’t find them cold.’
There would be no point in looking for help or comfort from that quarter.
No, what she would do was ring Dr Friar over at Kinnisport and share her fears with him. He would understand. He’d got a dying man on his ward too. A young one, to make it worse.
‘See one, do one, teach one,’ she murmured sadly to herself as she went to ring him.
But the switchboard at St Ninian’s Hospital couldn’t locate Dr Martin Friar and by the time a disconsolate Dr Dilys Chomel had got back to the Women’s Medical Ward the patient without her spleen had died.
Detective Constable Crosby was not making a lot of headway either. He had been dispatched by Sloan to interview Darren Clements and his fellow animal rights campaigners. He had tracked the group down to a dim café near the railway station in Berebury. They were sitting in a huddle at the back, all very young and earnest.
‘Why, if it isn’t Mr Plod the Policeman!’ called out Clements, his bandaged hand well to the fore.
‘That’s enough of that,’ said Crosby.
‘No law yet against being in a café, is there?’ asked a thickset youth wearing glasses and with an open notebook before him on the table. The cleversticks of the group, decided Crosby.
‘No,’ said Crosby. ‘There’s an old one against conspiring to break the law though, or weren’t you thinking of doing that?’
‘What about the people who murder animals then?’ shrilled a girl in black tights topped by something resembling a frou-frou. ‘Aren’t they breaking the law, then?’
‘Causing unnecessary suffering is against the law,’ began Crosby, ‘to animals, that is.’ As far as he was concerned the same law should apply to humans, too—well, to policemen, anyway—but even in his short life he’d seen that it didn’t.
‘Tell that to the fox,’ hissed another girl, ‘before they blood someone with his blood.’
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