Vicious Circle

by Douglas Clark

  “Theo, this has gone far enough. After all, she is my mother.”

  “Maggie, I declare to you that I spend most of my waking hours wondering how a woman like her could have produced a daughter as good and lovely as you. Thank heaven she was safely locked away during some of your formative years.” He lit a cigarette and then turned to Marian. “Don’t let her into your house, girl, but don’t let her see she’s got you down. Remember her type thrives on getting others at a disadvantage. Don’t let her see she’s made any impression on you.”

  “You mean I should go on taking that damned pill to her one day a week?”

  “I do, love. She’ll keep on at you as sure as houses, but you’ve cracked it now. You’ve withstood the first attack. You’re primed—or innoculated—against any further onslaughts. If you stop going she’ll think she’s got you on the run. Don’t give her the satisfaction of thinking she’s won even one inch of ground.”

  “I must say I’d made up my mind not to go there again, but if you think I should . . .”

  “Your father’s right, dear. His way of putting it is a bit graphic, but that comes of being a policeman. At first they’re taught that awful stereotyped way of reporting and then, later, when they finally revolt against it, they go too far the other way.”

  Marian laughed. “Sometimes I think daddy’s quite funny.”

  “Only sometimes?” asked the Detective Chief Superintendent in mock sorrow. “And me known throughout the division as the Permanent Hoot.”

  *

  Gwen Kisiel was not unaware of the situation. She was Adam’s sister and was very friendly with both him and Marian. Elke Carlow was in no way related to her either by marriage or by blood, and until she had married Tony Kisiel a year or two earlier, she had known little of the German woman. But the Kisiel family had grown up with not only a knowledge of her nearby presence but also with an inborn hatred of her.

  Josef Kisiel’s hatred of Elke had not carried over to her daughter, Margarethe, nor to Margarethe’s husband, Theo, with whom Josef was on amicable, if not close, terms. But he had felt a twinge of regret, nonetheless, when it became clear that his daughter-in-law’s brother, Adam, was to marry Elke’s granddaughter. He liked Marian, but he regretted the link that was being forged, however tenuous, between himself and Elke. His future grandchildren would be blood relations of her stock should Adam and Marian provide them with cousins. And that rankled. In one of his more intemperate moments he had gone so far as to voice the hope that either Gwen or Marian should not have children. Nor would he have been surprised to learn that Elke Carlow was of like mind. In fact, when he heard from Gwen of Elke’s intention to wish herself upon the young Whincaps he immediately jumped to the conclusion that her object in doing so was to break up the marriage in order to sever any existing link between herself and him and to ensure that no future bonds were forged by the birth of a further, connecting, generation. It took Gwen a long time to explain the reason Elke had given Marian for wishing to move into Helewou, and though eventually he pretended to accept his daughter-in-law’s explanation, he was not basically diverted from his own interpretation of the events.

  He stuck to his original belief, and said so to Dr David Whincap when the two of them met at Tony and Gwen’s home at Easter time.

  “Don’t agree with you, Josef,” said Dr Whincap after hearing what the Pole had to say. “She’s an old besom—a born mischief-maker without a doubt—and she’s trying to play Marian up. But that’s as far as it goes in my opinion. By paying too much attention to it we shall encourage her in her nonsense.”

  Josef eyed the glass of whisky he was holding. “She will not know my feelings,” he said quietly. “I do not communicate with her.” Though a quiet statement, it was uttered with disdain and loathing.

  “Maybe not, old boy, but feelings have a nasty habit of communicating themselves without any words from us. Attitudes, glances in the street, even silences themselves convey meanings that don’t have to be spoken.”

  “Gwenny tells me the old frau pays no attention to Margarethe or Marian. That means her skin is thick. A pig’s hide. She could not sense—what is the word?—an innuendo?”

  “One senses innuendoes with the mind, Josef, not the skin.”

  “What is the difference? She is a Prussian. A Boche.”

  “You still have a great hatred of her Josef. For your own peace of mind you should rid yourself of the feeling. You are a happy, prosperous man. You cultivate the earth and grow beautiful flowers. Surely that is enough to lessen your feelings of hatred?”

  “My friend, were she anybody else, I should be ashamed of what I wish for her. But because she is what she is, I have no feelings of disgust with myself for wishing her dead. Sometimes I have prayed for it.”

  “Steady, Josef, steady. Have your drink. Go on, see it off and I’ll get you another.”

  “I mean what I have said.”

  “Nonsense. You’re a good, kind man. You cannot really expect me to believe what you have just said.” But as he spoke, the doctor knew in his heart—because Kisiel was so honest and straightforward a man—that the Pole really did mean what he had said.

  A little later, when the two older men had changed the subject of conversation and were discussing the merits and otherwise of holidays abroad, Janet Whincap and Alice Kisiel came into the sitting room.

  “What’s to do?” asked Whincap, rising to his feet. “Has the Good Friday baked cod flipped out of the dish or the parsley sauce gone lumpy?”

  “No,” replied his wife. “Gwen has it all in hand. And Adam has arrived with Marian.”

  “Is it they we were waiting for?” asked Kisiel.

  Alice nodded. “They’re out in the kitchen with Gwen and Tony, drinking a soothing sherry.”

  “Soothing?” asked Whincap.

  “Soothing,” repeated Alice. “They were a bit steamed up when they arrived.”

  “Who? Adam and Marian?”

  “Don’t worry, David,” counselled Janet. “It’s something Marian’s grandmother has done.”

  “Not again,” groaned Whincap. “That woman is the bane of everybody’s life. What’s she done this time?”

  “Adam says a carpenter arrived at Helewou just as they were about to set out to come here.”

  “A carpenter? To see Adam? What did he want? A job?”

  “He thought he’d got one,” said Alice.

  “I do not understand,” said Kisiel. “Is Adam taking on more staff?”

  “No, Josef,” replied Janet. “Elke had sent him round.”

  “Now I’m lost,” said Whincap. “Elke sent a carpenter round to see Adam on Good Friday?”

  “Evidently the poor man couldn’t make it at any other time,” said Janet.

  “Stop, stop!” pleaded Whincap. “Just tell me why the man went to Helewou. Forget that it’s Good Friday.”

  “He went because Elke sent him.”

  Whincap struck his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Right. For what reason did Elke send him to Helewou?”

  “To measure up the timber and other materials for building the other bedrooms.”

  “She what? Are you saying she sent a carpenter round there—to a craftsman like Adam—without any reference whatsoever to either of the householders?”

  “Yes. A bit high-handed, wasn’t it?”

  “Why should she do that?” asked Kisiel. “To make an impertinence or to cause trouble?”

  “According to the carpenter, Elke said that Adam had neither the time nor the money to do the job so, as she was keen to move in with them, she had decided to pay for the job to be done herself.”

  “Bloody sauce,” said Whincap.

  “It would be worse than that,” said Kisiel. “After she has moved in she will present Adam with the bill.”

  “No, no,” said Whincap. “Adam must have sent the man away with a flea in his ear.”

  “He sent him away, certainly,” said Janet. “But the carpenter had come along in a
ll good faith. He had put himself out to come and measure up on Good Friday. Elke had nagged him into doing it on his day off.”

  “That I can believe.”

  “Besides, Adam knew the man slightly. He couldn’t be too cross with him for trying to do Marian’s grandmother a favour, could he?”

  “I suppose not. But I hope Adam told the chap to send Elke a bill for time wasted.”

  “I imagine he did. But, please, don’t go on about it at lunchtime. Marian is a bit upset about it and . . .”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll steer clear of the subject.” He turned to Kisiel. “I apologize, Josef. A few minutes ago you told me you had, on occasion, prayed for Elke Carlow’s death, and I told you you were talking nonsense. Now I’m not so sure.”

  Kisiel shrugged. “It will come,” he said quietly. “Sooner or later. I hope it will be sooner.”

  Chapter Two

  That particular prayer of Josef Kisiel was answered a week or two later, on the first day of May. Elke Carlow, that evening, died a nasty death from what David Whincap could only diagnose as an overdose of digitalis.

  Frau Mimi Hillger called Whincap’s surgery shortly after six to say that her sister was ill. The receptionist took the call.

  “Can you tell me what seems to be the matter, Mrs Hillger?”

  Mimi Hillger had learned her English in Germany. She spoke it far more correctly than her sister and her voice was lighter with none of the guttural character of Elke’s.

  “She is sick. By that I mean she is vomiting.”

  “I see. Are you sure it is not simply a bilious attack and that she does not really need the doctor to call?”

  “That is what I thought at first, so I have waited for it to finish. It is more than two hours since she started. But now she has pain as well as vomiting.”

  “Where is the pain?”

  “In her stomach. And now also she says she is seeing coloured lights.”

  “Coloured lights? That sounds like a liver upset.”

  “Whatever is the matter she is in great distress and I think her mind is becoming confused. I should like the doctor to come now.”

  “Dr Whincap is coming to the end of his surgery. I will see he gets your message immediately he finishes with his last patient.”

  “Thank you. I think it would be best if you were to ask him to hurry.”

  “I shall,” said the receptionist rather airily. She had heard too many urgent requests which had turned out to be false alarms to pay much attention to Mimi’s plea. Besides, Mrs Carlow had cried wolf on previous occasions. Dr Whincap had rushed out to see her more than once, only to find the need less pressing than he had been led to believe. Or so the receptionist thought, believing that she knew all that went on in the practice and unaware that the doctors did not discuss with her, for instance, the tendency of some patients to attempt suicide. “I shall tell Dr Whincap. If he thinks it is necessary to visit you he may come tonight. If not, I expect it will be tomorrow morning after surgery.”

  “If that is so,” said Mimi determinedly, “please make sure you note the time of this telephone call. I have done so, because the matter is so urgent.”

  The receptionist had never before been asked by a patient to log the time of a call, although it was her custom to do so with all calls. Dr Whincap insisted on it in case there should ever be a subsequent legal query. Mimi’s request jolted the receptionist a little—frightened her, even. So David Whincap had scarcely opened his consulting room door to let out the last patient before Mimi’s message was being passed on to him a little breathlessly.

  The receptionist thanked her lucky stars she had not delayed. From the way the doctor shot out of the surgery and into the car she would have said he was almost expecting an emergency at the Carlow house.

  It was just after twenty-five minutes to seven when David reached the house. He noted the time automatically as he hurried to the front door. Like most doctors who have categorized a patient as a potential suicide, Whincap was taking all the precautions he could—almost subconsciously—to protect himself should the need for an inquiry arise. Like a coroner’s inquest on a suicide. Not that Whincap believed Elke Carlow was desirous of killing herself deliberately, but she had already travelled some way along that road—even if only by accident. Notably on Christmas Day. But the fact that he considered her previous attempts to have been non-deliberate, or certainly without the intention of killing herself, made this present situation worse in Whincap’s view because he believed that his patient could not have taken an overdose of digoxin. He had been at pains to close that path to her, and very thankful he was that he had rationed the tablets and had arranged for them to be administered at the rate of one only each day by responsible people such as Margarethe, Marian and his own practice nurse. In essence, his belief, as he entered the house, was that he would most likely be faced with trying to identify some other toxic substance which Elke had managed to discover for herself.

  Familiar with the layout of the house, Whincap found his way up to Elke Carlow’s bedroom. Mimi Hillger was there, wearing a plastic apron, holding a bottle of pine disinfectant in one hand and a floorcloth in the other. The bucket of water at her feet testified to her recent occupation.

  She said nothing to him. Her silence and his own first glance at the figure on the bed filled him with the realization that this time he was probably too late.

  In response to his questioning, he learned from Mimi that Elke had vomited for nearly two hours. His nose told him this was no exaggeration. Despite Mimi’s efforts, the stench clung to the walls of the room and everything in it, scarcely diminished by a generous use of the pine fluid.

  Accepting that his patient was in an advanced state of poisoning, Whincap knew he could do little. But he had to do what he could. He examined Elke. There was excessive rapidity of the heart’s action—the ventricular tachycardia with marked irregularity that is the hallmark of a late stage in digitalis poisoning. This amazed him. He had been so certain that digoxin could not have been the toxic agent. He looked for other, confirmatory signs—the extrasystoles, coupled rhythm, and atrial tachycardia with block. He realized—with bewilderment—that they were all there, all the pathognomonics of digitalis poisoning. By the time he had determined this, administered a syringe of morphine sulphate as a remedy for the vomiting and then tried to get Elke to accept an oral dose of potassium chloride to normalize the ventricular irregularities and slow the tachycardia, it was all over.

  But Whincap continued the fight. Although he was satisfied Elke was dead from cardiac failure, he asked Mimi for blankets to prevent loss of body heat and then enquired whether the refrigerator had a supply of ice. He wanted a bag of ice over the heart. Though he knew this was not a measure likely to be helpful, it was one recommended by certain authorities and so he was not prepared to forgo it in these circumstances where there was nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying it.

  He did his best. But after a few minutes of watching and feeling for a tell-tale thread of pulse, he turned to Mimi. “Where is the tablet bottle, Mrs Hillger?” he asked heavily.

  “There is no bottle, doctor.”

  “What did she have them wrapped in? A tissue perhaps or a bag? Handkerchief?”

  “I have not seen any tablets, doctor. There were none. Ever since you yourself took the last of them away on Christmas Day she has been given them one at a time just as you arranged that she should.”

  “By Margarethe, Marian and my nurse? Never by anyone else?”

  “Never.”

  “She always took them properly—swallowed them? Didn’t store them away somewhere? I mean she didn’t just pretend to take them?”

  “I wasn’t always here at her medicine times, but when I was, Elke always swallowed her tablet. With water.”

  “Did she have a tablet today?”

  “From your nurse at two o’clock.”

  “What did she have to eat and drink after that?”

  “We
had tea soon after half-past three.”

  “What did you have to eat?”

  “Brown bread and butter and gingerbread.”

  Whincap thanked Mimi for the information and then asked her to help him search for a supply of tablets or a receptacle in which they could have been kept. They spent a quarter of an hour searching drawers, the bathroom medicine cabinet and waste bins, but without success.

  “She must have taken them all,” said Whincap at last. “Though what the devil she kept them in beats me.”

  “I cannot help you, doctor.”

  Whincap shrugged. They were on the upstairs landing. “Is there a key to the bedroom door?”

  “In the lock, doctor.”

  “Ah, yes. Now, Mrs Hillger, I shall have to lock the room.” As he pocketed the key he asked: “When did your sister begin to feel unwell?”

  He ushered her downstairs as they spoke.

  “Immediately after we had finished tea. At least, that is when she complained. She may have been feeling a little unwell before that and hoped that the cup of tea would make her feel better.”

  “You think so?”

  “I think perhaps.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we usually had our tea a little later than we had today, but Elke asked for it early.”

  “I see. But it was about four o’clock when your sister felt ill enough to mention it?”

  “Yes.”

  They had reached the hall of the house. Whincap asked: “Could I see the tea dishes and the food?”

  “The remains of the food, yes. It is in the kitchen.” She led the way there. “But I washed up. I said to Elke she should go to lie down while I cleared away. I did not know then it was serious. It was only when I heard her groaning . . . before that I had treated it like an ordinary bilious attack.”

  “For how long?”

  “From about half past four when she started to vomit until I telephoned your surgery soon after six o’clock.”