The Flaxborough Crab

“Would that be Dr Meadow, by any chance?”

“He’s been on to you people about it, has he?”

“Ah, not directly, no...”

Mr Grope absent-mindedly fingered his Order of Vassily (Second Class).

“Perhaps you’d better come through into the room.”

He half-turned, making space for her to pass him, then closed the door.

Miss Teatime paused by the first doorway she came to.

“That’s right—in there,” called Mr Grope. She noticed, not unthankfully, that he had neglected to replace the bolt.

The room contained a great deal of furniture, including two pianos, a carved mahogany cupboard the size of a modest bus shelter, an oval dining table draped in port wine-coloured plush, a pedestal gramophone, and a number of formidable sundries that eluded immediate identification.

Miss Teatime picked her way between a piano stool and what she suspected to be a commode, and perched as gracefully as she could upon the arm of a bloated, tapestry-covered settee.

“Yes, these tablets,” she resumed briskly. “What was it that Dr Meadow told you about them? The fact is that some of our prescription records appear to have gone astray. The question of your tablets might well have a bearing.”

Mr Grope, who had entered the furniture labyrinth by another channel, stared gloomily at her over a bamboo plant stand.

“Doing without them is very wearing,” he declared.

“I am sure it must be, Mr Grope. But what did Dr Meadow say?”

“He didn’t hold out any hope. Not when I called on Wednesday.”

Miss Teatime was by no means the first person to have discovered that having conversation with Walter Grope produced a curious sense of being bombarded with echoes. Was it the pianos? she wondered. Reverberations, perhaps.

“Hope of more tablets, do you mean?”

“Of course. They...” He paused, made several silent lip movements as if trying out words, then brightened and announced in a rush: “They-ran-out-on-Tuesday-at-eleven-fifteen.”

“That,” observed Miss Teatime, having grasped the reason for the echo effect, “does not scan.”

“Not really,” Mr Grope agreed.

“But it is very stimulating, if I may say so, to meet someone with so natural a flair for poetry.”

The nearest approximation to a smile of which Mr Grope was capable stirred momentarily in the feather-bed of his cheek.

“Do you compose much verse, Mr Grope?” Miss Teatime inquired, sensible of the perils of the question, but eager to please still further.

“A fair bit. It doesn’t come so easy now, though. Not since I finished at the pictures.”

“You were an artist?”

“I was a commissionaire.” Mr Grope flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his splendid sleeve. “It’s an occupation that leaves the mind free for a lot of the time. I used to think up most of my In-Memoriams while I was keeping an eye on the queue at the Rialto.”

“Did you, indeed.”

“For the paper, you know. There was one used to go: Of all the mothers she was the best—She’s gone to where she can get a good rest.”

“Lovely,” murmured Miss Teatime.

“Then there was: A dear one’s passed, but though we’re sad—We know it now is heaven for Dad. I remember the week I made that one up. It was Gold Diggers of 1933.”

“Films like that will not come our way again, Mr Grope.”

She sighed, then looked at the little silver dress watch that she wore.

“Dear me! The Ministry does not employ me to chatter about old times, I fear. I really must complete these little inquiries of mine and return to the office. Now then, do you by happy chance know the name of the medicine that Dr Meadow had been prescribing for you?”

She took a thin silver propelling pencil from her handbag.

Mr Grope shook his head. For some time, his gaze had been fixed on Miss Teatime’s knees.

“I could make a poem about you, if you like,” he said suddenly.

“You cannot remember?”

“The prescription, you mean? Oh, it was just a squiggle. I couldn’t make it out.”

“Oh, dear.”

Mr Grope swallowed. He appeared to be working out some kind of a problem. Hopefully, Miss Teatime waited.

“When beauty like yours I see, my memory...”

He looked at the ceiling, his lips moving silently.

“No, wait a minute... When on your looks I dwell, my eye-sight flickers...A Voice I hear: She is your dear—Be bold, take off her knickers.”

So sternly reproving was Miss Teatime’s immediate “Mister Grope! You will kindly remember to whom you are speaking!” that Grope jumped and knocked the side of his head against the carved case of a wall clock. He looked hurt, bewildered, and quite harmless. Miss Teatime felt sorry for having startled him.

“You must not bring discredit on that beautiful uniform, you know,” she said kindly.

Grope recovered a little. “You like it?”

“Very much.”

Proudly, “It was a retirement present.”

Miss Teatime glanced once more at her watch and stood up. She hoped that Mr Grope’s amorous urge had subsided. It would not be dignified to take part in an obstacle race through all that furniture.

Mr Grope took off the big peaked hat with RIALTO embroidered upon it in gold. He scratched his head.

“About what you were asking,” he said. “I’ve had a thought.”

Not another erotic rhyme, prayed Miss Teatime.

But Grope had lumbered from the room. She heard his boots on the stair. Taking her opportunity, she slipped out into the corridor and stood close to the street door after making sure that it would open easily.

When he came downstairs again, he was holding something in his hand.

“I’ve been keeping one by,” he said. “I meant to go to another doctor if Meadow didn’t change his mind about stopping them. I’d have to have one to show, you see.”

He handed her a small brown-tinted bottle. On its label, headed AMIS & JEFFREY, CHEMISTS, EASTGATE, FLAXBOROUGH, was the instruction: ‘One to be taken, three times a day, after food.’

Miss Teatime unscrewed the cap and tipped on to her palm the single tablet that the bottle contained. It was octagonal in shape and pale green. One face was stamped with the letters E.D.G.S.

“You can borrow it, if you like,” said Mr Grope. “Promise to bring it back, though, won’t you?”

“I shall, indeed. As soon as my department has identified this tablet—how pretty it is, by the way—and corrected its prescription records, I shall deliver it back to you personally. You have been most helpful, Mr Grope.”

She slid the octagon into the bottle. Grope leaned over her, watching the bottle disappear in her handbag.

“Marvellous pick-me-up, are those—They’d warm the blood of Eski-mos.”

Miss Teatime reached smartly for the latch and pulled open the door.

“If you happen not to be in when I return,” she said, “I shall put it through the letter-box.”

“Until you come, my brain will burn—with thoughts of you without your frocks!”

Eluding the hand that sought to favour her posterior with a farewell squeeze, Miss Teatime hastened down the steps and made for her car.

She drove at once to Eastgate and parked as close as she could to the shop of Amis and Jeffrey. Before leaving the car, she transferred Mr Grope’s tablet from its bottle to an envelope.

“I should like,” said Miss Teatime to one of two girls behind the counter, “to speak to your chief dispenser, please.”

There appeared, after an interval of discussion at the back of the shop as to what so flattering a description as ‘chief dispenser’ might portend, a wary-looking young man who said he was the manager and could he be of any assistance, Mrs, er...?

“Miss,” she corrected sweetly. “Yes, I do have a small problem, but I am sure it can be resolved very quickly with your help.

“You see, an uncle of mine arrived last night to take a short holiday with me here in Flaxborough. He is a fairly elderly gentleman—quite spry, you understand, but getting on in years—and for some time he has been taking tablets prescribed by his doctor. Three every day, I believe. They probably are a simple tonic, but the Dean—my uncle, that is—does feel they are important to him.”

The manager, whose black, back-brushed hair and ebony-framed spectacles seemed to have been fashioned as a single headpiece to cap his sharp, sallow face, regarded her solemnly and without a trace of sympathy. Miss Teatime gave a little cough and persevered.

“He was most upset, as you may imagine, on discovering when he arrived that the box containing a week’s supply of his tablets had burst during the journey. All but one of the tablets had shaken down and been lost through a hole in his pocket.

“Fortunately,”—she took the envelope from her handbag—“there was, as I say, this one survivor. You will see that it is distinctive in shape and colour. I should be most grateful if you could identify it so that my uncle may go to a doctor here in Flaxborough and obtain a repeat prescription.”

The manager was by now pouting very disagreeably. He glanced into the envelope, nodded, sniffed.

“Oh, yes. I know what that is.”

“Splendid!” she said. “I was sure you would be able to help.”

“I said”—he handed back the envelope—“that I know what it is. I did not say that I could tell you.”

“Oh, but surely...”

“We are not allowed to divulge the names of drugs to members of the public. I’m sorry, madam. All I can suggest is that the gentleman consults a local doctor. Then, if the doctor cares to identify that tablet and to issue the appropriate prescription, we shall be pleased to dispense it.”

Miss Teatime had been looking at the manager’s tie. It was fastened in the tightest, most diminutive knot she had ever seen.

“You’ll appreciate that we cannot break the rules,” she heard him add. (Unctuous sod, you’d not break wind if you thought it might oblige somebody.)

“Naturally not. I shall tell the Dean what you advise.” She turned, paused, faced him again. “Oh, by the way...” She was looking her most demure.

“Yes, madam?”

“You will think this unforgivably inquisitive of me, but I do have a reason for asking. Tell me, in what year were you born?”

The irrelevance, the sheer impertinence of the question startled him so much that he answered it at once and without thinking.

“Nineteen thirty-six.” Then he scowled. “Why?”

Miss Teatime looked him up and down appraisingly.

“Nineteen thirty-six...ah, yes. Quite a year for unsuccessful abortions, they tell me.”

Chapter Twelve

Dr Meadow’s surgery was a compact, single-storeyed building at the end of a short path leading off from the main drive to his house. It had been a carriage-house and stables in the earlier days of his father’s practice. Where once had stood old Dr Ambrose Meadow’s high-wheeled gig, there was now a three-litre Lagonda. The rest of the building had been reconstructed to form two consulting rooms, a small dispensary and receptionist’s office, and a waiting-room with doors to the other three.

Miss Teatime arrived in the waiting-room a few minutes before six o’clock, which a printed notice on the wall proclaimed to be the time of evening surgery.

In her handbag was Mr Grope’s green octagon.

In her head, daintily inclined in greeting to the group of people who were already assembled, was a story about the mislaying of a prescription provided by her London specialist and her hope that Dr Meadow would be able to identify the last of her present supply of tablets and give her a fresh order.

Miss Teatime, beckoned by a pretty, auburn-haired girl in a white coat, who had appeared at the hatch of her small office, gave her name and a London address.

“Are you a new patient?” the receptionist asked.

“You could say that I am a visitor. I have not yet chosen a regular doctor in Flaxborough.”

“Do you want to see Dr Bruce or Dr Meadow?”

“Oh, Dr Meadow, I think. He is the senior partner?”

“That’s right.” The girl slipped the sheet of paper on which she had written Miss Teatime’s name and address beneath a pile of three or four cards.

Miss Teatime took a seat and began unobtrusively to observe her fellow patients and to speculate upon their ills. They, equally unobtrusively, did the same to her.

A buzzer sounded weakly and a little glass panel above one of the doors flickered red.

The receptionist glanced at her top card.

“Mr Leadbetter.”

She handed the card to a florid, thick-set man who had risen to his feet with an air of grim determination. He stomped to the consulting room door and shut it firmly behind him.

A man with a grievance, Miss Teatime diagnosed.

She listened. So did everyone else. All that reached them of Mr Leadbetter’s complaint was a prolonged muffled boom. Then came the gentle rise and fall of a sweetly reasoned remonstration by the golden-voiced Dr Meadow. More booming followed, but at a much reduced level and for a shorter time. Again the doctor’s persuasive lilt. A pause. The lilt once more, livelier this time and crested with amusement. The boom—now friendly, responsive to the joke. An outside door clicked shut. Silence.

Smooth, thought Miss Teatime. Very smooth. Perhaps she should have asked to see Dr Bruce instead.

When the consumptive buzzer sounded again, the receptionist had to call “Mrs Grope, please!” twice before there was any reaction from the stumpy, sad-looking woman with very dark eyes who sat opposite Miss Teatime. At the second, louder, summons, Mrs Grope jumped, looked round inquiringly at everybody in turn, then hurried to the wrong door. A woman with a thickly bandaged foot caught her sleeve and motioned her to the other.

So that, Miss Teatime reflected, was the partner of the poet of Blackfriars’ Court. No wonder she had an air of chronic bewilderment.

Dr Bruce’s sign was the next to light up. The bandaged woman hobbled into his consulting room. He disposed of her and three more patients before the senior partner’s buzzer signified that he was no longer occupied with the woes of Mrs Grope.

“Mrs McCreavy. Will you go in now, please.”

Miss Teatime sneaked a look at Mrs McCreavy from behind an elderly copy of the New Yorker that she had been surprised to discover among the magazines on the table beside her. She saw a woman of about fifty, plump in black silk and tottery on too-tight shoes, who had the pained, querulous expression conferred by stubborn addiction to youthful make-up.

Mrs McCreavy paused at the door of Dr Meadow’s room, tightened her scarlet bird-mouth into a secret smile, and squeezed through the doorway out of sight, as if to a scandalous assignation.

Dr Bruce continued his brisk dispatch of the ailing. His buzzer sounded five times in as many minutes. The waiting room had begun to look depopulated. Between calls, a typewriter clattered in the receptionist’s office. She doubled as secretary, apparently.

Somewhere a clock struck the half hour. The girl left her typing in order to lock the surgery entrance against late arrivals. She smiled at Miss Teatime as she passed and gave a little shrug of mock weariness.

A schoolboy with his arm in a sling and a look of Napoleonic fortitude was next to disappear. There remained only Miss Teatime, a middle-aged man in a smart grey suit, and a girl of about twenty who kept her arms tightly folded across her chest and studied her shoes for most of the time.

Miss Teatime suppressed a yawn. She wondered what encyclopaedic symptoms lay beneath Mrs McCreavy’s black silk. Ten minutes. Quarter of an hour. The man had had time to examine her intestines inch by inch and get them all back again by now.

“Excuse me...”

She started.

“Excuse me, but if you like...”

It was the gentleman in the grey suit, and he was leaning forward, talking to her.

“If you like, you can go in and see the doctor before I do. I am in no hurry.”

“That is remarkably kind of you.”

“Not at all. As a matter of fact, I am not a patient.”

Miss Teatime was tempted to say, Nor am I, but she turned it to “No, I must say you look far too healthy to be consulting doctors.”

And so he did. His rather square face had the long-established tan of the widely travelled. It was a calm, controlled face, with a hint in the jaw muscles of considerable strength. His small moustache—military. Miss Teatime dubbed it, instinctively—was impeccably trimmed and almost white. The eyes, which she decided with regret to be humourless, were of very pale blue; they looked as if they had never been closed since early childhood.

The man had on the seat beside him a capacious brief case of heavy leather, highly polished. Its flap was unlocked and the man had taken from it a sheaf of papers, which he held now on his knee. They looked like brochures or leaflets of some kind.

Ah, a salesman, Miss Teatime told herself. One thing about these pharmaceutical people, though—they had an air of distinction, of being concerned with higher things than mere money, that you never found in a groceries rep or a hawker of hardware.

She tried to confirm her guess by reading the bigger type on the topmost leaflet, but she was hampered by its being upside-down. Only one word could she make out without going nearer and putting on her glasses (and she could imagine no pretext for anything so brash as that). It was ELIXON. Not much help. She withdrew again behind her New Yorker.

A buzz proclaimed that Dr Bruce was free once more, but no one made a move. After a while, his consulting-room door opened and there appeared a tall, slightly bewildered looking man of about thirty-five, with thin, untidy hair and long hands that kept wrestling with each other. He gazed challengingly at the three people who were still waiting, shrugged, and went back into his room. Miss Teatime heard water begin to run. Dr Bruce doubtless was washing his hands of them all.

“Oh, by the way, Mr Brennan...”

The receptionist was leaning out of her hatch. The man in the grey suit looked up.

“Did you manage to see the doctor earlier on?” she asked him.

“No, I didn’t, actually. There’s no hurry. I shall wait now until he has finished surgery.”

There was some quality in his voice that Miss Teatime had detected before without being able quite to define it. Now she knew what it was: a slight lisp—not an affectation, but the kind of speech flaw that could have resulted from an injury.

“I just wondered,” the girl went on, “because there was something I think he wanted to show you. It’s a copy of that article he rang you about yesterday, and I’ve only just finished typing it.”

“That’s fine. I’ll take it with me when I go in, shall I?...” He put aside the leaflets and stood up.

The girl left the hatch and reappeared holding a long buff-coloured envelope which she handed to Brennan. He slipped it into an inside pocket and resumed his seat after thanking her and taking a casual glimpse of the desk where she had been typing.

For lack of anything else to do, Miss Teatime turned her attention to the girl with the folded arms. Why was she hugging herself like that, as if trying not to be noticed? She looked lonely and in trouble. Miss Teatime felt increasingly sorry for her. Some plausible Flaxborough buck had fed her one of the usual legends, no doubt. I’ll be all right if you run about a bit afterwards and drink plenty of water. How sad that people were so ready to believe what they wanted to believe—or what others wanted them to bel...

There burst in upon this melancholy reflection a quick succession of violent sounds. A collision, as if of furniture...the crash of something overtoppled...a crumpling thud. Then, after an absolute silence no less shocking than the noise that had preceded it, the door to which all eyes turned seemed visibly to be straining against the assault upon it from within by a long, rasping scream.

For an absurdly extended time, nobody did anything. Did not convention decree that the right to intrude upon a doctor’s privacy was strictly reserved to nurses or other doctors?

The dilemma was resolved when the door was suddenly dragged open by a Mrs McCreavy transformed by near-nudity and shock.

Clutching a bundle of snatched-up clothing to her breast, she staggered out of the room with head thrust forward and mouth open. Pert no longer, the brilliantly red lips looked like the edges of a deep, rawly inflicted cut which had drained her face of what little colour it had had.

The girl opposite Miss Teatime was the first to move. She sprang to Mrs McCreavy, put an arm round her shoulder, and led her to a chair.

Brennan stared at them, momentarily bewildered, then strode to the open door. Miss Teatime followed close behind.

On the floor of the consulting room lay Dr Meadow, face down. His arms and legs were disposed like those of a swimmer who had reached shore at last gasp and fallen at once to sleep. Near his head, and caught in a leg of the heavy office chair whose overturning they had heard, were the black coils of his stethoscope.

Brennan knelt. Miss Teatime watched the fine grey cloth of his jacket tighten against underlying muscle as he heaved Dr Meadow over and bent to listen to his chest.

Behind them, the receptionist had opened a window and was shouting “Doctor Bruce!” Having found his room empty, she had looked out to see him getting into his car, which he had parked behind Meadow’s big Lagonda.

“I think,” Brennan said, “that the poor chap is dead.”

He raised his head and looked over his shoulder at Miss Teatime.

“Perhaps you had better try and find Dr Bruce.”

“The girl has been calling for him.” She listened. “I believe I can hear someone coming in from outside now.”

Brennan turned again to the body. He felt one wrist, then the chest. He shook his head and got up slowly, buttoning his jacket. “Extraordinary,” he murmured.

Bruce came into the room, pale-faced and anxious, yet quietly businesslike. Brennan and Miss Teatime moved aside to make way for him. They stood back close against the wall, silent spectators. From the doorway, the receptionist watched, knuckles pressed hard on her lower lip. The only sound was the muffled sobbing of Mrs McCreavy, who had been helped back into her crumpled dress and was now sitting grasping the hand of the girl with troubles.

Bruce squatted down beside his partner. Fingertips explored with delicate expertise. He unfastened Meadow’s shirt, tugged his own stethoscope from his side pocket, and listened, head bowed.

After nearly half a minute, he took off his jacket, folded it several times, and beckoned the girl at the door.

“Slip it under his shoulders when I raise him. I want his head well back.”

The receptionist did as she was told.

“Ambulance,” Bruce said. He nodded towards the telephone on the desk. “Then you’d better give the police a ring.”

The soft whirr of the spun dial sounded as loud as a helicopter rotor in the small, silent room.

Bruce crouched low, his mouth over Meadow’s. Firmly, almost violently, he pressed the heel of his hand into the man’s chest.

The girl was asking for an ambulance. She glanced down at Dr Bruce and remembered something else. Would they please alert the resuscitation unit.

She dialled again.

The calm, matter-of-fact voice of the answering policeman made the scene around her seem suddenly unreal. She tried to give a simple account, but he sounded as if he wanted to sit there all day asking subsidiary questions. She looked helplessly at Bruce. He interrupted what he was doing only long enough to inject a shot of adrenalin.

The voice at the other end became louder.

“I said, is he dead. Miss? Can you hear me?”

She started. “Yes. Yes, I think he is.”

“You only think...?”

She put down the phone.

When, at last, Bruce rose to his feet, he stared wearily at Meadow’s body for several seconds before he stooped once more and gently eased free his folded jacket. He put it on and went out into the waiting-room. Brennan and Miss Teatime followed him.

The receptionist lingered unhappily by the consulting room door. She seemed to be wondering whether she ought to close it. Bruce touched her sleeve.

“Miss Sutton, would you mind staying on here until the ambulance comes. It shouldn’t be many minutes. I must go round to the house now. Mrs Meadow will have to be told.”

Among the several matters exercising the busy mind of Miss Teatime was the reflection that her original purpose in visiting the surgery would not now be fulfilled. She watched the departure of the still tearful Mrs McCreavy in the custody of her younger companion, whose own anxiety, presumably, had been overlaid temporarily by the evening’s excitement. What could Mrs McCreavy tell of Dr Meadow’s dramatic end? She had volunteered not a single word and in the general distress no one had thought to ask her. The police, no doubt, would set that record straight in their own good time. Mr Brennan...had he gone yet? No, there he was by the door, his back towards her, putting the things back in his briefcase. A lost sale? Hardly. Those people were on a fairly easy pitch. Doctors did not like to think they were missing out on one of the latest fashions in miracle drugs. There had been a couple of those leaflets of his on the doctor’s desk. ELIXON. Tall, dark blue letters. But what, for goodness’ sake, was she to make of that other curious thing she had seen soon after entering Meadow’s room? She would have to think about that. Most puzzling.

“Goodnight, Miss Sutton.”

Brennan was leaving. He nodded at Miss Teatime, then looked back to the girl.

“I’m very sorry.”

The door closed behind him.

Miss Teatime was about to follow, when she caught the expression of distressed appeal in the girl’s eye. Of course—how thoughtless to leave her there alone. She went over to her and sat down. The girl looked at her gratefully.

After a while, the girl said: “I hope it wasn’t anything urgent you wanted to see the doctor about.”

“No, no,” Miss Teatime assured her. “It was nothing that cannot wait a little longer.”

“I’m sure Dr Bruce would help if you like to stay until he comes back.”

“No, he has problems enough for one evening, poor man. I should not dream of troubling him with so trivial a matter. It was simply that I wished to obtain a repeat prescription for some tablets.”

“He would do that for you, I’m sure. Would you like me to ask him?”

“That is extremely kind of you, my dear. Unfortunately”—Miss Teatime opened her handbag—“there is one small difficulty. You see, I do not know the name of the preparation—the formula, you know.”

The girl watched her unfold an envelope and coax out the little green octagon.

“Oh, I know what that is,” she said brightly, then, “What a coincidence, though—it’s one of Mr Brennan’s.”

“One of Mr Brennan’s? I do not quite...”

“No, I mean it’s a line done by his firm. It’s got a fearfully complicated name—I couldn’t begin to remember it—but it’s marketed as ‘Juniform’.”

“ ‘Juniform’. Ah. And you can tell that, can you, simply by looking at this tablet?”

“Oh, yes. It’s absolutely distinctive. The shape, the colour, those little letters stamped on it—see?—E.D.G.S. I’ve dispensed lots for Dr Meadow’s private patients.”

“His private patients?”

“Yes. Well, the Health Service ones would get theirs from chemists in town, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose they would.” She began re-folding the envelope.

“You have been most helpful. Miss Sutton. Thank you.”

Suddenly, the girl frowned. “Yes, but...”

“But what, my dear?”

“I don’t know that I ought to be telling you this, but Dr Meadow has stopped issuing ‘Juniform’.”

“Really?”

Again the girl hesitated.

“Well... Well, as a matter of fact, he used to be very keen on it. I think he was one of the first doctors to try it out. He did a piece in the B.M.J. about it at one time...”

“The British Medical Journal?

“That’s right. About clinical trials. That sort of thing. Then just a few days ago, he stopped prescribing it. And today I’ve been typing another article for the B.M.J. I didn’t understand much of it, but it seems he’s noticed what they call side-effects. Some syndrome or other.”

“Good gracious. I do not wish to catch that, do I?”

The girl looked at her. “I think it would be better if you spoke to Dr Bruce. You’ll not let him know what I’ve been telling you, though, will you?”

Miss Teatime smiled and patted her arm. “Not a word.”

They heard the sound of an engine. Tyres crunched on the gravel outside.

Miss Sutton jumped up. “That must be the ambulance.”

They waited, watching the door.

It opened, but instead of blue-uniformed ambulance attendants they saw a tall, easy-mannered man with a mop of greyish-yellow hair.

As soon as he spotted Miss Teatime, he stood still, his expression of bland interest replaced by one of surprise.

“Good God,” he murmured very quietly.

She advanced towards him, holding out her hand.

“Inspector! How very delightful to meet you again!”

Chapter Thirteen

“The pleasure is mine,” said Purbright, gallantly. “And how, may I ask, is the work of the Eastern Counties Charities Alliance progressing?”

“Splendidly. I have been astonished by Flaxborough’s yield of the milk of human kindness since the Alliance honoured me with the secretaryship.”

“Ah, one skims where one can, Miss Teatime, does one not? But look, you must excuse me for now. I’m looking for Dr Bruce.”

“He’s gone over to the house,” said the receptionist. “To tell Mrs Meadow what’s happened. I don’t think he’ll be long.”

“I see,” Purbright looked at her. “And you are..?”

“Pauline Sutton.”

“Right, Pauline. Now I’m a police inspector and I’m going to have to ask a few questions. You’ll not mind that, will you?”

She shook her head, then glanced swiftly at the window. Another vehicle had drawn up outside. They saw white paint and a pane of spectacle-blue glass.

The ambulance men came in, carrying their stretcher. Miss Sutton pointed to the open door of the consulting room. They went past her softly, like late arrivals in church.

For a moment, Purbright looked confused.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the girl, “but I hadn’t realized...”

“That he was still here?”

“Quite. Hang on a minute.”

He darted after the stretcher-bearers, motioned them aside apologetically, and knelt by Meadow’s body. After making careful scrutiny, he stood and stepped back to allow them to lift Meadow on to the stretcher. When they had gone, he spent several minutes in a ranging examination of the little room.

He noted the fallen chair and, close beside it, what he recognized as an apparatus for measuring blood pressure, apparently swept from the desk during the doctor’s fall. Its glass U-tube was smashed. On the desk lay sheafs of notes, prescription and certificate pads, a stethoscope, a couple of leaflets published by a drug house under the imprint ELIXON, and a rack of tiny specimen bottles.

In a glass-fronted cupboard were cases of surgical and diagnostic instruments, several jars and flasks, a selection of syringes and two or three enamelled kidney dishes.

A filing cabinet stood next to the cupboard, and in the corner farthest from the door was a sink with an electric water heater above it and two towels on a rail below.

There were two straight-backed chairs under the window. On one of them lay a shallow cardboard box, something over a foot long and about half as wide. The inspector lifted the lid. The box was empty except for some tissue packing.

He returned to the waiting-room.

Bruce was there, talking quietly with Miss Sutton. Another man also had entered, a man in a grey suit. He stood patiently, with one hand resting on the back of a chair, apparently waiting for a break in the conversation between Bruce and the girl. A briefcase lay on the chair.

Miss Teatime had gone.

Bruce left the girl and came up to Purbright.

“What about Mrs Meadow?” Purbright asked him softly.

“At the hospital. She went in the ambulance.”

“Took their time a bit, didn’t they?”

“Held up at the level crossing. Not that it would have made any difference.”

“He looked stone dead to me.”

“Oh, he was. No question about it.”

The whole of this exchange had been at a quiet, almost conspiratorial, level, with Bruce glancing occasionally at the man in grey. “Wait a moment,” he now said to Purbright, “I’ll just see what that chap wants.”

He went across.

“Can I help you, Mr Brennan?”

Brennan made a small bow.

“I’m terribly sorry to make myself a nuisance at such a time, doctor, but there is something rather important which I should like to ask Miss Sutton.”

“Pauline,” Bruce called.

The girl joined them. Brennan seemed to be waiting for Bruce to leave, but the doctor made no move.

“It’s this sentence,” Brennan said at last.

He unfolded the sheet of paper he had been holding and pointed to a line near the top.

“I cannot quite understand it. Could you possibly have made an error in copying, do you think?”

The girl read, frowning.

“No, I...I don’t think so, Mr Brennan.”

“Perhaps if we compared it with the original...?”

“But I’m afraid you can’t. Not now.”

Brennan raised his brows.

“Well, it’s with the other things for posting that I took across to the house a few minutes ago just before Mrs Meadow left for the hospital.” She turned to Bruce. “I thought that in the circumstances she ought to decide which letters should be sent off.”

“Quite right, Pauline.”

Brennan shrugged and gave a faint smile.

“I suppose,” Bruce said doubtfully, “that you could call later and explain to Mrs Meadow...”

“No, I would not dream of it. The matter is of no consequence.”

Brennan slipped the sheet of typescript into his case, gave another short bow, turned and left.

Bruce apologized to Purbright for the interruption.

“Miss Sutton tells me that you’d like to put a few questions to her, inspector. Perhaps you could do that first. It’s been a rather trying day for her.”

“Of course. Now then, Pauline, what I am going to have to do is make a report to the coroner. That is standard procedure in all cases of sudden death. It doesn’t mean that we are suspicious of anybody. We just have to establish exactly what happened.”

He searched in his pockets until he had found an envelope and a short piece of pencil.

“Firstly, I should like to know when you yourself last saw Dr Meadow.”

“About half-past four this afternoon.”

“As long ago as that?”

“Yes, I’d been typing an article for him. That and a few letters. He went back to the house at half-past four to get his tea.”

“What about your tea?”

“I made a cup here. He didn’t tell me until I’d finished typing his article that he wanted a copy made, so I stayed on.”

“At what time did surgery begin?

“Six o’clock.”

“And didn’t you see him then?”

“No, he always came into his consulting room by its own side door and rang for the first patient when he was ready.”

“I see. He seemed fit, did he, when he left you at four-thirty?”

“Perfectly. I’ve never known him to be anything else, as a matter of fact.”

“Perhaps I should say,” interjected Dr Bruce, “that my partner was, in fact, suffering a certain degree of hypertension. Miss Sutton here wouldn’t have known that, of course, but I think you’ll find that Dr James, in Priorgate, will confirm what I say.”

“Dr James was treating him, was he?”

“Well, he was certainly advising him. That I do know.”

Purbright again faced the receptionist.

“I presume that someone was with Dr Meadow when he collapsed. A patient.”

“Yes. Mrs McCreavy. She’s been taken home.”

“I’ll have her address, if I may.”

The girl went to the hatch and returned with the bunch of record cards. Purbright looked at them.

“Are these all patients who were seen by Dr Meadow this evening?”

“Not all.. These three. Mr Leadbetter was first in. Then Mrs Grope...”

“Mrs Grope? Mr Walter Grope’s wife?”

“That’s right. And Mrs McCreavy was the last. A girl called Hewson was waiting and so was the lady you met when you came in—Miss...Teatime, is it?”

“Miss Teatime,” the inspector confirmed ruminatively. “Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime.”

He wrote down the names and addresses of Mrs McCreavy and Leadbetter.

“Oh, and I’d better have yours, Pauline, while I’m at it.”

She told him.

“What was Mrs McCreavy’s reaction, by the way?”

“Oh, she screamed blue murder and came rushing out with half her clothes off.” The girl seemed to repent of the note of contempt in her voice; she added quickly, “Well, it must have given her a nasty fright, I expect.”

“Did you go in to see what had happened?”

“No, I ran to try and find Dr Bruce. It was Mr Brennan who went into Dr Meadow’s room. Him and Miss Teatime.”

“Mr Brennan is the gentleman who was here a little while ago?”

“That’s right.”

“But he’s not a patient, I gather.”

Bruce shook his head. “He’s the new rep for Elixon. One of the drug houses.”

“Where should I be able to get in touch with him? If it proves necessary—I don’t say that it will.”

Bruce looked blank, but the girl replied: “The Elixon man stays at the Roebuck as a rule, I believe. They’d tell you how long he’s booked in for.”

“But might it not be just overnight?”

“Oh, no. Reps are usually here for at least a week. They work the whole area from Flax and then go on to Norwich or over to Leicester. I should think Mr Brennan will be around for another three or four days.”

“I see. Well, you might as well get along home now, Pauline. Thank you for being so helpful.”

When the girl had gone, Purbright turned to meet the speculative eye of Dr Bruce. For a while he said nothing. Then he smiled.

“Yes?” Bruce prompted.

The inspector produced cigarettes. He lit one after Bruce had waved back the proffered packet.

“You are thinking,” said Purbright, “this... Why has an inspector, of all people, trotted along here so promptly on hearing of the regrettable, but perfectly natural, collapse and death of a respected general practitioner? Am I right?”

“You are,” said Bruce, drily.

“Ah, well you must not read too much into my apparent enthusiasm. For one thing. Sergeant Malley—whose province this sort of thing is—had gone home to enjoy a well-earned meal and it seemed rather heartless to drag him back again.”

“That was not your only reason.”

“No, it wasn’t. I admit to a degree of personal curiosity. You see, there’s a strong element of coincidence. You probably are not aware of it, doctor.”

“I am not.”

“Let me explain. Some rather odd things have been going on in Flaxborough lately. As you must know, if only by reading the local paper, a number of women have been assaulted. I don’t need to go into details, but the nature and the unusual frequency of these attacks have suggested that the persons responsible—and I use the plural advisedly—constitute a medical rather than a criminal problem.

“One of them, and only one, is known. Unfortunately, he is now dead...”

“Old Winge, you mean?”

“Yes. Alderman Winge. As I say, he is dead. But he was a patient of your late partner. Coincidence? All right. Now then, a girl was attacked just outside this surgery—out there on Heston Lane. Who came to her rescue? Dr Meadow, as you probably have heard. And there is no doubt in my mind but that he saw and recognized the man responsible—whom he let go, incidentally.

“Again, observation is being kept at this moment on a man whose wife is convinced that he goes out at night to seek some sort of erotic satisfaction. I know this sounds questionable as evidence, but I do happen to know that this particular man showed no such tendencies until recently, when he moved to Flaxborough and became a patient of Dr Meadow.

“You may say that these links, if I might call them that, are few and extremely tenuous. But I’m sure you will understand my curiosity—to put it no higher—on hearing that the man I believed to know a lot more than he had divulged about the business had suddenly dropped dead.”

For a long time, Dr Bruce gazed mournfully out of the window. When he spoke, it was with slow, rather weary deliberation.

“Whatever you say now, inspector, is scarcely likely to remove the implication you’ve already succeeded in making.”

“Which is?”

“That my partner’s death was connected in some way with what you’ve been talking about. That it wasn’t natural, in other words.”

“I’m a long way from saying that, doctor. I am not even going to speculate at this stage. After all, the cause of death has not been established. When it is—and I don’t suppose there’ll be any difficulty there—I shall accept the findings of the experts, as will the coroner. In the meantime, though, coincidence does exist. Judgment must be suspended, but investigation must not. Hence”—the inspector smiled—“the snooping. You do understand?”

Bruce resignedly lifted and let fall his hand.

“Very well. Is there anything you want to ask me now? I don’t want to be much longer getting over to the hospital, and I’ve some home visits I shall have to fit in.”

“I’ll be as brief as I can. Firstly, the cause of death. Do you want to say what you think it was?”

“Oh, a coronary. I don’t think there can be any doubt about that. He died extremely quickly, you know.”

“Obviously you wouldn’t have had time to make a detailed examination, but did you notice anything—anything at all—that seemed odd at the time, or has since struck you as being odd?”

Bruce pondered.

“Not a thing. The whole scene was exactly as one would have expected. He must have blacked out and gone full length.”

“But wouldn’t he have been sitting in his chair? Doctors never seem to get up when they’re being consulted by me.”

Bruce’s manner eased a fraction. “Perhaps you consult them about the wrong things. No, I imagine my partner was standing up in order to examine the McCreavy woman’s chest. She was half undressed when she ran out, you know.”

“According to Miss Sutton, he saw only three patients this evening. Yet she had quite a pile of cards. You must have dealt with far more than three in the same period.”

“Yes, that was the usual pattern.”

“You mean he was—what?—more leisurely in his dealings with patients?”

“If you like. Look—I’m the junior partner, he was the senior. Every practice works on the sound old principle that the junior’s share of the work shall equal the senior’s share of the income. What could be fairer?”

“What, indeed.” Purbright walked to the door and threw out the end of his cigarette. “In that case, I assume Dr Meadow tended to be selective. Did he deal primarily with those we might call his regulars?”

“Naturally.”

“Could you list them? In categories, I mean, not as individuals.”

“No difficulty about that. The paying patients. The socially desirable. And a few of the interestingly elderly.”

“Ah,” said Purbright, “it’s the old ones that I’ve been finding interesting lately. When I retire from the police force, perhaps I’ll take up geriatrics. Incidentally...”

Bruce watched Purbright search through a collection of pieces of paper he had taken from his pocket, select one, and thrust the rest back.

“Do you happen to know,” the inspector asked, “anything about a substance called”—he frowned at his note—“beta-aminotetrylglutarimide, God forgive us?”

“Where on earth did you get that one from?”

“It was mentioned during the inquest on Winge. I can’t vouch for my pronunciation. Nor for lawyer Scorpe’s.”

“Scorpe—he asked about it, did he?”

“Yes. He put it to Meadow.”

After a pause, Bruce said: “No, I don’t know what it is, but I suppose the old man’s family must have nosed around and found that Meadow had been prescribing it for Winge.”

“That was my impression.”

“I know those vultures. I smell a lawsuit.”

“So did Meadow, I think. He dragged in a red herring right away. He told Scorpe that Winge had been going against his advice and dosing himself with a herbal remedy called Samson’s Salad. You haven’t heard of that, I suppose?”

“Good God, no. What’s it supposed to do?”

“Impart the sexual virility of the Ancient Britons.”

Bruce took a little time to digest this promising specification. Then he said, half in wonder, half in pride:

“We don’t half have some goings-on in this little old town.”

“Don’t we?”

The inspector stood and buttoned his raincoat. At the door, he raised his hand.

“Ring me if you get any ideas.”

Chapter Fourteen

Miss Teatime paused at the little Georgian doorway that led to her rooms in the Church Close, and, while feeling for her key, looked up at the gothic wedding cake tiers of the great tower of St Laurence’s. That miraculous stone confection never failed to please her. She loved in particular its ever-changing response to weather and time of day. In the first light of morning, its buttresses, lancets and galleries had a metallic sharpness; they looked to be fashioned in pewter. Then, as the sky brightened, silver facets appeared. Summer noons turned the traceries to honeycomb. In storm, the tower was a monochrome of granite; in mist, a long brown sail, becalmed. As Miss Teatime gazed at it now, an hour after sunset on a damp, still evening, the soaring stone was tinged with green, as if it had caught and thrown down to her a reflection of the fields and woods beyond the town.

She sighed and faced about to open the door.

In her sitting-room at the head of the first flight of narrow, sharply twisting stairs, she switched on the light and enjoyed for a moment its revelation of pale lavender colour-washed walls and the gleam of fresh grey paint from deep, classically simple window frames. She had decorated the room herself, transforming it from the dinginess of long neglect (which had made it a gratifyingly cheap buy) into what she imagined—probably rightly—would have pleased those Flaxborough contemporaries of Jane Austen who had been its first occupants.

She took off her hat and coat, made tea in the tiny adjoining kitchen, and drew up a chair to the slender-legged table beneath one of the wall lamps. Among the contents of the tea tray, which she had set down at the end of the table away from typewriter and stationery, was a small whiskey bottle, half full.

When she judged the tea to be properly infused, she poured some out and added a little sugar, a very little milk, and as much whiskey as would still allow the mixture to be stirred without slopping over into the saucer. She took a sip, then, with an increasing approval, another, and a third. She did not care for over-hot tea: blowing it was vulgar—it also wastefully evaporated the whiskey.

Not until she had finished her first cup and poured and laced her second, did Miss Teatime turn her attention to a clip of correspondence which she had laid ready beside the typewriter.

There were nearly a dozen letters, all addressed to Moldham Meres Laboratories. Although most were from individual customers, four had been written by the managers of health food stores in various parts of the country.

They related to Press reports of the Winge inquest. Some enclosed newspaper cuttings. Drowned Alderman was Herb Eater...Reservoir Death after “Salad”, Court Told...Doctor Blames Nature Cure.

Every writer declared, in terms ranging from the abrupt and offensive to the politically ingenious (a customer in Leamington Spa suggesting that Samson’s Salad was a paralysing nerve weed cultivated on Siberian state farms), that no further supplies were required. Some of the shopkeepers demanded a refund on current stocks.

It was this last category of complaint that Miss Teatime considered particularly wounding, indicative as it was of a degree of cupidity that she had scarcely expected to find in the protagonists of Natural Goodness.

She lit a cheroot and considered how best a reply could be framed. It would have to be in the nature of a duplicated circular, she feared: these letters were doubtless but harbingers of flocks to come.

After a while, she began to type. Her typing, though punctuated by periods of thought, had the grace, speed and accurary typical of an old and hard school of secretarial training. Ah, yes, the Bishop (she would have explained to an admiring onlooker) had always insisted upon his pastoral letters being absolutely clean.

Friend, (her manifesto ran)

I am extremely sorry that you have been disturbed by certain newspaper references to Our Product. Our legal advisers, needless to say, are already taking certain action, in the outcome of which we have complete confidence; but I am writing to you in the meantime to point out certain facts which you, as an intelligent person, are fully entitled to interpret for yourself.

Firstly, I must reveal to you that the medical practitioner who saw fit to make the disparaging remarks in question has since died suddenly. We do not, of course, claim this ununfortunate occurrence to have been divinely engineered in vindication of Nature’s Way. You might well wonder, however, whether a man so signally unsuccessful in maintaining his own life span was qualified to throw doubt upon the health-winning methods of others.

Secondly, I would point out that Moldham Meres Laboratories have never pretended that Our Product is incapable of being misused. There is no Gift of Nature which cannot be turned to a wrongful purpose. Our Product is a natural concentrate of the Life Force. Therefore it cannot fail to increase the Vitality of the user and thus greatly to improve the performance of all Natural Functions.

You will readily appreciate, of course, that only those who temper their enjoyment of life with Self Control and respect the confines of Matrimony are suitable candidates for the advantages offered by Our Product.

If, for any reason, you feel that your own Personal Standards do not meet this condition, we shall be happy to refund your money on receipt of Proof of Purchase.

Miss Teatime withdrew the sheet from the machine and carefully read it through. From time to time she nodded to herself. Plenty of capital letters. Excellent. Devotion to upper case, she had noticed, was one of the more consistent characteristics of Life Force enthusiasts.

She put the letter aside. She would make the stencil later, then Florrie could start running off some copies.

It was now quite dark outside in the Close. There stood out from the blackness opposite an arched multi-coloured glow. It was the stained glass window of the chapel where choir practice was usually held. Miss Teatime gazed fondly at the night-framed mosaic of indigo, ruby and saffron. How timelessly dependable it looked, this lovely survival of mediaeval self-confidence.

She re-filled her cup and carried it to a small chintz-covered armchair near the fireplace. Close to the chair was a telephone on a low table. She set down her cup, lowered herself into the chair and reached for the phone. She asked for a Welbeck number and waited, leaning back into the comfort of the cushions.

“Bernard?... This is Lucilla—Lucilla Teatime.”

“Lucy! My dear, how lovely to hear you again! Where are you?”

She smiled smugly to herself and stroked with one finger the outline of a flower in the patterned chair cover.

“I am a long way from London, and not a bit sorry. Flaxborough suits me admirably.”

“Where and what in God’s name is Flaxborough?”

“Now, Bernard,” she said reprovingly, “I thought better of you. To pretend that civilization stops at North-west Three is the least endearing of the Londoner’s parochial affectations. Flaxborough is not merely an exceptionally charming town; it is a good deal more stimulating than that elephantine combination of a clip joint and knocking shop that you are pleased to regard as the centre of the universe.”

“All right, Lucy, all right. Just tell me what you are doing.”

“A number of things. All interesting.”

“And rewarding? Your talents are sadly missed, my love.”

“I really believe you mean that. But you need not worry. This is a town of many opportunities.”

“Which you are in the process of seizing, no doubt.”

“I glean where I may, Bernard. With a little help, of course.”

“Oh?”

“At the moment—and I know you will be interested to hear this—it is being given by an old friend of yours. You did not know, did you, that Brother Culpepper is here with me?”

“Good Lord! Holy Joe?”

“You had not heard that he was in retreat?”

“Well, I did gather as much from the newspapers.”

“No, no, Bernard—I mean in an ecclesiastical sense. Out here he is isolated from the demands of the world. He tells me it is a great relief not to feel sought after all the time. And of course the open air life is working wonders for him.”

“Never mind Joe. I want to hear about you, Lucy. What are you doing with yourself?”

“I have acquired a herb farm.”

“A what?”

“A herb farm. Now, please do not interrupt, Bernard: this call is going to cost rather a lot of money, and you will have to listen carefully if you are to understand what I wish you to do for me. There is one thing I must be clear about before I begin. Am I right in assuming that your—what shall I say?—your professional lustre is undimmed?”

There was a slight pause.

“If you mean what I think you mean, the answer is yes.”

“Oh, I am so glad. In that case, I am sure you will be able to do me the favour I have in mind. It will require a little research—nothing terribly difficult. Now then, Bernard, are you ready? You will probably wish to make a note or two.”

“Carry on.”

“Firstly, I wish to know what you can find out about a Dr Augustus Meadow, who is in practice in Heston Lane, Flaxborough. Or was, rather—he happened to die this evening.”

“Oh, Lucy, you surely haven’t got yourself mixed up in...”

“Certainly not. As far as anybody knows, he collapsed and died in a perfectly respectable manner and in his own surgery. It was by sheer coincidence that I was waiting to see him at the time. The annoying thing is that I shall not now be able to learn from him what I wanted.”

“What sort of information are you after, anyway? Career? Background? Whatever I can unearth down here is bound to be pretty sketchy. Why don’t you see what you can find in the files of the local paper? I assume there is a local paper?”

“I am not writing a biography, Bernard. My interest is in the man’s professional activities and I have reason to think that some of them may have been specialized in a way that would gain notice. His receptionist tells me that he conducted certain clinical trials, or helped to conduct them, on behalf of a drug firm called Elixon. According to her, he published findings in the medical press. I suggest that back numbers of the British Medical Journal might be revealing. Unfortunately, that is not the sort of literature one finds knocking about in Flaxborough public library, or I might not be troubling you.”

“All right, I’ll cast around. Anything else?”

“Yes. Have you heard of a drug called ‘Juniform’?”

“I have.”

“Is it well known?”

“Not in my field, no. But then it’s scarcely likely to become part of the armoury of the obstetrician.”

“Oh, Bernard! You are sweet. Obstetrician.... So you are!”

“Now look, Lucy—do you want me to help you or don’t you?”

At once Miss Teatime quelled her trill of amusement. “Bernard, I am sorry. No, you were saying...?”

“I was saying—or about to say—that ‘Juniform’ is what you might call an over-sixties drug. I’ve no personal experience of it, but I do know that it is being very assiduously pushed.”

“But how exciting! Like heroin, you mean?”

“No, I do not mean like heroin. Pushed commercially. It isn’t a pep pill being peddled round coffee bars. Private surgeries are where the pressure is being applied. The manufacturers obviously think they’ve got a winner. I gather they’re spending like mad on promotion.”

“I see... And what exactly is ‘Juniform’ supposed to accomplish?”

“The claim, I gather, is that it produces some kind of cellular modification that inhibits natural ageing processes. Is that too technical for you?”

“Hence the name, I presume. ‘Juniform’. Juvenis, young.”

“Exactly. I’ll try and dig up some more about it, if you really want me to.”

“I do, my dear. It sounds enormously intriguing.”

“At least I know your interest is purely altruistic, Lucy. It will be a good many years before you need any artificial rejuvenation.”

“Bernard, you are quite irresistible! No wonder all those lovely rich women bring you their cysts to be...”

“Is there,” he interrupted hastily, “anything else you want me to find out while I’m at it?”

“Am I being a dreadful nuisance?”

“Not in the least. I’m only too happy to help.”

“Well, in that case, I shall be greedy and ask you for one final piece of information. This will not be easy, I am afraid, but I know you will try. It concerns Elixon—you know, the drug house that markets ‘Juniform’. I wish to know whatever you can learn about one of its travelling representatives. His name is Brennan, and he is at present in this area. Oh, and Bernard...”

“Yes?”

“I realize that this will sound quite wickedly unreasonable, but if all this information is going to be of any use to me, I must have it within twenty-four or, at the most, forty-eight hours.”

“Bloody hell!”

“Bloody hell, indeed, Bernard, but I did tell you that Flaxborough is a considerably more lively town than London. I think the absence of petrol fumes has something to do with it. You will ring me?”

“Oh, all right. But I’m not promising anything.”

“Flaxborough four-three-double-seven. Tomorrow evening, or the evening following at the very latest.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Which I know will be a great deal, my dear. You are a man of resource. My confidence will not miscarry...”

“Lucy! For God’s sake! Not over the phone...”

“Sorry,” she said sweetly.

But the line was already dead.

Chapter Fifteen

Mrs McCreavy greeted Inspector Purbright with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. She had never, in the course of a somewhat tediously blameless life, received a visit from a policeman of any rank, let alone a detective inspector. But now, with so elevated a representative of the law upon her doorstep, it seemed (to Mrs McCreavy) that neglectful destiny was going to make up for lost time. Into what sort of notoriety was she about to be plunged? Would there be a taking of photographs? A summons to court? And had she remembered, on hearing the door bell, to take that corset off the settee in the front room?

She preceded him into the parlour, ready to whisk the corset under a cushion. It was nowhere in sight. (Of course—she’d put it away earlier that morning when the window cleaner had called.) Feeling less vulnerable, she tightened up her face and invited him to state his business.

“I understand, Mrs McCreavy, that you were present in Dr Meadow’s surgery yesterday evening when he was taken ill.”

She bowed her head in solemn confirmation.

“It must have been a very upsetting experience for you. I’m sorry.”

“Upsetting,” she repeated. “Yes, definitely.”

“I hope you’re feeling a little better now.”

“A little. Thank you very much.”

“The reason I am here is quite simple, Mrs McCreavy. You have nothing to worry about. It is just that a sudden death of this kind has to be officially reported. We have to establish details. You understand? All quite usual.”

“Details. I see.”

“So I want you to tell me exactly what happened, as you remember it. Of course, I shan’t ask you anything private—about your reasons for consulting Dr Meadow, I mean. I only want you to describe what took place.”

Mrs McCreavy’s response suggested that the inspector’s delicacy had been wasted. She slid both hands across her diaphragm and lifted, as if for his approbation, a generously proportioned bosom.

“Well, I’d been getting these pains round here, you see. Oh, and right through the chest. Just like knives. A bit worse on this side, if anything.”

She thoughtfully weighed her left breast, reminding Purbright, despite his determination to be seriously sympathetic, of a judge at a vegetable show.

“Of course, I’ve had them, off and on, since I was a girl, and my husband always says I make a lot of fuss about nothing, but I mean, he doesn’t know, does he? He’s not in there to feel. And then there was Mrs Holland, next door but one. She had to have all her insides taken away. Well...” She paused, inviting comment.

“You were very wise to make sure,” Purbright said briskly. “So,” he continued at once, “you went to the surgery, entered Dr Meadow’s consulting room when it was your turn, and told him about the pains. He was sitting down, was he?”

“Yes,” Mrs McCreavy seemed a little resentful at having been short-circuited.

“How did his appearance strike you? Did he look ill or tired?”

“No, nothing like that. He seemed a bit quiet, though, and he didn’t listen properly at first when I was talking to him. He just sat fiddling with that thing they listen to your heart through.”

“Anyway, you told him your symptoms, I suppose. What happened then?”

“He told me to take my things off.”

“Yes?”

“Well, I did. Not altogether, I mean. Just...well, so that he could sound my chest. There’s a screen, of course. When I came out again, he was standing up. He got me to come round beside the desk. Next to him—you know, facing. Anyway, he started off by doing that tapping business with two fingers, up and down the chest, and then round the back. I always like that, don’t you? He’d got lovely hands, Dr Meadow had. They sort of matched his voice—do you know what I mean? Anyway, he went on tapping and asking questions for a bit, about where I felt the pain, and whether I’d had a cold, and what I ate, and that sort of thing, and then he put on his what’s-its-name—you know—not telescope...”

“Stethoscope.”

“That’s right—and he went over my chest again with that, and he said there was nothing wrong that he could hear, absolutely nothing. And then he got me to turn round and he started listening at the back. And he said, no, nothing there. Oh, he said that twice, and I thought he sounded a little bit annoyed, as a matter of fact. And then he sort of stepped away. I didn’t see him, of course, but I heard him say something like, ‘Well, we’ll see if this does the trick’, and I waited, and then I felt that thing go on my back again, and I heard him say something very quietly to himself. It sounded like, ‘The fur is darker’...”

“The fur is darker?”

“That’s right. I don’t know what he could have meant. The fur is darker—that’s what he said. I only thought of it afterwards because of what happened. You see, straight away there was this funny hissing noise he made. Ssss! Like that. As if he was impatient or cross. And then I got the fright of my life. Well, his arm came up as if he was trying to grab me. And me with practically nothing on. I thought... well, I don’t know what I thought, but I jumped away from him and I think I called out ‘Get away’, or ’Don’t’, or something, and then there was this awful crash and I looked round and there he was lying on the floor, sort of jerking and twitching, and I screamed and all I can remember after that was sitting out there in the waiting-room and crying and trying to drink a glass of water that Miss Sutton had brought me. Oh, it was a terrible shock to see him there.... Poor Dr Mea...”

A return of grief transformed the name into a soft, bleating sob. Her head fell. She felt ineffectually for the handbag that she had put down on the settee on coming in. It was just out of reach. Purbright stood and moved it over against her hand. He touched her shoulder.

“Thank you, Mrs McCreavy. I shan’t trouble you any more.”

And he didn’t. But as he walked down the path between the diminutive lawn and a bed of Mr McCreavy’s scrupulously tended dahlias towards the green-painted gate, he reflected on troubles of his own. Not the least of these was the bafflement induced by the late Dr Meadow’s last words.

What on earth had he been trying to convey by ‘The fur is darker?’ What fur? Had there been an animal of some kind in the surgery? Had it bitten him? Fatally? Oh, hell...

Sergeant Love was looking deceptively bland when Purbright got back to the police station.

“I see he’s still at it,” he announced.

“Who’s at what?” Purbright was in no mood for cryptic references.

“The Flaxborough Crab. Have you seen the report book this morning?”

“I have seen nothing this morning. I’ve been purging my soul by unproductive leg work.”

“Another young woman’s been attacked.”

Purbright’s weary “Oh, Christ!” implied that he had had about enough of the conspiracy by assault-prone females to disrupt his routine. But at once he repented and asked anxiously: “Serious?”

“She wasn’t hurt. Only frightened. He was wearing something round his face this time.”

That’s new.”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the girl?”

“Elizabeth Loder. Nineteen. She’s a housemaid. Her family live in Dorley Road, but she’s only there on her nights off. Anyway, it was Pook who interviewed her. He’s doing you a full report.”

“Is he. Yes, all right, Sid. Now look—did you manage to see that Leadbetter character?”

“Aye, Mrs Grope, too. She says her old man’s cooling off again. Very pleased about that. Apparently the doctor told her that Grope had been taking some medicine that might have disagreed with him but that he’d had it stopped.”

“She offered no clue about Meadow’s dropping dead I suppose?”

“No, she said he was perfectly all right when she came out.”

“I see. And Leadbetter?”

Love grinned. “Funny, but do you know who he is? He’s the brother of that old ram on the council—the one who was mixed up in that brothel business a few years back. Must run in the family.”

“Must run in Dr Meadow’s patients,” corrected Purbright, thoughtfully. “Unless Leadbetter’s another herb addict. Did he tell you what it was he’d gone to see the doctor about?”

“Not a word.”

“No, I hardly expected he would.”

It was very rarely that Love felt awkward in the inspector’s presence. Purbright was no wielder of rank, and his temperament was remarkably equable. Today, however, not even the sergeant’s cheery insensibility could long block his realization that Purbright was, in the sergeant’s terminology, ‘bloody well cheesed’. He ventured, crudely but with good intent, to find out why.

“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 things 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?”

The deputy coroner, too, had lowered his voice. He was nervous lest anything they said should elicit further reminiscence from old James.

“I take it as definitely your opinion that there shouldn’t be an inquest. Is that right, sir?”

Thompson stiffened. “Of course it’s right. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“I just wanted to be sure, sir.”

Dr James glanced sharply across at them.

“Sure about what?”

“Nothing, doctor. The sergeant was only asking if we had any other cases to be dealt with today.”

“He said something about an inquest,” persisted the old man. “Why should there be an inquest? I’ve signed a certificate, haven’t I?” His head was rocking gently up and down, as if he had some machinery inside him.

“As long as you’re satisfied, doctor,” said Malley, easily.

He peered inside his cap, adjusted its shape a little, and put it on. The cap was not quite big enough and he had to pull it well forward and down to conform with the Chief Constable’s dictum that no policeman could do his job properly unless the tip of his cap peak were in line with, and equidistant from his ear lobes.

Dr James stared at the result and mistook for insolent indifference the sergeant’s resemblance to a patient, blinkered carthorse.

“I should like to know just what you are insinuating, officer. If it is suggested that after fifty-two years in general practice...”

“Oh, come now, doctor,” Thompson interjected. “I’m sure my officer would not dream of calling your judgment into doubt. He simply has to report the facts to his inspector, and he wishes to be absolutely accurate. Isn’t that so, Malley?”

“Of course, sir.” said the horse.

Dr James simmered silently a few moments longer, then made a determined effort to stop nodding.

“Very well, then. But don’t let us hear any more talk about inquests. That won’t do anybody any good. It’s a sad enough business as it is. Great loss to the profession. And to the town.”

He stared out once more through the small, dusty panes of the window, as though to see how the town was taking it.

“Indeed yes,” murmured Dr Thompson. Surreptitiously he gave Malley a nudge to signify that he’d better go while the going was good.

In another lawyer’s office, Inspector Purbright was cheerfully telling Mr Scorpe that he proposed to be so shamelessly unethical as to try and pick that gentleman’s brains.

Since his talk over the telephone with Pauline Sutton, Purbright had been feeling a good deal more energetic. New hope engendered a pleasant recklessness.

Mr Scorpe at first looked startled. Then he lowered the angle of his long wooden face and gazed over his spectacles with a touch of amusement.

“You are being very frank, inspector.”

“Not frank. Downright impertinent. I want you to tell me what the analyst found in that sample of herbs you sent off to him.”

Scorpe pulled a tray of letters across the desk top and began sorting through them.

“Go away,” he said.

“Come along, you can afford to do me a favour. And this one won’t cost you anything.”

“What gives you the idea”—Scorpe did not raise his eyes—“that I should have wanted something analysing? This isn’t a forensic science agency.”

“No, but you’re acting for the Winges, and we all know their family motto—‘Somebody’s Got to be Summonsed’. Moldham Meres Laboratories will do as well as anyone else.”

“Really, inspector! That is a most improper suggestion!”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

Purbright put his head on one side and gently scratched his ear.

“What did they find?”

Scorpe turned over another couple of letters.

“You get your own analysing done,” he said, gruffly. “My client has to pay. Yours don’t.”

“Aye, but it’s a question of saving time. You wouldn’t mind doing that for me, I know.”

Scorpe remained for half a minute in silent examination of his correspondence. Then, without looking, he opened and reached into a drawer and held out a small sheet of buff-coloured paper. Purbright took it.

The report was short. It referred to inert vegetable matter, minimal water content, insignificant mineral traces, non-toxic alkaloids, all derived from a plant of the genus Compositae, probably Taraxacum Officinale, or the common dandelion.

“Hard luck,” said Purbright. He put the sheet back into the still extended hand of Mr Scorpe.

“You haven’t seen me,” said the solicitor, feeling for the drawer.

Purbright made his way through Priory Lane to the river end of East Street and went into the Roebuck. After drinking half a pint of bitter in the deserted public bar, he sought out the manager, Mr Maddox, and asked him if a gentleman named Brennan was still among his guests.

The manager’s morning frown deepened. He looked at the register, then behind him at the key board.

“He is, yes. Did you want to see him?”

“Not at the moment. Has he given any indication of how long he intends to stay?”

“He’s booked until the day after tomorrow.”

“Right. If he changes his plans, I shall be glad if you will telephone at once and let us know, Mr Maddox. It’s very important.”

“I trust there’s nothing, ah...”

Long experience of the contingencies of the hotel trade had instilled in Mr Maddox a chronic anxiety, attested by his apparent inability to finish a sentence. Moreover, whenever he said ‘I trust...’—which was very often—he meant exactly the opposite.

“No, no, nothing,” said Purbright, airily.

“The fact is, we’ve had two already this week who haven’t, ah...”

“Have you, indeed?”

“Mr Brennan didn’t strike me as that sort, actually.”

“Oh? As what sort did he strike you?”

“Rather gentlemanly for a commercial. If he is one, that is. I’ve not noticed him playing billiards, come to think of it, although I suppose that’s not, er...”

“Did you happen to notice at what time he came in last night?”

“Ye-es, it would be about, oh, nine, quarter-past nine.”

“How was he dressed?”

Maddox shook his head doubtfully.

“That I couldn’t really say. I think he was carrying a coat... no, I’m wrong—I was thinking of someone else. He’s got his own car here, you know. Or is it hired? Yes, I remember he asked about hiring when he arrived. Simpsons probably, ah... Or the Two-Star, perhaps. It’s a grey Hillman, anyway.”

“You say you did see him come in last night. Did you see anything of a scarf?”

At this question, which Maddox obviously considered to have sinister overtones, his expression changed to one of alarm.

“I do feel, inspector, that for the sake of the hotel, you should say if there’s anything, ah...”

Purbright assured him at once that he had no need to feel apprehensive. To the truthful assertion that nothing was known to Mr Brennan’s discredit, he added, less truthfully: “We are only trying to eliminate him from an inquiry that’s been going on.”

“I see,” said the manager. “Well, that’s all right, then. A scarf, you say.... No, I’ve never seen him wearing a scarf.”

“What room is he in?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“And he’s in it now?”

Maddox again consulted the key board. “Yes.”

“In that case, I wonder if you’d mind coming outside and showing me which is his car.”

At the back of the hotel was a walled area that once had been the coaching yard. Part of it was still paved with cobblestones. Above the broad archway that divided the hotel’s ground floor and gave access to the street, there survived a balustraded balcony from which guests of two hundred years before had watched ostlers hasten to tend the steaming horses that had drawn the ‘Nottingham Flyer’ or the ‘Eastern Mail’.

Purbright looked up at the balcony and at the windows above. “Is there any chance of his spotting us down here?”

“No, twenty-seven is on the far side. In any case, the residents’ cars are kept under cover. I’ll show you.”

He led the way to a roofed enclosure. There were ten or a dozen cars inside. Maddox pointed to one of them and then turned to stand facing the yard.

Brennan’s car was locked. Purbright made a note of its number, then circled the car, peering through the windows. On the back seat were two leather cases, one small, the other about the size of a suitcase. Both were square and rigid-looking; designed, Purbright imagined, to hold pharmaceutical or surgical samples. He did not see the briefcase he had noticed Brennan carrying in the surgery. Several Elixon leaflets were in evidence, though.

On the front passenger seat was a rolled-up raincoat. It was a very pale mushroom colour; in better light, it would look practically white. Purbright scrutinized this coat from as many angles as he could by pressing his face against the glass and shielding off reflections with his hands. From one position he succeeded in spotting a tuck of some darker material. Something—possibly a thin scarf or silk square—had been rolled within the coat.

He rejoined Maddox, whom he thanked and again adjured to make instant report of any sign of his guest’s intention to depart. Then he set off for the other end of town and Heston Lane.

How deeply grieved was Mrs Meadow by her husband’s death, Purbright found difficult at first sight to decide. What was certain was that he encountered a woman monumentally put out.

His condolences were received with a formality just short of indifference. He had put no more than three questions before she shook her head impatiently.

“I’m sorry, inspector, but if you really must know these things, you will have to ask someone else. Perhaps my husband’s solicitor could find time to help you.”

“I doubt if that would meet the case, Mrs Meadow. You must believe me when I say that I am trying to spare you as much distress and inconvenience as I can. But there are some questions—they will not take long, I promise you—which you alone can answer.”

Grudgingly, she relaxed slightly the attitude of preparing to get up from her chair.

“I asked you a moment ago,” Purbright resumed, “where the doctor was yesterday between, say, five o’clock and six, when he went into surgery.”

“He was here, naturally. We always have tea served at four-thirty.”

“Did he not go out at any time during that hour?”

“No.”

“And was there no one else in the house, apart from yourself?”

“Only the maid.”

“Elizabeth Loder?”

She looked at him narrowly.

“I don’t see why you should know her name... Oh, the business down the road, of course. I hope nothing’s going to be made of that, by the way. Not on top of everything else. The girl wasn’t hurt, you know.”

“No,” said Purbright. “She wasn’t.” He thought for a moment, then asked: “Did anyone call on the doctor yesterday afternoon?”

“I don’t think so. He was across at the office for most of the afternoon. Until about half-past four. No, I’m sure no one called.”

“So he had no contact with anyone other than you or Miss Loder from four-thirty until he left the house at six.”

“Ten to six,” she corrected. “The patients begin to be seen at six, but my husband always went over ten or fifteen minutes beforehand.”

“Might he have had a caller during that time?”

“Yesterday evening, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible... But really, inspector. I don’t get the drift of all this.”

Purbright delved for what might serve as a plausible explanation.

“I’m sorry. The fact is that we believe that the man who attacked Miss Loder might have been hanging round the house or the surgery earlier in the day.”

“Miss Loder...? Oh, you mean Elizabeth. But surely you’re not taking up all this time and asking me all these odd questions because of that? It was a very trivial incident.”

“There have been other attacks, Mrs Meadow.”

“There might have been, but that doesn’t mean my house should be flooded with policemen. Especially at a time like this. Tell me, does Mr Chubb know you’re here?”

“The Chief Constable is aware that inquiries are being made,” Purbright said, stiffly.

Mrs Meadow gave a short nod. “I think I shall have to have a word with him.”

“Very good. But if I might take advantage of your forbearance for one moment more, Mrs Meadow, I should like just to be a little clearer about the period we were discussing. Can you suggest—and I assure you that this is important—anyone at all who may have visited the doctor between ten minutes to six yesterday evening and six o’clock when the surgery opened?”

Despite her expression of bleak resentment, she did appear to give the question thought.

After a while, she said: “There is one possibility, although I’m sure it is irrelevant. My husband had been writing an article for professional publication. He finished it yesterday. Apparently it made reference to the effects of some drug or other, and I believe Dr Meadow intended to show the article to the representative of a firm—one of the leading pharmaceutical firms—for which he had been doing research. He may—and I say may—have seen this man before surgery. It was a period he set aside for dealing with travellers and people like that. So that his patients would not be inconvenienced, you understand.”

She stood up.

“That is all I can tell you, inspector. And now you must please excuse me. Elizabeth will see you out.”

She picked up a little ornamental handbell and, somewhat to the inspector’s embarrassment, shook it resolutely.

Purbright waited until the girl was about to open the front. door before he spoke to her.

“Hang on a minute, Elizabeth. Just a couple of quick questions about what happened to you yesterday.”

She looked at him nervously, then glanced back down the hall.

“I don’t know that I ought, really...she says I’m not to make any fuss about it.”

“I shan’t keep you a second.”

“But the policeman who came—he wrote everything down, I told it all to him.” She kept one slim, brown hand on the door catch.

“The car the man was hiding behind—I don’t think you described that, did you?”

“I didn’t notice it, really.”

“Not the colour, even?”

“I think it was a sort of greyish colour.” Again she looked past him, towards the room containing Mrs Meadow and her bell.

“I see. Make? Number? No good?”

She shook her head.

“Never mind. Now the man. His face was covered. In something brown, you said. Something patterned? Or not.”

“Patterned, I think.”

“And his coat. You said white. Are you sure?”

“Yes, white. It was thin and sort of smooth.”

“Have you ever seen a continental raincoat, Elizabeth? The sort they wear in Germany, Scandinavia, places like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The letters. Now I want you to think very carefully. When you picked them up again, are you sure they were all there?”

“Please—I’ll have to be getting back...” She turned her face and began opening the door, but not quickly enough to hide sudden flushed cheeks.

Purbright touched her arm.

“How many were missing, Elizabeth? It’s very important that I know.”

“One. Only one. I...I daren’t let on about it. She’d have got mad at me.”

“Do you know which one? Had you seen the address on it?”

“Somewhere in London, I think. It was one of those long envelopes, and it had more stamps on than the others. You won’t let her know, will you?”

“Typewritten?”

The girl nodded miserably.

“Listen,” said Purbright. “Does this sound familiar? The British...” He formed his lips into the pronunciation of an M, and waited.

Suddenly she brightened, her unhappiness dispelled for the moment by a chance to show herself clever.

“British Medical Journal! Yes, that was it. I’m sure it was.”

“Good girl,” said Purbright. He pulled open the door himself and stepped through.

Sergeant Malley, gingerly carrying a brimful mug of tea from the canteen back to his office, raised his head to see Purbright immediately in front of him. He stopped. A little of the tea slopped on the corridor floor. The inspector was looking so cheerful that Malley had to remind himself that Purbright was not by nature a rib-poker before he felt safe to squeeze to one side and give him room to pass.

“Oh, about Meadow...” he began.

“Have they done the autopsy yet?” the inspector interrupted eagerly.

“Autopsy?”

“Certainly. Have you not seen Heineman yet?”

Malley gripped his mug more firmly. “I have, as a matter of fact. Thompson, too. And Dr James. There isn’t going to be any autopsy.”

Purbright stared. “What the hell are they playing at?”

“Thompson’s decided that there’s no need for an inquest. James signed a certificate, so it looks as though that’s that.”

“That is bloody well not that! Come on, Bill—get into your office. I’ll phone from there.”

Dr Thompson had left Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby. Purbright tried the deputy coroner’s own home. Mrs Thompson suggested the doctor might have driven over to the hospital. He had his medical duties to perform as well, the inspector would realize. She plainly shared her husband’s opinion that the honour of deputizing for old Amblesby was not worth the trouble involved.

The matron at the General said that Dr Thompson had gone on the wards to visit one of his patients. She would have him called to a telephone.

Purbright waited restlessly, weighing the receiver in his hand.

“I know what it is,” he said to Malley. “Doctors. Mutual protection association.”

The sergeant pushed his tea carefully to one side to make room for a tin of tobacco.

“I think you’ll find Heineman’s the trouble. The G.P.S don’t like pathologists much anyway—they spot the mistakes after the damage has been done—and Heinie’s an outsider. He’s only been here eleven years. You can imagine what the feeling is going to be when it’s not just a patient but one of the fraternity who goes on his slab.”

“Aye, but Meadow was murdered, Bill. I’m absolutely positive now.”

Malley paused in sniffing his newly opened tin.

“How?”

“God knows. That’s the hell of it. But it was done. Somehow or other it was done.”

“And do you know who did it?” Beneath. Malley’s bucolic manner was now a tense seriousness.

“Aye,” said Purbright, and left it at that.

A series of loud clicks came from the phone, followed by a voice, querulous, irritable.

Purbright spoke.

“Dr Thompson? Inspector Purbright... Yes, I realize that. I’m sorry. But this is urgent. I understand from the coroner’s officer that you have decided against holding an inquest on Dr Meadow...”

Four minutes later, Purbright put down the receiver and faced Malley with an expression of stony anger.

The sergeant removed his pipe and glanced with mild curiosity into the bowl.

“No joy?”

“He can see no reason for what he calls impugning the judgment of a competent and highly respected physician. That’s what he thinks his order for a P.M. would amount to.”

Malley took an experimental suck at his pipe and looked again in the bowl. “I was rather afraid you’d not be able to convince him.”

“Evidence—give me evidence, he says, that a crime’s been committed. But, God almighty, the only evidence we can ever hope to find is in that bloke’s belly. So what am I supposed to do?”

“Difficult,” said Malley, between puffs. “Pity there can’t be a little misunderstanding. I mean, Heinie would be in there filleting before anyone could stop him, once he got the word...”

“Oh, no!” Purbright held up his hand. “You can stop thinking along those lines, Bill. Pirate autopsies are definitely out.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

Purbright lay back in his chair and stared disconsolately at the wall. For a long time, he said nothing. What he did murmur at last made sense neither to the sergeant nor to himself.

“ ‘The fur is darker’.”

Chapter Seventeen

“I believe you have a Mr Brennan staying here, I should like to see him, please.”

The girl with the black fringe and a deep absorption in a magazine reached in slow motion for the house phone without looking up. “What name, madam?”

“Mr Brennan.”

“No, madam—your name.”

“My name is Miss Teatime.”

The girl set a plump white finger-end to guard the last word she had read, and peeked suspiciously through her fringe. Then, with the same hand that held the phone, she contrived to push home one of the switchboard plugs.

“There’s a lady in reception to see you, sir. She says her name is Miss Teatime.”

The girl listened, looking fixedly at the visitor.

“Very good, sir.”

She removed the plug, seated the phone, and made rendezvous with the waiting finger.

“Room twenty-seven, madam.”

Miss Teatime walked to the lift.

On the second floor, the door of twenty-seven already stood open.

Brennan, who now wore a brown suit that made him look bulkier than when she had seen him last, was on the threshold. He watched Miss Teatime’s approach along the corridor with an expression of curiosity, interrupted occasionally by a downward glance at the progress of something he was doing with his hands. As she got nearer, she saw that he was peeling an apple. He managed it very expertly so that the peel hung unbroken in a long green and white spiral which gently rose and fell as the apple turned beneath the knife.

“Good evening, Mr Brennan.”

He made a short bow, saying nothing, and stood back from the doorway.

Miss Teatime entered the room.

“We have met, you know.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.”

He let fall the appleskin coil neatly into an ornamental waste-paper tub beside the fireplace. The pocketing of the penknife was the conclusion of a single sweeping motion that brought the back of the blade against his thigh, snapping it shut. All his actions, Miss Teatime thought, would be like that—accurate, economical.

“Please...” He pointed to a chair.

She sat. Brennan remained standing by the table, on which he had laid his peeled apple on a saucer. He regarded her with polite expectancy.

As Miss Teatime removed a pair of light fawn gloves, she made a quick survey of the room; not inquisitively, but in the manner of a well-bred guest sizing up an agreeable situation. She saw that it was not a self-contained room, with a bed, like most of those at the Roebuck, but one from which two doors led to other apartments, presumably bathroom and bedroom. The carpet, a blue Wilton, was comparatively new, and the furniture included an antique lacquered cabinet, a pair of good chairs and a small bureau in reproduction Chippendale style. A big console television set supervised the room from one corner. By Flaxborough standards, it was all rather grand.

“And what can I do for you, Miss Teatime?”

She turned upon him her full attention, graced with a friendly smile.

“My errand will probably surprise you, but the fact is that I have come to make application for a grant.”

He frowned. “I don’t think I quite...”

“No, of course not. You cannot be expected to understand until I tell you who I am, can you? I am, so to speak, Moldham Meres Laboratories. That is to say, I am the company’s managing director—not,” she added hastily, “that I would like you to think of me as a tycoon or anything of that kind; we are a small and highly specialized concern, and it just happens that major responsibility has fallen upon me because of my long experience—through social work, you know—of the needs of elderly people. I do not need to remind you, of course, that the geriatric field is the area to which Moldham Meres Laboratories make particular contribution.”

“I can scarcely be reminded,” said Brennan, “of something I wasn’t aware of in the first place. I’m afraid I have never heard of these laboratories of yours.”

Miss Teatime looked shocked, but only for an instant. She good-humouredly wagged an admonitory finger.

“Now, Mr Brennan, we must not allow commercial rivalry to dictate our attitudes, must we? Human welfare is our common concern. Let us not pretend blindness to each other’s existence as workers towards that end.”

“I have not heard of your firm,” Brennan repeated. “And I am at a loss to understand what you said earlier about your purpose in coming to see me. A grant? What grant? How can you imagine that I have anything to do with grants?”

“You are the representative,” Miss Teatime resumed patiently, “of the West German drug house of Elixon, are you not?”

“Certainly.”

“And Elixon entertain high hopes that the product they allow to be made under licence here and marketed as ‘Juniform’ will prove a very valuable aid to geriatrician’s.”

“I would rather not discuss my firm’s products otherwise than with professional people, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, but I am not discussing them. I stated a fact which I assume to be available to anyone who cares to read the medical press.”

“Is that where you heard about ‘Juniform’?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

“You forget, Mr Brennan. We are fellow toilers in the vine-yard of human advancement. The only difference is that whereas your remedies are drawn from the retort and the centrifuge, mine rise directly from the earth.”

“Very picturesque.”

“Yes, but allow me to continue what I was saying. This ‘Juniform’, if it lived up to its promise, could be a tremendously significant drug. As I understand your firm’s admirably restrained claims, ‘Juniform’ actually holds back the effects of old age.”

“That is nowhere stated by us.”

“Not in those words, perhaps. ‘Inhibits the onset of cellular modifications associated with the ageing process.’ That seems to me to be very much the same thing. No matter—what your firm is offering is nothing more or less than a modern version of the great prize sought by the ancients, the Elixir of Life. I’m sorry—am I being picturesque again?”

“You are employing a silly and sensational catchphrase.”

“Solely to illustrate my point that ‘Juniform’ has sensational commercial possibilities. Always provided”—she put her fingertips together and regarded them critically—“that it produces no nasty side-effects.”

Brennan, who had remained standing in exactly the same position since Miss Teatime’s arrival in the room, took out and slickly opened his penknife. He picked up the apple, which was already brown-mottled by exposure, and with a deft, twisting incision, levered a piece out and carried it between thumb and knife blade to his mouth.

Miss Teatime was interested to see that he could eat with scarcely any overt jaw movement. She wondered if, instead of using his teeth, he had acquired the ability to crush food between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

“Oh, but I must not frighten you with talk of side-effects. I know they are bound to be a constant nightmare for you pharmaceutical people, and I do sympathize with you. Well, I know what I should feel if we began to receive complaints at Moldham Meres that people had been taken ill after using our products.”

Brennan cut away another piece of apple. There was a slightly more savage turn of the twist this time. He remained silent.

“To tell you the truth,” Miss Teatime continued in a lowered voice, “and quite in confidence between ourselves, there have been one or two cases lately that give me concern. A somewhat curious illness has afflicted several of our customers. Moreover”—her voice fell still further—“there has been publicity. You may well imagine how damaging that can be.

“The odd thing is that every one of these unfortunate customers of ours happens, or happened (one of them has died, I fear), to be also a taker of ‘Juniform’. This doubtless is pure coincidence, but it may serve to help you appreciate my firm’s predicament. I mean, it does bring you closer to the problem, does it not?”

She frowned. “Now, what was the other strange coincidence I meant to mention? Ah, yes—this illness. Do you know, it is exactly similar—or so I am reliably informed—to one that has been reported in a couple of Continental countries. And yet Moldham Meres Laboratories do not sell any of their products in Europe. I find that comforting, I must say, but it is rather mysterious.”

The apple was now sculpted down to its core. Brennan regarded the remnant pensively for a moment, then placed it on the saucer.

“And why are you telling me all this?” He spoke with tight, cold precision.

“Because I dared to hope that you might be interested in the problem as a colleague.”

“That is nonsense. What have I to do with this...this nature cure chicanery?”

“Let us not use harsh words, Mr Brennan. I am simply giving you an opportunity to use your influence with a very worthy organization towards an equally worthy end.”

“Again nonsense! My dear woman, if you imagine...”

“Please do not tell me,” Miss Teatime interrupted firmly, “that you are unaware of the existence of C.I.R.F.”

“And what is that pray?” Behind the hard, sardonic tone, there was a hint of caution.

“The Chemo-therapy International Research Foundation, Mr Brennan.”

“Ye-es, I have heard of it.”

“You should have done. It happens to be the creation of your own firm, by which it continues to be financed.”

“What of it?”

“The funds of C.I.R.F.—and please correct me if I am wrong to believe them substantial—are used to finance clinical trials of new drugs. They are supposed to be administered impartially, and I am sure they are, but the only trials of which I have personal knowledge are those which Dr Meadow—the late Dr Meadow, rather—conducted on ‘Juniform’. Dr Meadow received grants from the Foundation totalling nearly six thousand pounds. It was money well spent, of course, because it enabled him to establish that the drug was not only efficacious but completely harmless. His findings were published in the medical press and went into the sales literature of Elixon to be distributed all over the world.”

Brennan walked slowly to a chair and sat down. He did not take his eyes off her, nor, even when seated, did he relax the military stiffness of his back and shoulders.

“Go on, Miss Teatime.”

She nodded and gave him a benign smile.

“How fortunate that poor Dr Meadow was spared to complete his work in time. But now, alas, he has gone, and one might almost say that a vacancy has arisen in consequence.”

“A vacancy?”

“Yes—in relation to the availability of C.I.R.F. funds, I mean. Forgive my being forthright—presumptuous, I fear, was my father’s word for it—Sir William Teatime, the surgeon, you know—but it did occur to me that a research grant might appropriately be made to Moldham Meres Laboratories, in view of the parallel nature of our work in geriatrics. After all”—Miss Teatime gave a little shrug of sweet reasonableness—“my firm did receive the blame for those regrettable cases of indisposition which might just as well have been caused by ‘Juniform’, despite Dr Meadow’s vigilance.”

For a long time Brennan’s square, sombre face remained quite motionless while he stared unblinkingly at Miss Teatime. Then he gave a curt nod, as if he had just made up his mind about something, and examined his hands, slowly bending and unbending the stubby, powerful fingers.

“When you came in here,” he said, “I thought you were a crazy but harmless old woman...”

“That was a most ungentlemanly impression!”

Brennan ignored the interruption. “...but I see now that you are clever and far from harmless. It is obvious that you have been making a lot of inquiries into matters which cannot be said to concern you. You think you have found things out which will embarrass me or the firm I represent. Perhaps—and I shall put it no more strongly than this, out of respect for your age and sex—you are hopeful of financial gain.”

“Perish,” stoutly interjected Miss Teatime, “the thought!”

“Ah, I am glad to hear you say so. Because, believe me, you will be damnably disappointed”—his voice suddenly rose to a shout—“damnably disappointed, I say!—if you imagine that I will tolerate, let alone succumb to, any threat from you!”

Miss Teatime’s small, dainty mouth pursed in conjecture.

“You know, Mr Brennan, there is something about you which I do not quite understand. You do not have the style of a commercial traveller. Nor do you speak like one. I am particularly intrigued, because your, name is not known at the London office of Elixon’s subsidiary company in England.”

He glared. “My God! Your spying seems to have been very thorough!”

“My inquiries,” she corrected, gently.

“You will stop interrupting! Let me make this absolutely clear. Unless you cease your preposterous attempt to extort money and leave here immediately, I shall send for the manager and have you removed.”

“That would be very unethical, Mr Brennan. I have done no more than put to you a reasonable suggestion concerning medical research.”

“Get out!”

He had risen from his chair and was now standing a few feet away from her. His brittle fury was like that of a parade ground officer faced with some insolent subordinate.

Miss Teatime did not budge. She smoothed out a small crease in her skirt, sat a little more erect, and shook her head regretfully.

“Oh, dear. So Germanic.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You certainly could not be accused of having a bedside manner, doctor. But then, general practice is not your sphere, is it?”

“You are a lunatic! I was right, after all. You are mad as a hatmaker!”

She laughed. “Hutmacher...no, no, you are too carefully colloquial, doctor. In England, we say hatter. Nevertheless, your accent is most creditable—apart from a certain residual flatness. Tell me, how long were you in South Africa after the war, Dr Brunnen?”

He walked to the door, opened it, and came back to stand over Miss Teatime. She felt his fingers close over her upper arm.

“If you would be so good, madam...”

The harsh, ironic voice was within an inch or two of her ear. She was aware of her shoulder rising as if it had been trapped in machinery. For a second, the rest of her body drooped helplessly from it, like that of a cat picked up by one foreleg.

Brennan took a step towards the door.

Inexplicably, his foot failed to meet the ground. It seemed to have been taken in charge with quite astonishing dexterity and determination by Miss Teatime, who, slipping from his grasp, now thrust herself neatly aside so as not to impede Brennan’s floorward plunge.

The room reverberated so violently that it was some little time before the ringing of the telephone separated out as a significant sound.

Brennan lifted his head. Ponderously, he raised himself to a kneeling position.

Miss Teatime looked down at him sternly.

“You must never do that again,” she said.

The phone was ringing once more.

“Are you not going to answer it?”

Brennan got to his feet. He steadied himself against the wall and picked up the phone.

While he listened, he scowled with increasing intensity at Miss Teatime.

“Yes, I see... Did they say why?... No, I’ll come down. Tell them that. I shall be down in a moment, yes.”

Back went the receiver. The baleful stare was maintained.

“More of your stupid nonsense?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Those two policemen downstairs. They are your idea?”

“They most assuredly are not!”

Miss Teatime’s indignation had the ring of truth.

Brennan turned and hurried from the room.

Following as far as the door, Miss Teatime watched him walk swiftly to the end of the corridor and go from sight round the corner to the right. But the lift, she remembered, was on the left. He must have chosen to descend by the staircase.

She went back into the room and opened the front of the lacquered cabinet. It contained only a couple of bottles, a soda syphon and several glasses.

Two of the three drawers in the bureau were empty. In the third were hotel stationery, a pen, a map, rubber bands, an electric light bulb.

She made rapid search of the bathroom, paying special attention to a ventilator shutter and to the inside of the flushing cistern. In neither had anything been concealed. She pulled the door shut after her and went to work on the bedroom.

To the contents of the two small cupboards and the bedside locker, Miss Teatime paid only fleeting attention. She spent longer feeling between the clothing stacked with meticulous tidiness in a chest of drawers and explored the least obvious recesses within the big built-in wardrobe.

Then, as she stood by the bed, about to lift a corner of the mattress, she caught the sound of voices. At once, she slipped back into the main room.

Purbright appeared at the open door. Behind his shoulder hung the amiable, inquisitive face of Love, like a rosy moon.

“What on earth are you doing here? Where’s Brennan?”

“I presume you want an answer to the second question first. Mr Brennan left this room about three minutes ago. He said he was going down to see you.”

“Well, he didn’t. Sergeant—go and keep an eye on his car. It should be in the garage at the back. Grey Hillman, HMU-something-or-other.”

Love’s face dipped, then floated away.

“May I invite you in, inspector, on Mr Brennan’s behalf ? I cannot think he is likely to be far off.”

Purbright entered. He pushed the door nearly shut.

“And now your answer to the first question.”

“Why I am here? I came to persuade Mr Brennan of the error of his ways.”

“Which particular ways, Miss Teatime?”

“You should know, inspector. Otherwise, why should you be here yourself?”

“Ah, now you know better than to imagine that I am going to barter motives. Policemen have one great advantage, they need never account for their presence anywhere.”

“If I found one in my bath, I fancy I should be entitled to an explanation.”

“Not if he were in uniform. But you are not bathing at the moment, Miss Teatime, and I must not waste time in chat. Where is Brennan?”

Suddenly her expression changed.

“What is it you wish to question Mr Brennan about?”

“Oh, come now, Miss Teatime!”

“This is not mere inquisitiveness, and I do not mean to sound impertinent. Please tell me.”

He regarded her in silence for a moment.

“Very well. I want to ask him what he knows about an assault that took place the other night.”

“A criminal assault?”

“No. Technically, a common assault.”

She nodded. “Not a felony, then. Not an indictable offence at all. So you have no power to arrest him.”

“That’s true.”

She smiled at him slowly. “You do not much care, do you, inspector, for the exercise known as making bricks without straw.”

He, too, smiled. “Not greatly, no.”

“I may possibly be able to provide you with a little straw. Allow me to remain and we shall see.”

The door was pushed open. Brennan, accompanied by Love, entered the room. He glanced coldly at Miss Teatime, then addressed the inspector.

“I’m sorry, I was under the impression that you had arrived by the other entrance. I have been looking for you there.”

“I met the gentleman in the yard,” Love side-remarked to Purbright.

“That’s all right, Mr Brennan. The main thing is that we’ve finally managed to catch up with one another. I hadn’t really supposed”—the inspector grinned—“that you’d gone tearing off to the nearest airport or anything like that.”

Brennan responded with a brief, thin smile.

“There is a matter,” Purbright began, “about which we hope you might be able to give us some useful information, sir. We are investigating an incident in Heston Lane two evenings ago. The evening of the twelfth. A young woman was assaulted near a post box. You may know the place, sir—it’s quite near Dr Meadow’s surgery.”

“I know where the surgery is, yes.”

“Well, of course you were actually in the area not long before—as, indeed, I was myself.”

“That is true.”

“Did you happen to see or hear anything which may have a bearing on what happened to that girl?”

“No, I can’t say I did. I had no reason to be particularly observant.”

“You remember no one hanging about near the letter box?”

“I’m not sure that I’ve ever noticed a letter box in Heston Lane. In any case, I went to and from the surgery by car. I would have been watching the road at the time.”

“At what time, sir?”

“When I was coming back. About half-past six, wasn’t it, or a quarter to seven? You were there when I left the surgery.”

The inspector looked at Brennan’s suit.

“Were you wearing something else that evening, Mr Brennan? My mental picture of you has some grey in it.”

“Naturally. The suit I had on then was grey.”

“You weren’t wearing a coat, by any chance? Then—or later on?”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Not a light raincoat, perhaps?”

“Now look, inspector—you said you wanted to ask me some questions. Very well, I am glad to give what information I can to help the police. But I do not care to be cross-examined. Especially in front of strangers.”

Purbright looked surprised. “This lady is a stranger to you, sir?”

“Virtually, yes. She came to see me on a matter of business.”

“But this is your room, sir. I can scarcely ask a guest of yours to leave it.”

Brennan shrugged. Miss Teatime gave him a sympathetic smile and moved over to the fireplace, where she began to examine intently a framed print of Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’.

“Now, sir, just one more question about this matter of clothes. Do you own a lightweight raincoat, very pale in colour, practically white?”

“I do not,” asserted Brennan. “Or at least”—he carefully checked the irritation in his voice—“I never wear one. There is an old coat in the car. I keep it there in case I should need to get out in the rain.”

Purbright appeared to find this reasonable. Brennan added:

“I’ve had no occasion to put that coat on for, oh, at least a couple of weeks.”

Suddenly and quite sharply, the inspector asked: “Where were you at eight o’clock that evening, sir?”

There was a short silence. Then Brennan looked over towards the fireplace.

“Miss Teatime—just a moment, if you wouldn’t mind.”

She faced them.

“The inspector would like to know where I was at eight o’clock on the evening of the day before yesterday. Perhaps you would be good enough to tell him.” Without pausing, Brennan faced the inspector again. “Her firm has been awarded a grant by one of the medical research trusts. A quite substantial grant, I understand. My own company has been asked to help with currency arrangements. I met Miss Teatime by appointment on the very evening that you happen to be talking about. A few minutes before eight o’clock, if I remember rightly.”

He looked again at Miss Teatime.

So did Purbright. Unlike Brennan’s, however, his expression was one of perplexity.

Miss Teatime walked towards them a little hesitantly. She glanced from one to the other, and gave a gentle sigh.

“I am very much afraid,” she said slowly, “that this places me in a somewhat invidious position. I must now make certain facts plain. It is quite true,” she said to Purbright, “that a grant to my company has been mooted—a grant of...oh, dear, what was it? Three thousand pounds?”

Brennan nodded, “Three thousand.”

“No, I am wrong. Four thousand. That was the figure, was it not, Mr Brennan?”

Brennan’s frown seemed to indicate rapid calculation. “Ye-es...more nearly four, perhaps. At the present exchange rate.”

“Thank you. Yes, as I was saying, such a grant had indeed been suggested, and my company would have been delighted to accept it, as you may imagine, inspector. But Mr Brennan has been too modest in describing his own role in the matter. You see, he is something more than a mere representative of the firm which undertook the negotiation of the grant. He is a director and a co-founder.”

Sergeant Love, who had been gazing around with a mildly bored expression, gave Brennan a respectful glance.

“Is this true, sir?” Purbright asked.

“I would rather Miss Teatime had respected my confidence,” said Brennan. “In business, it is not always wise to advertise one’s connections. However, I see no point in denying what she says.”

Purbright returned his attention to Miss Teatime.

“I am relieved,” she said, “that this gentleman is showing such forbearance. It would be even more painful for me to be frank—and frank I must be—if I thought he might bear me ill-will. The grant, you see, is in the gift of Mr Brennan’s company. One might almost say that it would have come from his own pocket. Such generosity in the cause of public welfare, with no regard for national boundaries, does him great credit, of course. I was proud that my own little field of research should have won his interest.

“At the same time I could not help feeling that a personal relationship was involved. I was bound to ask myself: Should I, on behalf of my company, accept this wonderful gift from this man? There seemed no reason why not. I made discreet inquiries. It soon became clear that here was a gentleman of considerable attainment. The firm he had helped to create was already prosperous, and promised to become immeasurably more so by the sale of its latest drug. As for Dr Erich Brunnen himself...”

Brennan crashed his fist on the cabinet by which he was standing. Jarred wineglasses sent forth an angry little carillon.

“This is quite unforgivable!” he shouted. “It has nothing whatever to do with the inspector or anyone else. If you...”

Purbright raised a restraining hand. “Come now, Mr Brennan. No one is challenging your right to travel under any name you wish. Celebrities do it all the time. I cannot see that this lady has made anything in the nature of an accusation.”

“That is not the point,” Brennan retorted. “You are letting her go on and on with all this irrelevant nonsense. Why should I put up with it? What the devil has my private or my professional life to do with an attack on some servant girl in this ridiculous little town of yours?”

The inspector looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t recall,” he said, quietly, “describing her as a servant girl.” He waited, then made a gesture of indifference, “However, perhaps Miss Teatime will finish what she was telling us.”

Miss Teatime, who had been staring uncomfortably at the carpet, raised her head.

“I am sorry, but I had no intention of upsetting Dr Brunnen. I was simply going to say that what I learned about him was just as reassuring as the result of my inquiries about his firm. Long before his success in the drug industry, he had made quite a name in medical research at one of those big experimental institutes—what was it again?—Raven-something-or-other... Never mind, I must not embarrass him with a list of achievements. What really matters is that I decided it would be quite proper to accept the grant.

“And then, only two days ago, something happened that made me change my mind completely. Something absolutely unaccountable, and more distressing than I can say.”

She glanced timidly at the inspector. At the same time, one of her hands stole to the opposite shoulder and massaged it gently, as if to soothe the pain of a recent injury.

All three men were watching her, Brennan with as much bewilderment as anybody.

“It was in the surgery of poor Dr Meadow,” Miss Teatime resumed, seemingly with considerable reluctance. “Both Dr Brunnen and I went into the consulting room immediately after his collapse. I do not think that Dr Brunnen knew I was just behind him. He cannot have known. For one of the first things he did—with that unfortunate man lying there dead on the floor—was to steal Dr Meadow’s stethoscope and hide it away under his jacket.”

Chapter Eighteen

A dead silence extended for fully five seconds before Brennan managed to push words past the blockage of his anger.

“But she’s demented, this bloody woman! This, this...Wahnsinnige...”

“Just a moment, sir.”

Purbright turned to Miss Teatime.

“Are you quite certain about this?”

“Absolutely. I only wish I were not. I mean, it was such a petty thing to do. A doctor filching another doctor’s stethoscope...”

“You’re out of your mind!” shouted Brennan.

“It was,” continued Miss Teatime, undeterred, “the meanness of it that shocked me. Like stealing straw to make a brick. Of course, I resolved at once that I could not possibly accept the five thousand pounds unless Dr Brunnen could give a completely satisfactory explanation for his behaviour.”

“And can you, sir?” Purbright blandly inquired of Brennan.

“But this is sheer fantasy! Can’t you see that? She has been pestering me. Sexually, you understand? And because I would have nothing to do with her, she makes these lunatic accusations.”

“Stealing,” said Purbright, “is what we in this country term an indictable offence, sir. I have to explain that, because the legal distinction is important. Technically speaking, this lady has laid information against you, Mr, er, Dr Brunnen, and it is my duty to take it seriously.”

“But you can’t! I have told you why she is talking all this nonsense.”

“At the moment, it is your word against hers that it is nonsense. You must appreciate that I have to satisfy myself whether there is any truth in Miss Teatime’s charge. The other matter can wait for the time being.”

“What other matter?”

“The question of your whereabouts at eight o’clock on the evening of the twelfth.”

Brennan cast a quick look at Miss Teatime, but she remained in patient contemplation of the inspector’s face.

“Have you any objection,” Purbright asked, “to our making a search of your property, sir?”

“Of course I have. I object very strongly to the way I am being treated as a criminal. But if you want to waste your time looking for what is not here, by all means look. I need hardly say that this whole affair will be brought to the notice of your Foreign Ministry.”

“Very well, sir. If you will kindly remain where you are for a few minutes... Oh, and perhaps the lady would be good enough to wait outside in the corridor.”

Purbright and Love searched less astutely than Miss Teatime had done, but a good deal more industriously. Love, whose duties had afforded him a similar opportunity only once before in his life, found it highly enjoyable and determined to drag it out. More than once, Purbright had to point out to him that no degree of criminal ingenuity was likely to have succeeded in secreting a stethoscope within a stud box or submerging it in a bottle of after-shave lotion.

They finished at last, however, and the inspector presented himself to the cooler but still resentful Brennan.

“Would you mind coming down with us to the garage, sir?”

They walked in silence along the corridor, passing Miss Teatime at the first turn. She waited a moment, then followed quietly a few yards behind.

Brennan, invited by Purbright to walk ahead, led the two policemen into the roofed enclosure and stood beside the grey Hillman. He was quite calm now. As he handed the inspector a key, he made the slightest of bows.

Purbright opened the car door.

The two cases were in the same position, but the raincoat had been pushed into one of the compartments beneath the facia. Purbright drew it out and unrolled it. Holding it up, he shook it. Of the scarf, or whatever had been wrapped in the coat before, there was now no sign. He folded the coat and laid it on the seat.

Love was busy excavating and scrutinizing the contents of the boot. He found a foot pump, a tin box with a few small tools in it, a deflated beach ball, some rope, a folded canvas stool, a lemonade bottle half filled with a liquid which he decided, after careful sniffing, to be paraffin, and a much worn tyre.

By the time Love had loaded these back again, the inspector had completed his examination of the inside of the car and was about to open the smaller of the two cases with one of the pair of keys helpfully volunteered by Brennan.

The case contained, as he had guessed, a range of small sample bottles and packs of capsules. All bore labels under the Elixon imprint.

Purbright locked it again, replaced it on the seat, and pulled forward the larger case.

Sergeant Love looked over the inspector’s shoulder as the lid was raised.

He could not have put names to more than two or three of the things he saw revealed, but he knew that they were pieces of diagnostic equipment of a kind he had seen from time to time in surgeries and hospitals. He recognized an instrument for looking into ears. Another, a sort of barometer, was similar to one by which he once had had his very normal blood pressure measured. There were slim chrome torches, rubber-headed mallets, thermometers in transparent pocket cases, stainless steel spatulas. All were sealed in polythene and neatly arranged in compartments. Love gazed admiringly at their workmanship and pristine brightness. No wonder, he reflected, that it cost so much to set up as a doctor.

“Go on, inspector,” he heard Brennan say quietly, “There’s more under those.”

Purbright gave the top section a pull. It lifted and hinged back. He reached into the bottom of the case and drew up something black and tubular and flabby.

The sergeant very nearly said, “Ah!”

Then Purbright’s hand went again into the case.

Another stethoscope emerged.

Then another. And another.

By now, the inspector was looking rather like a man who had unwisely allowed himself to assist in some bizarre and protracted feat of conjuring.

Brennan, his face expressionless save for a slight thrusting forward of his lips that gave him something of a proprietory air, looked on.

The seventh, and final, stethoscope joined the bundle in Purbright’s left hand. He stood up. Love gazed with open wonder at the collection.

Brennan smiled.

“And which one,” he asked, “am I supposed to have stolen, inspector?”

It was a good question, Purbright bitterly reflected. Unless an answer presented itself pretty quickly, it was a winner.

He diligently examined the seven stethoscopes, comparing one with another. All seemed brand new and of exactly the same pattern. Their design, though, was unconventional—or so he supposed—for at the union of the earpieces was a small black box fitted with a rocker switch. A metal strip riveted to the top of this box carried the word Elixon in red.

“These are manufactured by your firm, are they, sir?”

“No, but they are made to our specification.”

“And you sell them?”

“I do not think you quite understand, inspector. All this”—he made general indication of the stethioscopes and the other contents of the case—“is just a small extra service that we are pleased to perform for the medical profession. Doctors find them very acceptable, I think.”

“You mean they’re free gifts?”

Brennan received this interpretation coldly. “They are gestures that help to maintain good will between one profession and another, that is all.”

“Rather expensive gestures,” Purbright remarked. He was looking closely at the stethoscope he had kept in his hand after dropping the others back in the case. “I don’t know much about these things, but this seems to be of fairly advanced design.”

“Oh, it is. This type is extremely sensitive. Electronics, of course.”

Brennan moved close. He held the black box lightly in his open palm.

“In here are the transistors, battery, and so forth. It is a very small radio set, in fact.” His fingers, the inspector noticed, bore several black grease smears. “You simply press this switch and you can hear a heart making a noise like an ocean liner.”

Purbright gave the switch experimental pressure, but Brennan shook his head.

“No, no—it is designed to work only when the earpieces are extended in use. To prevent accidental battery wear, you see.”

“And what’s this?” The inspector peered at the lettering he indicated with one finger immediately below the switch.

“Verstärker—amplifier,” Brennan explained.

For some time Purbright continued to stare at the tiny moulded letters. Then, without taking his eyes off them, he beckoned.

“Sergeant...”

Love, who had been stooping to look under the car, stood upright and came to Purbright’s side.

“Read that out loud, will you.” Purbright told him.

“Vurze...” He hesitated, and made a second attempt. “Vurzetarker...” He looked inquiringly at the inspector. “Is that right?”

“It will do, sergeant. It will do very nicely.”

Love withdrew and resumed his painstaking scrutiny of the car’s underbelly, watched impassively by Miss Teatime.

“Did Dr Meadow,” Purbright asked Brennan, “possess one of these stethoscopes?”

“No. They are a completely new line. As a matter of fact, I intended to give him one that day when he collapsed. If you remember, I was waiting to see him.”

“And you had it on you, did you?”

Brennan agreed, almost eagerly, that he had indeed been carrying the instrument intended for Dr Meadow.

“Of course!” he exclaimed. “This lady must have noticed it sticking from my pocket and concluded that I had stolen it!”

“That could be the explanation, sir.”

“Could? It must be. Does a man with a case full of beautiful instruments like this steal an old stethoscope from some little country doctor?”

Purbright smilingly conceded that such behaviour was most unlikely. He was sorry that Mr Brennan—or Dr Brunnen, rather—had been subjected to inconvenience.

Brennan (or Brunnen) bowed. Not at all. These little misunderstandings did arise from time to time. He quite understood. Perhaps now that the matter had been cleared up, however...

In the midst of this mutual affability, Purbright had been keeping a wary eye on the progress of Sergeant Love. By now, he had methodically worked round to the front of the car and had just raised the lid of the engine compartment.

“Excuse me a moment, sir,” Purbright said to Brennan. “We might as well finish the formalities.”

He casually walked over to join Love and leaned with him over the engine.

“If it’s anywhere,” he murmured very softly, “it’s in here. He’s still got oil on his hands.”

Both men peered intently into every recess, every conceivable hiding place from end to end of the engine compartment. Love probed beneath the cylinder block and behind the clutch housing and would have unscrewed both the radiator and oil filler caps had not Purbright dissuaded him.

The search revealed nothing.

Purbright was the first to straighten up. He took care not to sigh too obviously. The sergeant remained dutifully inclined over the engine for a few minutes more. Then he, too, stepped back.

Purbright looked towards Brennan.

“That appears to be all, then, sir,” he said. He motioned Love to close the lid.

“Excuse me, inspector.”

Purbright turned to find beside him the small figure of Miss Teatime. She was gazing pensively at the car.

“That model, if I remember rightly,” she said, “is fitted with a one-and-a-half litre engine.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Purbright, more abruptly than he had intended.

“A four-cylinder engine, in fact,” she said.

“Possibly.”

“No, inspector—quite definitely. So why, I wonder, should there appear to be six distributor leads? I thought I had better mention it before the sergeant puts the bonnet down.”

Purbright reached forward and parted the complex of black rubber-covered cables that ran from the distributor to the four sparking plugs. Two were loose. They had been tucked and twisted amongst the others. And now that he was deliberately looking at them and not simply glimpsing and accepting them as familiar parts of a car’s mechanism, their greater thickness and newness registered immediately.

He tugged them free.

There came to light the little black box at their junction, then the stethoscope’s third tube, the foot of the “Y”, ending in the button-like microphone housing.

Purbright examined the find. It appeared to be identical with the seven instruments in Brennan’s case. The same design, the same workmanship, the same little Elixon name plate. Yet there was a difference. This one was noticeably heavier.

“Do you wish to give me any explanation about this, sir?”

Brennan stared contemptuously into the middle distance. He said nothing.

The inspector waited a while, then handed the stethoscope to Love and again addressed Brennan.

“Erich Brunnen, or Brennan, I am now going to take you into custody. You will be charged with stealing, at or about half past six in the evening of the twelfth of this month, in Heston Lane, Flaxborough, one stethoscope, the property of Dr Augustus Meadow...”

“What a fiendish device, Mr Purbright!”

It was three days later.

The Chief Constable was looking at a sketch that the inspector had made on the back of an envelope.

“Yes, sir. The forensic people were quite impressed. That, you see,”—he pointed—“is the compressed air cartridge, rather like a soda syphon bulb, which releases its charge when that switch is pressed. Hence the hissing noise that Mrs McCreavy mistakenly ascribed to Dr Meadow’s impatience.

“Now look at the two tubes that form the earpieces. That one is just a dummy, like the bottom tube with its imitation microphone, but the other is a piece of small-bore hydraulic hose with steel mesh reinforcement under a smooth rubber facing. A sort of flexible gun barrel, in fact.”

“Good Lord!” said Mr Chubb. “I see what you’re getting at, of course. The whole thing’s a kind of air gun.”

“Exactly, sir. And pretty powerful, according to the lab report.”

“What does it fire? A pellet, or something?”

“No, sir. Probably a dart, a small steel spike. As you can imagine, it would have to be fairly sharp to pass through the petrous bone.”

“Yes, of course it would.” Mr Chubb saw no immediate reason to admit that he had never before heard of petrous bone.

“Tell me, Mr Purbright—why did you suppose this fellow to be lying when he claimed he had not seen Dr Meadow that day?”

“I knew for certain that he was lying as soon as I saw the word that was printed under the switch. The German word for amplifier—Verstarker. The last thing that Dr Meadow said before he collapsed was so curious that Mrs McCreavy remembered it. According to her, it was ‘The fur’s darker’. That is just how a muttered and probably anglicized pronunciation of the word would be interpreted by someone over-hearing it. So it was clear that Meadow had been using one of Brennan’s new stedioscopes. And there was only one way he could have got hold of it. Brennan must have presented him with it before the surgery opened at six o’clock.”

“I suppose that from then on Brennan was hanging around in order to reclaim the thing as soon as it had...well, gone off?”

“Yes, sir. It was essential to prevent its being examined by anybody else.”

“He was taking an awful risk, wasn’t he?”

Purbright shrugged. “There was a great deal at stake, sir. We’ve turned up a copy of the letter Meadow wrote to Elixon immediately after the inquest on Alderman Winge. It stated his misgivings about this drug ‘Juniform’ and said that he would have to withdraw what he had published previously about its safety. Brennan and his firm stood to lose sales that promised eventually to be worth millions. Men in that position do tend to favour boldness.”

“Lucky that Teatime person had her wits about her, eh?” remarked Mr Chubb. “We owe her quite a lot, you know.”

“Yes, sir. She seems a very public-spirited lady.”

Inspector Purbright, too, could be magnanimous when he wished.