The Last Detective

PART TWO
Gregory
Chapter One

IT WAS 5 AUGUST WHEN my wife Geraldine attempted to murder me.

The killing of a husband calls for a degree of disaffection, not to say loathing. Gerry was known to everyone as a warm, exuberant personality, a charmer. She was extremely good-looking, too. She had reached the stage of her life when 'beautiful' was beginning to give way to words that were no less appreciative, merely more dignified: words such as 'elegant' and 'soignee'.'air was gathered and fastened high on the nape of her long white neck. The fact that she favoured black skirts and blouses was in no way sinister; that was good dressing.

I'm bound to say that in the privacy of home it was a different story. In the last six months she had become increasingly difficult to live with. Her moods were unpredictable. She was subject to fits of temper, irrational outbursts when she would blame me for little things that thwarted her. I recall that she accused me of tampering with her car when it failed to start, of hiding her newspaper and of emptying the hot water tank when she had clearly left a tap running herself – silly, domestic things that she inflated into major incidents, claiming blatant evidence of malice on my part. Yet at other times she swung to moods of gaiety and amusement that could be almost as difficult to take, followed often by black, silent depression. All this worried me, naturally, but it stopped a long way short of personal violence, or so I believed.

With hindsight, I can see that the first intimation that Gerry was planning something came indirectly, from the doctor. Towards the end of July I went for my annual check-up, a routine that my employers at the university insisted upon. After the nurse had weighed me, checked my blood pressure, water, reflexes and every function on her list, I was ushered into the consulting room for the verdict. My regular GP was not available, so for the first time I met the senior man in the practice. Dr Bookbinder is one of the old school, pitted and grizzled, with a bow-tie and cufflinks. He's the sort who refuses to go near a computer. Although he had an anti-smoking poster on his wall and kept the window open, his room reeked of cigars.

'How do you feel in yourself?'

'Fit as a butcher's dog,' I answered, and although I say it myself I looked it, clear-eyed, sturdy and cheerful.

'What aretly – indecently young for a professor. What's your subject? Nothing in the medical line, I hope?'

'English.'

'Fine.' Dr Bookbinder's brown eyes glittered as he looked at me over his glasses. 'You won't be telling me my job. I didn't know they bothered with the mother tongue up at Claverton.'

'I'm in the process of building up a department. The chair was created a couple of years ago.'

'Chair of English, eh? Sounds all right, but don't be tempted to sit in it too long. The sedentary life can lead to constipation and piles.'

'It's not all sitting. I stand up and stretch at intervals.'

'Splendid. Is it stressful?'

'The standing up?'

'The running,' said Dr Bookbinder. 'Of the department.' 'Not really. I don't have many students yet.'

The doctor glanced through the form containing the nurse's findings and stuffed it ham-fistedly into the buff folder that represented all of my life in medical terms. 'Haven't read anything so boring since that book about the hobbits – or was it the rabbits? In insurance terms, Professor, I would describe you as a ruddy good risk so long as you don't burn yourself out. You're married to that enchanting young woman who used to play Candice Milner on the television, aren't you? She's a patient of mine.'

I nodded.

'She was in here on Monday,' he went on. 'It's one of the perks of this job that I tend to see the ladies more often than the husbands. No insult intended.'

'None taken. I make a point of avoiding doctors unless it's inescapable,' I riposted, uncrossing my legs prior to making my exit. 'And since I'm not here to wangle a week off work, I shan't take up any more of your time.'

Dr Bookbinder made a downward movement of his hand to signal to me to remain seated. 'When Mrs Jackman makes an appointment they go bananas in reception.'

'The power of the box.'

'Want to know why she came to see me?'

Indiscretion was in the air. I didn't care for it. I remember saying guardedly, 'My wife and I respect each other's privacy.'

'Do you sleep together?'

My eyes widened. I pulled myself up in the chair in a formal attitude. 'Does that have some relevance?'

'I wouldn't ask it otherwise, would I?' said Dr Bookbinder.

After a moment's consideration, I said, 'If you mean in the same room, the answer is yes.'

'In that case I'm not being unprofessional. You must have noticed it.'

'Noticed what, Doctor?'

'Your wife's insomnia.'

'My… wife's… insomnia?'

That's why I asked you about the stress. It crossed my mind that you could, quite unwittingly, be passing on your concerns about the job to her, but you tell me that isn't the case.'

Now, I don't care for half-baked psychiatry. I don't care much for psychiatry at all. So I told him, 'I don't often discuss my work with Geraldine.'

Then we must look elsewhere for a possible cause of anxiety. Could it be traced to some dissatisfaction with her present mode of life? She has to put up with rather less of the limelight now.'

'True. She does the occasional commercial, but otherwise the television work has dried up.'

'Why is that? Because everyone still thinks of her as Candice?'

'That's part of it, certainly.'

'You didn't notice she was losing sleep?'

'Frankly, no. We have twin beds and when my head touches the pillow, I'm off.'

'You don't enquire in the morning whether she slept well?'

'Not usually. My impression is that she's always sleeping soundly when I get up.' I paused. 'But I must say I feel very uneasy about this conversation, Doctor. If Geraldine is worried about losing sleep, she could have mentioned it to me. The fact is that she didn't. She came to you in confidence.'

'I made the not unreasonable assumption that you knew about the problem,' the doctor told me. He followed this up with an insinuation that I didn't like in the least: 'You are concerned, I take it?'

With difficulty I controlled myself. 'Naturally I'm concerned now that you've told me. I'll do whatever I can to help, if it's only making her cups of hot chocolate in the night.'

The doctor sniffed. 'You don't have to stay awake and keep her company. That's no way to tackle insomnia.'

'What do you suggest?'

Off-handedly he said, 'Don't bother – she'll get her sleep now. I've put her on phenobarbitone.'

I frowned. 'Is it as bad as that?'

'We've run through the milder hypnotics. She tells me they had little or no effect.'

'It's been going on for some time, then? I didn't know.'

'This is severe, intractable insomnia, Professor. We must break the cycle somehow, and in cases like this a good old-fashioned barbiturate will do the trick when some of the newer tranquillizers will not. When we have re-established the habit of sleep, the natural pattern should reassert itself in a few weeks.'

'You mean there's nothing I can do?'

'There's still the underlying problem. It may be physical, but of all the causes of sleep loss, anxiety is the most common. I can see that you're sympathetic, and that's helpful in itself, so if you can find out what is troubling her and do something constructive about it, you'll do more good than phenobarbitone in the long run. Please be discreet, however.'

That's rich!' I said.

'Professor, as an intelligent man, I'm sure you won't need telling that a patient's confidence in her doctor is vitally important.'

'Point taken,' I told him, and this time I didn't hold back. 'And as an intelligent man, I ought to advise my wife to change her doctor. Good morning.'

I got up and walked out.

Before starting the car I sat for some time trying to understand why Geraldine should have been losing sleep and how it was that I had failed to notice. The possibility didn't cross my mind that the phenobarbitone was intended for me.