Питер Ловси - Do Not Exceed the Stated Dose [Stories]

Innocent, or refusing to be drawn? He couldn’t tell.

“After the resuscitation had no result, what did you do?”

She bit her lip. “It’s difficult to remember. It’s just a blur. I was deeply shocked.”

“Did you stay in the kitchen?”

“For a bit, I think.”

“You didn’t go upstairs, or in the other rooms?”

“I don’t think so. I was horrified by what I’d done. I got the shakes. I think I ran out of the front door and wandered up the street asking the Lord to forgive me. It took Him a long time to calm my troubled spirit. In the end I walked all the way to Bath to confess to you.”

“Did you speak to anyone between leaving the house and coming to us?”

“No.”

“See anyone you knew?”

“I wasn’t noticing other people.” She made it all sound plausible.

“If there was anyone,” said Diamond, becoming reasonable in spite of his best efforts to be tough, “it would help us to account for your movements.”

“I’ve told you my movements.”

“And we only have your word for them.”

“That was after he died. Why do you want to know what I was doing after he died?”

He declined to answer. “Is there anyone you can think of who ever threatened your husband?”

“No.”

Julie looked up from her notes and said unexpectedly, “Was he seeing a woman?”

Trish Noble blinked twice and flicked nervously at her hair. “If he was...” she started to say, then stopped. “If he was, I’d be very surprised.”

“The wife usually is,” Diamond added, privately wishing he’d remembered to ask. Smart thinking on Julie’s part. “Anyone you can think of who may have fancied him?”

“How would I know? Look, you’re talking about the man I loved and married. He isn’t in his grave yet. Do you have to be so cruel?”

Julie said, “You want us to find the person who stabbed him, don’t you?”

She nodded.

“There is someone, isn’t there?” said Julie.

“I don’t know.”

“But you had your suspicions?”

She looked down and fingered her wedding ring. Speaking in a low, scarcely audible voice, she said, “Sometimes he came home really late. I mean about two in the morning, or later. He was exhausted. Too tired for anything.”

“Drunk?”

“No. I would have noticed.”

“How long was this going on?”

“When it started, it was once every two months or so. Lately, it was about every ten days.”

“Did you question him about it?”

“He snapped my head off when I did. Really told me to mind my own business. It made me think there might be someone, but I had no way of finding out. He didn’t smell of scent, or anything.”

Diamond told her to collect her coat.

She looked seriously worried. “Where are you taking me?”

“Home. Julie will take you home. I want you to look at the scene and tell Julie everything you remember.”

“Aren’t you going to be there?” A question that might have conveyed disappointment was actually spoken on a rising note of relief.

“I may come later.” He turned to Julie. “On the way, you can drop me off at the hospital.”

Trish’s anxiety flooded in again. “The hospital? Do you mean the RUH? You don’t have to talk to them. They can’t tell you anything.”

“It isn’t about you,” said Diamond. “It’s another matter.” And it wasn’t about his weight problem either.

“Believe it or not, I didn’t come here to admire your sewing,” Diamond told Jack Merlin.

There was no reaction from the pathologist.

“May I see the other side?”

“Not my sewing. My assistant Rodney does the stitchwork.” In the post-mortem room at the Royal United Hospital, Merlin had the advantage of familiar territory. No visitor was entirely comfortable in the mortuary. Attendance at autopsies is routinely expected of detectives on murder cases. Diamond ducked out whenever he could think up a plausible excuse. On this visit he arrived late. The gory stuff had already been got over. With only a sewn-up corpse to view, he was putting on a good show of self-composure, but it didn’t run to treating these places like a second home.

The assistant Rodney stepped forward and helped Merlin turn the body of Glenn Noble. Two eye-shaped stab wounds were revealed.

Diamond’s hands tightened behind his back. “Not much doubt about those.”

Merlin watched him and said nothing.

“They don’t look superficial, either.”

Still nothing.

“I reckon they tell a story.”

There was a long interval of silence before Diamond spoke again. “You’re a helpful bugger, aren’t you? You know I’m pig-ignorant, yet you’re not going to help me out.”

Merlin shot an amused look across the corpse and then relented. “This one to the right of the spine did the main damage. Penetrated the lung two inches above its basal margin.”

Diamond bent closer to the body to examine the wounds. “Obviously you’ve cleaned him up.”

“You don’t get much external bleeding from stab wounds. There was a pint or so in the right pleural cavity.”

“So was that what killed him?”

“It was a potentially fatal injury.”

“The cause of death, in other words.”

“The potential cause of death.”

Diamond straightened up, frowning. “Am I missing something here?”

“I can’t be specific as to the cause.”

“With a couple of stab-wounds like this and massive internal bleeding? Come on, Jack. Give me a break.”

Merlin said, “As I understand it, the wife admitted to you that she cracked him on the head with a teapot.”

“I believe her. Somebody certainly smashed a teapot. His shirt-front was stained with tea, as I’m sure forensic will tell us in their own good time. Probably tell us if it was Brooke Bond or Tetley’s and whether she warmed the pot.”

“There’s bruising here on the head, just above the hairline,” Merlin confirmed.

“Look, what is this about the teapot? The man has two deep stab wounds.”

“And a bruised cranium.”

Diamond screwed his face into an anguished expression. “Are you telling me it’s possible that the teapot actually finished him off?”

“It’s an interesting question. I can’t exclude the possibility of a fatal brain injury. Of course I’ll examine the brain.”

“Haven’t you done that?”

“It has to be fixed and cut in sections for microscopic examination.”

“How long will that take?”

“Three to four weeks.”

“God help us.” He complained because of his own frustration. He knew Merlin would give him all the information he could as soon as it was available. He was the best.

“And even after I examine the brain, I may not have the answer.”

“Oh, come on, Jack!”

“I mean it. I’ve examined people who died after blows to the head and I could find no perceptible damage to the brain. We don’t know why it happens. Maybe the shock wave passing through the brain stem was sufficient to kill them.”

“So even after four weeks, you may not have the answer?”

“I’m a pathologist, not an ace detective.”

There was an interval of silence.

“Let me get one thing clear in my mind,” said Diamond. “Is it possible that what Mrs Noble told me is true that he was still alive when she clobbered him?”

“Certainly.”

“With stab wounds like this?”

“A victim of stabbing may survive for some time.”

“How long?”

“How long is a piece of string?”

“Your middle name wouldn’t be Prudence by any chance?”

Merlin smiled.

“A few seconds? A few minutes?”

“I couldn’t possibly say.”