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Barry Maitland: The Marx Sisters

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Barry Maitland The Marx Sisters

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Dr Botev consulted his card again. ‘Plustranil, 200 milligrammes a day. It’s a tricyclic antidepressant.’

‘It worked?’

‘Yes. It took a week or so before she started to feel better, but after three weeks she came back to thank me. She had all her old bounce again, and said she felt much better and had stopped taking the pills. I told her she had to keep taking them for a couple of months and gave her a repeat prescription.

‘A couple of weeks later she came back to say she was getting new symptoms-palpitations, occasional dizziness, and the constipation had returned. These are quite normal side-effects for this type of drug, but from her remarks I could see she was worried there might be something wrong with her heart. Well, postural hypotension can be a side-effect of Plustranil too, and that can be a problem for someone with a bad heart, so I suggested she had a thorough check-up and she seemed quite relieved. I also reduced the Plustranil to 150 milligrammes a day.

‘She attended the cardio-vascular unit at the hospital on… August 12th. I got the report three weeks ago. She had a complete set of tests, and she was absolutely in the clear. There is no history of heart disease in her immediate family.

‘So’-he glared at Kathy through his lenses-‘while it is not impossible for someone to walk out of their doctor’s surgery with a clean bill of health and to drop dead with a heart attack ten minutes later, it is highly unlikely. Also, she didn’t look as if she’d suffered a heart attack. No warning chest pains, no signs of distress.’

‘What about a “silent coronary”, while she was asleep on the bed?’ Brock persisted.

Botev turned his glare back to Brock. ‘I don’t believe it. Come back when your police doctor has something to persuade me to change my mind.’

‘But do you know of any reason why someone should want to kill her?’

Botev didn’t reply, but only glared more defiantly over Brock’s head.

‘Or have any suspicion who it might be?’

Again no reply.

‘What about Eleanor? Have you been treating her?’

He shook his head. ‘She never needs a doctor. She is strong, too. Quite different from Meredith. But a fine woman.’

As Brock and Kathy got to their feet the doctor spoke again. The tone of abrasiveness had gone, and the curiously high pitched voice suddenly sounded plaintive.

‘I will never forget how good she was to me when my wife died. I was helpless… like a baby. She saved my life then. You must find who killed her.’

4

They stepped out into the little square which was formed where Jerusalem Lane changed alignment halfway along its length. Across the way the proprietor of the Balaton Cafe was taking advantage of the warm morning sun to set a couple of tables outside on the stone flags. A powerful rich smell of roasting coffee beans came from Boll’s Coffee and Chocolates next door, and on the near corner of the square, tubs of cut chrysanthemums and roses stood outside the front of Brunhilde’s Flower Shop.

Brock’s nose twitched at the smell of the coffee. ‘We’re early for the solicitor,’ he said, ‘let’s have a break,’ and set off with his big rolling strides towards the cafe. Kathy stopped to speak to two detectives making house-to-house inquiries before she followed him, and when she got to the table he was already deep in conversation with the owner about the Hungarian lake after which he had named his business. They ordered short blacks.

‘This is very civilized.’ Brock stretched back in his chair expansively. ‘I could live here quite easily. There’s everything you’d need on your doorstep: Mrs Rosenfeldt’s bratwurst, Mr Boll’s fresh ground coffee, the Balaton Cafe, and Dr Botev to prescribe Plustranil if it all gets too much. Shame about Kowalski’s bookshop, though.’ He nodded at the empty window up towards the north end of the lane.

‘Mind you, I see there are other services available here to compensate.’ He indicated a small handwritten card taped discreetly to a corner of the cafe window, offering ‘Swedish massage’ and an escort service. ‘Probably the same old dear who was giving “French lessons” here twenty years ago.’

‘Yes,’ Kathy nodded, ‘this is a real place, isn’t it? I’ve never been here before, and yet it all seems quite familiar, homely.’

‘It’s real, all right. Not like that yuppie tourist kitsch they’ve turned Covent Garden into,’ Brock grumbled. ‘That used to be real once, too.’

‘Although…’ She hesitated.

‘What?’

‘There’s an element of strangeness about this place, too. Maybe that’s part of what makes it real. I noticed it yesterday. There are odd things that are difficult to interpret. Over there’-she waved her hand towards a shop window beyond the door of the doctor’s surgery-‘there’s a framed photograph in the window of some elderly gent, edged in black, and draped with a flag I’ve never seen before. And that enormous empty flagpole on the top of this cafe building! And there’s a poster or sign up in that window on the second floor next door, which you can hardly see from down here, as if it’s aimed at the house across the street. Or’-she looked around with a frown-‘that building over there with all the window boxes of geraniums, as if you were in Austria or something, except that they’re all dead, except for just that one window. It’s almost as if the people who live here are all frantically signalling to one another, without letting on to the people passing through on the street.’

Brock laughed. ‘Yes, I like that. And you don’t think the signals are friendly?’

‘I don’t know. I feel I don’t know the code.’

Brock looked up at the aggressive Gothic lettering on the sign for the Balaton Cafe, and the unlikely clashes of colour on some of the front doors.

‘Whatever it is, I suspect it’s not in English,’ he said. Then, changing the subject, ‘I can see how Sundeep didn’t hit it off with Dr Botev.’ He smiled, thinking of the distaste with which the dapper, fastidious Indian had referred to the Slav.

‘He’s a rough diamond, isn’t he?’ Kathy said. ‘Those hands! But this time I thought he was rather sweet.’

‘Sweet wasn’t exactly the word that sprang to my mind.’

Kathy smiled. ‘I think he was in love with Meredith. His voice softened a little each time he mentioned her name.’

‘Yes, now you mention it, that could be. But that just makes his opinions about her death all the less reliable. He didn’t really give us anything. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a theory, but he wasn’t game to try it on us. Not yet, anyway.’

The offices of Hepple, Tyas amp; Turton were next to the Balaton Cafe, above a small tailor’s shop which appeared to have closed down some time ago. The solicitors’ brightly polished brass nameplate was set beside a door which opened on to a staircase leading straight up to the first floor.

A large woman in her mid-fifties was sitting at the reception desk, opening mail. She beamed at them through ornately framed glasses and invited them in to an inner office.

‘I’m Sylvia Pemberton,’ she said, ‘Mr Hepple’s secretary. He hasn’t arrived yet, I’m afraid, but he shouldn’t be long. I spoke to him myself about your appointment at 12. Probably stuck in the traffic-his other office is in Croydon.’

Her manner was confident and jovial, and gave the impression that she was much more likely to know what was going on in the office than Mr Hepple. There weren’t many indications, however, that much was going on. The photocopier and typewriter in the front office were both ancient, and the general air of tidiness seemed to owe as much to a lack of activity as to Ms Pemberton’s efficiency.

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