James McCure - The Steam Pig

“You examined her thoroughly?” he asked softly.

“Naturally. Dozens of times, as you’ve seen-every square inch.”

“With this thing?”

The spot of light dropped to bore into Dr Matthews’s right eye. He raised a protecting hand, flushing with anger.

“See here,” he barked, “stop fooling about with what you don’t bloody well understand. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“Lieutenant Kramer of the Murder Squad, and I have reason to believe you are lying, Dr Matthews. This is an ophthalmoscope, an instrument used for the examination of the human eye, and yet you get Miss Le Roux’s eye colour wrong in your records.”

“What the devil do you mean?”

“It says here they were blue.”

“Correct, she was blonde.”

“Oh, yes? I saw them in the mortuary this afternoon. They were brown.” “Brown?”

“Correct,” Kramer mimicked.

Then nothing was said for some considerable time.

“I have a little theory,” Kramer murmured at last, “that you never gave Miss Le Roux a look-over from top to toe. From your notes it seems you concentrated your attention on an area quite unconnected with cardiac irregularities-or eye irregularities for that matter.”

Dr Matthews looked up sharply.

“Now why would you do that, doctor? Your colleague Dr Strydom is quite certain she never suffered from any disease of that kind.”

“There was not much I could do for the heart,” Dr Matthews blustered. “Just give her pills and sleeping drugs so she rested properly.”

“Yes? Go on, man.”

“Surely it’s obvious from the file the silly little bitch was neurotic?” Dr Matthews exploded. “Open it, count how many times you see Wassermann test in it. Came in here demanding one damn near every week, for a time. Practically insisted she had the clap.”

Which destroyed a very beautiful illusion. Kramer paused a moment to mourn its passing. There had been something so refreshingly healthy about Miss Le Roux’s previous image, both physical and spiritual. Hating Dr Matthews a little, he pressed the attack.

“You say she was neurotic?”

“Yes.”

“Yet you gave her these tests every time?”

“That’s so.”

“I see. How much is a Wassermann worth to you-ten, twelve Rand? A nice little side-line.”

“Lieutenant, take care with what you’re implying. And if you knew anything about the practice of medicine at all, you would know that humouring a patient is often as important as treating them. You should have seen the girl each time I reported a negative result: she took new heart.”

Kramer could not resist it. “Made you feel like Christiaan Barnard, did it?” he sneered. “Pity you aren’t so handy with the transplants.”

“That was a very uncalled for remark.”

“Sorry,” Kramer said, almost meaning it. “Let’s get back to the clap. Did she ever give you any reason for her-”

“Anxieties? No. She was the kind that pays promptly and feels they have a right to use us like garage mechanics.”

“But weren’t you curious?”

“Not unduly, the chronically ill are apt to find some counterattraction to their main complaint elsewhere in their anatomies. Also, she was a very edgy girl. She shied away from questions. I didn’t bother, I’d come across similar cases before.”

“Really?”

“You’d be surprised how common they are, Lieutenant, especially among engaged girls. Little things make them suspect their future hubby is having his final fling and they get it into their sweet heads that some of this may backfire on them. After all, they say, nice girls don’t sleep with other girls’ fiances.”

“A lot they know.”

“Quite, but that’s the way it goes. Miss Le Roux just seemed less talkative than the rest.”

Suddenly Kramer felt reasonably disposed towards Dr Matthews. He offered him a Lucky Strike, exchanged it for one without a kink in the middle, and supplied the match. The truth was they had a lot in common. They both dealt with that perverse species homo sapiens and both had to make what judgements they could on the evidence.

“You think she could have been going to get married?”

“Well, she didn’t strike me as being a loose sort of a girl but she-”

“Yes, I know, but what about her heart? Had she a long life ahead of her?”

“No one could say. It could happen any time-as I thought it had, you see. She could have lasted for donkey’s years.”

“So you didn’t warn her-I mean in case it might change her wedding plans?”

“I didn’t have to, she knew already.”

“Hence the Trinity Burial Society?”

“I presume so.”

It fitted, but like the first pieces of blue in a jigsaw that was half sky.

“We must track down this bloke with the intimate relationship,” Kramer murmured.

“Anything to go on?”

“Bugger all, no one at the funeral and no flowers.”

Dr Matthews rose with a slight smile.

“Actually I’m bloody shaken and ashamed by all this, Lieutenant.”

“ Ach, don’t worry, doctor-I’m sure they won’t want your scalp by the time we get to the end of this one.”

“I’m not so sure. You see, I didn’t fill in eye colours and that until I heard the balloon had gone up. Funny, I could have sworn…”

“Just formalities. But can I take the file along, anyway?”

“Of course, let me show you out.”

Kramer stopped on the doorstep to warn Dr Matthews that he would probably send a man round in the morning for an official statement. As they were speaking, all the cars across the road started up almost simultaneously and drove off.

“Every good party comes to an end,” Kramer said.

“What party?” Dr Matthews asked.

But it was already time to get Bob Perkins to work on the tape, so Kramer just walked off down the road.

Mrs Perkins showed Kramer into the workroom and apologised that Bob had not finished his bath. He always bathed after work because of the ink from the proofs, they were ever such messy things.

Kramer knew that Mrs Perkins was Bob’s wife but he had never grown used to the idea. She doted on him like the pale but proud mother of a prodigy born under mysterious circumstances. They even looked alike. If they had not both been round about thirty, he could well imagine her having spent years bringing him up in neat navy suits and a flutter of clean handkerchiefs.

“Please make yourself comfortable, sir,” she said, unaware of the discomfiture her presence caused. “I was just going to pour out his cocoa-would you like some, too?”

“May I have coffee, please?”

“Do you think that’s very wise? My Bob was telling me only the other day what awful chemicals there were in it. He knows a lot about what happens to the brain, you know.”

“Black, please, if it isn’t too much trouble.”

“Of course not, I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Mrs Perkins bustled out, a cuddly heap of woollen night garments topped with a curly head of hair the colour of a teddy bear’s fur.

Kramer walked over to the wall of bookshelves. Bob Perkins should know something about the brain if he had waded through that lot: Let Hypnosis Work For You, Amateur Hypnosis, Hypnosis and Healing Therapy, Hypnosis Through the Ages, Hypnosis. He lost track, they were scattered all over between similarly bound books which promised, among other things, to show you How to Make a Million and how to Be Master of Yourself in Seven Days. Two of the shelves were piled with radio and electronics magazines. This was reassuring.

Bob entered carrying the tray of hot drinks and only just avoided being tripped up by Mrs Perkins who rushed past to clear a place on the table which was cluttered with wires and circuits.