Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

“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.