Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

“Which is?”

“That my partner’s death was connected in some way with what you’ve been talking about. That it wasn’t natural, in other words.”

“I’m a long way from saying that, doctor. I am not even going to speculate at this stage. After all, the cause of death has not been established. When it is—and I don’t suppose there’ll be any difficulty there—I shall accept the findings of the experts, as will the coroner. In the meantime, though, coincidence does exist. Judgment must be suspended, but investigation must not. Hence”—the inspector smiled—“the snooping. You do understand?”

Bruce resignedly lifted and let fall his hand.

“Very well. Is there anything you want to ask me now? I don’t want to be much longer getting over to the hospital, and I’ve some home visits I shall have to fit in.”

“I’ll be as brief as I can. Firstly, the cause of death. Do you want to say what you think it was?”

“Oh, a coronary. I don’t think there can be any doubt about that. He died extremely quickly, you know.”

“Obviously you wouldn’t have had time to make a detailed examination, but did you notice anything—anything at all—that seemed odd at the time, or has since struck you as being odd?”

Bruce pondered.

“Not a thing. The whole scene was exactly as one would have expected. He must have blacked out and gone full length.”

“But wouldn’t he have been sitting in his chair? Doctors never seem to get up when they’re being consulted by me.”

Bruce’s manner eased a fraction. “Perhaps you consult them about the wrong things. No, I imagine my partner was standing up in order to examine the McCreavy woman’s chest. She was half undressed when she ran out, you know.”

“According to Miss Sutton, he saw only three patients this evening. Yet she had quite a pile of cards. You must have dealt with far more than three in the same period.”

“Yes, that was the usual pattern.”

“You mean he was—what?—more leisurely in his dealings with patients?”

“If you like. Look—I’m the junior partner, he was the senior. Every practice works on the sound old principle that the junior’s share of the work shall equal the senior’s share of the income. What could be fairer?”

“What, indeed.” Purbright walked to the door and threw out the end of his cigarette. “In that case, I assume Dr Meadow tended to be selective. Did he deal primarily with those we might call his regulars?”

“Naturally.”

“Could you list them? In categories, I mean, not as individuals.”

“No difficulty about that. The paying patients. The socially desirable. And a few of the interestingly elderly.”

“Ah,” said Purbright, “it’s the old ones that I’ve been finding interesting lately. When I retire from the police force, perhaps I’ll take up geriatrics. Incidentally...”

Bruce watched Purbright search through a collection of pieces of paper he had taken from his pocket, select one, and thrust the rest back.

“Do you happen to know,” the inspector asked, “anything about a substance called”—he frowned at his note—“beta-aminotetrylglutarimide, God forgive us?”

“Where on earth did you get that one from?”

“It was mentioned during the inquest on Winge. I can’t vouch for my pronunciation. Nor for lawyer Scorpe’s.”

“Scorpe—he asked about it, did he?”

“Yes. He put it to Meadow.”

After a pause, Bruce said: “No, I don’t know what it is, but I suppose the old man’s family must have nosed around and found that Meadow had been prescribing it for Winge.”

“That was my impression.”

“I know those vultures. I smell a lawsuit.”

“So did Meadow, I think. He dragged in a red herring right away. He told Scorpe that Winge had been going against his advice and dosing himself with a herbal remedy called Samson’s Salad. You haven’t heard of that , I suppose?”

“Good God, no. What’s it supposed to do?”

“Impart the sexual virility of the Ancient Britons.”

Bruce took a little time to digest this promising specification. Then he said, half in wonder, half in pride:

“We don’t half have some goings-on in this little old town.”

“Don’t we?”

The inspector stood and buttoned his raincoat. At the door, he raised his hand.

“Ring me if you get any ideas.”

Chapter Fourteen

Miss Teatime paused at the little Georgian doorway that led to her rooms in the Church Close, and, while feeling for her key, looked up at the gothic wedding cake tiers of the great tower of St Laurence’s. That miraculous stone confection never failed to please her. She loved in particular its ever-changing response to weather and time of day. In the first light of morning, its buttresses, lancets and galleries had a metallic sharpness; they looked to be fashioned in pewter. Then, as the sky brightened, silver facets appeared. Summer noons turned the traceries to honeycomb. In storm, the tower was a monochrome of granite; in mist, a long brown sail, becalmed. As Miss Teatime gazed at it now, an hour after sunset on a damp, still evening, the soaring stone was tinged with green, as if it had caught and thrown down to her a reflection of the fields and woods beyond the town.

She sighed and faced about to open the door.

In her sitting-room at the head of the first flight of narrow, sharply twisting stairs, she switched on the light and enjoyed for a moment its revelation of pale lavender colour-washed walls and the gleam of fresh grey paint from deep, classically simple window frames. She had decorated the room herself, transforming it from the dinginess of long neglect (which had made it a gratifyingly cheap buy) into what she imagined—probably rightly—would have pleased those Flaxborough contemporaries of Jane Austen who had been its first occupants.

She took off her hat and coat, made tea in the tiny adjoining kitchen, and drew up a chair to the slender-legged table beneath one of the wall lamps. Among the contents of the tea tray, which she had set down at the end of the table away from typewriter and stationery, was a small whiskey bottle, half full.

When she judged the tea to be properly infused, she poured some out and added a little sugar, a very little milk, and as much whiskey as would still allow the mixture to be stirred without slopping over into the saucer. She took a sip, then, with an increasing approval, another, and a third. She did not care for over-hot tea: blowing it was vulgar—it also wastefully evaporated the whiskey.

Not until she had finished her first cup and poured and laced her second, did Miss Teatime turn her attention to a clip of correspondence which she had laid ready beside the typewriter.

There were nearly a dozen letters, all addressed to Moldham Meres Laboratories. Although most were from individual customers, four had been written by the managers of health food stores in various parts of the country.

They related to Press reports of the Winge inquest. Some enclosed newspaper cuttings. Drowned Alderman was Herb Eater...Reservoir Death after “Salad”, Court Told...Doctor Blames Nature Cure .

Every writer declared, in terms ranging from the abrupt and offensive to the politically ingenious (a customer in Leamington Spa suggesting that Samson’s Salad was a paralysing nerve weed cultivated on Siberian state farms), that no further supplies were required. Some of the shopkeepers demanded a refund on current stocks.

It was this last category of complaint that Miss Teatime considered particularly wounding, indicative as it was of a degree of cupidity that she had scarcely expected to find in the protagonists of Natural Goodness.

She lit a cheroot and considered how best a reply could be framed. It would have to be in the nature of a duplicated circular, she feared: these letters were doubtless but harbingers of flocks to come.