Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

Chapter Sixteen

Old Dr James stood at the window of the front office of Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby, solicitors, and stared gloomily at a passing parade of cars. It was the funeral procession of Alderman Steven Winge.

After the big square hearse, canopied with flowers and driven by a long, top-hatted man with a statuesque dedication that seemed quite unconnected with the vehicle’s mechanical controls, came three black limousines. Exactly identical with one another, they bore the same family resemblance to the hearse, whose pace they emulated like obedient sons, as, curiously enough, did their drivers to the petrified personage in the lead.

Following the limousines were two or three less opulent but still fairly expensive cars. Thereafter, the mourners’ transport became progressively less splendid—presumably in ratio to the standing and expectations of the occupants—until it terminated in the regrettable presence of the travel-stained baker’s van of some third cousins from Cardiff.

Dr James shook his head. He remembered the days of plumed horses and rows of bare-headed, silent spectators.

“Poor old Steve Winge,” he said, partly to himself, partly to the two men who stood behind him. “There was a time when the whole council would turn out to see an alderman off. They’d have followed on foot. Robes. The Mace. I wonder sometimes what has happened to our sense of occasion.”

He turned round.

“Sad. Don’t you think so, Thompson?”

The deputy coroner looked up from fiddling with a key ring and said yes, he did think it was sad, funerals nowadays were little better than disposal parties.

Sergeant Malley, who unwillingly half-filled what little space had been left in the little office by a welter of Victorian lawyers’ furniture, hoped that this sort of talk would not go on much longer. The inspector, he knew, was in an oddly impatient frame of mind; he wasn’t going to relish the news that after taking a look at Meadow’s body old James had blithely signed a certificate of natural death.

“You’ll not recall,” Dr James was saying, “when Bert Amblesby took over as coroner.”

It was a safe statement. Neither Malley nor Thompson had even been born at that remote remove of time.

“His partner, Zeke Sparrow, died the following year, and, do you know, there was black crepe all the way down the High Street. Fourteen carriages. Think of that.”

“People don’t have the time any more,” said Thompson. He was thinking that he was running a bit short of that commodity himself just then.

“Time? It’s respect they lack, not time. Did you notice what was happening out there?” Dr James indicated the window with a nod of his silver-white head. “There were cars overtaking and cutting in. One actually hooted at the hearse.”

The sergeant stole a look at his watch. Strictly speaking, he was at the disposal of the deputy coroner, but Thompson seemed to lack courage to break away from the reminiscences of his elderly colleague. That was the trouble with doctors, Malley told himself. They’d cheerfully knife one another at a safe distance, but as long as an outsider was looking on they were too busy being mutually respectful to bloody breathe.

“Shocking business, young Meadow passing away like that,” observed Dr James. It was the fourth time he had made the remark since he had held a mirror that morning to the lips of the peaceful and still handsome corpse in the hospital morgue and murmured: “Gone, by Jove—not a glimmer.”

Dr Thompson’s sigh was a fraction too vigorous to have been prompted by sympathy, but old James did not appear to notice.

“Better than lingering after a stroke, though, some might say. I don’t know. Very difficult question. My word—what a cramped little office this is. Don’t you find it cramped, eh? I’ll bet the sergeant here does.” Unexpectedly, the old man grinned.

Malley smiled back and seized his opportunity.

“I rather think they’ll be expecting me back at Fen Street,” he said quietly to Thompson, “but there is just one thing, sir, I’d like to be clear about when I see the inspector.”

“And what is that, sergeant?”

The deputy coroner, too, had lowered his voice. He was nervous lest anything they said should elicit further reminiscence from old James.

“I take it as definitely your opinion that there shouldn’t be an inquest. Is that right, sir?”

Thompson stiffened. “Of course it’s right. Why shouldn’t it be?”

“I just wanted to be sure, sir.”

Dr James glanced sharply across at them.

“Sure about what?”

“Nothing, doctor. The sergeant was only asking if we had any other cases to be dealt with today.”

“He said something about an inquest,” persisted the old man. “Why should there be an inquest? I’ve signed a certificate, haven’t I?” His head was rocking gently up and down, as if he had some machinery inside him.

“As long as you’re satisfied, doctor,” said Malley, easily.

He peered inside his cap, adjusted its shape a little, and put it on. The cap was not quite big enough and he had to pull it well forward and down to conform with the Chief Constable’s dictum that no policeman could do his job properly unless the tip of his cap peak were in line with, and equidistant from his ear lobes.

Dr James stared at the result and mistook for insolent indifference the sergeant’s resemblance to a patient, blinkered carthorse.

“I should like to know just what you are insinuating, officer. If it is suggested that after fifty-two years in general practice...”

“Oh, come now, doctor,” Thompson interjected. “I’m sure my officer would not dream of calling your judgment into doubt. He simply has to report the facts to his inspector, and he wishes to be absolutely accurate. Isn’t that so, Malley?”

“Of course, sir.” said the horse.

Dr James simmered silently a few moments longer, then made a determined effort to stop nodding.

“Very well, then. But don’t let us hear any more talk about inquests. That won’t do anybody any good. It’s a sad enough business as it is. Great loss to the profession. And to the town.”

He stared out once more through the small, dusty panes of the window, as though to see how the town was taking it.

“Indeed yes,” murmured Dr Thompson. Surreptitiously he gave Malley a nudge to signify that he’d better go while the going was good.

In another lawyer’s office, Inspector Purbright was cheerfully telling Mr Scorpe that he proposed to be so shamelessly unethical as to try and pick that gentleman’s brains.

Since his talk over the telephone with Pauline Sutton, Purbright had been feeling a good deal more energetic. New hope engendered a pleasant recklessness.

Mr Scorpe at first looked startled. Then he lowered the angle of his long wooden face and gazed over his spectacles with a touch of amusement.

“You are being very frank, inspector.”

“Not frank. Downright impertinent. I want you to tell me what the analyst found in that sample of herbs you sent off to him.”

Scorpe pulled a tray of letters across the desk top and began sorting through them.

“Go away,” he said.

“Come along, you can afford to do me a favour. And this one won’t cost you anything.”

“What gives you the idea”—Scorpe did not raise his eyes—“that I should have wanted something analysing? This isn’t a forensic science agency.”

“No, but you’re acting for the Winges, and we all know their family motto—‘Somebody’s Got to be Summonsed’. Moldham Meres Laboratories will do as well as anyone else.”

“Really, inspector! That is a most improper suggestion!”

“Yes, isn’t it?”