Colin Watson - The Flaxborough Crab

“Might he have had a caller during that time?”

“Yesterday evening, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible... But really, inspector. I don’t get the drift of all this.”

Purbright delved for what might serve as a plausible explanation.

“I’m sorry. The fact is that we believe that the man who attacked Miss Loder might have been hanging round the house or the surgery earlier in the day.”

“Miss Loder...? Oh, you mean Elizabeth. But surely you’re not taking up all this time and asking me all these odd questions because of that? It was a very trivial incident.”

“There have been other attacks, Mrs Meadow.”

“There might have been, but that doesn’t mean my house should be flooded with policemen. Especially at a time like this. Tell me, does Mr Chubb know you’re here?”

“The Chief Constable is aware that inquiries are being made,” Purbright said, stiffly.

Mrs Meadow gave a short nod. “I think I shall have to have a word with him.”

“Very good. But if I might take advantage of your forbearance for one moment more, Mrs Meadow, I should like just to be a little clearer about the period we were discussing. Can you suggest—and I assure you that this is important—anyone at all who may have visited the doctor between ten minutes to six yesterday evening and six o’clock when the surgery opened?”

Despite her expression of bleak resentment, she did appear to give the question thought.

After a while, she said: “There is one possibility, although I’m sure it is irrelevant. My husband had been writing an article for professional publication. He finished it yesterday. Apparently it made reference to the effects of some drug or other, and I believe Dr Meadow intended to show the article to the representative of a firm—one of the leading pharmaceutical firms—for which he had been doing research. He may—and I say may —have seen this man before surgery. It was a period he set aside for dealing with travellers and people like that. So that his patients would not be inconvenienced, you understand.”

She stood up.

“That is all I can tell you, inspector. And now you must please excuse me. Elizabeth will see you out.”

She picked up a little ornamental handbell and, somewhat to the inspector’s embarrassment, shook it resolutely.

Purbright waited until the girl was about to open the front. door before he spoke to her.

“Hang on a minute, Elizabeth. Just a couple of quick questions about what happened to you yesterday.”

She looked at him nervously, then glanced back down the hall.

“I don’t know that I ought, really...she says I’m not to make any fuss about it.”

“I shan’t keep you a second.”

“But the policeman who came—he wrote everything down, I told it all to him.” She kept one slim, brown hand on the door catch.

“The car the man was hiding behind—I don’t think you described that, did you?”

“I didn’t notice it, really.”

“Not the colour, even?”

“I think it was a sort of greyish colour.” Again she looked past him, towards the room containing Mrs Meadow and her bell.

“I see. Make? Number? No good?”

She shook her head.

“Never mind. Now the man. His face was covered. In something brown, you said. Something patterned? Or not.”

“Patterned, I think.”

“And his coat. You said white. Are you sure?”

“Yes, white. It was thin and sort of smooth.”

“Have you ever seen a continental raincoat, Elizabeth? The sort they wear in Germany, Scandinavia, places like that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“The letters. Now I want you to think very carefully. When you picked them up again, are you sure they were all there?”

“Please—I’ll have to be getting back...” She turned her face and began opening the door, but not quickly enough to hide sudden flushed cheeks.

Purbright touched her arm.

“How many were missing, Elizabeth? It’s very important that I know.”

“One. Only one. I...I daren’t let on about it. She’d have got mad at me.”

“Do you know which one? Had you seen the address on it?”

“Somewhere in London, I think. It was one of those long envelopes, and it had more stamps on than the others. You won’t let her know, will you?”

“Typewritten?”

The girl nodded miserably.

“Listen,” said Purbright. “Does this sound familiar? The British...” He formed his lips into the pronunciation of an M, and waited.

Suddenly she brightened, her unhappiness dispelled for the moment by a chance to show herself clever.

“British Medical Journal! Yes, that was it. I’m sure it was.”

“Good girl,” said Purbright. He pulled open the door himself and stepped through.

Sergeant Malley, gingerly carrying a brimful mug of tea from the canteen back to his office, raised his head to see Purbright immediately in front of him. He stopped. A little of the tea slopped on the corridor floor. The inspector was looking so cheerful that Malley had to remind himself that Purbright was not by nature a rib-poker before he felt safe to squeeze to one side and give him room to pass.

“Oh, about Meadow...” he began.

“Have they done the autopsy yet?” the inspector interrupted eagerly.

“Autopsy?”

“Certainly. Have you not seen Heineman yet?”

Malley gripped his mug more firmly. “I have, as a matter of fact. Thompson, too. And Dr James. There isn’t going to be any autopsy.”

Purbright stared. “What the hell are they playing at?”

“Thompson’s decided that there’s no need for an inquest. James signed a certificate, so it looks as though that’s that.”

“That is bloody well not that! Come on, Bill—get into your office. I’ll phone from there.”

Dr Thompson had left Sparrow, Sparrow and Amblesby. Purbright tried the deputy coroner’s own home. Mrs Thompson suggested the doctor might have driven over to the hospital. He had his medical duties to perform as well, the inspector would realize. She plainly shared her husband’s opinion that the honour of deputizing for old Amblesby was not worth the trouble involved.

The matron at the General said that Dr Thompson had gone on the wards to visit one of his patients. She would have him called to a telephone.

Purbright waited restlessly, weighing the receiver in his hand.

“I know what it is,” he said to Malley. “Doctors. Mutual protection association.”

The sergeant pushed his tea carefully to one side to make room for a tin of tobacco.

“I think you’ll find Heineman’s the trouble. The G.P.S don’t like pathologists much anyway—they spot the mistakes after the damage has been done—and Heinie’s an outsider. He’s only been here eleven years. You can imagine what the feeling is going to be when it’s not just a patient but one of the fraternity who goes on his slab.”

“Aye, but Meadow was murdered, Bill. I’m absolutely positive now.”

Malley paused in sniffing his newly opened tin.

“How?”

“God knows. That’s the hell of it. But it was done. Somehow or other it was done.”

“And do you know who did it?” Beneath. Malley’s bucolic manner was now a tense seriousness.

“Aye,” said Purbright, and left it at that.

A series of loud clicks came from the phone, followed by a voice, querulous, irritable.

Purbright spoke.

“Dr Thompson? Inspector Purbright... Yes, I realize that. I’m sorry. But this is urgent. I understand from the coroner’s officer that you have decided against holding an inquest on Dr Meadow...”

Four minutes later, Purbright put down the receiver and faced Malley with an expression of stony anger.

The sergeant removed his pipe and glanced with mild curiosity into the bowl.