Chapter and Hearse (2 page)

It was what he himself would have wanted.

‘I think,' said Dr Chomel cautiously, ‘she may have changed her mind about the whole thing. At first she told us that, if it was ever called for, she wanted us to attempt resuscitation.' The house physician always put in that little rider about
attempting
resuscitation rather than just doing it. The popular view was too optimistic a one.

‘Ah…'

‘It isn't always successful, you know, in spite of what you usually see on television,' she sighed, ‘and after being on the ward for a little while, I'm afraid the patients do get to realize this.'

‘I can see that might be the case,' agreed Sloan, bearing in mind that Mrs Galbraith also might have said one thing and later agreed to another. After all, it was a free world – even in hospital. ‘But after that?'

‘She must have told – er – someone else on the staff here that she didn't want it tried after all.'

‘What makes you say that, doctor?'

‘Her notes.' She hesitated. ‘As you will see, Inspector, they're quite clearly marked and that's why the crash team wasn't sent for. Look, there…'

Both policemen peered at the patient's records.

‘You will observe,' said Dr Chomel, ‘that we had her down as a “122”.'

‘Meaning what exactly?'

The house physician explained that the figures had succeeded the letters ‘DNR' on the admission records of patients at the Berebury and District General Hospital. ‘In most hospitals, Inspector,' she said awkwardly, ‘those letters stand for “Do Not Resuscitate”.'

‘I see.' Sloan thought he was beginning to see quite a lot now.

‘And some people,' the young doctor said ingenuously, ‘take exception to that decision being visible on the chart at the bottom of the bed.'

Detective Inspector Sloan said that he could see that they might.

Detective Constable Crosby said that he would have done.

‘So now we write “122” instead,' she finished lamely.

‘One, two, that'll do,' chanted Crosby insouciantly.

Dr Dilys Chomel, who came from a culture that did not encompass English nursery rhymes, looked bewildered. ‘That way,' she said, ‘now only the medical and nursing staff know.'

Detective Inspector Sloan, for one, did not for a single moment believe this; but then, he was in the disbelieving business. Any half-intelligent patient or visitor could have worked it out for themselves.

Dr Chomel wasn't in the disbelieving business. Not yet, anyway.

‘And if a visitor should ask what the “122” means,' she went on hastily, ‘they're told that it's the extension number of the doctor who has to be informed of any emergency.' Active medical resuscitation was not a problem in her own country. Few people there lived to their three score years and ten, let alone any longer. They also shared an unshakeable belief – completely at odds with contemporary Western medicine – that ‘what will be, will be'.

‘But I take it they weren't told that the patient would be dead by the time that doctor was contacted?' enquired Detective Inspector Sloan. Hippocrates, he decided, would be surprised at quite how far medical ethics had come since his time. ‘If he or she was ever to be contacted, that is…'

‘No,' she said, looking uncomfortable.

‘The best of both worlds,' he murmured.

‘This and the next,' remarked Crosby incorrigibly.

Sloan resolved that as soon as they got back to the police station he would give his assistant something more serious to think about than the sending of a Valentine. Such as when to keep quiet during an investigation …

Unfortunately the detective constable had more to say. ‘Do they have a secret sign too, doctor, when they want to reuse your liver and lights?'

Dr Chomel's command of English, though good, was not up to this. ‘No, no,' she said when Crosby explained. ‘For organ transplants we need the written consent of the relatives.'

‘I can see that your resuscitation procedure looks good on paper, though,' said Sloan absently, his mind now elsewhere.

Dr Chomel still looked uncomfortable.

‘Having to be good on paper,' Sloan said kindly, ‘is half the trouble these days.'

Dr Chomel looked even more uncomfortable.

‘So who,' piped up Detective Constable Crosby helpfully, ‘wrote this number “122” on the patient's notes, then?'

‘I'm not entirely sure,' Dr Chomel said with obvious reluctance, ‘but it does explain why the crash team wasn't summoned.'

‘Someone must have put the number there,' said Sloan ineluctably.

‘Yes, Inspector.'

‘Someone who knew what the numbers meant,' concluded Sloan aloud.

‘Yes, Inspector.'

‘Narrows the field a bit, doesn't it?' said Detective Constable Crosby chattily.

‘Ye-es,' she agreed, her uncertainty now patent.

‘Someone must have done it here, in the hospital, too,' continued Sloan.

‘Yes.' She gulped and suddenly blurted out, ‘I'm afraid that it's written in green ink.'

‘Is that significant?'

Her voice fell to almost a whisper. ‘Dr Beaumont always writes his patients' notes in green ink.'

Sloan nodded. Idiosyncrasies were important in establishing the pecking order. ‘To be different?'

She shook her head. ‘No, Inspector. He says it's so that there can't be any doubt who's written them.'

*   *   *

Dr Edwin Beaumont treated the police visit to his home as a tiresome interruption. ‘Don't tell me that the relatives are complaining the patient wasn't well treated,' he began testily.

‘Only in a manner of speaking,' said Sloan, explaining.

‘If you think,' the consultant said crisply, ‘that I am going about administering a
coup de grâce
to every very old patient blocking one of my beds, Inspector, you are mistaken. And I have statistical records to prove it.'

‘It seems that someone did,' said Sloan mildly. ‘In green ink.'

‘Clever,' conceded the medical man. ‘Very clever. But not done by me.' He took out his pen and wrote down the numbers on a sheet of paper. He handed pen and paper to the policeman. ‘Or with my Waterman pen nib. Check with your tame specialists if you like.'

‘I doubt if that will be necessary, sir,' said Detective Inspector Sloan. ‘But if I might just borrow your telephone to talk to Dr Chomel…'

The physician pushed it towards him.

‘Dr Chomel? Inspector Sloan here. There's something I want you to do for us. Now, listen very carefully…'

*   *   *

The two policemen were back at Berebury police station with a surprised Colin Galbraith under arrest on suspicion of causing unlawful death before Sloan expanded further.

‘What counts in police work, Crosby, is evidence – hard evidence – not just suspicion.'

‘Yes, sir, but…'

‘What we needed to do was to get the old lady's son to write down those letters in the presence of an impeccable witness…'

‘Dr Chomel,' said Crosby, faint but pursuing.

‘The courts trust medical doctors,' said Sloan elliptically, ‘even if all their patients don't.'

‘Yes, sir, I know that, but…'

‘So we had to get Colin Galbraith, who after all must have needed his share of his mother's money after a contested divorce, a new marriage and a failed business if anybody did…'

‘I'll say,' said Crosby, who had had the perils of matrimony spelled out to him in the canteen by the cohort against the sending of the famous Valentine.

‘… to write the letters “122” down without suspecting that we knew anything was amiss.'

‘But what I don't see, sir, is why you got Dr Chomel to get Galbraith to sign a statement that he didn't want a post-mortem performed on his mother. That's got nothing to do with it.'

‘Nothing,' agreed Sloan cheerfully. ‘What was important was getting him to date it.'

Crosby frowned. ‘What's the date got to do with it?'

‘With today's date, of course,' said Sloan.

‘Today's date?' said Crosby, adding after a moment's thought. ‘The 12th of February?'

‘The graphologists don't mind if you use letters or figures,' said Sloan. ‘Or which pen.'

‘So…'

‘Whether you write down 12 February or 12.2 and the year, you've got to use the figures 1 and 2.'

‘One, two, that'll do…' remarked the constable.

‘Exactly. Anyone can use a green pen but your handwriting characteristics can't be disguised. Distance-killing, you could call it, writing in that death warrant. By the way, Crosby…'

‘Sir?'

‘If I were you, I think I'd send that Valentine card for 14 February after all…'

Due Diligence

‘I must say I don't like the idea at all myself,' said Simon flatly. ‘Otherwise, of course, I can see that it would be a very good place to live.'

‘Quite,' said Kenneth Marsden, the estate agent, patently unperturbed. The word was one he was very fond of using with his clients. It implied agreement without actually spelling it out. ‘Quite.'

‘Nor me,' chimed in Simon's wife, Charlotte, quickly.

Too quickly.

‘Quite,' said the estate agent again. Kenneth Marsden had found that this all-purpose word equally usefully concealed disagreement without actually spelling out the fact to prospective purchasers of attractive properties newly on the market in rural Calleshire. ‘I do understand, naturally. It was all very, very unfortunate.'

‘I mean,' said Simon Cullen, ‘it's not every day that something like that happens in someone's house.'

‘Quite so.' The man from Messrs Crombie and Marsden, Estate Agents and Valuers, paused and then said judiciously, ‘On the other hand, it has at the same time to be remembered –' Kenneth Marsden was also in the habit of making all unwelcome pronouncements in the impersonal tense – ‘that there are very few domestic properties in this country – especially genuinely old ones such as the Manor at Cullingoak – in which, over the years, somebody has not died…'

‘Naturally,' agreed Simon, ‘but this death was really only the other day, wasn't it?'

‘Which is why the present owner wishes to dispose of it so quickly,' said the estate agent smoothly. He changed the subject with the skill born of long practice. ‘By the way, how did you happen to hear about the Manor being up for sale? We shan't be advertising it until the end of the week.'

It was Charlotte Cullen who answered him. ‘Somebody at work mentioned it to me, and I rang my husband and got him to collect the key when he was in Berebury so we could see over the house while I could fit it in. I've got to go abroad for the bank tomorrow.'

Kenneth Marsden translated her coded message without difficulty. There would be no problems over money or mortgage with any purchase was what she was actually telling him.

‘But the lady of the house didn't just die, did she?' persisted Simon.

‘My husband meant houses in which there has been a fatal accident,' spelt out Charlotte for him. ‘Didn't you, Simon?'

Simon Cullen did not respond to this.

‘I do understand,' Kenneth Marsden hastened to say soothingly. Actually he understood a great deal more: he now knew which of this couple it was who metaphorically wore the trousers. This knowledge was something that was as important to him now as it would be to any experienced negotiator.

‘The publicity,' pointed out Simon.

‘Unfavourable,' conceded the estate agent immediately. He allowed a little pause to develop before he said obliquely, ‘You yourselves would, of course, be benefiting from this to the extent that the property has been placed on the market at a substantially lower price than it would have been had the – er – unfortunate accident not occurred.'

‘We do appreciate that,' murmured Charlotte Cullen. ‘It is an important factor in our even considering purchasing a property such as this. I must say, though, that I agree with my husband that it is a very nice house.'

Within the privacy of the partners' room of Messrs Crombie and Marsden, Kenneth Marsden had described this particular instance of his lowering of his valuation of the house as ‘blood money'. To his eternal credit, the vendor had not demurred at his suggested figure. Indeed, for a money man – he was a stockbroker – Mr Wetherby had shown very little interest in the prospective sale, only in disposing of the property at the earliest possible moment.

Needless to say, Kenneth Marsden did not say either of these things now. Instead, he nodded his agreement with Charlotte. ‘Yes, indeed, Mrs Cullen,' he said easily. ‘It's a very fine example of its period.'

Charlotte, who was rising rapidly through the upper-middle echelons of the Bank of Calleshire, where she worked, leaned forward and said, ‘Actually it was the price which first attracted my husband.'

‘I'm sure,' said Kenneth warmly.

Simon said nothing.

‘I hesitate to use the word “bargain” in these particular circumstances,' went on Kenneth Marsden, matching spurious frankness with superficial – if seemingly transparent – honesty, ‘but there's no denying that if it weren't for the – er – tragic incident there, the Manor at Cullingoak would be much more highly priced than it is today.'

‘My husband,' began Charlotte again, ‘was quite taken with the actual property too…' She turned towards Simon and said, ‘Weren't you, dear?'

Simon had long ago decided that Charlotte must have read in a women's magazine that where the wife was the money earner, it was important that she deferred to her husband on each and every occasion when this was at all possible. And that her constant litany should be, “I'll have to ask my husband.” That this should only be when his answer wasn't important went, Simon knew, without saying.