Some Die Eloquent (12 page)

‘Very well, really. She was sensible – that's what matters most in caring for that condition.'

Sloan nodded. ‘She didn't kick over the traces?' It was nice to know that there were other professions which also had to deal with kickers over traces. But if nobody in society ever did step out of line … His wife had read extracts from
Brave New World
to him once. He didn't like the idea of programmed obedience either. He preferred the middle way. One way and another you usually came back to that.

‘Let us say,' said Dr Paston, building a steeple with his fingers, ‘that she was an intelligent woman who understood her condition very well and acted accordingly.'

‘Not careless?'

‘Certainly not.'

‘And not given to eating what was bad for her?'

‘I would have thought, never.' He frowned. ‘She would understand the consequences too well.'

‘Or missing out her insulin?'

‘Out of the question.'

‘I see.'

‘She was most punctilious about that. In any case …' He paused.

‘Yes?'

‘In any case,' the doctor said more slowly, ‘if she did forget she would begin to feel ill and that would remind her.'

The doctor rearranged a prescription pad and a book of certificates on his desk top while Sloan said quietly, ‘That's what we thought.'

‘Besides,' continued the general practitioner, ‘as it happens, I had actually advised her to step up her dose the week before she died, not once but twice, so she would scarcely have forgotten. Quite the reverse, I should have said.'

‘Would it surprise you, Dr Paston, to know that the pathologist could find no trace whatsoever of insulin at post mortem?'

‘Very much,' said the practitioner vigorously. ‘In fact, I would find it exceedingly difficult to credit.'

‘Moreover,' continued Sloan, ‘he also found a number of signs that indicated quite positively that she had not had any insulin for some days before her death.'

‘I can tell you,' countered the doctor immediately, ‘exactly when she had her last prescription.' He flipped a switch and asked a secretary for Beatrice Wansdyke's medical case-notes.

‘She also had some symptoms indicative of shortage of insulin,' went on Sloan firmly. ‘We have a witness to her being unusually thirsty, for instance, on Thursday.'

The doctor's head came up most alertly at that but he did not speak, and there was a sort of silence while they waited for the notes to arrive. Detective-Constable Crosby used it to turn over the pages of his notebook slowly and deliberately in such a manner as to emphasize that he was taking notes. Detective-Inspector Sloan spent the time studying the general practitioner. He was grey-haired, sparely-built, and not – at a guess – very far short of retirement. He gave every appearance at the moment of a puzzled man – but not a frightened one. Dr Paston himself was clearly using the lead time for thinking hard.

When the patient's notes arrived the situation took a completely new turn.

‘As I say,' began the doctor, scanning them rapidly, ‘Miss Wansdyke consulted me at Thursday evening's surgery last week and I advised extra units of insulin morning and evening. She had ample supplies. Her last prescription was …' His face changed. He looked suddenly older. ‘As it happens,' he said carefully, ‘I didn't write her last prescription. It was given to her in September while I was on holiday.'

‘Oh?'

‘My partner wrote it out for her as I was away.'

‘Dr McCavity?' said Sloan.

‘Dr Peter McCavity?' said Detective-Constable Crosby from the patient's friend's chair in a manner which betokened prior acquaintance with the name.

‘Perhaps, Dr Paston,' suggested Sloan, ‘if we might just check with him?' It would be interesting in any case to see the knocker-down of so many items of what the town planners called ‘street furniture'.

‘By all means, Inspector,' said the doctor without enthusiasm. ‘I'll ask him to step through.'

There was an altogether different cut of jib about the man who came along in response to Dr Paston's message. He was a much younger man but already his features had taken on the blur of self-indulgence. He positioned himself against the examination couch at the side of the room, a hand resting rather too heavily against it for normal support purposes.

‘Police?' he said uncertainly. ‘If it's about that bollard in the Eastgate yesterday …'

‘Our Inspector Harpe is dealing with that, Doctor.'

‘I meant to report it. No time, you know. Urgent medical work.'

‘You'll be hearing from him in due course,' said Sloan formally.

‘Oh … oh yes. Thank you.' Dr McCavity managed an acknowledging nod. ‘Some fool cut in on me …'

There was the accumulation of years of skill and experience in the totally expressionless way in which Sloan contrived to cast doubt on the driver's statement while doing and saying nothing provocative that an astute defence counsel could use in evidence.

‘While we're talking about cars, Doctor …' began Sloan.

‘Go on.' Peter McCavity brought his gaze to bear upon the detective-inspector but seemed to have some little difficulty in keeping it there.

‘Can you tell me where your car was parked on Friday afternoon?'

‘Friday?' Now he merely looked bewildered. ‘Last Friday?'

‘Last Friday,' said Sloan patiently. For the young doctor last Friday was clearly light years away from this Wednesday morning.

An expression of genuine puzzlement came over his prematurely blunted features. ‘Friday? I should have to think about that. When on Friday?'

‘Afternoon turning to evening.'

‘Friday was a long time ago.'

‘I dare say.'

‘With the weekend in between.' He made the weekend sound as solid as the house but for which you could see to Hackney Marshes (“wiv a ladder and some glasses”.)

‘It's easy to lose a weekend,' agreed Sloan temperately. In fact ‘lost' weekends were quite a feature of a certain condition.

‘My weekend off,' said McCavity.

‘I see, sir.'

‘Not on duty.'

‘I understand.'

‘Very tired.'

‘Quite.'

‘I didn't feel very well on Friday.'

‘I see, sir.'

He looked round unsurely. ‘I may have had a little sleep in my car.'

‘Can you remember whereabouts, sir?'

The doctor roused himself to a modicum of belligerence. ‘Nothing wrong with that, is there, Inspector?'

‘No, sir. Not in itself.'

‘Well?'

‘Would you have been anywhere near Ridley Road?'

His aggression collapsed as speedily as a pricked balloon. His face changed pathetically. ‘Oh my God, Inspector!' He clutched Sloan's sleeve in an alarmed manner. ‘I didn't … don't tell me that I …' His whole frame shuddered. ‘I haven't knocked anyone down, have I?'

His senior partner, Dr John Paston, stirred at last behind his desk and said brusquely, ‘Oughtn't you to be cautioning him, Inspector?'

‘I don't think so, Doctor,' replied Sloan evenly. He knew his Judge's Rules as well as the next policeman and he didn't need any spectator – or even the referee, come to that – telling him he was off-side.

‘What is all this anyway?' demanded Dr McCavity. ‘This isn't a police state yet, you know.'

‘Just a few questions, sir, that's all.'

‘More like the third degree,' complained the young doctor bitterly. His words would have carried more conviction without the fine tremor of his hands that shouldn't have been present in one so young.

‘It's a wise man that knows his own movements,' said Sloan prosaically. ‘Were you near Ridley Road on Friday afternoon?'

He hesitated. ‘I may have been.'

Sloan turned back to Dr Paston. ‘Perhaps we might ask Dr McCavity instead if he can remember writing Miss Wansdyke's prescription for insulin while you were away.'

The young doctor answered for himself. ‘That'll be down in black and white, Inspector. You'll be able to see that for yourself.' He turned scornfully to a stony-faced Dr Paston. ‘Wansdyke? That's the old bird who's left you some money, isn't it?'

‘Well,' demanded Superintendent Leeyes, ‘where are we now?'

Detective-Inspector Sloan had reported to his superior's office as soon as he got back to the police station. If it hadn't been for the feminine overtones of the simile, he thought privately, you could have likened the Superintendent to a Queen Bee placed firmly in the centre of her hive. What with worker bees reporting back all day honey-laden, other bees dancing attendance upon the Queen Bee (there was no shortage of lady clerical workers servicing the Superintendent's out-basket and telephone line), and sentry bees on guard duty at the mouth of the hive, the organization of the police station at Berebury could have changed places with a beehive any day.

‘How far have you got, Sloan?'

Except, of course, that there were no drones in the Calleshire Force.

‘Sloan, are you listening?'

‘Yes, sir,' he said, pulling himself together quickly. Ants were known to be well organized, too. ‘We haven't made a lot of headway so far.'

‘You've had all morning.'

‘Yes, sir.' There was no doubt either, thought Sloan confusedly to himself, about who was Top Dog in their hive, so to speak.

‘Found the nephew yet?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Got a general call out for him?'

‘A whisper,' replied Sloan, ‘has gone around the nebulae.'

‘What's that, Sloan?'

‘Nothing, sir. Sorry, sir.' He brought his mind back smartly to the here and now by getting out his notebook and opening it in front of him. ‘We're looking for Nicholas Petforth now.'

Leeyes grunted. ‘You saw the pathologist …'

‘He's quite certain, sir, that the deceased didn't have her insulin.'

‘And her general practitioner?'

‘He's quite certain, sir, that she did.' There was some elusive quotation hovering about in his mind about when doctors differ but he couldn't pin it down. ‘Or rather …'

‘Yes?'

‘He's quite sure that she wouldn't have stopped taking it.'

Leeyes grunted again. ‘So?'

‘So there remains the alternative that she thought she was taking it.'

‘You mean that when she gave herself an injection it wasn't insulin?'

‘It figures,' said Sloan cautiously.

‘It didn't do her any good,' agreed Leeyes grimly, ‘did it, whatever it was she had instead?'

‘No. We know she wasn't feeling well on it. That's why the doctor told her to increase the dose.'

‘Compounding the error,' pronounced the Superintendent neatly.

‘Er – quite, sir.' The depths of the Superintendent's knowledge and ignorance were equally unfathomable to his subordinates. They couldn't count on either. ‘Increasing the dose didn't help, you see.'

‘And it should have done, I take it?'

‘Oh yes. In theory, anyway. That's why Dr Paston upped the dose again after that.'

‘Or said that he did, Sloan,' warned the Superintendent.

‘Yes, sir. Naturally.' That went without saying at this stage. There was always an unwritten and unspoken caveat in all police work acknowledging the difference between what was given in an untried statement and what was offered – tested – in evidence.

‘Putting the dose up yet again didn't help either, of course,' observed Leeyes.

‘No, sir.'

‘Nothing and nothing is still nothing.'

‘It reinforces the theory that what she gave herself wasn't insulin.' Sloan, who was no mathematician, shifted his ground slightly. ‘According to the medical men, her symptoms should have gone away on the bigger dose.'

‘Not got worse, like they did.'

‘No.'

‘Sloan, I don't like the sound of this.'

‘No, sir.'

‘Someone wanted that woman dead.'

‘There could have been an accident,' pointed out Sloan for form's sake as much as anything. ‘A duff supply or something like that.'

Leeyes gave a Machiavellian smile. ‘Putting the whole thing down to bad luck, are you, Sloan?'

‘No, sir, but …'

‘And the quarter of a million pounds to good luck?'

‘Never, sir …' He meant that. The one thing he didn't want any child of his to have was unlimited wealth on the grand scale. He didn't call that good luck.

‘And,' carried on the Superintendent, pursuing his own line of thought, ‘as for having the bad luck to have a fatal accident at the same time as having the good luck to have come by a large sum of money …'

‘Unlikely,' agreed Sloan. The Furies usually went so far and no further. Not that you could count on that either.

‘One in the eye for Yin and Yang.'

‘Beg pardon, sir?'

‘The unity of opposites.'

‘Er – quite, sir.' Sloan quickly racked his brains. The Superintendent attended Adult Education Classes in his spare time. Indiscriminately. One way and another they had all left their mark on the Force.

‘Equal and opposite, you might say.'

‘Indeed, yes, sir.' Was that, Sloan wondered, a hangover from Mathematics for All and Congruent Triangles or Eastern Philosophies for Enquiring Minds?

‘Someone,' repeated Leeyes forcefully, ‘wanted that woman dead.'

‘Yes, sir.' He cleared his throat. ‘If we accept that then I rather think that we can go a little further than that.'

‘Come on, then … don't just sit there, man! Tell me.'

‘I think someone wanted her dead sooner rather than later.'

The Superintendent shot Sloan a shrewd look from under his bushy eyebrows. ‘We've got a Speedy Gonzales about, have we?'