Some Die Eloquent (4 page)

‘Body of an averagely nourished female,' Dr Dabbe began dictating, ‘whose age has been given to me as fifty-nine and whose name I am told is Beatrice Gwendoline Wansdyke.'

The voice of the secretary broke in. ‘She's been positively identified, Doctor, now. By her niece.'

The pathologist nodded and began peering forward at a wide area of thickened skin at the front of the dead woman's right thigh. He spoke into the hanging microphone again. ‘No external signs of violence except that there are indications that subcutaneous injections have been given over a long period.'

‘That's the diabetes, I suppose,' said Sloan. What the police meant by violence was quite clearly something very different from that which the pathologist meant by violence.

‘It's funny,' mused the doctor, ‘how all the old diabetic hands find one site and use it all the time for their injections.'

‘Rather them than me,' said Sloan.

‘They've plenty of places to choose from,' said Dabbe, ‘yet they usually find the one and stick to it.'

‘Does her choosing her right thigh mean she was right-handed?' asked Sloan. Anything that he could find out about Beatrice Wansdyke to add to his meagre store of information might be a help: you never knew with police work.

‘I should think so,' said Dabbe. He ran a professional eye over two biceps muscles. ‘You can take it from me that the deceased was right-handed anyway.'

Sloan wrote that down. It was a beginning.

‘Right, then,' said the pathologist cheerfully, ‘shall we go in head first?'

Sloan stood well back. The hanging microphone looked like the spider descending beside little Miss Muffet.

‘The deep end, you might say,' murmured Dr Dabbe as Bums busied himself with a stainless steel knife.

‘Beg pardon, Doctor?' In Detective-Inspector Sloan's considered view this was neither the time nor the place to be playing with words.

‘She was educated, wasn't she? Miss Wansdyke …'

‘What?… oh, yes. A science degree.' That, too, had – like the quarter of a million pounds – been left behind outside the post mortem room. This world's goods were not the only things that did not show up here. University degrees didn't carry any weight either. How right the ancients had been to drape what they were pleased to call achievements round the tomb instead …

A wicked-looking bone-saw had succeeded the knife in Burns's hand.

Sloan stirred. ‘What are you looking for, Doctor?'

‘Cause of death, old chap. Nothing less, nothing more.' He peered over his assistant's shoulder at the late Miss Wansdyke's head. ‘Looks all right to me.'

‘Yes, Doctor,' said Burns.

The pathologist turned towards the hanging microphone and translated this for his secretary into medicolegal English for his report. ‘No macroscopic changes in brain tissue.'

Presently: ‘Rita, are you still there?'

‘Yes, Doctor, I'm here.'

‘No signs of strangulation. All the larynx bones are intact – hyoid and all.'

Then: ‘Lungs normal. Got that?'

‘Yes, Doctor.'

A little later: ‘Some signs of myocardial degeneration. You'd expect that, of course.'

And quite quickly after that: ‘Minimal diabetic changes in the pancreas. Bound to be with her history, I suppose. We'll have all the usual tissue sections, Burns, please. Rita, do a list, will you?'

‘Yes, Doctor.'

‘And put the kettle on.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan had never relished post mortems and he didn't enjoy this one now. Nevertheless, as always, there was something quite fascinating about watching a true expert at work. Gradually simple atavistic distaste fell away. It was succeeded by something much less primitive. The pathologist must have sensed his interest because he shot the policeman a shrewd glance and said:

‘You're quite right to take your shoes off, Sloan.'

He started. ‘Beg pardon, Doctor?'

‘Metaphorically, of course.'

‘I don't see …'

‘You're in the Temple of Truth now,' said the doctor drily. ‘As well as inside Nature's Temple.'

‘Oh?'

‘The human body.'

‘Ah, I see what you mean.'

‘The greatest creation of them all,' said the pathologist soberly. ‘Don't make any mistake about that, Sloan.'

‘No, Doctor.'

‘All alike and none exactly the same into the bargain.'

‘I hadn't thought about that.'

‘Mathematicians –' the pathologist waved a rubber-gloved hand – ‘contemplate infinity.'

‘Do they?'

‘I contemplate human dissimilarity.'

Detective-Inspector Sloan looked first at the pathologist, then at Burns and then at the body on the post mortem table. ‘We're all one-off models, are we, then? The long and the short and the tall.'

‘We're all the same and we're all different,' said Dr Dabbe the specialist. ‘Past, present and future. That's the wonder of it, Sloan, the sheer wonder …'

There was a sudden clatter near the mortuary door. At the same time over the intercom came the hasty voice of the pathologist's secretary. ‘Rita here, Doctor. You've got a visitor. He said he'd been sent.'

The door opened and a very young policeman stepped into the mortuary. At once the atmosphere changed from the philosophic to the mundane. The newcomer addressed himself first to Sloan.

‘Detective-Constable Crosby, sir, reporting for duty.' Sloan sighed. ‘Come in, Crosby.'

‘The Superintendent said to step round, sir.'

‘Did he?'

‘There wasn't anyone else.'

‘No.'

‘And …'

‘And?'

‘And he'd got word that the Assistant Chief Constable might be dropping in to the station this afternoon.'

‘Ah.' That explained the Superintendent's eagerness to get Crosby out of it. ‘Get your notebook out, then.'

‘Yes, sir.' The constable struggled with a recalcitrant pocket and gave a greeting to the pathologist the while. ‘'Afternoon, Dr Dabbe.' He nodded amiably to Burns and then his eye fell upon the body on the post mortem table. He moved over politely as if she, too, was of the gathering. ‘Hullo,' he said, ‘it's Miss Wansdyke, isn't it?'

‘I didn't know,' said Sloan with heavy irony, ‘that you two knew each other. How come, Crosby?'

A telephone bell rang.

Technical progress has done a lot for the telephone bell. In business offices unobtrusive warbles, discreet flashing lights or quiet buzzers draw attention to the instrument. In the Berebury District General Hospital where a little extra peace and quiet would not have come amiss it rang with old-fashioned clarity.

‘Ante-natal out-patients' clinic,' said the young nurse who answered it.

‘This is Fleming Ward,' said a voice. ‘Can I speak to Dr Roger Elspin please?'

‘Is it urgent?' enquired the nurse. ‘He's seeing a patient at the moment.'

‘Penny, is that you? It's Briony here.'

‘Briony! What on earth's the matter?'

‘Penny, I simply must speak to Roger this very minute.'

‘But he's in the clinic with a patient. Truly.'

‘If I come straight down will you let me in for a minute to see him?'

‘What if Sister Stork catches you here?'

‘She need never even know that I've been in her precious clinic.'

‘She'll know,' declared Penny feelingly. ‘She always knows everything. Don't ask me how, though.'

‘I expect she's a witch really,' said Briony Petforth with surprising matter-of-factness. ‘All hospital sisters are. In disguise. Look here, are you going to let me in or aren't you?'

‘Well …'

‘Only for a minute, I promise.'

‘Oh, all right then.'

‘I can say that I've come down with a message from Fleming Ward.'

‘And exactly what sort of message,' demanded Penny with some spirit, ‘would a men's surgical ward have got for an obstetrics outfit?'

‘I'll think of something on the way down,' promised Briony Petforth. ‘You see if I don't.'

‘Mind, you'll have to wait until Sister's back's turned.'

This seemed to go without saying and Briony Petforth rang off and sped down to the ante-natal clinic. Her friend, Penny, gave her a conspiratorial look.

‘Now's your chance. Sister Stork's on the other phone to the delivery ward.'

‘Bless you,' said Briony. ‘I won't forget this.'

‘Sister Stork will kill me if she ever finds out,' declared Penny dramatically.

‘Sister Fleming will kill me if she finds out,' returned Briony more tersely. ‘I should be doing dressings.'

‘It must be important,' said Penny, wide-eyed. ‘He's in the first consulting room on the right.'

Briony tapped on the door.

‘Let's see, it's Mrs … Mrs … er … Sloan, isn't it?' the obstetrics registrar was saying to his patient.

‘It is.' Margaret Sloan had at last worked her way to the top of the queue in the clinic and a moment ago had actually been ushered into the medical presence. Her husband – in the way of police husbands – had not returned to her side before she did so, but Larky Nolson had waved to her as he and his wife had departed from the ante-natal clinic ahead of her.

It had been poor consolation.

‘Let me see now,' said the doctor in the manner of all doctors, ‘the baby's due pretty soon, isn't it?'

The knock on the door was repeated.

‘Come in,' commanded Dr Elspin.

‘Dr Elspin,' said Briony Petforth formally, ‘could you spare a moment, please?'

‘Certainly, Nurse.' The obstetrics registrar paused in the act of reading Mrs Margaret Sloan's case-notes and excused himself to her.

Mrs Sloan murmured, ‘Of course.'

Dr Elspin stepped with alacrity into the adjoining examination cubicle and abandoned his professional manner. ‘Darling, what's the matter?'

‘Oh, Roger …'

‘You look as if you've seen a ghost.'

She laughed shakily. ‘Only poor Aunt Beatrice.'

‘Now,' he began briskly, something of his professional manner coming back, ‘you must start forgetting all about that. I know you found her and that you were fond of her, but –'

‘Not that.'

‘No?'

‘You don't understand, Roger. Something else.'

‘What?'

‘They're doing a post mortem.'

‘Well, why not? After all, old Paston has every right to request –'

‘No.' She shook her head impatiently. ‘You don't understand. He gave us the death certificate all right. It was after that. Roger, what would make them change their minds?'

The young doctor frowned and paused for a moment before he spoke. ‘I don't really know.'

‘There you are, then.'

‘But there's no harm done. You should know that, darling.'

‘How do you know?' she demanded tightly.

Dr Roger Elspin made no audible answer to this. Instead there was a silence.

It was not broken for a long minute.

No one has ever pretended that those screens and partition walls in hospitals which do not reach the floor and are of less than ceiling height are meant to be soundproof. They exist solely to give an illusion of privacy to the patient – nothing more. And in any case that illusion was only ever meant to extend to visual privacy. Nobody, unless completely deceived by the token aloneness of being behind screens, could really believe that speech and sound were protected in any way.

Or could they?

Mrs Margaret Sloan, no ugly duckling herself in her day, reckoned that she knew what a kiss sounded like as well as the next woman.

‘No, Roger,' she heard Briony protest, ‘not here!'

‘Why not?' mumbled Roger Elspin indistinctly.

‘Roger, mind my cap …'

Mrs Sloan was even more sure of the sound the second time she heard it. The partition was, after all, only an aid to dignity – the patient's dignity.

‘Roger, stop it! Sister might come in.'

‘And she might not,' said the obstetrics registrar promptly. ‘Then look what I'd have missed.'

‘Roger, be serious for a minute.'

‘I am serious,' retorted the young man.

‘Roger, you mustn't …'

‘Give me another kiss and I'll prove it.'

‘Darling,' the timbre of her voice changed noticeably.

‘You know very well,' said Roger Elspin gruffly, ‘that I am serious.'

‘And you realize what this means?' said Briony urgently.

‘Your Aunt Beatrice dying?'

‘Yes.' Briony Petforth let out a sigh that Mrs Margaret Sloan heard quite clearly. ‘It means that now there is nothing in the whole world stopping us getting married.'

CHAPTER IV

I give fair warning you may search for ever;

A golden future lures one on to sever

Oneself from all one ever had, and trust

An art for which one cannot lose the lust.

‘How is it, Crosby,' repeated Detective-Inspector Sloan evenly, ‘that you happen to know Miss Wansdyke?'

Constable Crosby did not – in any sense – live anywhere near Ridley Road.

‘She's the lady who lost her little dog,' said the detective-constable. ‘Very upset about it at the time, sir, she was.'

‘And what time would that have been exactly?' asked Sloan. Someone down at the police station had been detailed to teach Crosby about the more precise reporting of fact but they evidently hadn't got very far yet.

‘Saturday, sir.' He turned back the pages of his notebook. ‘Saturday morning. Miss Wansdyke asked if anyone had brought her dog in to us.'

‘And had they?'

‘No, sir. I looked in the book and all we had that day was a budgerigar, two umbrellas, a slide rule, four scarves and a stone of plain flour.'