After Effects (13 page)

‘And when, may I ask,' said Sloan, although he thought he might already know, ‘was Dr Meggie due to hand over to you the results of the trial run of this elegant and clinically and chemically more discriminating pilot test?'

‘Lunchtime today,' said Gledhill hollowly.

‘Which means,' spelled out Crosby, who appeared to have been doing nothing but look out of the window, ‘does it, that now nobody knows? By the way, what's that funny hedge thing out there?'

‘A maze,' said Gledhill distractedly. ‘No, it doesn't mean that nobody knows the results. It means that nobody knows them until we see them and put them together with the names in our records.'

‘And then we'll know,' said Mike Itchen, ‘whether the trial run worked.'

‘If, that is,' said Gledhill, putting in a caveat, ‘Dr Meggie actually completed them before his death.'

‘There is also the possibility,' remarked Sloan in a detached way, ‘the purely theoretical possibility, of course, that Dr Meggie completed his records and did not like the results.'

Detective Constable Crosby looked round the room and said brightly, ‘Or that he had completed his records and there was someone else who didn't like them.'

‘Well?' demanded Superintendent Leeyes. The superintendent's weekend off-duty was sacrosanct even if no one else's was and he was anxious to be gone. ‘You're making progress, I hope, Sloan.'

‘We've begun to establish a number of parameters,' said Sloan, generously implying that Crosby had been helpful in this exercise. ‘And also that Gilroy's keep some personal-protection devices on their premises in the form of propellant sprays.'

‘What are they afraid of?' enquired Leeyes with interest. ‘Mice or men?'

At Gilroy's Pharmaceuticals he had been told that their chief anxiety when attacked by the animal liberationists was not letting the fruit flies escape since it seemed that a nuclear fast-breeder reactor had nothing on
Drosophila bifurca
for speedy reproduction. Which, apparently, was very helpful in research.

Sloan decided against going into this with the superintendent and said instead that he and Crosby had then gone over to the Kinnisport Golf Club.

‘Links,' said Leeyes.

‘Pardon, sir?'

‘A seaside golf course typified by sand, turf and coarse grass of the kind on which the game of golf was originally played,' his superior officer informed him.

‘Really, sir?'

‘They're known as links, Sloan.'

Detective Inspector Sloan made a careful note. It was perfectly true to say that you learned something new every day. It was just that he didn't usually learn it from the superintendent, that was all.

‘They confirmed over there that Miss Bunty Meggie did take part in a golf competition all morning.' Sloan consulted his notebook. ‘It was something called a four-ball medal round. Would that be right, sir?' Sloan was not a golfer and the superintendent was. That was why his weekends off-duty were so inviolable.

‘What isn't right, Sloan, is that the ladies should be playing a four-ball medal round at all.' Leeyes snorted indignantly. ‘Shouldn't be allowed, that's what I say.'

Sloan thought that he already knew by heart everything that the superintendent thought shouldn't be allowed. Here, obviously, was yet something else.

‘Holds up everyone on the course behind them,' said Leeyes, adding with his usual didactism, ‘Their committee should put a stop to it at once—'

‘According to the Ladies' Captain, sir, Miss Meggie arrived there at about seven forty-five, hitting her first shot off the tee on the stroke of eight. The ladies went out at five-minute intervals and the course was closed to everyone else until half-past nine—'

‘What did I tell you, Sloan? It shouldn't be allowed.'

‘Therefore,' Sloan ploughed on, ‘Miss Meggie's movements are accounted for after the time it would have taken her to get to the golf cour—links from her house or wherever else she started from—'

‘Ah!' Superintendent Leeyes pounced. ‘Are you saying, Sloan, that she could have been the one—'

‘Crosby is measuring the distance between Dr Meggie's house and the place where he was found now, sir.'

‘And you, I take it, Sloan,' said Leeyes sourly, ‘are making due allowance for Crosby's speed?'

‘And he is also,' said Sloan, ‘establishing exactly how far it is from Willow End Farm to the Kinnisport Links to see if, at a speed unlikely to attract comment—'

‘Talking of speed attracting comment, Sloan,' began Leeyes, ‘let me tell you that Inspector Harpe tells me that Constable Crosby—'

‘She could have done the distance in the time.'

Inspector Harpe was head of Traffic Division and not an admirer of Crosby's driving.

‘You're talking about normal speeds now, aren't you?'

‘Yes, sir.' Mention of the combination of speed, time and distance conjured up the spectre of Galileo again so Sloan added swiftly, ‘I don't know if it's relevant sir, but the Ladies' Captain said that Bunty Meggie played to her handicap in this competition they were having there this morning.'

For some mysterious reason that did meet with his approval. ‘Good, good, Sloan. Mind you, a four-ball medal round is so slow that you've got time to get into form.'

‘Really, sir?' Bunty Meggie hadn't struck Sloan as the sort of woman to be put off her stroke very easily anyway. He amended this: the thought of her father's remarriage had certainly got to her.

He put the real question to Detective Constable Crosby when they met in the canteen a little later. ‘The point was also raised, you may remember, Crosby, in the old nursery rhyme called “An Elegy on the Death of Cock Robin”.' He hadn't himself realized when young the close links between nursery rhymes and crime.

‘Bunty Meggie could have done the distance in the time, sir,' said Crosby, pulling out his notebook. ‘From Larking to Kinnisport—'

‘That was also a case of “Who'll be chief mourner?”,' said Sloan, sinking a mug of hot tea.

‘Although it's not a very good road until you get to—'

‘“I, said the dove”,' quoted Sloan. ‘It was exactly who the dove was that mattered, Crosby.'

But he was talking to himself. Crosby had gone back for buns.

‘“I mourn for my love”,' declaimed Detective Inspector Sloan to the empty air. ‘“I'll be chief mourner”.'

‘There's currant or jam,' said Crosby, plonking the buns down on their table.

‘There's Hannah Glawari—' said Sloan.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As to the honour and conscience of doctors, they have as much as any other class of men, no more and no less.

Even in hospitals Saturdays are different from weekdays. Shirley Partridge never minded being on duty at the weekend. The pressure of incoming calls was less then and this left her free to chat to those coming and going in the entrance hall. Saturdays were different for Dr Marion Teal, too. The woman-hating Mr Maldonson had no need to make her late for her child-minder on Saturdays since her husband would be at home. This morning she had left the hospital at the right time without having to wait on his pleasure.

Saturdays were the same as any other day for Adrian Gomm, the artist. It was the state of the light that dictated his work, not the calendar, and today the light was good. He was halfway up his ladder when Dr Edwin Beaumont came in. The doctor paused as usual to observe the work in progress on the mural.

‘Ah,' he said, recognizing some old medical symbolism, ‘you've started on one of the serpents.'

‘And not our old friend from the Garden of Eden either,' grinned Gomm. ‘I put the Great Divide in yesterday.'

‘The axis,' said Edwin Beaumont appreciatively.

‘And I'll do the other serpent after this one.'

‘Caduceus.'

‘Light and dark, conscious and unconscious, male and female, beginning and end,' recited Gomm.

‘Youth and age, summer and winter, past and future, death and life,' added Dr Beaumont. ‘That reminds me. I'd better be getting along. I've someone to see on Barnesdale Ward.' He tapped on Shirley Partridge's glass cubicle window as he went by. ‘Any messages for me?'

But there were no messages awaiting him and he went on his way towards the rickety old lift, and then, later, to the clinic to which his private patients were admitted. He was walking down one of their quiet, carpeted corridors when he spotted a familiar figure ahead of him.

‘Roger! There you are.' Beaumont quickened his pace until he caught up with him. ‘I thought I might see you here. Is there any more news about Paul's death, do you know?'

Dr Byville paused on his way and shook his head. ‘None that I've heard. I had poor Bunty on the phone for an age last night though.'

‘She'll need to talk to somebody.'

‘She wanted to be told all about the wretched Cardigan Protocol. Paul hadn't said a thing about it to her, naturally.'

‘Do you think it was that which drove him to it?'

‘I couldn't say,' said Byville, shrugging his shoulders.

‘He was a bit wrapped up in it.'

‘I said to Bunty that her father was the only person who could have told her anything really important about it. If there was anything to tell. Who knows?'

Dr Edwin Beaumont stroked his chin in the gesture of thought. It was a movement that always went down well with his patients, who were left with the impression that he was thinking about them. ‘Do you think there's anything in Cardigan?'

‘I don't see how we can possibly tell at this stage, can we?'

‘Suppose not,' said Beaumont peaceably. ‘All the same, it's all a great pity.'

‘Of course it's a great pity,' said Byville with feeling. ‘Quite apart from anything else, Paul had a lot more work and research in him. And now we're going to be left short-handed for God knows how long.'

‘It'll take them an age to get a
locum tenens
,' agreed Beaumont, no friend of the administration at any time, ‘let alone appoint someone else.'

‘They've already been talking about rearranging our duties,' said Byville. ‘And that, as we both know very well, means more work. A lot more work.'

‘There's the Senior Registrar, Friar.'

‘Much good he is,' said Byville contemptuously. ‘He had me out early this morning because that spleen I showed you on Lorkyn was dying. I'd told him yesterday that the man hadn't a hope in hell.' He sniffed. ‘These days I don't expect the public to understand that we can't save everyone but I did think a senior registrar would have worked it out by now.'

‘I hear,' said the other doctor, ‘that the
p.m.
on Angus Browne's patient over at Larking—you know, the one on whose farm Paul was—er—found—was absolutely straightforward even though he was on the Cardigan Protocol, too.'

‘How do we know?' he demanded irritably. ‘How does anyone know who's on what in a double-blind trial?'

‘Afterwards, Roger. They can always tell afterwards.'

‘Not when the police have one set of records and the drug people the other, they can't,' responded Byville with vigour. He gave an unamused bark of laughter. ‘Didn't you know they've taken Paul's records into protective custody? Gledhill over at Gilroy's is fit to be tied.'

‘Do we know what Cardigan comprises?'

‘It's a compound of fagarine and some other substance, the name of which,' he added acidly, ‘Gilroy's are not prepared to disclose at this juncture.'

‘Fagarine,' mused Edwin Beaumont. ‘Now that, I agree, is something that could bear being looked at again.' He halted in his tracks, deep in thought. ‘It would be very interesting to administer fagarine with a catalyst and measure the reaction. More interesting still, of course,' he went on, suddenly alert, ‘would be to put it with a synergist.'

‘If you ask me,'—Roger Byville lowered his voice,—‘the synergic agent in all of this is a widow called Mrs Hannah Glawari. Not only bringing about change but being changed by it herself—'

‘True synergy,' murmured Beaumont as the sister in charge of the clinic bore down upon them both. ‘I must remember to look up fagarine. It's an alkaloid, I think—'

Saturdays were different from weekdays at the police station, too. This was principally because Superintendent Leeyes seldom came in then. Detective Inspector Sloan, sitting in his meagre office there, was grateful for this small mercy, although—Saturday or not—he realized that the early scented rose ‘Celeste' was destined to be born unseen and waste its sweetness on his friend's deserted greenhouse air without him, and Crosby had, as usual, been late.

‘Had any further thoughts since you went home last night?' Sloan asked him.

‘I went off-duty, sir, when I went home,' Crosby reminded him reproachfully.

‘Have you had any fresh thoughts this morning, then?' enquired Sloan with an elaborate politeness quite lost on the constable. ‘Such as who it would be best to interview next?'

Crosby frowned prodigiously. ‘Perhaps we should lean on Christopher Granger.'

‘The farmer's son?'

‘He found the body, didn't he?' said Crosby unanswerably. ‘And so he would have had time to do what he wanted with it.'

‘We could establish if he was out and about very early yesterday morning.' Sloan made a note. ‘Although I dare say the rest of the family would have been too preoccupied nursing the old man to notice.'

‘Christopher Granger could have guessed that Dr Meggie would know how very ill his father was.'

‘True.'

‘And all he had to do,' persisted Crosby, ‘was to tell him to take the left fork on the farm road and not the right.'

‘And we don't know whether the deceased recognized the voice on the telephone, do we, since he's not alive to tell us.' Sloan made a note.