‘It should be tonight. Everything’s arranged.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘If I don’t manage to see everyone I’ll come back and go again tomorrow.’
‘Don’t leave me!’
‘I told you I’m not leaving you: and where and why I’m going. Which you know I’ve got to.’
Hall had been disconcerted but Mason had called it valuable. ‘Think what she’s gone through, without breaking. That showed me just how deep the depression is.’
‘Can you lift her out of it?’
The psychiatrist pulled an uncertain face. ‘I’ve probably got a more difficult job than either you or the priest.’
The incident delayed him but he still arrived in good time for his first appointment, uncomfortable in the jacket he’d had to buy from the clinic outfitters which didn’t stock clothes in his chest size. He was unhappy, too, that Michael Bailey had decreed somewhere as public as Winchester hospital, although the nearby railway station car park was convenient to hide the hire car against its number being noted at the hospital and traced to the Hertfordshire clinic. He walked the intervening distance and grew unhappier at the obvious attention from the suddenly busy corridors, with their open-doored offices, along which he had to pass to get to the pathology department. There was a lot of activity there, too. It had been wise to abandon the car.
Bailey was a tall, gangling man with a stutter, which worsened with the intensity with which he leaned forward to get the blocked words out. Jeremy Hall went through the quadrille of thanking the pathologist for seeing him so promptly and being told in return it was in no way inconvenient: Bailey patted the dossier in front of him and said he had recovered his original statement from the archives at Humphrey Perry’s pre-trial request and of course he’d followed the sensational events.
It took longer agreeing the case of Jennifer Lomax was absolutely incredible – ‘earth shattering’ was the phrase it took the pathologist three attempts to say – threatened the very foundations of conventional imagination and even religious belief. Hall went through the routine recognizing that it was indeed every one and more of those things but that, perhaps most incredible of all, he’d become so closely involved that he’d ceased thinking so and was now accepting the totally abnormal as the totally normal. He invoked professional confidentiality to avoid talking about Jennifer personally, supposing this encounter to be a rehearsal for those to follow.
‘You want to reopen the inquest?’ anticipated Bailey.
‘I don’t know that would be possible. Or whether any useful purpose would be served.’
‘What then?’
‘It is, as you say, an astonishing case,’ said Hall, the lie carefully prepared. ‘Everything about it has to be compiled and assessed for legal and academic study. And that includes any reassessment that might be necessary of what happened in the past.’
‘I understand,’ assured Bailey, getting stuck halfway through the word.
‘All I’ve been able to do is compare newspaper reports with written statements. It’s not clear to me how much of those written statements were actually introduced as evidence or how much the coroner took as read, from access to the statements beforehand.’
‘The usual way,’ smiled the pathologist, uncertainly. ‘He just picked the relevant points to put to me, from my statement.’
Everything decided in advance, Hall thought again. ‘In your report you refer to aspects of the puncture wounds, where Mrs Lomax injected herself. Was that finding examined or taken as read?’
‘Actually I discussed it with Mr Davies before the inquest began,’ admitted the pathologist. ‘He felt it would be distressing for Mr Lomax for us to go too deeply into it at the hearing itself.’
Hall swallowed the sigh. ‘Go through it with me, if you would.’
‘The puncture mark in the left arm was larger than the others on the body and was dangerously close to the vein. The other three were much smaller and properly injected subcutaneously.’
‘What did you think about that?’
‘The largest puncture mark would have been the last injection she self-administered. By then, I believe, she would have already overdosed on insulin. And additionally have taken one lot of temazepam after another. She would have been extremely unsteady.’
‘The majority of the injections were to the right of the body: two to the right arm, one in the right thigh?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You referred to skin hardening, because of the length of time Mrs Lomax had been injecting?’
‘Yes. It happens to diabetics, particularly those who take soluble insulin, which she did.’
‘In which side of the body was that hardening most prevalent, the right or the left?’ Into his mind, abruptly, came a fact that could have greatly contributed to Jennifer’s innocence at the trial, if the other evidence hadn’t been so overwhelming.
Bailey frowned, needing for the first time to go back to the file on his desk. It was several moments before he looked up, smiling. ‘Not a great deal in it, really. But on balance the right.’
‘What about the left arm. What was the extent of the hardening there?’
The pathologist went back to his file, although more briefly this time. ‘Very little. The softness of the skin was a contributory factor, I decided, to the puncture wound being larger than the others.’
‘Something else not in the newspaper reports but mentioned in your statement, was how long Mrs Lomax had been unconscious.’
Bailey breathed in sharply and the irritation made it even more difficult for him initially to respond. ‘Mr Davies was furious with the policeman, for talking about the bladder collapse. That was most unnecessary. Most distasteful.’
‘How long?’ repeated Hall.
‘A considerable time: the bladder collapse was an early indication of organ deterioration.’
‘Working back from the time she was found – three-twenty in the afternoon, according to Gerald Lomax – what time the previous night would she have become deeply unconscious?’
‘Twelve hours, at least. The evening meal had been steak: very little had been digested. The blood alcohol content was also extremely high.’
‘There was no mention whatsoever in any report I read but in your written statement you talked of an abrasion inside Mrs Lomax’s upper lip?’
Bailey nodded. ‘Something else that didn’t need to be brought out to cause Mr Lomax any further distress. In my opinion it resulted from Mrs Lomax, in a very unsteady condition, accidently striking her lip between the glass and her teeth, when she attempted to drink from the brandy goblet that was found on the bedside table.’
‘As a medical expert, what’s your opinion of Mrs Lomax being prescribed meberevine hydrochloride?’
Bailey gave the impression of considering the question. ‘As you know, a diabetic makes excess glucose. Some proprietary brands of meberevine hydrochloride have lactose and sucrose added to them. I don’t think it’s an ideal preparation for a diabetic but the two, by themselves and with the instructions being strictly followed, wouldn’t be overly dangerous. But with an excess of alcohol and insulin it is, as I said at the time, a lethal cocktail.’
He smiled, expectantly, but Hall didn’t respond. Instead, tightly, he said, ‘Thank you,’ and stood up. How many deaths crying out for a proper investigation, as this had been, were dismissed by platitudes, quick chats between fellow members of the local golf club and preconceived, unsubstantiated opinions?
Bailey frowned. ‘But I haven’t told you anything.’
‘Enough,’ assured Hall.
Hall considered recovering the car but decided against it, instead taking a taxi from the station. The recognition took longer than he expected and was encouragingly disinterested.
‘You’re the lawyer, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She coming home.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Lots of stuff on television.’
‘I saw some of it.’
‘Lot of people believe in ghosts, you know. My Doris does.’