M.C. Beaton
Death of a Dentist
Hamish Macbeth #13
1997, EN
∨ Death of a Dentist ∧
1
For there was never yet a philosopher, That could endure the toothache patiently.
—William Shakespeare
It was a chill autumn in the Highlands of Scotland when Police Constable Hamish Macbeth awoke in hell.
The whole side of his jaw was a burning mass of pain.
Toothache. The sort of toothache so bad you cannot tell which tooth is infected because the pain runs through them all.
His dentist was in Inverness and he felt he could not bear the long drive. Lochdubh, the village in which his police station was situated, did not boast a dentist The nearest one was at Braikie, a small town twenty miles away. The dentist there was Frederick Gilchrist.
The problem was that Hamish Macbeth still had all his teeth and meant to keep them all and Mr. Gilchrist had a reputation for pulling out teeth rather than saving them, which suited the locals, who still preferred to have their teeth drawn and a ‘nice’ set of dentures put in. Also Gilchrist, in these days of high dental charges, was cheap.
One summer visitor complained bitterly that Gilchrist had performed The Great Australian Trench on her. Australian dentists had gained the unfair reputation for casually letting the drill slide across as many teeth as possible, therefore getting themselves a lucrative and steady customer. And although Mr. Gilchrist was Scottish, he was reputed to have performed this piece of supposedly Australian malpractice. Mrs. Harrison, a local widow, alleged nastily that she had been sexually molested by Gilchrist while unconscious under gas, but Mrs. Harrison was a strange woman who always seemed to think every man was lusting after her and so her charge was not taken very seriously, and as she had not reported it to the police, but only to everyone else who would listen, there had been no excuse for Hamish Macbeth to take the matter further.
And yet the pain was so fierce that by the time he had dressed, he had argued himself into sacrificing one tooth.
He dialled Gilchrist’s number. Gilchrist’s receptionist, Maggie Bane, answered the telephone and to Hamish’s frantic appeal for help said sourly he would just need to come along and take his chances. Mr. Gilchrist was very busy. Come at three and maybe he’ll fit you in.
Hamish then went to the bathroom and scrabbled in the kitchen cabinet, looking for aspirin and found none. He petulantly slammed the cabinet door shut. It fell off the wall into the handbasin, and cracked the porcelain of the handbasin before sending large shards of glass from its shattered glass doors onto the bathroom floor.
He looked at his watch through a red mist of pain. Eight o’clock in the morning. Dear God, he wouldn’t live until the afternoon. A sorry, lanky figure in his worn police uniform, he left the police station and made his way rapidly along the waterfront to Dr. Brodie’s home.
Angela, the doctor’s wife, answered the door in her dressing gown. “Why, Hamish, you’re early,” she cried.
“I need help,” moaned Hamish. “I’m dying.”
“Come in. He’s in the kitchen.”
Dr. Brodie, wrapped in a camel hair dressing gown, looked up as Hamish entered, a piece of toast and marmalade halfway to his lips. “Hamish!” he said. “You look like death.”
“You’ve got to give me something quick,” gabbled Hamish, grabbing his arm. “I am in the mortal pain. I haff the toothache.”
“You look as if you’ve got mad cow disease,” said Dr. Brodie sourly, jerking his arm away. “Oh, very well, Hamish. Sit yourself down while I get my bag.”
Hamish sank down in a chair and clutched his jaw. One of Angela’s cats leapt lightly on the table, studied Hamish with curious eyes and then began to drink the milk out of the jug.
Dr. Brodie came back with his bag, opened it, and took out a small torch. “Now, open wide Hamish. Which one is it?”
“It feels like all of them,” said Hamish. He opened his mouth and pointed to the lower left of his jaw.
Dr. Brodie shone the torch in his mouth. “Ah, yes, nasty.”
“Nasty what?” demanded Hamish.
“You’ve got an abscess there. The bottom right-hand molar. Ugh! I don’t know that a dentist could treat you until it’s cleared up. I’ll give you a shot of antibiotic. I’ll need to go to the surgery. Stay here and Angela’ll get you a coffee. I’ll need to get dressed.”
“Where am I getting this injection?”
“In the backside.”
“Then I will be coming with you.”
“Why?”
Hamish blushed. “I do not want your wife seeing my bare bum.”
Dr. Brodie laughed. “I’m glad there’s one woman left in this village you don’t want to show your bum to.”
When he had gone upstairs to change, Hamish whimpered, “No coffee, Angela. I’m in such awfy pain, I couldnae get it past my lips.”
“You’re nothing but a big baby, Hamish Macbeth,” said Angela, her thin face lighting up with amusement.
“Women!” said Hamish sourly. “All that talk about maternal feelings and womanly sympathy is chust the myth.”
“If the abscess is that bad, why did you let it go so far?”
“I felt a few twinges,” muttered Hamish, “but, och, I thought I had the cold in the face.”
Angela smiled again at him, sat down at the coffee table, grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and dragged its face out of the milk jug, poured some in her coffee, and picked up a book, saying before she started to read, “I am sure you do not feel like talking.”
Hamish glared at her and nursed his jaw. Dr. Brodie eventually appeared. “Let’s get to the surgery, Hamish, and spare your blushes.”
They walked silently along the waterfront. The day was cold and still. Smoke from the cottage chimneys rose straight up into the clear air. A heron sailed lazily over the sea loch. The village of Lochdubh in Sutherland – that county which is as far north in mainland Britain as you can go – dreamed in the pale sunlight making one sad constable feel like a noisy riot of pain.
Once in the surgery, Dr. Brodie injected Hamish with a stiff shot of antibiotics, gave him a prescription for antibiotic pills and told him to go home and lie down. Hamish had told him about the appointment with Gilchrist. “You’d best cancel it,” said Dr. Brodie, “until that abscess has cleared up. You don’t want to go to Gilchrist anyway. He’ll pull the tooth and there’s no need for that these days. You’d be better off in Inverness. There’s been some awfully nasty stories about Gilchrist circling about.”
Hamish crept off back to the police station. He had bought a bottle of aspirin from Patel’s, the local supermarket on the road there. He took three aspirin, swallowing them down with a stiff glass of whisky. He undressed slowly and climbed back into bed, willing the pain to go away. To take his mind off the pain, he began to think of Gilchrist and all the rumours about the man, and then he suddenly fell asleep.
He awoke two hours later. The pain had almost gone, but he was frightened to get out of bed in case that dreadful pain came roaring back. He clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. He missed his dog, Towser, who had died so suddenly. Towser would have lain on the end of the bed and wagged his tail and he, Hamish, would have felt that someone in the whole wide world cared about his suffering. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, the once love of his life, had gone to London to stay with friends and no other woman had come along to fill the gap left by her going. They had once been unofficially engaged, but he had broken off the relationship because of Priscilla’s odd coldness when he had tried to make love to her. He missed her, but he tried to tell himself that missing Priscilla had simply become a habit.