“Ha, what a splendid fellow we had for this one, gents!” was her introduction. “Home office special.” She perched on a high stool and twined long legs about it like the stems of a healthy house plant. “Whiskers, he had. Beaver.” Pouting, she stroked her cheeks and chin. Love laughed.
Mackenzie, Purbright guessed. A gunshot specialist.
Miss Oolik peered into her notebook. “Now then, gents...I think, I think, I think well be finding something funny about this one...wait a moment, please.” She flicked pages over, noisily, one neat foot jerking in time. Bradley watched the foot and some of the leg.
Miss Oolik took less than five minutes to extract the essential facts from her record of the doctors’ running commentary upon their discoveries. Love jotted them down, aided every now and then by a considerate and charming pause on the part of the transcriber and even an occasional spelling-out that she managed to make sound so unpatronizing that Love felt by the end of the recital that he had been permitted to assist at an important operation, scalpel, forceps and all.
“So he wasn’t drowned,” said Purbright, when Miss Oolik had finished.
She looked at him, then at Bradley. “So sorry. That is what you wanted?”
They smiled. So did Love. Then seriousness set in. Purbright recapitulated the main findings, as he recalled them, while the girl listened and nodded in confirmation.
No water had been found in the lungs, so death had taken place before the body entered the river. Such injuries as there were on the lower part of the body were superficial and attributable to striking obstructions after death. The man was well nourished and reasonably free of disease.
He had died of shock following the penetration of his brain by a foreign body, presumably a shotgun pellet, one of several which had lodged in the head and neck area. The distribution pattern of these pellets suggested that two cartridges had been discharged, at close-medium range, each from a different direction.
“What,” Purbright asked Miss Oolik, “did you mean a little while ago by ‘something funny about this one’?”
“You cannot see it?”
“I can see several odd things. I was only wondering if Dr Heineman—or Mackenzie, perhaps—had mentioned anything in particular.”
She nodded. “It was Dr Mackenzie. Please, though, do not make songs about this until the proper report.” Love unconsciously stiffened his jaw and shook his head. Purbright promised tactfulness.
Miss Oolik turned back several pages of her notes. She raised a finger. “Here we have it. You will remember? This strange fellow has no teeth.”
Purbright looked slightly bewildered. “So? He probably had false ones.”
Bradley said: “Dentures are quite easily lost. Vomiting can do it.”
“Strangulation,” added Purbright, without conviction. “Or blows on the head.”
“The body had been knocked about in the river a bit,” Bradley added.
The sergeant, who had the vague feeling that it would be disloyal, forebore from mentioning the case of his fiancée’s father, who once had parted from his teeth simply by yawning in church.
Miss Oolik dismissed all this rationalization. “Not ever,” she declared, “has a man—or a lady—been killed by a gunshot through the brain pan with loss of denture consequently. So has said Dr Mackenzie.” She gave Purbright an almost envious look: “He is making the point special in his report for you.”
“I look forward to reading it.”
Despite the smell of iodoform that lingered still upon the person of Miss Oolik, their departure from the neat, spinsterish little room, with its flowery wallpaper and chairs in matching covers, was more like the conclusion of a visit for tea than for an autopsy summary.
“What an obliging young woman,” Bradley said.
A deeply preoccupied Purbright remained silent until they reached the main corridor on their way out of the hospital.
“Do you know anything about guns?” he asked Bradley.
“Not a great deal.”
“Nor do I, but I should say that O’Dwyer was more than a little unlucky to have that one pellet get into where it mattered. The others didn’t do much damage.”
“Skulls do have unluckily thin bits sometimes. In Frankie’s case, that would not surprise me in the least.”
“The squire of Moldham would seem to me to be a better shot than the family retainer gave him credit for.”
“You mean the old gentleman who has now lost his memory?”
“Benton, yes.”
“Would he not be a better witness away from his tied cottage, or grace-and-favour residence?”
Gloomily, Purbright begged leave to doubt it.
They had almost reached the intersection with the corridor from the female geriatric wards when they were obliged to stand aside to make way for a procession that was rounding the corner and bearing down upon them.
It was led by a lady in a black-belted, square, dark blue dress, walking rather faster than her length of leg was designed for; and presenting in consequence an appearance of choleric determination, which was very alarming.
She was followed by two young women, their white coats a-swirl, in the leader’s slip-stream. One bore a deep tray containing instruments and bottles; the other, a bundle of files.
In the centre of the parade was a figure whose most immediately noticeable feature was his style of locomotion, a sort of rolling prance. Holding his shabby sports-jacket close by keeping his hands in its pockets, he leaned forward as he advanced and peered ahead over half-moon spectacles in an attitude of perpetual diagnosis. The impression of rolling was given by a rather womanish, self-regarding sway of the hips. The feet, which were turned outward, made no sound whatever: they were small and encased in very soft shoes, plimsoles perhaps.
“Who’s the ageing matinée idol?” Bradley whispered.
“Gule.”
The procession was nearly level with them now. The rearguard became identifiable. It consisted of three junior doctors, two black, one white; and a woman physical therapist, much out of breath. All were in white coats. The doctors wore stethoscopes, displayed with meticulous carelessness.
Purbright moved forward. “Dr Gule, may I speak to you for a moment?”
The half-moon glasses swivelled instantly in his direction. No less swift was the consultant’s diagnosis. Disgruntled patient, almost certainly National Health. He pranced on, scowling.