“Dr Thorndyke,” murmured Purbright, “rides again.”
Chapter Fifteen
When the two inspectors arrived at the little infirmary in Twilight Close, they found Sergeant Love standing in a sentry-like attitude outside the door.
“He’s being examined now,” said Love, making an indicative movement of his head. “I couldn’t get Reynolds,” he added, cheerfully.
“Police surgeon,” explained Purbright in an aside to Bradley. “Why was that?” he asked Love.
“His wife said he wasn’t in, but that was only after I explained what we wanted him for. I think he just didn’t want to come out on this particular job.”
Purbright spoke again to Bradley. “I was afraid this might happen. The local GPs will do anything rather than run foul of a consultant.”
Love looked pleased with himself. “Dr Rambanajee didn’t mind. He came straight away.”
Purbright drew a quick breath. He waited a moment before saying: “Ah, well, that’s all right, then.”
“He is on the list of deputies,” pointed out Love, suddenly apprehensive.
“Yes, of course. You’ve done very well, Sid.”
Bradley had been listening. He gave Purbright a questioning glance. “Incompetent?”
“Far from it. Absolutely reliable. Gule would enjoy trepanning him without anaesthetic.”
After about ten minutes the door opened and the little nurse peeped round it daintily. She beckoned.
Cratchy Anderson was sitting up in bed. He leered sleepily at the approaching policemen and raised in greeting a hand like a piece of driftwood.
Beside him, Dr Rambanajee folded the inflatable cuff of his sphygmomanometer, shut the lid of the instrument and packed it with precision in his case. He looked up as Purbright walked to the bed and declared jocularly: “He will live a while yet, this fellow.”
The head of Dr Rambanajee consisted of three circles: the face itself, gleaming brown and expressive of reflective amusement; and the big, exactly round lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“It was kind of you to come at such short notice, doctor,” said Purbright.
The circles inclined forward gracefully.
“I explained,” put in Sergeant Love, “that Mr Anderson had made a request for a second opinion.”
The sailorman’s grin broadened in confirmation. He groped beneath the bedclothes and brought forth a bottle of Guinness. He looked about him uncertainly, then raised the bottle to his mouth.
Love, sharing the horror of the general impression that the old man was about to bite the neck off, snatched the bottle away and drew from his own pocket a pen-knife whose many supplementary devices included a corkscrew and a bottle opener.
“I will write for Mr Anderson a report which he may care to show you,” said Dr Rambanajee to Purbright. “For the moment, it may be of sufficient interest to you to know that he is, clinically speaking, in good health. He exhibits no symptoms that would indicate need for medication of any kind. Certainly, nothing in his condition would warrant sedation on any substantial scale.”
Bradley had been watching Anderson’s fumbling but happy progress with his Guinness. “He’s very sleepy,” he said to Dr Rambanajee.
“So should I be if I had swallowed eighty milligrams of Lotusol in the last twenty-four hours. He will brighten as time goes on.”
With which assurance, Dr Rambanajee bowed to the company and made his way primly out of the room.
Mr Wellbeloved, glum with Ancient and Modern, watched from the superintendent’s lodge the departure of the doctor’s car and mentally pictured the reaction of Dr Gule to what had been going on. Who, he would demand, let that little dervish on to my bloody ward? For was it not Dr Rambanajee, alone of all the medical men in Flaxborough, who had happened to be available to take a sample of the consultant’s blood that night when he had been found driving an ambulance round and round the Market Place after the Hospital Ball? Gule had been saved from prosecution only by simulating a heart attack long enough for colleagues in the intensive care unit to set about oxidizing his gin intake with a respiratory support machine.
It seemed to Purbright that Anderson would be of questionable use as an informant until the residue of drug had been eliminated from his system. On the other hand, his natural cunning—now at a fortuitously low level—would increase with returning alertness. He sought Bradley’s advice.
“It would be charitable,” said his colleague, “to let the poor old chap sleep until he fully regains his faculties. He will, by then, be able to lie easily in both senses of the word. I suggest that charity be postponed.”
Love was sent off to help the nurse make some strong coffee. Purbright, without pressing the matter to sadistic degree, coaxed the old sailorman to let his Guinness first be held for him and then put aside. (“A bit too soporific,” Bradley had tipped, from knowledge of low life.) When the coffee arrived, they gave Mr Anderson a huge mug of it and pledged him merrily in their own plastic beakers.
“Down the hatch, mateys all!” cried Crutchy, aglow with realization of a suddenly acquired importance.
He swilled nearly half his coffee in one go into a gullet long since kippered to insensitivity by grog and tobacco juice.
“Aahh...” He slowly drew the back of his hand across his mouth. In the quiet of the ward, it sounded like surf on a pebbly beach.
Purbright gave what he intended to be a comradely wink. “Not a bad little berth, Crutchy.” He glanced around commendingly.
The old man considered the proposition. “Ar, not bad,” he conceded, then pointed to his eye. “Not if you keep one of these open all the time.”
“Which you do.”
Anderson chuckled, and tugged a leathery ear. “One of these an’ all, skipper. All the time.”
Purbright conveyed by an expression of surprise and keen interest that he would like to hear more about the vigilance of Mr Anderson and about the circumstances that compelled it.
The sailorman leaned forward from his pile of pillow, looked about him, and announced with croaky confidentiality: “They’d have scuppered me, if they could.”
“No! Who would?”
Mr Anderson savoured with great satisfaction the shock on the faces of his audience. He stroked the side of his long, tar-stained nose and looked upon each in turn. Having selected Bradley to receive his next revelation, he beckoned him and said: “They think they’ve made me fast here. Think I can’t cast off. That’s what they think. Gilly Gully and old Kiss-me-quick.”
“Really?” responded Bradley. “More fool them, I should say.”
Mr Anderson glared while considering if this reply were as friendly as it seemed. Then he nodded, and grasped Bradley’s arm.
“I’m going to show you something. Just take a look over the side there.”