“I realize that this will sound quite wickedly unreasonable, but if all this information is going to be of any use to me, I must have it within twenty-four or, at the most, forty-eight hours.”
“Bloody hell!”
“Bloody hell, indeed, Bernard, but I did tell you that Flaxborough is a considerably more lively town than London. I think the absence of petrol fumes has something to do with it. You will ring me?”
“Oh, all right. But I’m not promising anything.”
“Flaxborough four-three-double-seven. Tomorrow evening, or the evening following at the very latest.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Which I know will be a great deal, my dear. You are a man of resource. My confidence will not miscarry...”
“Lucy! For God’s sake! Not over the phone...”
“Sorry,” she said sweetly.
But the line was already dead.
Chapter Fifteen
Mrs McCreavy greeted Inspector Purbright with a mixture of apprehension and curiosity. She had never, in the course of a somewhat tediously blameless life, received a visit from a policeman of any rank, let alone a detective inspector. But now, with so elevated a representative of the law upon her doorstep, it seemed (to Mrs McCreavy) that neglectful destiny was going to make up for lost time. Into what sort of notoriety was she about to be plunged? Would there be a taking of photographs? A summons to court? And had she remembered, on hearing the door bell, to take that corset off the settee in the front room?
She preceded him into the parlour, ready to whisk the corset under a cushion. It was nowhere in sight. (Of course—she’d put it away earlier that morning when the window cleaner had called.) Feeling less vulnerable, she tightened up her face and invited him to state his business.
“I understand, Mrs McCreavy, that you were present in Dr Meadow’s surgery yesterday evening when he was taken ill.”
She bowed her head in solemn confirmation.
“It must have been a very upsetting experience for you. I’m sorry.”
“Upsetting,” she repeated. “Yes, definitely.”
“I hope you’re feeling a little better now.”
“A little. Thank you very much.”
“The reason I am here is quite simple, Mrs McCreavy. You have nothing to worry about. It is just that a sudden death of this kind has to be officially reported. We have to establish details. You understand? All quite usual.”
“Details. I see.”
“So I want you to tell me exactly what happened, as you remember it. Of course, I shan’t ask you anything private—about your reasons for consulting Dr Meadow, I mean. I only want you to describe what took place.”
Mrs McCreavy’s response suggested that the inspector’s delicacy had been wasted. She slid both hands across her diaphragm and lifted, as if for his approbation, a generously proportioned bosom.
“Well, I’d been getting these pains round here, you see. Oh, and right through the chest. Just like knives. A bit worse on this side, if anything.”
She thoughtfully weighed her left breast, reminding Purbright, despite his determination to be seriously sympathetic, of a judge at a vegetable show.
“Of course, I’ve had them, off and on, since I was a girl, and my husband always says I make a lot of fuss about nothing, but I mean, he doesn’t know, does he? He’s not in there to feel. And then there was Mrs Holland, next door but one. She had to have all her insides taken away. Well...” She paused, inviting comment.
“You were very wise to make sure,” Purbright said briskly. “So,” he continued at once, “you went to the surgery, entered Dr Meadow’s consulting room when it was your turn, and told him about the pains. He was sitting down, was he?”
“Yes,” Mrs McCreavy seemed a little resentful at having been short-circuited.
“How did his appearance strike you? Did he look ill or tired?”
“No, nothing like that. He seemed a bit quiet, though, and he didn’t listen properly at first when I was talking to him. He just sat fiddling with that thing they listen to your heart through.”
“Anyway, you told him your symptoms, I suppose. What happened then?”
“He told me to take my things off.”
“Yes?”
“Well, I did. Not altogether, I mean. Just...well, so that he could sound my chest. There’s a screen, of course. When I came out again, he was standing up. He got me to come round beside the desk. Next to him—you know, facing. Anyway, he started off by doing that tapping business with two fingers, up and down the chest, and then round the back. I always like that, don’t you? He’d got lovely hands, Dr Meadow had. They sort of matched his voice—do you know what I mean? Anyway, he went on tapping and asking questions for a bit, about where I felt the pain, and whether I’d had a cold, and what I ate, and that sort of thing, and then he put on his what’s-its-name—you know—not telescope...”
“Stethoscope.”
“That’s right—and he went over my chest again with that, and he said there was nothing wrong that he could hear, absolutely nothing. And then he got me to turn round and he started listening at the back. And he said, no, nothing there. Oh, he said that twice, and I thought he sounded a little bit annoyed, as a matter of fact. And then he sort of stepped away. I didn’t see him, of course, but I heard him say something like, ‘Well, we’ll see if this does the trick’, and I waited, and then I felt that thing go on my back again, and I heard him say something very quietly to himself. It sounded like, ‘The fur is darker’...”
“The fur is darker?”
“That’s right. I don’t know what he could have meant. The fur is darker—that’s what he said. I only thought of it afterwards because of what happened. You see, straight away there was this funny hissing noise he made. Ssss! Like that. As if he was impatient or cross. And then I got the fright of my life. Well, his arm came up as if he was trying to grab me. And me with practically nothing on. I thought... well, I don’t know what I thought, but I jumped away from him and I think I called out ‘Get away’, or ’Don’t’, or something, and then there was this awful crash and I looked round and there he was lying on the floor, sort of jerking and twitching, and I screamed and all I can remember after that was sitting out there in the waiting-room and crying and trying to drink a glass of water that Miss Sutton had brought me. Oh, it was a terrible shock to see him there.... Poor Dr Mea...”
A return of grief transformed the name into a soft, bleating sob. Her head fell. She felt ineffectually for the handbag that she had put down on the settee on coming in. It was just out of reach. Purbright stood and moved it over against her hand. He touched her shoulder.
“Thank you, Mrs McCreavy. I shan’t trouble you any more.”
And he didn’t. But as he walked down the path between the diminutive lawn and a bed of Mr McCreavy’s scrupulously tended dahlias towards the green-painted gate, he reflected on troubles of his own. Not the least of these was the bafflement induced by the late Dr Meadow’s last words.
What on earth had he been trying to convey by ‘The fur is darker?’ What fur? Had there been an animal of some kind in the surgery? Had it bitten him? Fatally? Oh, hell...