Sergeant Love was looking deceptively bland when Purbright got back to the police station.
“I see he’s still at it,” he announced.
“Who’s at what?” Purbright was in no mood for cryptic references.
“The Flaxborough Crab. Have you seen the report book this morning?”
“I have seen nothing this morning. I’ve been purging my soul by unproductive leg work.”
“Another young woman’s been attacked.”
Purbright’s weary “Oh, Christ!” implied that he had had about enough of the conspiracy by assault-prone females to disrupt his routine. But at once he repented and asked anxiously: “Serious?”
“She wasn’t hurt. Only frightened. He was wearing something round his face this time.”
That’s new.”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“Elizabeth Loder. Nineteen. She’s a housemaid. Her family live in Dorley Road, but she’s only there on her nights off. Anyway, it was Pook who interviewed her. He’s doing you a full report.”
“Is he. Yes, all right, Sid. Now look—did you manage to see that Leadbetter character?”
“Aye, Mrs Grope, too. She says her old man’s cooling off again. Very pleased about that. Apparently the doctor told her that Grope had been taking some medicine that might have disagreed with him but that he’d had it stopped.”
“She offered no clue about Meadow’s dropping dead I suppose?”
“No, she said he was perfectly all right when she came out.”
“I see. And Leadbetter?”
Love grinned. “Funny, but do you know who he is? He’s the brother of that old ram on the council—the one who was mixed up in that brothel business a few years back. Must run in the family.”
“Must run in Dr Meadow’s patients,” corrected Purbright, thoughtfully. “Unless Leadbetter’s another herb addict. Did he tell you what it was he’d gone to see the doctor about?”
“Not a word.”
“No, I hardly expected he would.”
It was very rarely that Love felt awkward in the inspector’s presence. Purbright was no wielder of rank, and his temperament was remarkably equable. Today, however, not even the sergeant’s cheery insensibility could long block his realization that Purbright was, in the sergeant’s terminology, ‘bloody well cheesed’. He ventured, crudely but with good intent, to find out why.
“Do you reckon old Meadow was knocked off?”
Purbright looked up. His expression was one of agreeable surprise, almost of gratitude.
“Ah, I knew if I waited long enough I wouldn’t be left alone in that lunatic surmise. You’ve come to join me, have you, Sid?”
Guessing that he had fortuitously said the right thing, the sergeant gave a self-congratulatory grin and gazed at his feet.
“Come on and sit down, then. Let’s see what we can make of it all. If anything.”
Purbright shifted his chair along a little and collected into a tidy group the reports and notes that lay on his desk.
“Tell you what,” he went on. “You can be a stand-in for the Chief Constable. He’s the one I ought to be talking to, but I’ve neither the heart nor the nerve at the moment. By the way, do you know where Bill Malley is?”
“He went over to the hospital about half an hour ago. I believe he’s seeing the deputy coroner as well.”
“Good. That means they’ll be getting on with the post-mortem. Everything is going to depend on that. We’ve nothing else. Not a damned thing. So if Heineman doesn’t manage to turn anything up, we can all go home.”
“You said Dr Bruce thought it was a natural death. He did examine him, didn’t he?”
“As far as he could in the circumstances. He was only giving an opinion. Incidentally, do you know anything about Bruce?”
“Not a lot. He hasn’t been here very long.”
“How long?”
“About eighteen months, two years. They reckon he’s a bit of a live wire. From what I hear, he’s been doing all the donkey work.”
“I wonder,” said Purbright, ruminatively, “if donkeys ever kick.”
“That’s mules.”
The inspector shook his head.
“I don’t know—the whole trouble is that the very idea of a respectable doctor being cunningly assassinated in his own surgery is so bloody far-fetched that one can’t help being fascinated by it. The sensible thing is to reject it out of hand. Damn it all, there isn’t any evidence. None at all. And yet that only makes the notion more attractive, somehow. You see now, don’t you, why I don’t dare discuss this with the chief? He’d think I’d blown a gasket.”
“He wouldn’t be very sympathetic,” Love agreed.
While lighting a cigarette, Purbright glanced at one of the sheets before him.
“I wouldn’t care so much,” he said, “if only there were somebody who by any stretch of imagination qualified as a suspect. But just look at this miserable bloody list. They’re the only people who were anywhere near the man at the time.
“Bruce, the overworked assistant partner. Disliked Meadow, certainly. He’d have had access to poisons and the knowledge to use one that would produce symptoms consistent with a fatal onset of Meadow’s blood pressure trouble. What does he gain, though? Junior partners aren’t heirs apparent; he doesn’t automatically take over the practice. Anyway, there’s the hell of a long gap between dislike, or even strong resentment, and the sort of hatred that makes people murder one another.”
“Perhaps,” Love suggested, “he was after the old man’s missus. Doctors are devils for that sort of caper.”
Purbright regarded him sternly for a moment. “Have you met Mrs Meadow?”
The sergeant shrugged. “It was just a thought.”
“There are oddities enough in this business, Sid, without your adding to them. However, now that you’ve mentioned the wife, I’m reminded that we know very little about the domestic background. Mrs Meadow can’t be ruled out, strictly speaking, any more than Bruce can. She’s part of the clutter, if you see what I mean. She had opportunity, probably knowledge and means. Temperament?—possibly. Motive?—we’ve no idea, and we’re not likely to find out with her help.
“The receptionist, Pauline Sutton. Out. I think we’re safe there, at any rate. Then there were three patients who actually consulted Meadow, also a youngish girl who came and went without seeing him, a traveller from some pharmaceutical firm who was waiting to see him but only went into his room when the doctor was either dead already or as near as dammit, and finally our venerable friend, Miss Teatime.”
“Yes, what was she after?” asked Love.
“She didn’t confide in me, but I’d guess that she intended to tackle Meadow about his remarks at the Winge inquest. He hadn’t exactly gone out of his way to boost the herb trade.”
“It’s just as well for her,” Love said, “that she didn’t get in to see him before he kicked the bucket.”