Injury Time (5 page)

‘I only heard of the one case myself,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘and that was from my father, although I did read that someone had recalled in fiction the causing of a very high fever therapeutically in those suffering from primary syphilis.'

‘“A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit”,' quoted Crosby, since it had been printed on the inside cover of one of his school-books.

‘Yes, well, as it happens, it's life-blood that we're talking about,' said Dabbe, ‘and that's always precious. This was in the Second World War. An old mental asylum had been commandeered by the authorities to be used as an acute general hospital.' He spun round suddenly. ‘Do you two know what a padded cell is like?'

‘I've heard of them,' said Detective Inspector Sloan cautiously. The exigencies of constabulary service had not led him into one as either patient or policeman.

So far.

‘We don't have them down at the nick,' said Detective Constable Crosby.

‘The padding on the walls of the cell where this particular medical drama was played out,' said the pathologist, ‘served two purposes. One was to deaden sound and the other was to stop the patient injuring himself.' He pursed his lips and added, ‘Or herself.'

‘Quite,' said Sloan, unsure whether this was a blow against Women's Lib or not.

‘There's usually a small high window there—out of reach, of course …'

‘Of course,' chorused the two policemen.

‘And barred, too,' said Dabbe, ‘leaving just what Oscar Wilde called “the little tent of blue which prisoners call the sky”, which is there to let in light and air but not to let out the patient.'

‘And not,' said Sloan fairly, ‘to let in the gaze of people outside.'

‘You've got the idea, Sloan,' said Dr Dabbe warmly. ‘The floor's sometimes of cork tiles to deaden sound …'

‘Like the house of that French writer who went on and on?' suggested Sloan, who had often wondered how that particular author would have got on doing his writing if he'd had to do it as Sloan had to, down at the unquiet police station.

‘Just like Marcel Proust, Sloan,' agreed Dabbe, ‘but the main thing about a padded cell is that the door only ever has one handle, and that's always on …'

‘The outside,' said Sloan for him. Some things were the same down at the police station.

‘And it had a Judas window,' the raconteur completed his description.

‘What's a Judas window?' asked Crosby.

‘A sort of one-way mirror,' said Dabbe.

‘Oh, I've heard of them.' Crosby went a bit pink. ‘So that the person on the other side doesn't know when there's someone watching.'

‘This hospital, doctor …' said Sloan.

‘When my father was there in the war, it was treating all sorts and conditions of men and disease—including a number of Lascar seamen with gonorrhoea … You know what sailors are …'

‘By giving them malaria?' asked Sloan a trifle repressively. ‘That's right, Sloan. And it was the duty of the House Physician to inoculate these patients by means of the only known method …'

‘Which was?' asked Sloan, hoping to keep the conversation clinical.

‘The bite of the anophelene mosquito.' Dr Dabbe chuckled. ‘Believe it or not, these mosquitoes were kept captive in the hospital's dispensary …'

‘Along with the leeches, I suppose,' said Sloan.

‘I bet that that was before the Animal Liberationist people had got going,' said Crosby feelingly. He had sustained injuries once at a march in aid of Animal Rights. It had been at the hands of a group not at all interested in the protection of the endangered species known as unarmed police constables.

‘And, as I don't need to remind you, gentlemen'—the pathologist was not interested in either leeches or the Animal Liberation Movement—‘such mosquitoes are dangerous.'

‘I can see that they would be,' said Sloan, something of a specialist himself in the dangerous, if not the endangered.

‘It was delivered to the ward from the dispensary in a corked test-tube.' Dr Dabbe had obviously learned narration skills at his father's knee because he went on: ‘The Lascar seaman was languishing on his bed in the padded cell and a young nurse accompanied the doctor in a way that was
de rigueur
in the dear dead days of long ago.'

There was a pause in tribute to yesteryear. Detective Constable Crosby shuffled his feet and Dr Dabbe smiled.

‘This young nurse stood on the left of the bed and was thus nearest to the door. This is important and you should remember it.'

‘Yes, doctor,' said Sloan patiently.

‘The House Physician went round to the other side of the bed and therefore had the bed between him and the door,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘Well, my fa—this House Physician removed the cork from the test-tube and applied the open end of it to the seaman's arm.'

‘So …' said Crosby, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

‘So far, so good,' said the pathologist. ‘The anophelene mosquito, which had been kept hungry, applied itself to the patient's forearm with all the vigour of its kind …'

‘Being out for blood, in a manner of speaking,' said Sloan, conscious that Superintendent Leeyes would be out for his blood if he didn't get back to the police station with that report soon.

‘Exactly, Sloan. When it had had its fill, it withdrew its proboscis or whatever.' The pathologist gave a wicked grin. ‘That it had also ingested a good dose of cla—well, gonorrhea, troubled the mosquito not at all. This infection,' added Dr Dabbe hortatively, ‘sometimes known as the English disease, not being one to which gnats of the genus
Culex
are susceptible.'

‘You learn something every day, don't you?' observed Crosby chattily.

Dr Dabbe was not deflected. ‘In this respect, as the poet had it, only man is vile.'

‘Yes, doctor.' It was a lesson Sloan had learned early on in his police career.

‘Well, what this little beast had enjoyed, Sloan, was the heady taste of freedom …'

For a moment Sloan was not sure whether the pathologist was talking about the mosquito or the patient.

‘… and when it came to going back into the test-tube, I'm afraid that the insect wasn't having any of that and escaped.'

‘Oh, dear,' said the Detective Inspector, stealing a surreptitious glance at his watch.

‘Exactly,' said Dr Dabbe. ‘The nurse acted first and with great presence of mind.'

‘She got out?' said Crosby.

Dr Dabbe nodded. ‘Being nearest to the door, she made for it, shot through it, and then slammed it shut behind her.'

‘Good for her,' said Crosby.

‘But not good for my fa—the House Physician, Crosby. That left him, the Lascar seaman and the mosquito together in the padded cell, which, best beloved, you will remember had no door handle on the inside.'

‘“Best beloved”?' echoed Detective Constable Crosby, mystified.

‘Never mind,' said his superior officer. ‘Carry on, doctor.'

‘Well, the seaman, having the nasty gonorrhoea already, and it was to be hoped, now malaria as well, had nothing to lose and remained calm and disinterested throughout.'

‘Good for him,' said Crosby.

‘And the mosquito, already a carrier of
Plasmodium falciparum
malaria and now perhaps also of
Neisseria
gonorrhoea too, was, at least, not as hungry as he had been.'

‘That was something,' said Sloan.

‘For the unhappy House Physician,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘growing older by the minute, rather more was at stake. Were he to be bitten by the mosquito he would be at risk of being infected not only by malaria but possibly by the gonococcus, too.'

‘And he would know it, too,' said Sloan, ‘being medical himself.'

‘Not so much a case of a little learning being a dangerous thing,' said Dr Dabbe judiciously, ‘as a lot of learning being downright terrifying.'

‘What happened next?' asked Crosby in a manner dear to all narrators.

‘He started to yell to be let out, of course,' said Dr Dabbe.

‘Not unnaturally,' said Sloan, feeling something of a captive listener himself.

‘But the nurses on the outside of that locked door yelled back: “Not on your life!” “It is on my life …” wailed the poor fellow, urgently trying to remember what he'd learned about malaria and gonorrhoea.'

‘Neither prospect exactly pleasing,' said Sloan not unsympathetically.

‘Taking several propitiatory oaths about his future conduct,' said Dr Dabbe drily, ‘to do with remaining chaste for the rest of his life and never visiting Afric's burning shores, he set about trying to catch the mosquito.'

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, stealing another glance at his watch. Time was getting on.

‘What happened next?' asked Crosby.

Dr Dabbe chuckled. ‘The young ladies outside the door of the padded cell, all wearing the uniform of those dedicated to the selfless care of the sick, chanted: “Kill it, kill it, and then we'll open the door.”'

‘They would,' said Crosby feelingly.

‘It never does to trust someone you can't see though,' pronounced Sloan. ‘Never.'

‘No,' agreed Dr Dabbe, ‘but perhaps it was just as well they didn't trust him because he—deceitful fellow—called out that he had killed it.'

‘And he hadn't?' said Crosby, unversed as yet in real cupidity. ‘What happened?'

‘Ah,' said the pathologist, ‘the watch of Nightingales on the other side of the cell-door had heard the siren songs of newly qualified young doctors before and were not deceived. They demanded to be shown the body.'

‘Quite right,' said Crosby stoutly.

‘The cunning young man countered that he would when they opened the door. “Show us through the Judas window,” the nurses trilled sweetly,' recounted the pathologist, showing all the skills of a real tale-spinner. ‘One of the nurses whose father was a judge even called out “Habeas Corpus” …'

Detective Inspector Sloan gave it as his considered opinion that invoking the law was seldom helpful in a real emergency.

‘Then,' said Dabbe histrionically, ‘the House Physician suddenly went quiet.'

‘Saying his prayers, was he?' asked Sloan.

‘The hapless fellow had been struck by a horrid thought,' said Dabbe. ‘He'd just remembered that the tsetse fly—
Glossina morsitans
—which is the vector of sleeping sickness—African trypanosomiasis—is led to its victims by the odour of their breath. Mind you, gentlemen, he was pretty flustered and not yet sufficiently sophisticated to think it through …'

It crossed Detective Inspector Sloan's mind that the time would probably come when forensic scientists would be able to track down criminals in the same way.

Dr Dabbe was talking about the past not the future. ‘The House Physician said afterwards that he wasn't taking any chances with the anophelene mosquito.'

‘Quite right,' said Sloan.

‘So he shut his mouth and kept it shut while he sought a weapon.'

‘Quite right,' said Sloan again. It was a course of action he approved on principle.

‘Only, of course, there wasn't a weapon immediately at hand. Not in an old padded cell.'

‘No.'

‘So it came about,' said the pathologist, ‘that those looking through the Judas window were treated to the engaging spectacle of a white-coated young doctor in hot pursuit of a mercifully replete mosquito round a padded cell, brandishing a small pocket
vade mecum
of pharmacology,
circa
1941, published in conformity with war-time economy standards.'

‘And,' enquired Sloan, his glance straying back to his watch, ‘was the race to the swift?'

‘Well,' replied Dr Dabbe judiciously, ‘the House Physician was no match for the mosquito at ducking and diving although he was quite good on the Rugby field. The hospital, you understand, had been in need of a wing three-quarter at the time of his admission.'

‘Oh, I understand all right,' said Sloan.

‘The contest was in some respects—especially to those who witnessed it—reminiscent of that between Sancho Panza and the windmill …'

‘Was he a boxer?' asked Crosby suspiciously.

‘No, Crosby, he wasn't,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘but it doesn't matter because in the end
Homo sapiens
beat
Culex
, the law of the jungle prevailing.'

‘It usually does,' said Sloan.

‘Kill or be killed,' said Crosby sententiously.

Dr Dabbe hadn't finished. ‘Picking up the dead body of the mosquito, the House Physician waved it triumphantly in front of the Judas window, demanding of the nurses to be let out of the padded cell at last.'

‘And?' said Sloan. Surely that report they were waiting for should be ready by now? They were late enough already.

‘And,' said Dr Dabbe, ‘the door was indeed opened unto him.'

‘Good,' said Crosby.

‘But,' sighed the pathologist, ‘how was he to know that while he had been concentrating on the kill his audience had been swelled—and silenced—by the arrival of a prewar, pre-Salmon Ward Sister of the old school?'

‘How indeed?' said Sloan politely.

‘One with a Crimean cast of mind, too …' The door of the pathologist's room opened and his secretary appeared with something in her hand but he carried on regardless: ‘The poor fellow fell out of the cell and said, ‘Talk about being clapped out …' That was before he realized she was there, of course.' Dabbe paused and said with a touch of melancholy, ‘He never made consultant, you know. Had to go into general practice …'

LORD PETER'S TOUCH

‘He said what?' exploded Superintendent Leeyes irately.

‘That the bell-ringers in Almstone church take their names from the characters in a book by Dorothy L. Sayers called
The Nine Tailors
when they're ringing. All eight of them.'