Some Die Eloquent (18 page)

‘Like that, was it,' grunted Leeyes.

‘Turned him down.'

‘It happens all the time.'

‘In favour,' pressed on Sloan, ‘of young Dr Elspin.'

‘You won't remember this, Sloan.'

‘Sir?'

‘Before your time.'

Sloan steeled himself to silence. Every so often some hapless soul at the police station had – metaphorically, at least – to splash his way ashore at Walcheren alongside the Superintendent in a wartime landing-craft, rifle at the ready.

‘There was this radio programme, Sloan, called
ITMA
.'

Sloan breathed again. It wasn't going to be Walcheren.

‘They had a character sketch about a young Dr Hardcastle,' said the Superintendent reminiscently. ‘Ivy used to say he was lovely …'

‘Being turned down,' said Sloan as repressively as he dared, ‘doesn't seem to have deterred Dr McCavity.'

‘He didn't get the message?'

‘This last couple of weeks he's been more persistent than usual. Sister Fleming's turned him out of the ward several times even though he's a doctor.'

The Superintendent stopped thinking about wartime radio comedy programmes. ‘Are you saying that he might have thought he was on to something?'

‘I am merely pointing out,' said Sloan astringently, ‘that his ardour seems to have enjoyed a bit of a comeback recently.'

‘Love and lolly?' said Leeyes, contemplating this.

‘As Dr Paston's partner he collects a sixteenth of the deceased's estate …'

Leeyes nodded.

‘As Briony Petforth's husband …'

‘A clear way to another eighth,' said the Superintendent practically. The repeal of the Married Women's Property Act had no more signified with him than with most husbands. ‘You'd better look into that.'

Sloan didn't write his report before he went to the Berebury District General Hospital to see Crosby, but he did telephone his own home.

There was no reply.

Detective-Constable Crosby had come round by the time Sloan reached the Accident and Emergency Department of the Berebury Hospital.

His first words uttered on regaining consciousness had not been notably helpful.

‘He just complained about his head,' reported Sister Casualty.

Sloan nodded.

‘I'm not surprised, really,' said Sister. ‘You should see the knock he's had.'

Sloan was resigned. ‘I expect that I'll have to.'

‘I don't know what he hit me with,' complained the patient bitterly. He was lying in an examination cubicle looking surprisingly cherubic in hospital pyjamas. Every now and then he ran an exploratory finger near the back of his head where he had been hit, found afresh that it hurt and took it away again.

‘They haven't found a weapon yet,' said Sloan.

‘Try looking for a sledge-hammer,' groaned Crosby.

There might well be a Noble Army of Martyrs but quite clearly Detective-Constable Crosby of the Berebury Police Force had no intention of being numbered among them.

‘He has got quite a contusion there,' said the Sister fairly. ‘The doctor's going to look at it in a minute.'

Crosby groaned again. ‘Bury me at Wounded Knee.'

‘This man who hit you …' began Sloan.

‘The blighter must have been holed up in that linen room all the time.'

‘I suppose,' said Sloan, ‘he was waiting for a chance to talk to his sister. If it was Petforth.'

‘I don't know what he was going to do,' Crosby reminded him with a certain savagery, ‘but what he actually did was to hit me. Hard.'

‘It's not too serious,' said Sister Casualty with professional briskness.

‘It's not your head,' said Crosby plaintively.

‘The man who hit you,' repeated Sloan, who had professional obligations too: ‘Did you see him?'

Crosby brought his hand up to the back of his head again. ‘This is where he hit me. Here.' He accidentally touched the spot. ‘Ouch!'

‘I've already told you not to …' began the Sister.

‘He got me from behind,' insisted Crosby. ‘That's why I never saw a thing. Except stars,' he added mordantly.

‘He was waiting in there all right,' said Sloan. ‘He'd been sitting on a pile of blankets.'

‘Saving his strength,' said the victim. ‘All I can say is that for someone who'd gone native he packed a pretty punch.'

‘Opted out of society,' said Sloan. ‘That's what he'd done.' The real natives of this sceptr'd isle lived in semidetached houses and watched television in the evenings.

‘If you ask me,' said a disgruntled Crosby, ‘he'd been practising with a pile-driver while he was up on the motorway site …'

Suddenly the curtain of the cubicle in Casualty was twitched back and a very young-looking man in a white coat approached.

Crosby started nervously.

Sloan was near enough to read the taped identification label on his breast pocket. It said ‘Junior House Surgeon'.

‘I've just come to put a few stitches in your scalp,' he announced cheerfully.

Crosby obviously regarded the cheerfulness as misplaced.

‘It
is
Mr Crosby, isn't it?' enquired the doctor.

All men are equal in hospital.

Or nearly.

‘It is,' said Crosby in doom-laden tones.

Like steam giving way to sail, Detective-Inspector Sloan yielded in the name of the law to the ancient profession of healing.

‘I'll be getting along then, Crosby,' he said, moving away.

Crosby was still taking in the doctor's appearance. He looked a real infant beside the well-built policemen. He had long wavy hair and sported an amulet with distinctly pagan overtones. He was also trying to grow a beard.

‘It won't take a minute,' said the young doctor heartily.

Crosby rolled his eyes and muttered something under his breath.

Sister Casualty showed Detective-Inspector Sloan out.

‘I've noticed that policemen are getting younger too,' she said obliquely, walking with him to the door of the Department. ‘And, Inspector …'

‘Sister?'

‘The House Surgeon's mother does know he's out.'

‘Pardon? What was that?'

‘Constable Crosby wondered if she knew.'

‘Of course I don't know what a policeman was doing in the ward linen cupboard,' retorted the distraught girl. ‘And neither does my cousin George. Do you?'

‘No,' said Dr Roger Elspin.

‘All I know,' said Briony Petforth helplessly, ‘is that he was there and that I found him and …' her voice trailed away.

‘And?' prompted Elspin.

‘And that if anything else is going to happen after all this, in spite of what you say, Roger, I don't think that I can …'

He interrupted her with ‘You've had quite a week, darling, haven't you?'

Her manner changed abruptly. ‘Oh, Roger …'

‘What with one thing and another,' he said largely. Nearly two years of working in hospital had taught him the value of unspecific statements that sounded comforting. And of the great importance of always sounding sympathetic. Being bracing made enemies of patients faster than the most painful treatment.

‘First poor Aunt Beatrice,' she said.

‘And now this,' he said for her.

‘Nothing makes sense any more.' She pushed her hair back under her cap. ‘Why should there be policemen in the hospital at all?'

The obstetric registrar shook his head. ‘I don't know.'

‘And why wasn't Dr Paston's death certificate for Aunt Beatrice good enough in the first place? Tell me that.'

‘I don't know.' He frowned. ‘We only had one lecture on jurisprudence when I was a student. It's not enough, really.'

She shuddered. ‘Post mortems are all very well but only when it's someone you don't know.'

‘That goes for a lot of things,' he said soberly.

‘I suppose it does.' She sighed. ‘Like illness.'

‘Like childbirth,' said the obstetrical registrar meaningfully.

‘Oh, Roger …'

‘I think we'd better adopt.'

‘Oh no we won't,' she said hotly.

‘Or do without the patter of tiny feet then and stay childless.'

‘I don't know about you,' she said strenuously, ‘but I'm proposing to have six babies in quick succession.' Her face clouded again. ‘I don't agree with small families.'

‘No.'

She looked at him. ‘Roger, you're taking on quite a bit, aren't you?'

‘If by that you mean your brother Nick …'

‘He's a big worry, especially if …' She fell silent.

‘He's old enough to take care of himself, you know,' said Roger Elspin.

‘I only wish he was,' said Nick Petforth's sister practically.

‘He's certainly in a spot of trouble if he biffed that young copper.'

‘I thought he was dead at first,' she shuddered. ‘Now are you sure you want to marry into our family?'

‘Quite sure,' he said calmly.

‘The police wanted to know if Nick had a key to Aunt Beatrice's house.'

‘Had he?'

‘We all had.'

‘We?'

‘Nick, George and me. Aunt always said we were welcome any time, even if she was out. She was out a lot, you know. She liked to spend her spare time down at the firm's lab working on this theory of hers.'

‘Turning air into gold.'

‘It was our home, after all,' said Briony, ignoring this, ‘and anyway she never knew when she might be ill. She was very sensible, you know. Isolde would only attack a stranger so it was all right for us to have keys.' She caught her breath. ‘Roger, I don't understand about Isolde …'

‘No. Did the police ask anything else?'

‘They wanted to know if Peter McCavity had been up to the ward again. Sister must have told them about that.'

‘And had he?' asked Elspin quickly.

‘Oh, he's always around these days.'

‘Bothering you?' Elspin's colour deepened.

She shook her head listlessly. ‘Not bothering exactly. Just around.' She looked across at the Registrar. ‘By the way, Roger, someone told me that they'd seen you up on Fleming this afternoon.'

He nodded. ‘I was.'

‘You were?'

‘I came up to snatch a quick kiss between deliveries.'

‘Oh, I see.' She essayed a smile. ‘It would have had to come out of your ration today.'

‘I needed a pick-me-up, Nurse. It's been a busy day on the maternity unit.'

‘I didn't see you.'

‘You had a bit of a flap on,' he reminded her.

‘That's right.' She looked at him, wide-eyed. ‘Do you know I'd almost forgotten about that already. And I would never have thought I could so soon. Terrifying, isn't it?'

‘That's life.'

‘He was such a nice man, too, the patient who died.'

Dr Roger Elspin shot a quick glance at his watch. ‘Talking of patients reminds me that I should have a head coming up to crowning by now …'

‘Someone,' pronounced Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, ‘made darn sure that we linked Dr Peter McCavity up with that smashed bollard near Ridley Road on Friday afternoon.'

‘And a man it was to boot,' murmured Sloan. ‘Not a woman.' That had been the curious thing. It was the curious things which added up in a case.

‘So,' said Harpe, ‘we ran a paint test.'

‘The good old exchange principle,' said the detective-inspector.

‘We shouldn't get far without it up in this department,' said the Traffic man.

What Isaac Newton and gravity were to physics so the exchange principle was to police work. Fundamental. Objects could never meet without exchanging something of each other. Never. (Well, hardly ever.) And that usually went for human beings who touched – let alone things that went bump in the night too.

‘Paint of car left on bollard?' guessed Sloan. Being a policeman and not a philosopher he liked to leave the general for the particular as soon as he could.

‘Better than that.'

‘Bit of bollard still attached to car? Oh, well done, Harry!'

Inspector Harpe permitted himself a rare grin of triumph. ‘Embedded in the headlight.'

‘McCavity's had another bollard, though, since Friday's, hasn't he?' asked Sloan.

The Traffic inspector was unperturbed. Quite clever defence lawyers had been trying to catch him out for years. On oath.

‘No, Sloan. The second bollard was yellow. The Friday one was white.'

‘That helps.'

‘What I want to know,' said Happy Harry, ‘is whether you want me to run any other sort of test on the man rather than on the vehicle.'

Sloan considered this. ‘He's certainly going to lose his licence one of these days anyway, isn't he?'

‘Unless,' said Inspector Harpe sourly, ‘whoever brings him in doesn't play the procedure game properly.'

‘It's a lot better than it was, Harry,' said Sloan, answering the thought rather than the words. Breathalysers had been progress indeed.

‘The Leith police dismisseth us,' lisped the Traffic man mockingly.

‘My client,' responded Sloan in court-room tones, ‘has always had a speech impediment'

‘He fell off a chalk line drawn on the floor of the police station.'

‘My client has a wooden leg. Surely the officer noticed?'

‘He couldn't focus.'

‘An artificial eye.'

‘Drowsy …'

‘Tired.'

‘He attempted to embrace a desk.'

‘Deeply shocked.'

‘He was quite unable to complete Rhomberg's test and touch the tip of his nose with his finger while his eyes were shut.'

‘The officer completely misinterpreted his gesture.'

‘He was pathologically talkative.'