you say
'Une autre bouteille' , you mean a different bottle of wine. '
'Oh.'
'You say
'Encore une bouteille de' whatever it is. '
'Why do you ever ask me to help you?'
'Agh! Forget it! Like I say, you're bloody useless.'
Lewis had never himself read Bleak House, and unlike Morse would not have
known the soothing secret of counting up to however-many. And in truth he
felt angry and belittled as he walked silently down the stairs, picked up the
box-files from the table in the entrance hall, walked past the living room,
where Mrs Lewis sat deeply submerged in a TV soap, and settled himself down
at the kitchen table, where he began to acquaint himself with the strangely
assorted members of the Harrison family wife, husband, daughter, son four of
the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.
He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still
echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively
engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the
husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne the mother,
who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead,
Oxon.
chapter Six The English country gentleman galloping after a fox the
unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable (Oscar Wilde) at first he'd felt
some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he
decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones
considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis
three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4. 30 P. M. At which
time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking
softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress's study.
'Come inl' She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him,
across the desk.
Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early
sixties the internationally renowned chief- guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary's
Diabetes Centre in Oxford.
'You wanted to see me, sir?'
Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.
'Look, we're probably going to be together at lots of do's these next few
months years, perhaps so, please, let's forget this
'Sir' business, shall we? Please call me
'Robert'
'
Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late
twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.
29
Not for long.
'I've sat in with you once or twice, haven't I?'
'Three times.'
'And I think you're going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I
mean?'
'Thank you.'
'But you're not quite good enough yet.'
'I'd hoped I was improving.'
'Certainly. But you're still strangely naive, I'm sorry to say. You seem to
believe everything your patients tell you!'
'There's not much else to go on, is there?'
'Oh, but there is! There's a certain healthy and necessary scepticism; and
then there's experience. You'll soon realize all this. What I'm saying is
that you might as well learn it now rather than later.'
'Is there anything particular . . . ?'
'Things, plural. I'm thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar
records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their
alcohol-intake. You see, the only thing they can't fool you about is their
weight.'
'And their blood pressure.'
Turner smiled gently at his pupil.
'I haven't got quite as much faith as you in our measurements of blood
pressure.'
'But they don't all of them make their answers up.'
'Not all of them, no. It's just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all
tend to say we're fine, even if we're feeling lousy. Don't we?'
'I suppose so.'
'And our main job' (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) 'is to give
information and to exert some sort of influence about the way our patients
cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness.'
Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.
And he continued: 'There are a good many patients here who are professional
liars. Some of them I've known for years,
and they've known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn't
