museum cases. Across the road there was a movement in the back of one of the cars-ah, the younger generation was succumbing to the wild wind.
And Kramer turned to stare at the couch, half screened off in one corner. So this was where Miss Le Roux had felt it right and proper to undress and recline. Sick. Horrible. The whole room was sick. It was certainly not the place to be told you had three months to go, taking things easy. For that you needed one of those unreal skyscraper suites with pretty receptionists to smile unwittingly at you on your way out to the lift shaft. At the very most it was a room which should serve only for offering up afflictions of the anal region. Which seemed to be Dr Matthews’s level anyhow, so maybe he was expecting too much.
The GP was in the room without warning, moving lightly as became a fat man so daintily shod. His likeness to his mother’s photograph on the desk was remarkable-except his moustache turned upwards.
“What brings you here, officer?” he said. “Don’t tell me-I’ve made a balls and so has Strydom but he’s also getting the glory, lucky man.”
He stopped and frowned.
“As a matter of fact, he was rather rude to me. I told him her history. I told him it was congenital angina. Remained quite unimpressed. Very rude when I said I hadn’t her previous records but one has to trust patients, hasn’t one?”
“And doctors,” Kramer observed, ignoring the outstretched hand.
“Now then!” Dr Matthews said. “May I take your coat?”
“No coat,” Kramer replied.
“Of course, I’ve been in touch with the medical association,” Dr Matthews continued unruffled. “Speaking to the secretary at his home only a moment ago. He said that off the record he was inclined to agree I’d come to a reasonable conclusion under the circumstances. One can’t go ordering post mortems for everyone who pops off.”
“But she was only twenty-two.”
“Good God, man, she’d had cardiac irregularities since she was nine!”
“Hearsay,” Kramer snapped, resorting to a bit of his own jargon. “Now just hand over that file you’re waving about, I want to take a look for myself.”
Dr Matthews did so with a mildly insolent thrust and then pottered about the room, humming plump, complacent hums. Eventually, however, he came to a stop behind his desk where he patted his pockets and took from them a stethoscope, auriscope, ophthalmoscope and stainless steel spatula. He was like a balloonist dumping ballast in an effort to regain height. He slumped down into the swivel chair, his clothes creasing into great loose folds.
Kramer closed the file and stared across at him. Then he picked up the ophthalmoscope, switched it on and played the tiny beam across the room until it stopped in the middle of the practitioner’s pink forehead.
“You examined her thoroughly?” he asked softly.
“Naturally. Dozens of times, as you’ve seen-every square inch.”
“With this thing?”
The spot of light dropped to bore into Dr Matthews’s right eye. He raised a protecting hand, flushing with anger.
“See here,” he barked, “stop fooling about with what you don’t bloody well understand. Who the hell do you think you are?”
“Lieutenant Kramer of the Murder Squad, and I have reason to believe you are lying, Dr Matthews. This is an ophthalmoscope, an instrument used for the examination of the human eye, and yet you get Miss Le Roux’s eye colour wrong in your records.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
“It says here they were blue.”
“Correct, she was blonde.”
“Oh, yes? I saw them in the mortuary this afternoon. They were brown.” “Brown?”
“Correct,” Kramer mimicked.
Then nothing was said for some considerable time.
“I have a little theory,” Kramer murmured at last, “that you never gave Miss Le Roux a look-over from top to toe. From your notes it seems you concentrated your attention on an area quite unconnected with cardiac irregularities-or eye irregularities for that matter.”
Dr Matthews looked up sharply.
“Now why would you do that, doctor? Your colleague Dr Strydom is quite certain she never suffered from any disease of that kind.”
“There was not much I could do for the heart,” Dr Matthews blustered. “Just give her pills and sleeping drugs so she rested properly.”
“Yes? Go on, man.”
“Surely it’s obvious from the file the silly little bitch was neurotic?” Dr Matthews exploded. “Open it, count how many times you see Wassermann test in it. Came in here demanding one damn near every week, for a time. Practically insisted she had the clap.”
Which destroyed a very beautiful illusion. Kramer paused a moment to mourn its passing. There had been something so refreshingly healthy about Miss Le Roux’s previous image, both physical and spiritual. Hating Dr Matthews a little, he pressed the attack.
“You say she was neurotic?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you gave her these tests every time?”
“That’s so.”
“I see. How much is a Wassermann worth to you-ten, twelve Rand? A nice little side-line.”
“Lieutenant, take care with what you’re implying. And if you knew anything about the practice of medicine at all, you would know that humouring a patient is often as important as treating them. You should have seen the girl each time I reported a negative result: she took new heart.”
Kramer could not resist it. “Made you feel like Christiaan Barnard, did it?” he sneered. “Pity you aren’t so handy with the transplants.”
“That was a very uncalled for remark.”
“Sorry,” Kramer said, almost meaning it. “Let’s get back to the clap. Did she ever give you any reason for her-”
“Anxieties? No. She was the kind that pays promptly and feels they have a right to use us like garage mechanics.”
“But weren’t you curious?”
“Not unduly, the chronically ill are apt to find some counterattraction to their main complaint elsewhere in their anatomies. Also, she was a very edgy girl. She shied away from questions. I didn’t bother, I’d come across similar cases before.”
“Really?”
“You’d be surprised how common they are, Lieutenant, especially among engaged girls. Little things make them suspect their future hubby is having his final fling and they get it into their sweet heads that some of this may backfire on them. After all, they say, nice girls don’t sleep with other girls’ fiances.”
“A lot they know.”
“Quite, but that’s the way it goes. Miss Le Roux just seemed less talkative than the rest.”
Suddenly Kramer felt reasonably disposed towards Dr Matthews. He offered him a Lucky Strike, exchanged it for one without a kink in the middle, and supplied the match. The truth was they had a lot in common. They both dealt with that perverse species homo sapiens and both had to make what judgements they could on the evidence.
“You think she could have been going to get married?”
“Well, she didn’t strike me as being a loose sort of a girl but she-”
“Yes, I know, but what about her heart? Had she a long life ahead of her?”
“No one could say. It could happen any time-as I thought it had, you see. She could have lasted for donkey’s years.”
