“No, but I rang him last night at the Roebuck and told him he was likely to be called as a witness at the inquest. He promised to keep himself available.”
“When
“That’s what I’m waiting to hear now. I assume Malley will have fixed it with Thompson. Right, where were we?” Purbright looked again at his file.
“The patients,” Love reminded him.
“Yes, the three who actually went into the consulting room. The last three people to see Meadow alive. One private. Two National Health. Any significant distinction there, Sid, in regard to homicidal tendencies? One man, two women. There you are—what a chance for applied psychology. You’ve talked with Leadbetter. You’ve talked with mother Grope. I’ve talked with Mrs McCreavy, and I make you a present of the information that she’d have neither the guile nor the guts to kill a sick chicken. Right, then. You’ve got the facts. Spot the murderer. I pass.”
Love watched Purbright throw himself back in his chair and draw a final desperate mouthful of smoke from his cigarette before reaching out and angrily stubbing it in the ashtray.
“Of course, it could be,” Love ventured, with the air of advancing a novel and utterly comforting proposition, “that Dr Meadow died of natural causes after all. I mean... well, I only asked about the other because you seemed worried.”
Purbright stared, opened his mouth and closed it again, scowled, then at last relaxed into a posture of weary acceptance.
“Yes, you’re perfectly right. This is just so much pointless, time-wasting speculation. Sheer self-indulgence on my part. It comes to something when we start trying to catch a criminal before we know there’s been a crime.”
“I expect you had a hunch,” suggested the sergeant, kindly. Hunches, his reading of fiction informed him, were perfectly permissible excuses for queer behaviour in the upper ranks.
“That’s nothing but another name for pre-judging an issue,” Purbright retorted, ungratefully. “The only sensible course now is to wait for the post-mortem report.”
“What happens if it’s negative?”
“It won’t be.”
Purbright suddenly slapped the desk with his hand.
“Look, Sid—we’ve been messed about for weeks by citizens with the staggers who attack women. We don’t know how many, probably we never shall know. The only one we’ve nailed—or who nailed himself, rather—had been getting a certain drug from Meadow. Another man on the drug was known to be acting along similar lines, if not so violently. But now, to use your phrase, he’s cooled off. Harper confirms that, by the way. And why the change? Obvious. Meadow stopped the drug. Who was it who actually caught and must have recognized one of these Crab characters? Meadow. Why did he keep quiet? Again I think the reason’s obvious. It was one of his own patients— and probably an influential one, at that. Leadbetter? He lives just off Heston Lane, near where the Sweeting girl was attacked. I know Perce Leadbetter. It’s only by the grace of God and relatives that he hasn’t got a record for indecent assault. I didn’t tell you that when I asked you to see him, but I thought you knew. And it’s a hundred to one that Perce’s reason for turning up at Meadow’s surgery last night was to ask for another supply of pep pills.”
“Pep pills?” Love clearly considered such things alien to respectable medical practice.
“Well, what else can they be? They certainly got old Winge’s tail wagging. And I’d like to know how many others were on Meadow’s list. Never mind that, though. What is perfectly clear is that Meadow got cold feet when Scorpe had a go at him during the inquest. He put out no more prescriptions.”
“Yes, but...”
“But what?”
“I thought Meadow was supposed to have blamed that herb stuff for what happened to Winge.”
“So he did—in public. But he didn’t believe it. If he had, he wouldn’t have stopped issuing his own prescriptions. He knew what Heineman was talking about, all right, and it scared him.”
There was a knock on the door. The head of Detective Constable Pook appeared.
“Come in, Mr Pook, come in. What have you got to tell us?”
Pook stepped carefully and quietly to the desk, ran his eye quickly over the hand-written foolscap sheet he was holding, and delivered it to Purbright with a little flourish.
“Miss Loder’s statement, sir.”
“Ah, yes.” The inspector began to read Pook’s round, painstaking script. He had that expression of calm approval which schoolmasters learn to adopt lest they discourage the thick but eager pupil.
Soon, however, the feigned interest became genuine. It livened into urgent concern. He read quickly to the end, then darted back to earlier passages, re-reading, checking.
He looked back at Love.
“You didn’t tell me this girl works at the Meadows’ place.”
The sergeant stared incredulously. “She doesn’t!”
“Oh, yes, she does. She was on her way to post some letters for Mrs Meadow when she got jumped.”
Purbright turned to Pook, on whose stiff, stern face was a faint flush of pride.
“She was quite sure, was she, that there was nothing sexual about the assault? I mean, she would know— she’s not dim or anything?”
“No, sir. Quite intelligent, I thought.”
