She was thinking of this when Dr. Norrie Brown came in. She knew it was him from the way he hesitated at the door, looking for someone he did not know; and he knew it was her from the way she sat there, waiting for somebody similarly unknown to her.
“Isabel Dalhousie?”
She reached out and shook his hand. He sat down opposite her and looked at her appraisingly. There was no attempt to conceal what he was doing; he was taking her measure. She blushed.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “Tactless of me. I can’t help it, I’m afraid. When I meet somebody for the first time, I’ve got into the habit of looking at them as if they’re a new patient. I don’t quite take the blood pressure, but I do sum things up.”
She smiled. There was a pleasant frankness about the way he spoke, and she liked the look of him too. He was in his mid-thirties, she decided; open-faced, uncomplicated. A straightforward doctor.
“Oh well,” she said. “We all look at others according to our calling. I have a lawyer friend who immediately examines people as if they’re in the witness box. And my hairdresser looks out of the window and comments on the hair of people going past. Bad hair day. That sort of thing!”
He reached for the menu. “I assure you, you look quite well. And so I conclude that you don’t want to consult me professionally.”
“Certainly not.”
He glanced at the menu. “So? Do you mind if I ask why you got in touch? You said it was to do with a mutual friend.”
“Yes,” she said. “Marcus Moncrieff.”
He replaced the menu on the table. “Oh. Marcus.”
“Yes. I know his wife, you see. Not very well, but enough to know that she’s terribly worried about him.”
He watched her as she spoke. The openness she had detected earlier on was being replaced, she thought, by a marked guardedness.
“Marcus is pretty low, is he? I haven’t seen him for a month or so; I must go round. I take it that it’s the…”
“Disgrace?”
“You could call it that. And I suppose that’s what it was.”
The waitress came and took their order. Norrie, she noticed, chose a salad and a diet drink. “I’m training as a gastroenterologist now,” he said. “I see what people put in their stomachs. It’s enough to put one off eating altogether.”
She smiled. “But you won’t disapprove of what I have.”
He laughed. “Probably. But I won’t say anything. An Italian diet is reasonably healthy, anyway. It’s the stuff they eat in Glasgow that does the damage. The fries. The red meat. The fried fish. My cardiac colleagues could keep you entertained for hours on the subject.”
Isabel steered the conversation back to Marcus. “The incident,” she began. “The incident that led to the complaint. Do you think it was his fault?”
Norrie said nothing for a moment, but fingered the stem of an empty glass in front of him. When he eventually spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words with care. “The finding against him was clear,” he said. “He was negligent. The figures of the dosage were far too high. He should have checked. He didn’t.”
“Where did those figures come from?”
“From the lab.”
Isabel watched Norrie carefully. His manner was very matter-of-fact, as if he were relating everyday events, rather than ones that had brought a career to an end.
“And what did you think? What did you think of the figures?”
Again he took his time to answer, and again, when he did, his words were careful. “I just took note of them and passed them on.”
“That’s all?”
He held her gaze. He neither blinked nor looked away. “It wasn’t for me to say anything. I was—am—a junior doctor. I came to medicine late, you see. I did a degree in engineering and then changed my mind. It’s going to be some time before I catch up.”
“It wasn’t for you to say anything?”
“No. That’s what I’ve just told you.”
She persisted. “Even if you thought they were high?”
His self-controlled manner slipped a little. “Listen,” he said, an edge appearing in his voice. “I didn’t have a clue.”
She made a calming gesture with a hand. “All right. Sorry, I’m not accusing you of anything. I just think that Marcus may have been harshly treated. I was hoping that we could find out something which puts him in a better light.”
This remark seemed to take him by surprise. “Harshly treated?”
She explained that she felt that a momentary lapse of judgement should not, in her view, end a career. Anybody could make a mistake—indeed everybody made mistakes. But that did not make them culpable. “So,” she concluded. “I was wondering whether I could come up with something that could help him to establish that he was not blameworthy. I wondered if I could get him off this awful hook of blame.”
