The Crozier Pharaohs

she was out of the house most afternoons.’

‘Couldn’t Dr Rant drive the car, then?’ asked Laura.

‘Oh, he did, until Bryony was old enough to handle it. After his wife’s death, of course, it was better for his own and everybody else’s safety that he did not drive.’

‘I wonder he had any patients who still wanted him to visit them, ’ Laura observed. ‘I’m dashed if I would have called him in.’

‘Well, Mrs Gavin, you would have been surprised by Rant. I often was. After he had steeped himself at lunch, he was urbane, good-humoured, clear-headed and absolutely at his best. Of course, the reaction came later, usually after evening surgery, although quite often he would cry off the evening stint and leave me to cope with his patients as well as my own.’

‘I also wonder,’ said Laura bluntly, ‘that you stayed with such a man.’

‘Well,’ said Mortlake apologetically, ‘there was this promise to take me into equal partnership, you see.’

‘You believed that a drunk like Rant would have kept his word?’

‘I think the fact that he left me enough money to buy my own practice is proof, don’t you?’

‘Well, now,’ said Dame Beatrice briskly, ‘let us turn to the second of the deaths. An inquest was held, I am told, because the death was sudden and totally unexpected. What can you tell us about Mrs Subbock, Dr Mortlake?’

‘I was doing the afternoon rounds when she met with her fatal accident. I attended the inquest, but was not called as a witness. There was nothing to which I could have testified.’

‘But Dr Rant was called, I assume, and you heard his testimony.’

‘Yes, and nobody could fault it. It was held at three in the afternoon because the coroner had been in the police court conducting a case for a client all the morning. Rant was — how shall I put it?’

‘All tanked up?’ suggested Laura.

‘So, of course, he was at his best. We got the repercussions later. He said that he had seen Mrs Subbock to the door himself. She was so vituperative and abusive that he did not want either of his daughters or a servant to hear the bad language. He said he saw her on to the top of the front steps and then promptly shut the front door on her. Shortly afterwards, a man who had been working in the garden knocked on the door and said that the woman had fallen down the steps and that her head was bleeding and she had lost consciousness.’

‘And the verdict was accidental death. What did you think of the verdict in Dr Rant’s own case?’

‘Oh, undoubtedly it was the correct one. The alternative could only have been suicide and nobody who knew Rant would have dreamed that he was capable of that.’

‘Grief for the death of his wife, perhaps?’

‘Oh, he missed her, of course, as a useful adjunct, but the drinking he did consoled him for his loss of one of the household serfs. He had plenty of money, work he could (and did) shove on to me when he didn’t feel like doing it, and two grown-up daughters who had never shown any intention of getting married and who provided his meals and all his other domestic comforts. Rant was sitting far too pretty and was far too fond of himself and his bottle ever to have thought of suicide.’

‘Interesting. But if he was so clear-headed in his cups, how do you account for his dangerous mixing of a drug he was taking and the alcohol to which he had become addicted?’

‘The drug had soporific effects, I suppose. It must have muddled him to the extent that he forgot he had already taken the specified dose. Of course, he should have left the drinks alone at such a time, but he had lost the will to abstain and, again, the drug may have clouded his reasoning powers. I was called as a witness and I said all this. Nobody attempted to challenge the evidence I gave.’

‘Were his drugs prescribed by you?’ asked Laura.

‘Good heavens, no! That would have been quite improper, as I was his assistant and living in his house. He prescribed for himself and Bryony or I was sent to the chemist’s to pick up the bottles. The chemist is dead now, and the shop has been taken over by people who never knew Rant.’

Dame Beatrice asked no questions. She said, ‘So we come to the fourth and most recent of the deaths in which I am interested, and not only I, but the police.’

‘Oh, this chap who was found dead in the river? As a matter of fact, I’m interested in that. Three of us examined the body, you know, myself, a police doctor and then a pathologist from Lambridge. We agreed that, in all probability, the man, terrified of the dog he had tried to steal, had dashed into the river in an attempt to cross it and had slipped and cracked his skull and drowned while he was still unconscious.’

‘Well, it appears that the police are not prepared to allow matters to rest on a verdict of accidental death. They have their suspicions. Has a man named Goodfellow ever consulted you?’

‘Goodfellow? Not so far as I remember and I think one would remember a name like that. What is his first name?’

‘Robin, or so he says.’

‘Good Lord! Aren’t parents odd when it comes to having their children christened! As for the corpse in the river, do you mean it was this Goodfellow chap?’

‘I know it was not. The Rant sisters have met Goodfellow and they also saw the dead man. Goodfellow’s was not the corpse in the river.’

‘Strange that nobody has come forward.’

‘The answer may be that the dead man was a foreigner. By that, I mean that he did really come from abroad. The villagers call everybody a foreigner who was not born in the place. This man, perhaps, was a chance visitor. Even so, if he was on holiday at one of the hotels or was staying at one of the cottages, one would think he would be missed and then his. photograph recognised. How long did you and the police doctor think he had been dead?’