‘You mean the booze,’ said Bryony, with a short laugh. ‘Even less did he approve of the drugs or that father made up his own prescriptions for them.’
‘He knew what the prescriptions were, of course?’
‘I don’t know, but he was kind enough to relieve me of the job of presenting them at the chemist’s in Castercombe, so I think he was sure to have known something about what father had ordered,’ Bryony said. ‘I used to have to wait, quite often, before the bottle was ready to be handed over. It was a nuisance I was very glad to get rid of.’
‘Did you see the chemist make up the prescriptions?’ asked Dame Beatrice.’
‘No, he used to do that in his back room, with the help of his chemist’s boy, whom I never met. Apparently, he was an intelligent lad and took a great interest, Dr Mortlake told us, in the prescriptions, so the chemist, who was getting old, taught him quite a lot, although, of course, he had no proper training or qualifications. It’s my belief, all the same, that he was trusted, in the end, to make up some of the medicines. Of course, nobody was supposed to know that, but rumours do get around.’
‘But they weren’t true,’ said Morpeth. ‘The old chemist would never have dared. You can’t have an unqualified person making up prescriptions. You might kill somebody.’
‘I was only repeating what I had heard. Anyway, the old chemist has gone and Dr Mortlake said the young man had gone, too. Perhaps he went abroad and practised his skills there. It’s a pity to let talents go to waste.’
13
Brother and Sister
« ^ »
So now for Susan,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they were in the car. ‘Drive down to the Axehead road, as usual, and then turn left and pull up where the zigzag footpath from Abbots Crozier ends in the middle of Abbots Bay village. There, I fear, we may have some time to wait.’
‘We are to waylay her?’
‘I do not want to visit her in her cottage, but I must see her alone. Before we can get any further in this business, she will have to explain why she left home so early on the day of the first man’s death and what she was doing up to the time that Sekhmet was missing. The police are not satisfied, I am sure, with her continued assertion that she was bathing in the Abbots Bay sea-pool.’
‘If she wasn’t, and refuses to come clean, she’s asking for trouble, but why are you bothering? We didn’t know the first man and we certainly didn’t take to that charlatan Ozymandias. You don’t think Susan is likely to be pinched for the first death, do you?’
‘She could also be apprehended for the second one now that those scalpels have been found, and so could Bryony or Morpeth.’
‘I thought it was pretty clear the scalpels had been taken by that tramp, or whatever he was, who slept in the garage loft.’
‘Or by the poacher, perhaps. As for the man in the loft, he may or may not have stolen the doctor’s bag, but the poacher has identified him as the man Susan found dead at Watersmeet, so he could not have been the murderer of Goodfellow.’
‘The poacher only recognised him on the strength of what could have been a very poor and misleading artist’s impression.’
‘That reminds me. Now that the local police and I are mutually acquainted, I must ask to see the far from poor and misleading pictures their official photographer took of the dead man which were thought to be too gruesome to print in the newspapers.’
‘You don’t think you know who he was, do you?’
‘No. I am hoping that I can find someone to tell me.’
They sat on for half an hour and expected to wait longer, but Susan, it seemed, had left Crozier Lodge earlier than usual. Laura got out of the driver’s seat and greeted her.
‘Hullo, there!’ she said. ‘We’ve been waiting until we could get you on your own, away from Bryony and Morpeth. Hop into the car and have a word with Dame Beatrice.’
Dame Beatrice had taken her seat at the back. A bewildered but unexpectedly obedient Susan got in beside her. Her obedience was soon explained.
‘I think I’m in for a spot of bother,’ she said. ‘The police don’t believe that first death was an accident, do they?’
‘The more one knows of Sekhmet, the less one can conceive of a man’s being so much alarmed by her attentions as to yield up his trousers to her and dash into a river to escape from her. Have the police made her acquaintance?’
‘Yes. They’ve been once or twice, a different man each time, and I was asked to go into the house so that her reactions wouldn’t be conditioned by my presence.’
‘In other words, to find out how she would behave herself with strangers when you were not there,’ said Laura. ‘What did the Rants think about these visits?’
‘They don’t know anything about them. That’s what worries me. They must have kept watch and seen Bryony and Morpeth go out with four of the hounds, so that they knew I was alone at the Lodge with nobody to back me up. Of course, all that damn bitch did was to abase herself before them, pile on the charm, roll over, wag her stinking tail and more or less jump through hoops for their benefit. If ever a dog landed its handler and feeder in jug, that dog is blasted Sekhmet and that handler and feeder is me. Besides, now this second death — this obvious murder — has come about, the police are more on their toes than ever.’
