‘Certainly. Just one little question. When you rang Valerie yesterday to ask when Mr Sprott was coming back . . .’
‘He’s arrived. I’ve seen him. Val gave him his key just a few minutes ago.’
‘Good. When you rang through was Val alone?’
‘No. Mr Compton told her to ask who wanted to know.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Mr Sprott’s quite near you. Bungalow forty-two. With Mrs Sprott.’
They walked along the road, now busier than ever with incoming visitors and visitors already in residence moving about between the different amenities. Hill said: ‘Are we getting anywhere, Chief?’
‘I think so.’
‘Thoresby?’
‘It’s too soon to say. It’s a strange case. As odd as Dick’s hatband.’
‘In what way?’
‘There are too many possibilities and sub-plots and side turnings. Like this doctor chap Inspector Green’s been asking questions about. Where does he fit in, I wonder?’
As they entered the bungalow, Green met them. ‘We’ve got visitors. The doctor and his missus. I’ve sent Brant to rustle up coffee.’
‘Excellent. Could the medicos help?’
‘They have a theory which you’d better hear.’
Laurence Meeth said as he greeted Masters: ‘You chaps don’t let the grass grow. Fancy unearthing Thurso like that.’
‘You know him?’
‘I don’t. Meg’s met him.’
Meg Meeth was in an apple-green linen frock. Bare arms and legs and no-shoe sandals. She was carrying a large white hessian bag with bamboo handles. She said: ‘Don’t stare. I’m dressed for the weather, not a murder investigation. We don’t usually have much of a surgery on Saturday mornings, so Larry does it all.’
Green pulled up a chair for her. She patted the arm for him to perch beside her. As there weren’t enough chairs to go round, Green obeyed, a little self-consciously. He sat stiffly, as though too aware of her nearness, her shining hair and the strip of thigh laid bare where the green skirt had ridden up.
Masters said: ‘Tell me about Thurso.’
‘He’s an F.R.C.P. and been at St Mary’s about a month or five weeks. I had a patient in there and went over to see her. I know the Obst and Gynae registrar pretty well. He introduced me to Thurso.’
Larry said: ‘He’s a good man by all accounts.’
‘How d’you think he came to know Fay Partridge?’
‘Not in the way men usually got to know her,’ Meg said. ‘Of that I’m sure.’
‘How then?’
Larry said: ‘You were wondering about Nonavom yesterday. I reckon Thurso prescribed it.’
‘She went into hospital?’
‘No. Private patient.’
‘But Thurso is the hospital consultant. He wouldn’t have private patients, would he?’
‘Oh, very much so. St Mary’s hasn’t got all that many beds, so consultants there aren’t full time. They do about seven notional half-days a week . . .’
‘Notional half-days?’
‘The Ministry’s term for three and a half hours’ work. There’s a scale fixed for that—it averages about eight pounds for the session. The rest of the time they’re free to take on private patients—at about five guineas a time. So what they get is about three thousand from the Regional Hospital Board and probably—if they’re kept busy—the same again from private consultations.’
‘Where, in your opinion, does Mrs Partridge fit in?’
‘I reckon she went to him.’
‘But you are her doctor.’
‘That’s right. I think she was fed up with me, so she went as a private patient. No N.H.S. documents needed. But she didn’t remove herself from my list, so I knew nothing about it. She was playing it safe. Keeping me on a string, to fall back on if she didn’t like Thurso or his prices.’
‘That seems a funny game.’
‘She was entitled to do it. My guess is she went to Thurso complaining vaguely of nausea . . .’
Meg said: ‘Which is more than likely considering how she stuffed herself—with food, I mean. Sweets, cakes, chocolate . . .’
‘Fruit maybe?’
‘Fruit? Perhaps. If it was exotic enough—grapes, peaches, passion fruit—bags of that.’
Larry went on: ‘And Thurso gave her Nonavom. Charged through the nose for it and told her to take one whenever she felt sick. That’s how I read the situation.’
‘Why come to her funeral?’
‘It’s a customary thing to do—particularly in the case of private patients.’
‘But if he learned she had died . . .’
‘Learned she was murdered, you mean. That’s why he didn’t come forward. She’d probably consulted him once, because I can’t see Fay paying out five guineas very often. So he said nothing about her consulting him. But he came to the funeral.’
‘I still think it’s odd.’
‘Does the doctor of every murder victim come to you and say “I’m his doctor”?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘You know they don’t, ducky. Larry didn’t. You came to him. And if you hadn’t, we should never have approached you.’
Masters said: ‘Well, if what you say is true, it solves the mystery of the Nonavom. We’ll try and confirm it. Now. Where’s that coffee?’
*
After the doctors had gone, Masters said to Brant: ‘Did you manage to hear anything of what Compton said to Mrs Thoresby?’
‘No, Chief, sorry. The window was closed. But they looked very friendly.’
‘Thanks.’
‘What about these chemicals?’ Green asked.
‘Can you do the potting-shed end before lunch?’
‘I suppose so.’
When Green had gone, Masters stepped outside on to the little lawn. He was trying to locate bungalow 42. Hill, standing at the french window, said: ‘There’s Mrs Thoresby now.’
Masters looked round. Lorna Thoresby in pale blue slacks and Courtelle sweater was passing the end of the bungalow. She was slim enough to look well in her apparel, but Masters noted as he strode towards her that the garments looked far from new.
‘Good morning, Mrs Thoresby.’
‘Oh!’ She seemed startled and displeased at the encounter.
‘Been down to see your sweet factory yet?’
She hesitated before answering. Then finally she said: ‘I just looked in earlier to see if it had changed at all.’
‘And had it?’
‘Not much.’
‘Any of those new lines you suggested in production yet?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Compton didn’t bother to implement them.’
‘Oh yes he tried, he . . .’
‘Yes, Mrs Thoresby?’
‘There were difficulties.’
‘Difficulties that even the manager couldn’t overcome?’
‘You don’t understand. Henry tried hard, he really did.’
‘For your sake, Mrs Thoresby?’
‘Well, yes. He knew how interested I was in them.’
‘But Mrs Partridge stopped him.’
She hung her head and said: ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Not to worry. You can give the orders now.’
‘Mr Compton . . .’
‘No. You. You’re the boss. Go and amuse yourself. Make a few batches or loads or whatever you call them. See how they go.’
She looked up at him. ‘Do you think I should?’
‘In your place I’d jump into the saddle straight away—and try to forget quite a few things. Do it quietly. Don’t expect too much. Just work yourself into a nice, happy, impregnable position, and don’t let anything—anything or anybody—upset or unseat you.’
‘Thank you. I’d like . . .’
‘Then why not? And don’t tell anybody. Let them find out. And when they do, make it clear that you want no interference. Good luck.’
Masters watched her turn and walk with a more
sprightly step towards the old mess building. Then he called to Hill. ‘Get the car. We’re going to see Thurso.’
*
It was midday before they reached Thurso’s house. It stood alone. Not too big, but large enough, Masters guessed, to be able to set two rooms aside as waiting and consulting rooms for the doctor’s private patients.
It was Thurso himself who opened the door. He was dressed in a dark suit, with collar and tie, as though he had just finished a morning’s work. For a moment he stared, then said, quite jovially: ‘I’ve seen one of you before.’ He pointed to Masters. ‘You.’
‘That’s right, doctor. At Mrs Partridge’s funeral.’
‘I hadn’t forgotten. Yesterday afternoon. What can I do for you?’
‘We’re police officers, doctor. My name is Masters. . . .’
‘Good lord. Are you he? Come in, come in.’
‘And this is Detective Sergeant Hill.’
Thurso bustled ahead, almost rolling as he went. The fat seemed well controlled, with a good surface tension, but the bulk tended to sway on the short, thick legs. ‘Come in here. My study—so called. Actually it’s a rag-bag of a den. If I want to work I go into my consulting room.’ He opened the door and stood aside. ‘See what I mean? The kids use it as a playroom.’
He was right. The table held a Monopoly board with the bits and pieces strewn. On the floor was a Minic car, over on its back, showing its wheels like a puppy waiting to be tickled. Alongside it were the television programme papers. With a grunt, Thurso stooped to pick them up. Out of kindness to him, Hill did a quick collecting tour of the floor and dumped his finds on the table.
‘Thanks. At least I’ve got a safe hidey-hole for drinks here—until the lads learn to pick locks.’ He took keys from his pocket and opened a corner cabinet. ‘Here, Sergeant, d’you mind acting as barman? Mine’s a pink gin and you’ll know best what suits yourself and Mr Masters.’
He took an open tin box of fishing floats from a chair for Masters. Then he subsided himself into what was obviously a favourite well-bottomed club chair. ‘What’s the form? Mrs P. was poisoned, I hear? Having difficulty in pinning it on anybody?’
‘Naturally. We always do.’
‘Not from what I’ve heard.’
‘You only get to hear of successes. We keep our failures well and truly hidden.’
‘Like us. They’re usually buried deep.’
‘Which brings us, sir, to your presence at the funeral.’
‘Did it look suspicious—my being there?’
‘Shall we say that in such a small congregation you tended to stand out.’
Thurso patted his stomach. ‘Stick out, you mean.’ He took the glass from Hill. ‘Thanks, Sergeant, that looks fine for size.’ He raised the glass. ‘Cheers.’
Masters, who had been given canned light ale, took a sip and then continued the conversation. ‘As you can imagine, doctor, on occasions like yesterday, we keep our eyes open and ask questions. When I learned you were a doctor and very new to the district I wondered what your connection with the deceased woman could be. Not an old friend, surely?’
Thurso found this amusing. He heaved with mirth for a moment. ‘Not if I read her aright. She was my patient—short-lived in every sense.’
‘She consulted you?’
‘Once. She came here last Wednesday complaining of a feeling of nausea. I examined her pretty thoroughly and found nothing organically wrong. In fact I’d have said she was a lusty specimen.’ He laughed again at his own joke.
‘Then what?’
‘I did the usual. Questioned her closely about her diet, but I couldn’t get very far.’
‘Why not?’
‘She was so damnably “refained”. She’s dead now, poor soul, but you know how it is when people like her won’t speak in a natural voice or use words that come naturally. She was going on about having a soupçon—only she said soopson—of this, a modicum of that, morsel, dash, thimbleful, pinch, spot—they all came in, and quite frankly I was hard pushed to get a clear picture. I mean, when I tried to discover what a modicum of fresh cream was, I was told it was no more than the merest dash, when I suspected she meant a whole carton. But that’s by the way. There was only one thing she admitted to going a bust on fairly regularly, and that was fruit.’
‘Fruit?’
‘Yes. But as I say, she tried to be so very port outwards starboard homewards that she would keep referring to it as dessert. It fitted, though. It was fairly clear that she was nauseating herself by overeating, so I gave her a bottle of anti-nauseant pills and told her to cut out the fruit.’
‘To cut fruit out altogether?’
‘Most emphatically. I know fruit usually causes diarrhoea and possibly sickness, but usually only if it is under-ripe or over-ripe. In good condition, fruit could well cause sickness—without diarrhoea—in some people. But to play safe I gave her Nonavom, which is usually effective in the treatment of vomiting of varied aetiology. So if it was, say, the cream and not the fruit, she’d be just as well off with Nonavom.’
‘Thank you, doctor. She took just one Nonavom. Last Friday.’
‘She was sick at that time?’
‘Her dance professional says he found her laid out and she asked him to give her the tablet. It worked, apparently, because she was up and about in a few hours.’
‘Only to die on Tuesday?’
‘Do you think the two events could be connected, doctor?’
‘Possibly. But it hardly seems likely if one tablet of Nonavom put her on her feet again on Friday. And, as I said, she was organically sound on the Wednesday.’
Masters said: ‘You didn’t come forward to tell us she had visited you, doctor.’
‘No. I should have done so had I known earlier of her death. I don’t read the local rag, yet. Don’t know enough about the district to be interested. But on Thursday night, in the club, somebody mentioned it. So I turned up at the funeral on Friday—just to show willing, you know. But my information was she’d been poisoned. Nothing to do with me, really.’
‘Nonavom could have poisoned her.’
‘I made sure it hadn’t. I rang the District General on Friday morning. If there’d been the slightest doubt I’d have got in touch. But I’m just starting to build up a private practice round here, and the least breath about a doctor scuppers any ambitions he may have in that direction. So I attended the funeral, and nothing more.’
Masters got to his feet.
‘I’m most grateful for your help, doctor. Sorry we had to call just at lunchtime.’
‘It’s been a pleasure and, I must confess, a bit of a relief to see you. I had a sneaking feeling that I really ought to have got in touch.’
‘Consciences can be hell, can’t they? Goodbye, and thanks once again.’
As he drove back towards Throscum, Hill said: ‘What did he mean—port outwards, starboard homewards?’
‘Posh.’
‘Oh!’
Masters looked across at him. ‘How true it is, I don’t know, but it is said to refer to first-class bookings on ships in the old days. Something to do with which side of the ship faced the sun. I’ve not been able to determine whether the preference was for heat or for shade in the tropics.’
Hill spent the rest of the journey trying to work it out. Masters was thinking that if Dr Thurso had warned Fay Partridge against eating fruit, it was no surprise that the sergeants had found no skins, cores, pips or other signs of fruit in her flat. But if this was so, why had Ernie Syme said she took coffee and fruit on Friday after she recovered from her bout of sickness?
Chapter Seven
Cyrus R. Sprott was sitting in a deckchair on the tiny lawn outside bungalow 42. He was wearing blue-grey Palm-Beach trousers, a white shirt with a bandana cravat, English hand-made shoes with round toes, sun-glasses with heavy side-pieces that ran straight back over the iron-grey hair above the ears, and a hat that Masters, not too well up in this particular piece of apparel, thought must
be a stetson of much smaller capacity than the ten-gallon type. He was thick-set and powerful: the uprolled sleeves showed hairy forearms developed like those of a circuit tennis ace. Masters could imagine him, twenty-five years earlier, thrusting into action like a scrum forward. The second deckchair was empty except for two magazines and a plastic cylinder of frozen cologne. Sprott himself was reading Life magazine.
Masters, stopping by the low white paling, said: ‘Excuse me, Mr Sprott. My name is Masters.’
Sprott was quick to his feet, hand outstretched.
‘Well, now, Mr Masters, it’s good to meet you. Little Cathy told me you’d been asking for me. And though I just can’t imagine what one of the famous detectives from New Scotland Yard would be wanting with me, I’m glad of the opportunity to shake your hand.’
Masters shook hands. Felt the power of the man. Hated the sun-glasses. They hid too much. Robbed him of one of his favourite ways of assessing a man quickly. ‘At the moment, Mr Sprott, I’m not here in my official capacity.’
‘Not here in . . . but I heard you were down here investigating the murder of Mrs Partridge?’
‘I am. What I meant was that I am not approaching you in my official capacity. I wondered if you could give me a little private information.’
‘Surely. Glad to. Step over and have a seat. Emmy’ll be sorry to have missed you, but she had a sun headache and went to lie down.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. If it’s serious there is a doctor close by.’
‘Hell, no. She’s got some analgesic that’s easy to take. One of my company’s own products, Mr Masters. She’ll be right in an hour.’
‘That’s good.’ Sprott cleared the second chair and they both sat down. Masters said: ‘What I was hoping you could tell me was where I could get hold of some of those micro-encapsulated perfume strips. I heard you’d given some to Mrs Partridge and I wondered if you could tell me the name of the firm that makes them or a shop where I could buy some.’
‘Nothing easier, Mr Masters.’
‘If you could give me the name of your London retailers.’
‘I can do better than that. I can give you a sample pack.’
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