“No, don’t thank me, Mr Masters. You had a reason for asking that question—no, don’t tell me what it was, otherwise you will influence the second examination I am going to give them as soon as I leave here.”
“I was not suggesting you have not done a thorough job, Professor. I—and all my colleagues—are more than happy with what you’ve done for us.”
“So far, you mean.”
“Steady, Prof,” said Green. “His Nibs here gets strange ideas at times. That doesn’t mean that everybody else has fallen short in some way.”
Haywood laughed. “I’ve not taken any offence, Mr Green. But you would be a crowd of mugs if you hadn’t listened to what I had to say. By the same token, I’d be a mug not to pay attention to ideas, however strange, that emanate from your side of the fence.”
“I’m glad of that. Had the boyo got anything in his pockets to interest us?”
“Ah! That’s one of the things I wanted to mention to you as officers in charge of the case. Boyce’s pockets were emptied by Sergeant Watson when the lad was put in the cell. The contents have not been released to me yet.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because I haven’t so far asked for them, and I suppose Sergeant Watson was in too much of a flap to send them with the body to the mortuary. Don’t worry. The order of things has gone a bit astray. Usually I get the body and everything attached to it all at once. Fortunately those who die in police cells—where, naturally, they have been stripped of most possessions—are enough of a rarity to get the drill a bit fouled up.”
Masters turned to Betty Prior. “Is Sergeant Watson still on duty?”
“No, Chief, he was due off at four.”
“Please find Mr Snell and tell him that Professor Haywood would like to examine the contents of Boyce’s pockets.”
“Bring them down here, Chief?”
“No, we’ll come up.”
After the girl had gone, Masters turned to Reed. “I’d like you and Berger to start making enquiries about thefts from chemists’ shops.”
“Recently, Chief?”
“During the last six months. Concentrate in this area. Regional H.Q. should be able to help you. I want to know when, how, what and who.”
“Particularly if any of this sodium aurothiomalate has gone missing?”
“Or anything like it containing gold.”
As Masters, Green and Haywood got to their feet, the professor said: “You know, Masters, I don’t think your average thief would break in and pinch those ampoules. What I mean is, they are not the sort of drugs which attract thieves.”
“Unless the person who broke in knew exactly what he was after,” said Green. “A knowledgeable bastard.”
“That would presuppose,” countered Haywood, “that this killing was premeditated and planned with a great degree of care over a period of time. I find it difficult to believe that anybody would go to such trouble to kill a youth—a bit of a yob of a youth—but still a youth and, I suppose, a relatively harmless one who, in the scheme of things, was a comparatively unimportant hunk of humanity. Who would go to the trouble of robbing a chemist’s shop for toxic substances when a clout with an iron bar would have done the job just as effectively?”
“Quite right, Professor,” said Masters. “My idea exactly. But . . .”
“But what?”
“I asked you where this gold salt could be obtained. You mentioned three sources. A chemist’s shop, a doctor’s surgery or the home of somebody who has been given a prescription.”
“I should have added a hospital pharmacy, a drug manufacturer’s store or a drug wholesaler’s stock.”
Masters acknowledged these additions and said: “We could also consider theft during transit from factory to wholesaler or from wholesaler to retailer.”
“That, of course. It is amazing how many alternatives there are when one comes to count them up.”
“And all must be considered or eliminated. The first I have discarded is that which presupposes that a rheumatoid arthritic patient was the source. I cannot believe that a drug which is used so sparingly and so cautiously would be prescribed and supplied in an amount approaching that which you found in Boyce’s body. You told us that the maximum dose for a month for one person would be fifty milligrams and that only rarely. Yet you found two thousand milligrams in Boyce’s body—a supply sufficient for forty months at top whack. What doctor would ever write a prescription for that much for one person to keep in reserve against monthly jabs?”
Haywood scratched his head in perplexity. “It does sound so unlikely as to be not worth considering,” he admitted.
“How many family doctors would carry that much on their premises?”
“Only a dispensing doctor would stock any at all.”
“And how many dispensing doctors are there these days?”
“About ten per cent.”
“One in ten and all in rural areas, I believe?”
“That’s right. Far away from a High Street chemist.”
“And you suggest that such doctors would not have two thousand milligrams of sodium aurothiomalate?”
“Highly unlikely. It is too expensive. No G.P. would tie up so much money in slow moving stock. Besides, gold is, as I told you, light-sensitive, and so it is an even guess that its shelf life is relatively limited—compared with many other drugs, that is.”
“So we have also eliminated doctors. Now, what about hospital dispensaries?”
“Ah! There the picture could be very different. For one thing, they tend to buy in bulk, to save money. In fact, in lots of areas, several hospitals will join together to do contract buying on more favourable terms.”
“Professor, nobody has a greater admiration for the medical profession than I have. And my regard extends to hospitals. All my experience and observation of them at many a tricky moment tells me that we’re damned lucky to have such generally fine institutions. But having said that, I must confess that I have often had cause to criticise what I will call the bureaucratic side of hospitals. In other words, I would never think of criticising their medical expertise or their immediate care of patients, but I have personally encountered small—but nevertheless irritating—examples of administrative crassness.”
“So have I,” rumbled Green. “Doris—my missus—had to attend an afternoon clinic. Her appointment was for three o’clock. So were half a dozen other people’s—all to see the same man. I was with her, of course, and I wasn’t best pleased at being wheeled into the presence at nearly half past five.
“However, that wasn’t what riled me. The doctor told Doris to attend the path lab two days later—for a blood test—and to arrange to see him again a fortnight later.
“So far, so good. I wasn’t going to criticise a hard-working consultant physician who’d restored my missus to full health and had taken a load of trouble over doing it. If his consultations ran on a bit overtime, that was fine by me. He was doing a good job. But when we got downstairs to the desk where we had to make the appointment, we found nobody on duty. They’d packed up and gone home. Now, in the police, we’d make sure that as long as the clinics were open and going strong, that desk would be manned.
“But that wasn’t all. The doctor had given us the path lab card. The place opened at half past eight in the morning. I got Doris there in such good time, we were first. A nice little lass in the office took our card, and recorded the details. Then other people started trooping in. At nine the technicians started work. But was Doris called first? Not on your N.H.S.! The nice little lass had piled up the cards as she got them, and the lab assistants were taking them off the top. It was a case of first come, last served, and Doris had eaten nothing nor taken a drink—not even water—since six the night before—as instructed. It took me some time to realise what had happened. I wanted to play merry hell, but Doris didn’t want me to—for her sake. So I made a mild little protest which was ignored not because it was invalid, but because the nice little lass said that everybody was always
complaining about everything and if I didn’t like it I could go to another hospital.”
“I think I know what you are going to say,” said Haywood. “That in institutions where there are such obvious and easily remedied loopholes in administration as the ones you have encountered yourselves, you must consider the possibility of there being other areas of slackness—like the security of dispensaries and watertight accountability of drugs.”
“Not necessarily that,” said Masters. “The pharmacists are professional men and know their jobs, just as do the doctors and nurses on the wards. But hospitals are big places and dispensaries are probably overworked. I don’t think that in many of them the pharmacist delivers drugs himself to each ward. There are messengers of one sort or another who leave loaded trolleys in corridors while they carry supplies from them into wards. Maybe it’s against the rules, but it happens, particularly with drugs which are not scheduled as dangerous poisons.”
“So?”
“There were two thousand milligrams in Boyce’s body. To me, that sounds like a pharmacist’s stock or a hospital rheumatology department’s supply.” Masters got to his feet.
As they moved out to find Betty Prior and Boyce’s belongings, Haywood asked: “So you’ve eliminated everybody except those two sources?”
“Not eliminated completely. But shall we say I have chosen to concentrate on them for the moment?”
Betty and Snell were waiting for them. The contents of Boyce’s pockets were spread on the typist’s table behind the desk.
“I can see why Watson didn’t bother to let me have them,” said Haywood. “There isn’t even a handkerchief.”
“But there is this,” said Masters, picking up the white plastic stopper and handing it to Haywood.
“And what would you expect me to do with that?”
“Nothing, Professor.”
“You mean it is likely to tell you more than it is me.”
Masters took the stopper from him. It was made of polythene—a hollow cylinder with three lateral ridges to give it the grip of a conventional cork, and a round disc top, three-sixteenths of an inch thick and milled to make removal from a bottle easier.
“Why would a youth keep a cheap article like that? It has a certain amount of aesthetic appeal, I suppose, and I won’t suggest that because Boyce was a loutish youth he had no appreciation of form or materials. In fact, something of this sort must have caused him to keep the stopper. But as with all such little peccadilloes, he would soon have tired of so useless an article. And that is what this stopper says to me. He came across it only a matter of hours before his death, otherwise he would have rid himself of it, because it really is a lumpy sort of article to carry in the rather skimpy pockets of skin-tight jeans.”
Green took out a crumpled packet of cigarettes and helped himself. “It’s an amateur wine-maker’s bung, isn’t it?” he asked as he struck a match.
“Is it? Exclusively, I mean?” asked Haywood.
Snell said, “I’d say it was, sir. Not many professional bottlers would use that. They’ve started to use plastic tops to ordinary corks in cheaper wines, but I’ve never seen an all-polythene closure on any wine I’ve bought.”
“I think Mr Snell is right,” said Masters. “I know very little about wine making, but I do happen to know that for the insertion of an ordinary cork, a corking gun is needed. I would have thought that very few amateur wine-makers would go to the expense of buying items of equipment like corking guns when stoppers like this are available. The advantages are obvious. They can be inserted by hand; I imagine they can be sterilised to be used more than once; and my guess is that individually they couldn’t be all that much dearer than corks.”
“It all adds up,” said Green.
“What does?” asked Snell.
Masters turned to the local man. “Your people thought Boyce was drunk when they brought him in, despite subsequent assertions that he had drunk very little beer. The truth—as found by Professor Haywood—is that Boyce had drunk a full bottle of white wine—presumably before his visit to the pub to top up with beer.”
“I’m pleased to know that, sir.”
“I’m sure you are. What we were in fact discussing was what sort of wine was it, and where did Boyce get it. The professor suggested cheap plonk. We have been speculating on whether it could have been home-made white wine. The finding of the stopper seems to support our belief that it was of the home-made variety.”
“I’d go along with that,” said Snell, “without hearing the pros and cons. A chap like Boyce wouldn’t buy wine from an off-licence. The only time he would drink it would be if he could knock it off—from some house he’d broken into.”
“Right, lad,” agreed Green.
“Well,” said Haywood, “I must be going. It’s been a pleasure meeting you and your merry men, Masters. I hope we’ll bump into each other again before you leave.”
“I’m sure we shall. Thank you very much for coming and talking to us. Many in your line of business are content with providing just a written report.”
Haywood grinned. “Strictly speaking, remember, my written report is the coroner’s property. You know by law he had to come and view the body before I started the autopsy and he was careful to remind me that copies were not to be given to anyone else without his permission. He fully intends you to have one, of course, but I thought that in the circumstances you shouldn’t be expected to work blind. I’ve done as he said, but there is nothing to prevent me coming to talk to you.”
“As I said, we appreciate it.”
“I’ve enjoyed talking to you. Cheerio.”
After the professor had gone, Masters turned to Green. “I think I would like to go back to the hotel for a bath. That recreation room is pretty sticky in weather like this.”
“I shall have a bath, too,” said Green. “I wonder if the barman will mind providing me with a large, iced drink.”
“For before or after the bath?” asked Berger.
“Before, after and with,” answered Green.
*
Masters and Green met by arrangement, in the hotel bar, at seven o’clock.
Reed was there. “No thefts from retail pharmacies where gold salts were lifted, Chief. No wholesalers either. Regional H.Q. has had no reports of any sort from hospital pharmacies for years. If there are any losses, they are either covered up or ignored.”
“Thank you. So now what are we left with?”
“Quite a lot of good drinking time before dinner,” said Green.
“You’ve already had one before and one in your bath,” accused Berger.
“True, lad, but they were only to whet—or wet—my appetite in preparation for the dirty great pint you’re about to buy me.”
“Buy your own. It’s not my round.”
“I’ve already bought a round.”
“For yourself.”
“I was the only one there because I usually bath alone. But it still constitutes a round.”
“Allow me,” said Masters, handing Reed a note. “Make them all long and cold, please.”
Green sat down in one of the chairs at the window table. “George,” he said, “while Haywood was speaking, I could almost see your old mind linking rheumatoid arthritis with Miss Foulger, and home-made wine with Miss Foulger, and Boyce with Miss Foulger, and a mysterious break-in connected with wine belonging to Miss Foulger . . .”
“You were obviously doing the same.”
Green grimaced. “It stuck out a mile.”
“But?”
“Lots of buts, chum. Too much poison for one. We don’t know whether she has ever had gold treatment for another. We have nothing to connect her with Boyce except the chance meeting in court, for a third.”
“We’re swinging about a bit, Chief,” said Berger. “We were looking at the tramp first, now we’re looking at the magistrate.”
“Wrong as usual, lad. We were just saying we weren’t looking at the magistrate.”
“So w
ho are we looking at?”
“Not who, lad. What!” said Green appreciatively as Reed put a foaming glass of cold beer in front of him.
“You mean all you’re interested in is a pint of wallop.”
“Not at all.” Green took a deep, noisy gulp, set the tankard down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Bonanza,” he added.
“What the devil are you talking about now?”
“Eldorado, Yukon, gold-rush!”
“You mean we are seeking gold? We know that much.”
“Then why ask, lad?”
“Because we were talking about people.”
“You were. You’ll notice His Nibs isn’t saying much. And why? Because he’s cross. As cross as two sticks.”
“The Chief? Angry?”
“Of course he is. We’ve spent today pottering, because we didn’t know what killed Boyce.”
“We did know. Poison.”
“But not which poison, so we couldn’t go looking for it. As I said we’ve spent today pottering, and His Nibs doesn’t take kindly to that. He is of the opinion that Haywood should have had the answer last night.”
“Are you, Chief?”
“Most assuredly,” said Masters. “If you were to ask him, Haywood would say that it took him a long time to find and then to blame gold for Boyce’s death. But even he admits that so long a delay is not attributable to the fact that the presence of gold was hard to confirm but to the fact that it was unexpected. In other words, he didn’t work from a knowledge of Boyce’s physical reaction to the poison, but to a knowledge of the frequency of use of the more common poisons.”
“How do you mean, Chief?”
“He did a blood test straight away. We know that, because he was able, yesterday afternoon, to inform the Chief Constable that Boyce had died from a massive shortage of blood platelets.”
“Thrombocytopenia?”
“Yes. I know there are a good few substances which cause blood disorders, and of these, gold is one of the biggest culprits. But because he could not envisage gold being used for this purpose, he pushed it aside and tested for everything else before he turned to it. In other words, it should have been high on the list, not last.”
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