In the Teeth of Adversity

by Marian Babson

“There you are,” Endicott Zayle said, a pale echo of his father. “I can take you now. Just pop in here and we’ll get that tooth attended to. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to manage it yesterday, but –”

  I turned around, but there was no one behind me. He was looking at me and he was talking to me. There was no one else around.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “We don’t have to keep up the pretence in front of Gerry. He knows all about it. If you want a council of war, we’ll have one now, but you don’t have to call it by any other name. Gerry’s one of the firm and we don’t keep secrets from him.” It would be damned hard trying to, considering the size of the office flat we shared.

  “Council of war?” Zayle stared at me vaguely. “I don’t know what you –”

  “All right. Forget it.” I was growing progressively more annoyed with him.

  “But I don’t understand –” His gaze wandered past me to Gerry and sharpened abruptly. “What’s that you have there?”

  “It seems to be a feather,” Gerry said. “Your father insisted on giving it to me, but –”

  “Oh, God, not again!” Zayle stepped forward and snatched away the feather, looking at it suspiciously. “It is!” he moaned. “That’s from the fan Adele’s grandmother carried when she was presented at Court. I thought we’d hidden it where he couldn’t find it again. It costs a fortune to have it restored every time. And Adele will be furious.

  “Father!” He charged past us, rushing up the stairs. “Faa-ther!”

  “You know” – Gerry looked after him thoughtfully – “I never thought I’d feel sorry for a dentist, but in his case I may make an exception.”

  “He does seem to have quite a few problems,” I agreed. No wonder he occasionally lost the thread of a conversation. If there was anything in heredity, heaven knew what kind of a memory he’d inherited from his father. The Zayle memory seemed highly selective, at best, and it would not be surprising if he chose to forget everything to do with yesterday. One might think that the continuing absence of his partner might bring it to mind; but one might also consider that, once the initial strain of caring for a double load of patients was past, his path would be considerably smoother.

  “I’ll see you now.” The words were unpleasantly familiar; so was the voice. Once again, they seemed to be directed at me. I turned slowly.

  Inspector Rennolds stood on the stairs – looking straight at me. For a fleeting moment I regretted that I had not seized my opportunity to occupy the dental chair. Then I remembered the state of the recent occupants of both dental chairs and stopped regretting it. What the patients didn’t know wouldn’t bother them, but it was going to be a cold day in hell before Zayle got me into either of those two chairs.

  In fairness, I had to admit that Rennolds didn’t look any more eager to talk to me than I was to talk to him. There was a distinct reluctance – almost a forcing himself to duty – in the way he stood aside to let me enter the room. I was relieved to notice that Gerry was following close on my heels – I didn’t want to be in this alone.

  Rennolds watched unhappily as we settled ourselves on the sofa. It was really too comfortable a room for an interrogation, but evidently, he hadn’t quite enough authority – or evidence – yet to require us all to attend him in his office. With a sigh, he closed the door and came over to sit in front of us.

  “Is Endicott Zayle your client or your dentist?” he began.

  “It’s a sort of two-way arrangement,” I said. “He does our dentistry, and we do a bit of subtle PR for him.”

  “Umm, ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,’ eh?”

  It was an invitation I could resist. After the silence had run on for a while, he tried again, abruptly becoming official. “Were both of you here yesterday?”

  “No, just me.” He’d have that information in his records from the police who had been here yesterday. I took a deep breath and went the rest of the way. “It was an emergency – one of my teeth suddenly started giving me hell. Zayle said to come along and he’d try to fit me in.” That was my story and I was stuck all around it. I was aware of Gerry shifting position uneasily beside me.

  “I see.” Impossible to tell whether the inspector saw everything or just wanted to make it sound as though he did. Yet there seemed to be a trace of sympathy in his tone. “And did he?”

  “Did he what?” It was not a time for volunteering anything – least of all, information.

  “Fit you in?”

  “Actually, no. Uh – by the time he got to me, we’d discovered – I mean, there was a call from the reception desk to say Tyler Meredith wasn’t answering his intercom and he’d patients waiting who were getting restless. We went into his surgery to see what the matter was – and we found him.”

  “So you didn’t actually” – he accented the word nastily – “get any treatment yesterday?”

  “Who could do any work after that? In any case, I was feeling a lot better. You know how it is – as soon as you get into the same building with the dentist, your tooth stops aching. It’s practically a law of nature.”

  “Ummm.” He was noncommittal; they weren’t the laws he was called upon to enforce. “What about the others?”

  “Others?”

  “The other patients.” He was losing his own patience; I could recognize the signs of old. It was a pity I had such an abrasive effect on him. Still, you can’t win ’em all.

  “Oh, yes.” I brightened. “There was the Honourable Edytha Cale-Cunningham, Morgana Fane and her business manager, Sir Geoffrey Palmer – you know, the one they call in for consultations whenever there’s something wrong with any Royal innards.” As Inspector Rennolds grew progressively gloomier, I cheered up. “And also, the Right Honourable Mrs. Kate Halroyd, MP. All in all, a pretty influential crew.”

  “The C.I.D. is above influence,” Rennolds said without putting over any great conviction.

  “Did I say it wasn’t?” I tried out an injured expression. “You asked me who was there.”

  “Just the same,” Gerry weighed in, “I hope you’ve brought your best pair of kid gloves along.”

  “And how are all your teeth?” It had been a mistake to draw Rennolds’s attention to himself. “Aching, too? Or did you just come along to hold your partner’s hand?”

  “Do you know,” Gerry said, “I’m getting sick of all the insinuations around this nut hatch. If it’s not one nut making them, it’s another.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “If you haven’t found out yet, all I can say is ‘Congratulations’ – but you will.”

  I noticed that the sergeant in the corner had tactfully stopped taking notes during this little slanging match, by which I gathered that Rennolds was stepping rather too far outside the official line. It emboldened me to rejoin the battle.

  “In the light of what has happened,” I said, somewhat pompously, “Endicott Zayle has called us in in our official capacity. Quite naturally.”

  “Naturally?” Rennolds’s attention swung back to me. “When a man’s partner dies – under his own roof – in questionable circumstances, he calls the police, he calls the doctor, he calls the undertaker, perhaps he calls the parson. But – his public relations men?”

  And there he had it. I tried to keep a frozen face, not letting him see that the shot had hit home. It had not escaped my attention that, over in the corner, the sergeant had resumed note-taking with renewed zest, as though making up for lost time. I was silently cursing Zayle when Gerry made a stab at an answer.

  “This is the age of information, freely given, freely acquired. Everyone has to think of his public image. Endicott Zayle has a certain standing in the community; he recognizes his responsibility to the public to let them know what’s happening.” It was a good answer, but not good enough.

  “And to put the best face on it?” Rennolds knew he was on to something, but not what. I wondered briefly whether I could change my story at this stage and tell him all abo
ut Morgana Fane and the false alarm that had panicked Zayle and sent him scurrying to Perkins & Tate.

  “Let’s face it” – changing my mind, I tossed in a tentative towel – “the whole family is pretty eccentric.”

  “I’d wondered when we were going to come to something like that.” The sergeant’s transcript would never do full justice to the inspector’s interviews – there was no way of writing in the shades of meaning underlying every phrase. “I may say that I thought Mrs. Zayle a very well-balanced and sensible woman.”

  It hadn’t been Adele I’d been thinking of – at least, not primarily. I was interested in the inspector’s opinion of her, though. It meant she had kept her temper under control while she was talking to him. If he’d ever seen her the way Gerry and I had, neither “well-balanced” nor “sensible” were words that would spring readily to mind.

  “You’re going to tell me,” he prophesied inaccurately, “that a wife can’t testify against her husband. That isn’t so. A wife cannot be forced to give evidence against her husband, but, if she wishes to, she can. Mrs. Zayle wishes to.”

  “Does that ever go down well with a jury, though?” Gerry asked. “Smacks a bit too much of vindictiveness and settling old scores. Sort of thing that leaves a bad taste in the mouth. English juries especially don’t like it.”

  It was another good try, but I thought we were getting a bit too far advanced.

  “Who said anything about juries?” I blithely ignored the fact that the inspector had introduced the subject of testimony. “I’m sure we’ve all noticed that Mrs. Zayle has her own axe to grind.” And after honing a sharp enough edge, the spot she was aiming it at was her husband’s neck. “She couldn’t be considered an unprejudiced witness. Apart from which, she wasn’t even here at the time her – um, fiancé – died. I’d say any contribution she might make would be pretty worthless, all things considered.”

  “We intend to consider everything.” I consoled myself with the thought that he wouldn’t have kept his attention away from me indefinitely. “For instance, Mrs. Zayle tells me that her father-in-law will support all her contentions.”

  I wondered if he would have been so indiscreet if his dislike for me hadn’t triggered him into it. I noticed that the sergeant had stopped taking notes again and his pen was jittering unhappily just above his notebook. Was it an indication that the inspector was way out of line – or was it just a very well-rehearsed double act to knock witnesses off their guard?

  “Try telling me,” Inspector Rennolds said triumphantly, “that General Sir Malcolm Zayle won’t impress a jury!”

  “Oh, he’ll impress them all right,” I admitted. “Tell me,” I probed cautiously, “have you had a talk with the General yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  I hadn’t thought so when he’d spoken with so much confidence.

  “But we’ll be questioning him soon. Mrs. Zayle tells me that he was here all day yesterday. That means he might be helpful at narrowing down the actual time.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he will be,” I said. “He’ll probably put it at either 1914 or 1940.”

  “As late as that?” Automatically, Inspector Rennolds glanced at his watch. “We thought it was around sixteen hundred. Still, the autopsy report will give us a better indication.”

  I didn’t bother to tell him I wasn’t talking in terms of the twenty-four-hour clock. What is life without surprises? He was due for a beauty when he questioned General Sir Malcolm Zayle. It would be a shame to spoil it in advance.

  On the other hand – I discovered a new worry – General Sir Malcolm Zayle actually might make an impressive witness. For all the wrong reasons. His defence of his son could be more damning than his daughter-in-law’s accusations, precisely because he was so certain that his son had done the correct thing and that any right-minded minion of society ought to recognize the fact. I wondered if there were any possible way to yank Sir Malcolm into the proper decade of the twentieth century before he did more damage with that time-warp displacement of his. Perhaps a psychiatrist? Perhaps a good knock on the head? Perhaps a push downstairs?

  Which brought us back to Adele. If she had discovered that she wasn’t Tyler Meredith’s only fiancée, into what revenge might that red-haired temper have led her?

  “By the way,” I said, “have you interviewed the Honourable Edytha yet?”

  “Who?” Over in the corner, the sergeant recorded these seemingly unloaded words with relief. He couldn’t show up with a blank pad when an interview had been indicated.

  “The Honourable Edytha Cale-Cunningham. She was here yesterday. Downstairs, in the waiting room with the others. She was –” Discretion abruptly set in; the valiant could look out for themselves. “She was Tyler Meredith’s patient.” Let her tell him the erstwhile-happy tidings herself. I began to have the strong feeling that I’d said too much already.

  “She’s on the list to be interviewed,” he assured me, with an emphasis that instantly made me doubt it. He’d been having the whole case handed to him on a platter – and come to think of it, Adele would have made an excellent Salome – and he wasn’t too interested in clouding the issue.

  “In the absence of a solicitor” – I decided to drag a few more clouds down to obscure matters – “I would like to protest …” I hesitated there, not being sure quite what I ought to protest, but it was a good line.

  “You don't want me to interview Miss Cale-Cunningham?” Rennolds was beginning to look faintly groggy. So was the sergeant, still struggling to keep up with the turns of the conversation. “You just suggested that I should do so.”

  The telephone began to ring and the sergeant lunged for it, delighted to be presented with a situation he could cope with.

  “I protest” – I went on, decided it was time to make some noises like a public relations person – “your taking the word of a neurotic and unreliable woman who demonstrably hates her husband –” The sergeant put the receiver down on the table and came over to murmur something into the inspector’s ear. Rennolds nodded.

  “I protest your even considering that our client might have had anything to do with – whatever has happened here.”

  “Yes?” Rennolds said. “Why don’t you go paint some banners and have a march? I’ll speak to you again later.” He stood up. “Meanwhile, I have a private call coming through here.”

  “I protest,” I continued as he herded us toward the door, “this harassment of an honest and upright citizen. A man dedicated to the cause of suffering humanity. Wherever you find your criminals, you don’t find them among the humanitarian professional class.”

  “I’ll make a note of that,” he said absently, opening the door and seeing us into the hall.

  “A dentist!” Emboldened more by the thought of getting away from him than by any success I thought I was having, I kept firing parting shots. “A man whose life’s work is relieving pain and –”

  “There’s one thing you might remember.” He paused in closing the door. “Everyone else seems to have forgotten it.”

  “What’s that?” I asked cautiously. I knew I wasn’t going to like the answer, and I didn’t.

  “Just remember” – his lips twitched upward in a grimace that was more a wolfish snarl than a smile – “some people think Crippen was a dentist.”

  Chapter 8

  “As a thought for the day,” Gerry said, moodily regarding the closed door, “that may inspire the inspector, but it doesn’t do a thing for me.”

  “Frankly, it depresses me,” I said. “It was one thing to quietly marshal the possible evidence against the client between ourselves, but it was unnerving to discover how far along the same path the law was racing ahead of us.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gerry said abruptly.

  “The inspector didn’t say we could go,” I reminded him.

  “He didn’t say we couldn’t.” Gerry was ever the optimist.

  “Perhaps we could go back to the waiting room for half an hour or s
o. Out of sight, out of mind. Then if he doesn’t call us back, we can leave and have the excuse that we waited for some time, but had to get back to the office.”

  “Good thinking,” Gerry said. “Let’s get out of sight right now.” Without waiting for my answer, he started downstairs and I plunged after him. I didn’t intend to be found in the hall by myself if the inspector should end his telephone conversation quickly and come looking for us.

  I discovered it was old home week as we walked into the waiting room – and I didn’t like it one little bit. It looked like the gathering of the clans – if you presupposed that there had been some great clan tragedy.

  Yesterday’s cast was now complete, with Mrs. Kate Halroyd, MP, Morgana Fane and her business manager, all sitting in various attitudes of dejection around the waiting room. Even the newcomers – who were, presumably, today’s appointments – seemed infected by the general air of gloom.

  It’s not that anyone expects a dentist’s waiting room to have an air of jollification and general merriment, but this place was as cheerful as a wake. All that was missing was the corpse.

  I immediately wished I hadn’t thought of that.

  Even Gerry seemed subdued. He followed me to an unoccupied corner and sat down without attempting to disperse any sweetness and light. A sure sign – when there were celebrities present – that he had subconsciously tested the emotional temperature of the water and decided that it was better to imitate an invisible jellyfish rather than a large frog in a small pond. He didn’t often come to that conclusion. It added to my uneasiness.

  When he picked up a three-year-old copy of Country Life and immersed himself in it, my worst fears were realized. To all intents and purposes, he was no longer with us and – with his unfailing sense of occasion – that meant all hell was ready to break loose.

  I picked up a rather later issue of Punch and tried to follow his example, but was doomed before I started. I had carelessly let my gaze cross that of Mrs. Kate Halroyd. She leaned forward and fixed me with an accusing eye.

  “You were here yesterday,” she breathed.