Murder and Malpractice

by Mairi Chong

  Before long, the aforementioned Jennifer appeared, all smiles and politely batting away Cathy’s apologies at being so late. Together they walked through the hall to a further set of stairs at the back of the house.

  ‘And you’re a doctor yourself, the matron said?’ Jennifer asked, walking ahead now.

  ‘That’s right,’ Cathy said, following her up the stairs. ‘I work at the practice that Dr Clark used to be a partner with, and thought I’d come and meet him. Some of the patients still speak very fondly of him.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Jennifer said, turning on the landing. ‘He doesn’t get many visitors, so he was delighted to hear someone was coming today. He’s quite a character as you’ll see. Keeps us all on our toes.’

  ‘So mentally, he’s still quite …?’

  ‘He’s brighter than most of the staff. Nothing wrong with his brain at all. That’s the shame of it, I suppose. He does get so frustrated at times. His body’s not holding up so well now,’ she said in explanation.

  Cathy didn’t want to ask but was told anyway.

  ‘Prostate problems and osteoarthritis,’ the other woman said. ‘He’s had a bad chest infection recently too, so he might get a bit out of breath talking.’

  Having divulged this piece of information, Jennifer then turned and they headed along a wide, carpeted corridor. There were doors on either side of the passageway. Cathy glanced sideways as they went. Each door displayed the name of its resident. ‘Alice Booth’s’ door was slightly ajar and Cathy could see that the lady was sitting by the window. Beside her was a birdcage, and something chirruped from within.

  ‘Pets are allowed then?’ Cathy asked the back of Jennifer’s head.

  ‘Oh, the budgie? Yes, we encourage them to have pets actually, within reason of course. We have a cat going around somewhere downstairs and a few others have birds in their rooms. No dogs though. The staff end up having to do too much.’

  They finally arrived at the door marked ‘Dr Reginald Clark.’

  Jennifer knocked. ‘Dr Clark can we come in?’ she asked, and not waiting for an answer, she opened it.

  He was seated at a writing bureau and rose slowly to come and greet her, completely ignoring Jennifer. His outstretched hand was cold and all knuckles, but his grasp was firm, and he met her with a steady gaze. His blue eyes, clouded by cataracts, hinted at a touch of humour behind the glasses. Although stooping with osteoarthritis of his spine, he still had an air of formality and correctness. The immediate impression he gave was that of confidence. She wondered if it had always been so, or if it was something that had developed with age.

  ‘You come from my old practice; I believe, Doctor?’ He turned to Jennifer who stood in the doorway and gestured for her to go.

  Cathy turned to thank the woman who had brought her to the room, but she was already leaving.

  ‘Nurses!’ the old man said with feeling. ‘Like to boss you around but some have hardly a qualification, and assume you know nothing. Come and sit down so I can look at you better. My eyes are going. Cataracts in both but an anaesthetist wouldn’t touch me because of my neck, so I just make do with the glasses and live in a cloudy haze.’

  Cathy sat down in a matching leather chair. The room was flooded with sunlight and she could see that he had an excellent view from his desk of the garden and drive leading up to the house. He followed her gaze.

  ‘It does me fine. I tolerate the staff as best I can. I have my work to keep me busy and privacy from the rest of them in here. They used to try and get me down for all the social gatherings but they don’t bother anymore,’ he said, settling himself now in his own chair.

  ‘What are you working on?’ Cathy asked, leaning to look at the writing desk, piled high with ancient-looking medical textbooks. She could barely read the scrawl of writing on the A4 page. It looked like a spider had dipped in the ink and had run across it.

  ‘Something and nothing,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s an article for the British Journal of the History of Science on phrenology. I have done a few for them over the years and have been researching this small lead for a number of months.’ He smiled at her obvious surprise. ‘I might be eighty,’ he said, ‘but no signs of dementia as yet. Thank God.’

  Cathy laughed nervously. ‘I’m glad you agreed to see me today,’ she said, knowing that what she was going to ask would be awkward at the very least. ‘You know, I suppose, that I’m the newest partner at the practice. I’ve been there for four years now?’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ the old man said ‘I get the local paper every week and I saw the announcement. Dr Longmuir’s told me a little about you when he’s visited in the past. It’s been a while, of course. He’s a busy man. I don’t expect him to come often.’

  ‘I had hoped that he might still be in contact with you,’ Cathy said, ‘I assume if you get the local paper, that you’ve heard about the death of Dr Hope?’

  ‘Suicide? Yes. I’m afraid I had read about it. All the staff were gossiping about it too. Not that it’s any of their concern.’

  ‘You say suicide,’ Cathy said slowly, ‘but the police don’t think it was. They think that Dr Hope may have been poisoned deliberately.’

  The old man didn’t appear to be shocked but merely raised his white eyebrows and shook his head.

  Cathy continued. ‘I’m sorry to say that the police have been concentrating their efforts on Dr Longmuir.’

  Still, the elderly man showed no sign of surprise.

  ‘The police have been asking questions about his wife and how she died.’

  He sighed and shook his head once more. Cathy heard his chest wheeze and tinkle as he exhaled.

  ‘I know,’ Cathy said in response. ‘But I was only at the practice for a few months when Maureen passed away, and I wondered if you could shed some light on the matter. I want to clear James’s name more than anyone.’

  Eventually, he spoke, and when he did, his voice had a distant quality. ‘Maureen had an aggressive ovarian carcinoma,’ he said. ‘It was a grade four when she was diagnosed. Terrible. She was offered palliative radiotherapy but declined it, I believe. Dr Longmuir and she agreed that it would impede her quality of life being driven back and forward to the hospital when it would only prolong things by a few months at the most.’

  ‘I see,’ Cathy said. ‘And Dr Longmuir nursed her at home, I believe? Presumably, she was on a syringe-driver for analgesia nearing the end?’

  ‘Yes. It was over very quickly, and she died with her husband and children around her.’

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ Cathy went on, knowing that she was possibly going to offend the man by asking further. ‘I’m sorry to ask this,’ she said, ‘but a suggestion was made to me, and it may well be idle gossip, but a vial of diamorphine went missing around the time of her death. I just wondered …’

  Dr Clark turned and looked at her. His eyes, if it was possible, seemed to fog over even more.

  ‘Dr Moreland,’ he said heavily. ‘What is it that you want me to say?’

  Cathy uncrossed her legs and leaned in towards the man. ‘I know that Dr Longmuir still holds you in very high regard,’ she said with feeling. ‘He speaks of you and Dr Frobisher often, as do many of our patients. I don’t know James as well as I should do having worked with him for four years, but he is a potential murder suspect now. I need to know if he was capable. I have just lost one partner and I don’t want to lose another one.’

  ‘You want to know if he assisted in Maureen’s death, I take it?’ the man asked after a long pause.

  Cathy didn’t speak and the old doctor’s eyes seemed to somehow brighten.

  ‘May I ask, Dr Moreland, how many years you have yourself been a GP?’

  ‘I qualified in 2001 and did my house jobs and then went straight in. Nearly ten years now. Four as a partner at this practice,’ Cathy said.

  He shook his head and again turned his gaze out of the window. ‘Can you tell me,’ he went on, ‘in those ten years of practice if you have ever
assisted a death?’

  Cathy didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Let me put it another way, then,’ he went on. ‘Can you tell me, hand on heart, that you haven’t helped someone nearing the end of their life? Maybe not intentionally, but might you have known that by increasing the pain-relief that you had been using to ease their discomfort, you might also possibly compromise their breathing?’

  Cathy met his gaze but did not need to answer.

  30

  Fraser looked unhappily out of his office window. He had come in to work really to avoid suspicion, but he knew that it was hypocrisy, given that he was unable to settle to anything. Since Dr Hope’s death, he had been all but useless to the practice in his capacity as in-house pharmacist. It seemed that the police were concentrating all their efforts in quite the wrong direction. He had heard that Dr Longmuir had been asked into the police station for questioning. It was he who had carried down the mug Fraser had poisoned to Dr Hope that day. Goodness knows why the man had made the coffee in that ugly, thermal mug. If only he had used one of the normal ones. Fraser couldn’t comprehend how the thing had happened.

  He had turned the dreadful chain of events over and over in his mind. He thought with despair of the minor incidents that must have led up to the calamity. Jackson calling in sick that morning, Dr Longmuir making the coffee that day and taking it down instead of one of the receptionists. If only Julie or Michelle had made the coffee, the poisoned mug might still have been sitting unused in the kitchen. Fraser wondered how different it might have been. If the whole thing hadn’t happened, how might he have felt on returning that morning to find that Jackson hadn’t come in at all and the tragedy hadn’t taken place? He had barely concentrated during the asthma meeting for worrying about how he should react on hearing the news of Jackson’s death returning to the practice. Fraser considered if after further thought, he might have run upstairs and washed the mug out, abandoning any plans of murder. Had it been such a good idea in the first place really? Fraser certainly doubted it now. All in all, he had suffered a dreadful run of misfortune.

  Although the past few days had been filled with abject terror for Fraser, he clung onto one small hope: that the police, with no evidence to charge Dr Longmuir, would abandon this line of inquiry. With this optimism though, came the inevitable question of who they might turn their attentions to next. Fraser of course, prayed it would not be him. True enough, he and Dr Hope hadn’t got on particularly well, but towards the end, they had begun collaborating to improve the cardiovascular disease register and things had been more settled. Of course, Fraser had been out of the building when the incident occurred, so he hoped that this might protect him to some degree also.

  Who might the police focus on next though? Fraser had already looked around the practice and had begun to size people up as having had motives to kill Dr Hope. It seemed that just about all of them did, as the man, despite apparently having been a respected and liked clinician, was undoubtedly rude and abrasive with his staff. Fraser had started to study with interest, the rest of the team’s reactions to the tragedy. Brenda had been quite off-kilter. Fraser had never seen the woman in such disorder. He knew that Dr Hope had caused the practice manager a good deal of grief while he was alive, perhaps more than most given the demands he made upon her, but certainly his death had benefited Brenda little. She was, after all, a full-time doctor down and the last time Fraser had seen her, she was close to tears trying to pin down a locum.

  Fraser then moved on to the receptionists. Neither Julie or Michelle, he decided, despite disliking the doctor, and seemingly much enjoying the gossip and intrigue of a real-life drama, had any real motive, so he thought that they might well escape police interest.

  Fraser considered the remaining doctors. Linda, the long-term locum, was a little disorganised and careless, he had found. He knew that she disliked Dr Hope and apparently, she had been vocal about this in conversation before the man had died. If hearsay was to be believed, she had complained to Brenda that she found his manner intimidating. This had since been relayed to him by Michelle, over coffee one morning. Dr Moreland was quite a different matter. Fraser still hadn’t quite worked her out. He had heard that she had been unwell, and reading between the lines, it seemed that she had had some sort of a nervous breakdown recently. He got the impression that the other GPs had been trying to protect her. He found himself rather drawn to Dr Moreland. She had a fragility that the others did not and of all the doctors, he felt that if he had a problem, he might go to her first. She had spoken about setting up a methadone prescribing clinic with him. He wondered if she would have the mental strength to deal with such individuals and he knew that Dr Longmuir and Dr Hope hadn’t been keen. The police surely wouldn’t suspect her though. He certainly hoped not.

  The nurses though, were a different matter. Irene might easily be crossed off. She hadn’t a bad word to say about anyone and Fraser found himself smiling when he thought of how the elderly nurse had pulled the team together, insisting on bringing in traybakes to cheer the staff up. No, Irene was unquestionably safe. What of Tracy then? Dr Hope’s girlfriend and possible inheritor of his fortune. Having witnessed the girl’s callous flirtations first-hand, and then suffered the repercussions of her insinuations later, he thought that she might well warrant a police investigation.

  Fraser closed the computer file that he had been looking at and glancing at the clock, decided to go upstairs. It was late afternoon and although he didn’t want a hot drink, he needed to get out of his room. He hated his own company and even the chatter of the receptionists was preferable to sitting alone with his thoughts. Gradually, as he walked through reception and along the corridor, passing Dr Hope’s room, and turning his head in aversion, he felt his panic begin to lessen. It was alright. He would be fine. Perhaps in some ways, he had done the practice a favour given that Dr Hope was so universally disliked. Maybe the police would give the thing up. Put it down as suicide. Dr Hope might have had some hidden financial worries, and then there was his divorce settlement. Maybe the police would think that this was reason enough to end his own life. He continued to the bottom of the stairwell and climbed the steps. Yes. Certainly, there was no call for panic just yet. He had behaved naturally and of course, there was the alibi.

  With the thought of his alibi, Fraser’s confidence returned. The police had taken away the coffee granules for analysis. They were clueless as to the real route of ingestion of poison. And then, Fraser for the first time considered the mug and what had happened to it. He assumed that it must have been washed up by Dr Hope in his own room and then taken for analysis by the police. Had they found any trace of poison within? He assumed that they had checked it for fingerprints also, but having been sat in the communal kitchen for days, it seemed likely that the thing might have picked up a good number of innocuous prints. His own would be amongst them. That did not bother him in the least. He wasn’t criminally minded, but he knew that had he worn gloves, the patches of no-prints might well have led to more questions. Better to plead that they had all used the damn thermal thing and be done with it.

  Fraser found himself now running up the stairs. He was safe for surely the police might have asked to speak to him further if he was truly a suspect. Hopefully, Tracy might get a good grilling at some point. Yes. She deserved to be shaken up at least.

  He pushed the heavy door to the room and entered. The kitchen area was around the corner and at first, he thought he was alone. He moved rapidly with a jauntiness to his step but to his shock, came face to face with the last person he expected to see.

  A slow smile crept across Jackson’s face. ‘In a hurry, Fraser? Finally, a chance for a good catch up.’

  Fraser stood stock-still and watched as Jackson shifted casually around the kitchen. In his hand, he held the thermal mug. Fraser couldn’t take his eyes off the thing. How could Jackson possibly have it? Surely the police must have taken it away?

  ‘I thought they’d told you not to come b
ack,’ Fraser finally said. ‘You’ve no supervisor.’ All the while, his eyes didn’t leave the cup.

  Jackson laughed. ‘Is that what you thought, Fraser? Or rather hoped. No, well I’m ever so keen,’ Jackson said as he walked across the room towards Fraser. ‘I gave Brenda a call the other day and asked if I could be of any help. She was falling over herself to take me back. I’m a qualified doctor, you see? I can deal with the day-to-day dross that these simpletons see without thinking. As long as the beautiful Dr Moreland keeps an eye on what I’m up to, it’s fine. Nice set-up too, no? I knew I’d like general practice and what a treat to work amongst old friends. I’ve even been thinking about going the whole hog and completing my training here. Lovely, lonesome Tracy looks to be in need of some cheer, and I heard that Dr Moreland was looking for a hand setting up a methadone clinic. Sounds fun, don’t you think?’

  Fraser shook his head.

  ‘No?’ Jackson laughed. ‘I thought it was right up your street, Fraser. From what I recall, you’re very sympathetic to the needs of drug takers.’

  Fraser flashed him a look of anger, which only caused Jackson to laugh.

  ‘If looks could kill, eh Fraser? Forgive me for being melodramatic, but given that I was meant to be consulting on the day that Dr Hope was killed, I find myself a little twitchy. If the coffee that Dr Hope received had been meant for me … Well, anyway, cheers.’

  Jackson raised the mug to his lips and Fraser watched in horror. He didn’t understand. Had there been two mugs, both filled with poison? But before the man could take a sip, Fraser darted forward and without thinking, he snatched the mug from Jackson, downing the hot, bitter liquid himself.

  31

  Tracy had it seemed, settled into a new role. Cathy thought that in many ways the situation could not have been better for the young nurse, who looked incredibly comfortable now as the grieving widow. Cathy had overheard the suggestion that Tracy might be expected to inherit at least some of her lover’s fortune. She did not know if there was any truth in this rumour, but one thing that had struck her as distinctly odd, was the fact that Tracy had apparently moved into Dr Hope’s farmhouse since her brief time at Irene’s, rather than returning to her own flat. Michelle had been particularly vocal on the matter, behind the nurse’s back of course. It could not have been a more scandalous arrangement in many of the patients’ eyes either. The only thing Cathy could do was remain tight-lipped. It wasn’t any of her business and as long as Tracy continued to arrive for work and attend to her patients with care and respect, there was nothing much else to be done.