by Colin Watson
Chapter Nine
The door of Dr Meadow’s house was opened by a girl of about eighteen who wore upon her head something white and lacy. Purbright’s first thought was that the girl was a patient, visiting the doctor in his off-hours, and that the white object was a lightweight bandage of some kind. But would a patient say “Good morning, sir” and just stand there?
He realized with something of a shock that the bandage was in fact what used to be called a ‘maid’s cap’ (he had last seen one on a café waitress in Bournemouth in 1949) and that the girl was a domestic servant.
“Is the doctor at home?”
“I’ll just go and see, sir.”
“But don’t you know?” (The house couldn’t be all that big.)
She reddened and he was sorry to have embarrassed her.
“I’ll see, sir,” she said again.
After a while, he heard someone cry “Yes?” It sounded impatient, hostile. From a doorway down the hall the face of Mrs Meadow looked out. She kept the rest of herself out of view. (Bad payer, thought Purbright.)
He called to her, genially. “Good morning, Mrs Meadow.”
No sign of recognition. “Yes? What is it you want? Who are you?”
He wanted very much to bellow: I am a DEBT COLLECTOR, madam! but restrained himself.
“We have met, Mrs Meadow. I am (up, irresistibly, went his voice, after all) A POLICE INSPECTOR. Purbright is my name.”
On the announcement of his dreadful vocation, at a pitch that might just have reached the nearest neighbours, Mrs Meadow emerged like a flushed-out stoat and hastened to the front door.
“All right, what is it you want?”
“I wish to speak to your husband. Is he available?”
“Couldn’t you have seen him at the surgery? It is not convenient for him to be disturbed at home.”
“I am not here for a consultation, Mrs Meadow. Not as a patient, anyway. If the doctor would prefer to come and see me, I dare say it could be arranged.”
Mrs Meadow was looking very annoyed indeed, yet curiously impotent, as if at a loss to know how to keep in his place someone with whom there was no financial relationship.
“Perhaps you had better come in. I’ll see if he can spare a minute.”
She stepped back and he came in past her. She shut the door and walked away up the hall.
Invited neither to follow nor to wait in any of the other rooms, Purbright stood patiently and looked around.
He saw a heavy mahogany coat-stand, with mirror and two brushes and a desk-like compartment, presumably for gloves. The hat pegs were antelope horns. No hats hung there; no coats either. The whole affair was kept scrupulously polished, though.
Set against the opposite wall was a semi-circular table. Three letters lay on it. A small tray. Silver?—no, plate, but a good one. For bearing cards, no doubt. A gentleman to see you, sir... Oh, and a gong! Heavens, a nine-inch brass gong, complete with a wash-leather striker, on its own little stand. Sid would love that.
He looked at the pictures. There were a dozen or more, set in a straight line at eye level. The subjects were random: a water-mill, the Haymarket Theatre in 1905, a school tennis group, Degas ballet girls. Yet the frames were uniform. Mrs Meadow’s arrangement, no doubt.
“Inspector! You mustn’t stand around like that. Why haven’t you made yourself comfortable?”
Meadow was twenty or thirty feet away, but his voice filled the hall. He was wearing a suit of oatmeal-coloured tweed. He looked much taller than when Purbright had seen him last, longer in the leg and arm. His face was pinker, his manner more boomingly genial. Purbright thought perhaps he had been alarmed by his wife’s rudeness and was trying to make amends.
A door was being thrust inward. “Come along in, there’s a good chap.”
The room was less spacious than that in which the inspector had seen Brenda Sweeting, but more richly decorated. A Regency couch and four matching chairs were spaced in a precise pattern, like a group in a furniture museum. Their upholstery, a brocade striped in gold and pale blue, was of brochure brightness. The walls were covered in what looked like chamois suede, embossed with a lozenge motif. Stark white moulding encompassed a ceiling of rose-tinted grey. The central chandelier was a cascade of crystal prisms and drops, frozen on golden wires. A small rosewood writing table stood before the tall window. This was fashioned in a single bow of glass, through which Purbright saw smooth lawn and the blue, aseptic gleam of a swimming pool beyond.
Meadow indicated a chair facing the window. Purbright sat. The chair’s padding was much harder than he had expected. Meadow lowered himself carefully upon the couch and leaned forward, clasping his hands, ready to be consulted.
“I am a good deal bothered,” the inspector began, “by a problem which I am coming to think might be as much in your province as in mine. You know what I am talking about, I suppose?”
“I would rather you were more specific. Guesswork is not good medicine.”
“Very well, doctor. Let us start with the young girl who was attacked in the road outside here, although that was not really the beginning—there were earlier cases of a similar kind. You do know that there have been several such attacks. Almost an epidemic, in fact.”
Meadow nodded pleasantly. “So I understand.”
“These cases have certain common features. Let me tell you what they are. Firstly, the attacker invariably is described as elderly. Secondly, he seems to be of middle-class background. What little he has been heard to say suggests that he is not uneducated or inarticulate. Also he dresses fairly soberly and is likely to own a car.
“Thirdly—and this is where we enter your field, doctor—the man has a quite extraordinary propensity for losing his sense of balance. Every witness has remarked on the way he runs. ‘Sideways’ is how they all describe it.”
Meadow shrugged. “Inner ear trouble,” he said. “Not uncommon.”
Purbright regarded him for a moment.
“At the inquest on Steven Winge,” he said, “the pathologist said something about a syndrome—I can’t remember the name he put to it. He talked of a disturbance of the central nervous system, didn’t he?”
“I am not a neurologist, inspector.”
“But that was how he phrased it, was it not?”
“As far as I recall, yes.”
“Thank you. I am going to be perfectly frank with you, doctor. When we learned the circumstances of old Winge’s death, we felt reasonably confident that it was he who had been responsible for all the recent attacks on women in this town. And the medical evidence seemed to confirm that opinion. Yet within hours of his death, a young and intelligent woman reported an incident which tallied in every detail with the sort of thing that had been going on before. She described having watched the man run away. Sideways, of course. You see where that leaves us?”
“I see that you would seem to owe poor old Winge an apology.”
“Well, not quite. It cannot be denied that he made a very determined attack on Miss Pollock. He might well have given in to similar impulses recently. But what is now certain—and very disturbing—is that there is someone else, perhaps several other people, given to the same kind of behaviour. And he, or they, must be found.”
“A very proper sentiment, inspector. I hope you are successful.”
“Oh, we shall be. Eventually.”
“Good.”
Meadow looked at his watch, which was gold, very slim but of large diameter, and worn on the inside of the wrist so that he had to make an elegant gesture with his hand in order to see its face. He half rose.
Purbright was staring gravely out of the window.
“I think you could, if you wished, help to shorten the time it is going to take to clear this business up.”
The doctor sat again and leaned back, frowning.
“In what way?”
“For one thing, I was hoping that you would tell me—in confidence and off the record—what the condition was for which y
ou were treating Alderman Winge.”
“I was asked that question at the inquest.”
“And you declined to answer.”
“A doctor has every right to resist probes into his professional relationship with a patient.”
“An inquest is a public hearing. That did make your position difficult, sir. This is a private—and, I hope, friendly—talk. The patient is dead. Do you not think that ethics might be slightly relaxed?”
Meadow saw the inspector’s faint smile. “Yes, but even so...” He hesitated.
“You have seen the post-mortem report.”
“Of course.”
“You could tell me if it squared with your own knowledge of Winge’s condition.”
“Heineman has certain bees in his bonnet. Some of his interests are rather obscure.”
“The what’s-its-name syndrome, for instance?”
“That, yes. I have said that I am not a neurologist. If I have a special field, it is geriatrics.”
“Treatment of the old?”
“You could call it that. Winge was getting on. Active, but getting on. I prescribed accordingly.”
“Tonics—that sort of thing?”
“Well, the modern equivalent. Vitality is quite easily regulated nowadays by an appropriate drug regimen. The process is well proven.”
“Is there no danger of such drugs having unwanted effects?”
Meadow laughed. “You must beware of popular superstition, inspector. The very word ‘drug’ still conjures up visions of opium dens. But any medicinal substance is, by definition, a drug.”
“These particular medicinal substances, then—can they not operate harmfully in certain circumstances? By overdose, say?”
“Every drug has side effects that are undesirable in greater or lesser degree. Every single one. It is a matter of balancing good against bad. Would you rather have polio than risk a vaccination rash?”
“No, what I am driving at...”
“What you are driving at, inspector, is this—and correct me if I am wrong—Was I prescribing something for Mr Winge that turned him into a randy old goat?” The inspector looked pleased.
“Ah, now we are getting near the nub of the matter. May I phrase the question more delicately? Was there any possibility of Mr Winge over-doing his treatment—taking too many tablets, capsules or whatever—and thus stepping up his vitality to a degree that might land him in trouble?”
“None whatever. I know you do not mean to imply irresponsible prescribing, so I shall not read into your remarks as much as I might. But let me put your mind at rest, Purbright. The treatment I considered necessary for Mr Winge was strictly controlled on a week-to-week basis. That is my invariable practice. It is also a rule of mine—and of other doctors, I do not doubt—to make use only of such drugs as have been subjected to exhaustive clinical trial and are manufactured by a reputable house. I might add that in my own field of geriatric medicine I have done some contributory work on the clinical side—work that has received recognition rather farther afield than you might think. I am not likely to put at hazard either my patients or my reputation by taking the slightest risk of any kind you seem to have had in mind.”
It was a speech of reproof and dismissal, and Purbright was not misled by the amiable tone of Meadow’s cultured, beautifully modulated voice into hoping that he might gain from the interview.
But perversely he tried.
“The man who assaulted Brenda Sweeting—have you no idea of his identity?”
“None.”
“Could he possibly have been Alderman Winge?”
“I did not see his face.”
“But can you assert definitely that it was not Winge? As a patient, he must have been familiar to you.”
“That possibility did not occur to me at the time. Why should it? My only concern was to save the girl further distress. Once he had run away, the obvious thing to do was to make sure she had not been injured.”
“Do you happen to know a man called Walter Grope, doctor?”
If the switch of subject surprised Meadow, he gave no sign.
“Grope?” he repeated levelly. “I do have a patient named Grope. Walter, though...I couldn’t be sure without checking.”
“A man of sixty-odd. He moved here recently from Chalmsbury. A retired cinema commissionaire.”
“I believe he is, yes. What about him?”
“I have advised his wife to have a talk with you about him. His behaviour has been worrying her.”
“Behaviour? What sort of behaviour?”
“Something, I gather, along the same lines as Mr Winge’s little weakness. An excess of vitality.”
“You surely cannot expect me to comment on that, inspector. If Mrs Grope sees fit to seek my professional advice, that is up to her. I cannot discuss with you or anyone else some hypothetical marital problem that even my own patient has not mentioned.”
“The problem might not be purely marital,” said Purbright. “The law could well become involved.”
“Ah.”
Meadow rose to his feet. He walked in his easy, athletic way to the window and looked out, his hands clasped loosely behind him.
“As to that,” Purbright heard him say, “I should prefer to hear no more, if you wouldn’t mind. It is the physical welfare of my patients that concerns me, not their relations with the law.”
“Crime concerns us all, doctor—if you will forgive the triteness of the sentiment.”
Meadow turned to face the room.
“Policemen,” he remarked pleasantly, “do not have a monopoly of social conscience. When next I see Mr Grope committing a crime, I shall assuredly remonstrate with him. All right?”
He stepped to the door. The smile he directed upon the inspector was as warm as a car salesman’s.
Purbright stood. He glanced behind him at the chair. It’s splendid satin had regained its creaseless convexity.
“I hope you haven’t found my intrusion too tiresome, Dr Meadow.”
“My dear chap! What an idea!”
One slender, immaculately clean hand was drawing open the door. The other was extended in a gesture at once courteous and peremptory. (He’s a great one for showing out, Purbright said to himself.)
The inspector was almost through the doorway when he stopped suddenly, looked at Meadow, snapped his fingers and said: “Salad.”
Bewilderment—a very rare visitor to the doctor’s handsome and confident features—was certainly upon them now.
“Salad,” Purbright said again. “Samson’s Salad. I nearly forgot to ask you about that.”
Meadow shrugged, apparently still doubtful of what Purbright was talking about.
“At the inquest, you spoke of Winge’s indulgence in self-medication. You mentioned a specific herbal preparation. Wasn’t that its name? Samson’s Salad?”
“Oh, that. Yes, so I understand. Why?”
“What do you know about it?”
“Only that Winge claimed it did him good.”
“You didn’t investigate it yourself—have it analysed, or anything?”
“Good lord, no. Patients are always putting that sort of rubbish into themselves. I advised against it, naturally, but I don’t suppose he took any notice.”
“Might something of that sort have produced the symptoms we were talking about before? The loss of balance, for instance?”
“Conceivably.”
“Sexual stimulation?”
“Certain vegetable extracts do have that effect. I am not saying that this particular preparation did so,”
“But you saw fit to draw it to the attention of the coroner. And by name. That did rather suggest to me, doctor, that you considered it suspect.”
“I did not want any fact overlooked that might be relevant, that’s all.”
“But the coroner did not take up the point.”
“No. I had made it, though. That was enough for me.”
“Certainly. By the way, do you happen to kno
w of anyone else who takes this stuff?”
“I do not.”
“None of your patients—apart from Mr Winge?”
“No.” For the first time, Meadow’s manner was unmistakably curt.
Purbright gave a slight bow.
“You’ve been most tolerant, doctor.”
“Not at all.” Affability was back instantly and in full measure.