Vicious Circle

by Douglas Clark

  “That seems to have been a long delay.”

  Mimi shrugged. “I was busy with Elke. Cleaning her and the bed and the room. Clean sheets, up and down stairs for buckets and cloths . . . the time just passed.”

  “Of course. Well, Mrs Hillger, I’m sure you must realize that I cannot sign a death certificate in these circumstances. I am legally bound to inform the coroner that I suspect your sister to have died of poisoning.”

  “I understand, doctor. The formalities must be obeyed.”

  “Obeyed? Ah, yes. Complied with is what we usually say. Same thing, really. They are mandatory. Now, if I may use your phone, I will call Margarethe.”

  “She must be told her mother has died, of course.”

  “I also want her to come here to keep you company until we can make some proper arrangements for you.”

  “I can stay in the house.”

  “I think it would be better if you were not alone here tonight.”

  *

  Whincap drove straight to the home of his brother-in-law, Robert Bennett. By the time he arrived it was almost eight o’clock.

  “David, my dear chap, what brings you here?”

  “Could I come in, please, Bob?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d like to use the phone first off if l may. Just to tell Janet where I am.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll get you a drink.”

  “Thanks. I could do with one.”

  After making his call, Whincap joined Bennett in the sitting room. “Gin and tonic, David,” said Robert, handing him the glass. “All right, for you?”

  “Perfect,” replied Whincap, accepting the drink gratefully.

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  “I haven’t been home since evening surgery.”

  “That means you haven’t. Flora’s just about to serve up. She said she’s laying a place for you in case you can stay.”

  “That’s very kind of Flora. If I’m not putting you out . . .”

  “Delighted to have you.” Bennett opened the sitting room door and raised his voice. “Darling, David’s staying for supper. Water the soup down to make it go round.” He came back into the room. “Dave, I can see you’re in a bit of a stew about something. Seeing you’ve come here, I’m taking the attitude that you want to talk to me about something. If I’m wrong and it’s none of my business, tell me to keep my big nose out of it.”

  “It is your business, Bob, and it’s official.”

  “Ah! An unnatural death, I presume.”

  Whincap nodded.

  “Who? Anybody I’m likely to know of?”

  “Elke Carlow.”

  “Good Lord! The old dear tried to poison herself at Christmas time, didn’t she? Has she managed it this time?”

  Whincap lay back in his chair and paused as though choosing his words before replying. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that, Bob, although obviously it will be for you, in your official capacity, to decide.”

  “You mean it’s a case for my officer to make preliminary enquiries?”

  Whincap sat up. “I’d better tell you the whole story, Bob. As you know, Elke Carlow had a heart condition for which I was prescribing a digitalis preparation—digoxin tablets. The dosage of digoxin varies between half a tablet up to two a day, according to what the doctor thinks the patient needs. I’d got Elke on one tablet a day. But she was a headstrong old woman and far from doing as I ordered she developed the habit of doing what she thought best.”

  “I gathered from the conversation at Christmas that she’d been mucking about with the dose.”

  “And how! She’d miss taking her tablet for days on end, then she’d take a whole heap together to catch up.”

  “I remember you telling me this at Adam’s party.” He got to his feet. “Let me get you a refill.” He took the doctor’s glass. “But I also seem to remember that you made some foolproof arrangement whereby various of the old girl’s relatives and your nurse were going to call in daily and administer the right dose.”

  “That’s exactly what I did, and the whole business worked perfectly.”

  “So she couldn’t have died from an overdose of digitalis. That, at least, is something.”

  “But she did,” said Whincap accepting his glass. “Or at least I think she did.”

  Bennett said: “You’re too old a hand at your doctoring, Bob, to make a gross error on an occasion like this. So, chum, she must have had a hidden supply of the pills.”

  “No, Bob, she didn’t. I made absolutely sure of that at Christmas time. Her sister swears there have been no tablets concealed in the house as far as she knows, and I couldn’t find any container. Furthermore, I’ve kept my eye on the amounts I’ve prescribed for her daily dose and on the arrangements for administering the tablets. So has my nurse, and she’s no fool.”

  Bennett pursed his lips. There was a silence between the two men which lasted until Flora Bennett joined them. “I rang Janet to say we were going to feed you here as I supposed you had neglected to tell her.”

  “David didn’t know he was staying for scoff when he rang,” replied her husband. “Besides, he’s a worried man, and worried men are forgetful.”

  “Worried, David? Is it Janet? Or the family? Can we help?”

  “Official problem for me, Flo,” said her husband. “Crowner’s Quest stuff.”

  “Oh, I see. Is that all? Come along then. Chicken casserole. Is that all right for you, David?”

  “Couldn’t be better, thank you.”

  They discussed the problem during the meal.

  “There’s no doubt about it,” said Whincap in answer to a question, “that for certain heart conditions there is nothing to equal digitalis. That’s why I had Elke on it.”

  “What does it do, specifically?” asked Bennett, gently levering a large piece of pinky-white chicken breast from its bone. “In not too-technical terms.”

  “It increases the force of contraction of the heart without increasing its oxygen consumption. Harder, remember, not faster. It’s like a person gripping a sponge very tightly and then letting it out again as opposed to gripping it loosely before letting it go. The speed of the action could remain the same in both cases.”

  “I’ve understood that bit,” Flora said to her brother.

  “Then you can see why digitalis is used in congestive heart failure—when the heart is not making contractions positive enough to keep the works going properly.”

  “That was Elke’s trouble?”

  “She had a little auricular fibrillation and fortunately digitalis helps there, too, in that it does tend to slow the heart rate in such cases.”

  Flora went on to ask: “How does it become fatally poisonous? I know that sounds a silly question . . .”

  “No, no,” protested her husband. “Not silly at all. It’s the sort of question we should all be asking all the time. Why are poisons poisonous?”

  “Silly ass. There are lots of medicines in use which might make you very ill if you were to take too much of them, but so often people do recover from overdoses if they’re pumped out, don’t they, David?”

  “Not while we’re at table, pet, please,” begged her husband. “I know stomach pumps and their varied gastric harvests are a source of unending delight to David, but to me they’re just . . .”

  “Filthy beast!” scolded Flora.

  “You were upsetting me.”

  “There’s nothing upsetting about it,” said Whincap, “so eat your nice string beans and baked potato.”

  “I’ll get you,” threatened Bennett. “Next time you’re in my court I’ll ruin your reputation by making hints about your unsocial behaviour.”

  “Such as?”

  “Like that large piece of carrot that has suddenly sprouted on your tie and . . . yes . . . there’s a morsel of onion in the runnel of gravy, too.”

  “Thanks, Bob. I know you’re trying to cheer me up, but I’d rather talk the problem through.”

  “You’re
that worried by it?”

  “Scared stiff,” admitted Whincap.

  “So’s Bob,” said Flora. “He always starts acting the fool when he’s worried. Trying to camouflage his feelings to protect me, but I can see through his antics.”

  “Nice!” said Bennett. “Silly ass, filthy beast and now acting the fool! All in the space of about two minutes! You can see what I have had to put up with from your sister-in-law these many years, David.”

  “Keep quiet and pass me your plate if you’ve finished.”

  Bennett did as he was told and then turned to Whincap. “We’ve established that we’re both worried men. So shall we continue the discussion? Flo asked you something about digitalis being a poison.”

  The doctor turned to his sister-in-law who was serving helpings of fresh fruit salad. “To answer your question, Flora, it is necessary to bore you a little by pointing out that the cardiac glycosides—that’s digitalis and other like substances—have very little beneficial effect on the heart until they are present in the body in a concentration near to that which produces toxic effect. It’s a fine dividing line, so a doctor has to control the dosage carefully.”

  “That explains why you made such specific arrangements for dosing Mrs Carlow after that episode on Christmas Day.”

  “Quite so. The daily maintenance dose is quite small after the initial degree of digitalization has been achieved by higher doses at the beginning of treatment. So you see, I was already keeping Elke on the verge of the poison level, if you like to put it that way. Very little more would send her over the limit—as it did last Christmas—while a bigger dose still would prove fatal. As it has done this evening.”

  “I think I understand that, David,” said his sister-in-law, passing him his fruit salad. “And I can see now why you’re so worried. If, as you claim, there were no extra tablets in the house, those she got hold of to kill herself with could only have come from one source—or so it would seem.”

  “Right,” said Whincap heavily. “The supply that Margarethe kept for her mother.”

  “And so Margarethe, Marian or your nurse could somehow—not knowingly, of course—be the means by which Elke got hold of what she needed.”

  “If only I could be certain of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “That bit about their not knowing. If only I could be sure that Elke deceived one or even all of them.”

  “David! You’re not suggesting that any one of them would co-operate with her willingly? To help her to take her own life? Never!”

  Whincap sat silent. Bennett himself filled the gap in the conversation after the silence had grown embarrassingly long. “What I think you are suggesting, David, is that Elke Carlow so frightened herself by the overdose she took at Christmas, when she was nearly a goner, that you don’t believe she would try again. Am I right?”

  Whincap nodded. “That is exactly what I think.”

  “Rubbish, David,” retorted Flora. “If you had really believed that you wouldn’t have made those complicated arrangements for ensuring she only got one tablet at a time.”

  “I had to play for safety, Flora.”

  “Knowing the precautions to be unnecessary?”

  “Thinking them to be so, but not totally sure.”

  “David, think for pity’s sake. You’re virtually accusing Margarethe, Marian or your nurse of . . . well, criminal activity. And you’re doing it in front of Robert, knowing full well that, as coroner, he will have to investigate the case.”

  “If that is how it seems to you, Flora, I’ve given you and, presumably, Robert, the wrong impression. I trust my practice nurse implicitly. Nobody could be better or straighter. Marian is married to my son. I regard her as a daughter, a loved daughter. And as for Margarethe, well she is a friend of long-standing, besides being Marian’s mother. Would I, could I, accuse any of those three of criminal behaviour? I would stake my life that when we come to count and account for the pills in Margarethe’s bottle we shall find them to be all present and correct.”

  “Then why . . .?”

  “My dear,” said Robert Bennett gently, “can’t you see? What David is trying to tell me is that we are all in a hell of a mess, but he’s been putting it diplomatically.”

  “Us? We are in a mess? How can we be involved? Except through our relationship with David and Janet, of course.”

  “Sweetheart, I am the coroner. David, quite rightly, has reported to me a death for which he feels unable to issue a certificate. He has come directly to me—which is a common and permissible habit between doctors and coroners in such cases, because it saves all the rigmarole of having the registrar act as go-between.

  “But here’s the snag. Possibly implicated in this business, if only by association, are David’s daughter-in-law and his practice nurse, to say nothing of his son’s mother-in-law, Margarethe.”

  “Me, too, as the doctor,” added Whincap.

  “Quite. And in cases like this, which I have to investigate, the coroner’s officer, who is a serving policeman, starts asking questions. And in cases of mysterious death, policemen have a habit of looking hard at the surviving members of the deceased’s family first.”

  “Oh! You mean . . .?”

  “Hear me out, old thing. Not only will our policeman friend be looking at Margarethe, Marian, David, Mimi Hillger and the nurse, but he will be reporting to his senior officer the outcome of his investigations. I don’t have to remind you that the senior officer to whom he will have to report is Detective Chief Superintendent Theo Rainford who is the dead woman’s son-in-law, husband of one of the women who will come under scrutiny and father of another, to say nothing of the in-law ties he has with David here.

  “Sorting that lot out will be bad enough, but the job falls on my shoulders. And who am I, besides being the coroner? I’m David Whincap’s brother-in-law and uncle to young Adam and consequently to Marian. So you see, sweetie, what David has been saying—somewhat indirectly perhaps—is that I am faced with a ready-made set-up for collusion in a case of unnatural death. The authorities won’t wear it, of course, and the press would have a field day were they to hear of it.”

  “I see.” Flora got to her feet to fetch the coffee percolator from the sideboard. “You know, I don’t think I’m going to enjoy the next few days very much.”

  “Nor any of us,” said Whincap.

  “Black for both of you?”

  “Hold mine for a minute or two, please, Flo.” Bennett got to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment or two . . . I have a couple of calls to make. I’ll be back to have a brandy with you, David.”

  After her husband had left them, Flora said: “That old troublemaker, Elke Carlow, seems to be intent on stirring things even after she’s dead.”

  “This time she may be more sinned against than sinning.”

  She stared at him. “David, what are you suggesting now? So far, as I’ve understood it, you’ve been saying that Elke Carlow committed suicide and that any one of a number of women—mostly our friends and relations—can have been guilty of unknowingly providing her with the means to do so despite restrictions, precautions and strictures on your part to prevent it happening. Now you are changing your tune.”

  “No, Flora, I am not. You have misunderstood me, my dear. I said I didn’t believe Elke would ever again attempt to take her own life. That’s point one. Point two is that the act of providing somebody with the means to commit suicide is not a criminal act. If I gave you a clothes line and you hanged yourself . . . or even if one of my patients takes a full bottle of aspirin I have prescribed . . . not legally criminal.” He shrugged. “But I have not attempted to hide from you, nor has Robert, that there may be criminal connotations here.”

  “Meaning that somebody could have actually given her an overdose.”

  “At its most euphemistic, yes.”

  She rose from the table. “I think I’ll need a brandy, too. I’ll get the glasses, if you’ll get the bottle, David.”
<
br />   Robert Bennett returned. “Ah! Coffee and brandy. What a pity we won’t be able to linger over them.” He looked up. “Patrick Dean, my deputy coroner, and Theo Rainford are both on their way here.”

  *

  Bennett did the talking. He told the whole story and then turned to Dean. “You will be responsible for the inquest, Patrick, because as you have heard, I am disbarred by personal interest. For the same reason, Theo, you can play no part in any investigation that the deputy coroner may wish to undertake.”

  Both men nodded their agreement.

  “Patrick will take over from me. The question is, who will take over from you, Theo?”

  “Obviously I wasn’t intending to act as coroner’s officer. So I wouldn’t be involved at the outset,” said Rainford. “But naturally it would become my responsibility if it turned out to be a criminal case. As it is . . . well, I, too, have a deputy. D.S. Sandy. You all know him, I expect. I could detail him . . .”

  “No,” said Patrick Dean firmly. “Sorry, Theo, but in handling this case I must take care not only to arrive at a true finding, but also to make sure that the proceedings are completely free from the slightest hint of self-interest. I know and like D.S. Sandy, but he is a great friend of yours, Theo, as well as being your subordinate. He is debarred on both counts, as you must see.”

  “What then?” asked Rainford. “All the jacks round here are my subordinates.”

  “Then we must ask the Chief Constable to bring in somebody totally unconnected with you or the case. Somebody from outside. I’m not going to have anybody pointing the finger at you, Theo.”

  “And whispering,” added Whincap. “I can hear the susurration already. Patrick is quite right, Theo. You, Robert and I must not only be off the field of play, we mustn’t damn’ well be in the stadium during the game, let alone be officiating at it.”

  “In that case,” said Rainford, “I’d better get on to the C.C. I can’t see him wanting to call in one of the neighbouring forces. He’ll call in the Yard—once he’s convinced there’ll be need.”

  “He should know by tomorrow morning,” said Dean. “As soon as Robert rang me this evening—before I set out to come here to see him and having some idea of what he wanted me for, I alerted the pathologist. He’s prepared to work late tonight once he can get the body and I’m more fully informed.”