Inheritance Tracks, page 6
‘It was guaranteed to be a miracle cure and sold as such.’
‘Just what I said. Phony.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Leeyes tapped Simon Puckle’s letter. ‘There were six legatees and now there are five. That right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So, Sloan, just make very sure that you keep it that way.’
Dr Hector Smithson Dabbe, Consultant Pathologist at the Berebury District Hospital Trust, hastened to welcome Sloan and Crosby to the mortuary. ‘Come along in, gentlemen,’ he said genially. ‘I understand that you may have an interest in the cause of death of Susan Mary Port here.’ He indicated what looked just like an unclothed shop window mannequin lying on the steel table.
‘That all depends on what you have to tell us, Doctor,’ said Sloan cautiously. ‘It’s much too soon to say otherwise.’ That there was a crime scene to examine only applied if there had been a crime and he didn’t even know that yet.
‘Then, Inspector, to quote Mr Asquith, we’ll just have to “wait and see”, won’t we?’ said the pathologist, who appeared to be in a jovial mood.
‘Your opinion, Doctor, would be a great help,’ said Sloan.
‘That’s as may be,’ responded Dr Dabbe philosophically. ‘The post-mortem laboratory is a place where science and law meet, so sometimes I set people’s minds at rest and sometimes I don’t.’
‘Quite so,’ said Sloan.
‘And sometimes I upset the apple cart, too,’ said Dr Dabbe. He grinned. ‘And more often than not I upset the insurance companies as well.’ He did not sound too upset about this. ‘And some families,’ he added mischievously.
‘I can believe that,’ muttered Detective Constable Crosby, already beginning to edge his way towards the further wall of the mortuary. He didn’t like attending post-mortem examinations.
‘All I can tell you at this stage,’ said the pathologist, ‘is that it’s not often Angus Browne can’t say what someone’s died from.’ The pathologist gave a wolfish grin. ‘So at least this isn’t an open-and-shut case.’
Detective Constable Crosby visibly winced at the similarity with a post-mortem.
The pathologist nodded in his direction. ‘Your trouble I expect, young man, is that you didn’t have a gerbil or, better still, a hamster as a pet when you were a child.’
The constable looked bewildered. ‘No, Doctor, I didn’t.’
‘Pity,’ the pathologist said elliptically. ‘Hamsters and gerbils have short lifespans – they die quite soon, you see, which is a very good thing. It gets children used to death.’
For a moment Sloan toyed with the idea of saying that it was young policemen, newly on duty, not children, who had to get used to death and its ten thousand doors, but he decided against it.
‘And dissection gets everyone used to it,’ said the pathologist. ‘Just as the sainted surgeon William Hunter said, “Anatomy is the basis of surgery, it informs the head, guides the hand, and familiarises the heart to a kind of necessary inhumanity”.’
Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. A necessary inhumanity came into some police work, too. The arrest of a man that left his wife and children homeless and destitute as a consequence was one of the instances that never sat well on his conscience.
Dr Dabbe was still talking. ‘The history of the deceased’s last illness is a bit confusing, gentlemen, to say the least, which is why Angus Browne wasn’t prepared to sign a death certificate. A good man, Browne.’
Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. The general practitioner had a reputation as a canny Scot of a notably careful disposition.
‘Are we ready, Burns?’ Dr Dabbe asked his taciturn assistant. Burns nodded and the pathologist, already gowned and now masked, pulled an overhead microphone down over the steel post-mortem table, adjusted it to the level of his mouth and began his report. ‘Body of a well-nourished female, identified by a next-door neighbour, Mrs Doris Dyson, as Susan Mary Port, age given as …’ He looked round for Burns. ‘Age given as what, Burns?’
‘Sixty-six, Doctor,’ said the mortuary attendant.
‘Sixty-six,’ the pathologist said into microphone. ‘On macroscopic examination the body appears a little but not seriously jaundiced. It is also very dehydrated, consistent with the history of much vomiting and diarrhoea.’ Dr Dabbe peered systematically all over the body on the examination table. ‘Some recent bruising of the right trochanter and a fracture in the right talocrural region …’ He turned away from the microphone and said, ‘That’s an ankle to policemen.’
‘She is said to have slid down on to the ground from a low roof,’ volunteered Sloan, not rising to the translation.
‘That would explain it, Inspector.’ He raised his voice to a hortatory tone and resumed speaking into the microphone. ‘No signs of any other external injuries visible … Ah, hang on, there’s an old appendectomy scar in the right iliac fossa, if you call that an injury – more of a surgical assault if you ask me, if not even wounding with intent – near where what we used to say was McBurney’s point, only they don’t call it that any more. Strictly Latin names now, more’s the pity. You knew where you were with McBurney.’
‘Nothing stays the same,’ said Sloan sententiously. There had been many changes in the police force since he was a constable, too − only some of them for the better.
‘And a healed Colles fracture of the left wrist. Hullo, hullo,’ said the pathologist alertly, examining the arm further, ‘what have we here?’ He was bending over the body now, peering at the tips of the subject’s fingers. ‘A little bit of gangrene in both hands. Now what’s that doing on the deceased, I wonder?’
Since Sloan had no answer to this, he kept silent while the pathologist moved swiftly down the table to stare at the deceased’s feet. ‘And in the toes. Now that is interesting, Sloan. Very interesting.’ He straightened up. ‘Let’s have a look at her back, Burns.’
His assistant moved forward and turned the body over.
‘There’s many a good pathologist caught out by not looking at the deceased’s back, Inspector.’
‘I’m sure, Doctor.’ The police equivalent was failing to look everywhere – but everywhere – for fingerprints at a crime scene. And these days, DNA, too.
‘Gangrene,’ murmured the pathologist absently. ‘I haven’t seen gangrene like this in a month of Sundays. Not common nowadays.’
Detective Inspector Sloan had never seen it at all ever before and wished he hadn’t now. Crosby had moved himself out of the line of vision to a spot where he couldn’t see anything of the body.
‘And I wonder what gangrene’s doing here on her digits, now?’ mused Dr Dabbe.
‘That I couldn’t say,’ said Sloan.
Detective Constable Crosby might not have had the body of the deceased in direct view but nevertheless he winced visibly as he heard the pathologist starting to open the subject’s brain.
Sloan decided that this organ must have passed muster, until the pathologist said that there was some congestion there. ‘Now the thorax, Burns.’
‘Yes, Doctor.’ His assistant moved forward.
‘Congestion of all internal organs,’ reported the pathologist a few minutes later. ‘Burns, there’s quite a lot for the path lab here, bearing in mind that food poisoning is suspected.’ He turned to Sloan and remarked, ‘The Radio Doctor described that sort of pathologist as a man who sits on one stool and examines others.’
‘Really, Doctor?’ murmured Sloan as Burns advanced obediently with a variety of little bottles and collected and labelled specimens wherever the doctor pointed.
‘Gastrointestinal tract shows distinct inflammation.’ The doctor peered at Sloan over the top of his mask. ‘Browne did say that he suspected food poisoning, didn’t he?’
‘At first,’ temporised Sloan.
‘There’s quite some degeneration of the internal layers of the smaller arterioles, too, and there are thrombus formations all over the place. Interesting, Inspector, all very interesting.’
‘Yes, Doctor, I’m sure.’ He cleared his throat and asked, ‘But what does it all mean?’
The pathologist tugged his mask off. ‘I can’t tell the coroner exactly what killed this woman. Not yet, that is. Not until I hear back from the laboratory about those specimens and do a little more research but …’
‘But?’
‘I can tell you one thing, Inspector, something you do need to know. In my opinion, whatever it was this woman died from, the immediate cause was the ingestion of a noxious substance of some sort.’
‘Not natural causes, then,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, opening his notebook and turning over to a new page.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘Ah, Sloan, come in.’ Superintendent Leeyes laid his hat upside down on the top of the filing cabinet in the corner of his office and tossed his gloves into it. Then he flopped down into a chair at his desk and waved an arm at Sloan to sit down as well. ‘They told me that you wanted to see me as soon as I got back this morning. So?’
‘Yes, sir,’ began Sloan. ‘It’s about the post-mortem examination on Susan Mary Port.’
‘The mayor’s a real old windbag,’ grumbled Leeyes, pushing a pile of papers on his desk to one side.
‘Yes, sir, so I’ve heard,’ said Sloan, tugging his notebook out of his pocket and opening it out.
‘And as for the town clerk, or the chief executive as he likes to be called these days,’ snorted the superintendent sarcastically, ‘all he wants is his precious town cleared of anyone sleeping rough in it. He kept on talking about reclaiming the streets as if it was some sort of a mantra.’
Sloan decided against saying that it had been a famous slogan somewhere once.
‘The mayor insists that the corporation underground car park be properly policed, too,’ snorted Leeyes. ‘I’m not surprised that the homeless are sleeping down there since it’s the warmest place in town to spend the night in if you’re sleeping rough in winter. They will congregate there as well as behind the Berebury supermarket – you know, near St Peter’s Church in Water Lane.’
‘Yes, sir, now I’ve just come back from the—’
‘As if we’ve got the men and the time to do any such thing, Sloan.’
‘No, sir, of course not.’ Sloan opened his notebook at the new page, gave a preliminary cough and began again. ‘As instructed, sir, I duly attended the post-mortem conducted by Dr H. S. Dabbe this morning on Susan Mary Port.’
‘But what has really upset our worthy councillors, Sloan,’ continued the superintendent, still mentally in the mayor’s parlour, ‘are the couple of alkies living on the roundabout on the West Polsby road. They need to get on with evicting them.’
‘Living?’ echoed Sloan, in spite of himself.
‘They’ve pitched a tent on the grass and insist they’re quite happy staying there, thank you very much. They’ve even had the nerve to say that they’ve quite got used to the traffic noise by now and they don’t have any difficult neighbours either.’
‘I should hope not, sir.’ The detective inspector could see that the site would be very handy for the supermarkets and their shelves of cheap drinks but kept his own counsel on the matter. ‘It was Mrs Port’s sudden death at Bishop’s Marbourne, sir, if you remember,’ he said, ‘that so interested Simon Puckle.’
‘I told them,’ said Leeyes, ignoring this, ‘that Highways should get a warrant for trespass. After all, it’s their roundabout. A court order should do the trick, all right.’
‘Quite so, sir.’ The County Highways surveyor was an old enemy of Superintendent Leeyes. His unsporting response to all requests and suggestions from the superintendent could best be described as ‘extended bureaucratic’.
‘And you won’t believe what that man, Holness, from the homeless charity wants now. I ask you, a shooting gallery.’ He sniffed. ‘We had to explain to the mayor that it meant somewhere quiet and private to shoot drugs not stuffed toys. The mayor wasn’t happy.’
‘No, sir, I’m sure.’ Sloan plodded on, ‘Dr Dabbe has found that the deceased had died as the consequence of ingesting a noxious substance.’
‘If the pathologist means poison why doesn’t he say so?’ demanded Leeyes truculently, his full attention engaged at last.
Sloan knitted his eyebrows. ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he suggested, ‘it’s because the word “poisoning” automatically implies an illegal action.’
‘And ingestion doesn’t?’
‘It can do but it doesn’t have to. The deceased could have swallowed a noxious substance by accident. We don’t know yet.’ He wanted to say that you needed malice aforethought for the other sort of poisoning, but the superintendent had no time for the antiquarian language of the past.
‘The food that you eat,’ said Leeyes sententiously, ‘can also be poisonous if you eat too much of it.’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sloan, averting his eyes from his superior officer’s incipient paunch. ‘In fact, as it happens that was exactly the point the pathologist made. Dr Dabbe would only say that his post-mortem findings were suggestive of ergot poisoning – I think that was because of the gangrene.’
‘That’s a first,’ observed the superintendent.
‘Not exactly, sir,’ said Sloan. He chose his words with care, since contradicting his superior never went down well. ‘Dr Dabbe said there was a famous outbreak in France in 1951.’ Actually, any mention of the French didn’t go down well either, since Superintendent Leeyes was inclined to blame them for everything that had gone wrong since the Norman Invasion. He hurried on before Napoleon’s name cropped up. ‘He said that ergot poisoning used to be known as St Anthony’s Fire.’
‘And from where might I ask, Sloan, would anyone get ergot that wasn’t in France?’
Sloan explained what he’d learnt, then looked down at his notebook. ‘Of course, we don’t actually know yet if it was from rye or, if so, how it got into the deceased’s system – or even if it actually did.’
‘Splitting hairs,’ pronounced Leeyes flatly. ‘Just like lawyers do.’
‘It could have just been bad luck, sir, like eating the wrong end of a sausage.’
‘It’s more likely that the pathologist doesn’t really know himself exactly which poison,’ said Leeyes uncharitably, ‘and isn’t saying so.’
Detective Inspector Sloan saw fit to ignore this since he intended to talk to the police laboratory himself as soon as he could. Instead he swept on. ‘I’ve been back to Simon Puckle and he says he’s quite sure that the deceased didn’t have any immediate family. Her husband had predeceased her many years ago and there had been no children. Apparently, his firm – Puckles, that is – had gone into her antecedents quite carefully in the course of planning to wind up this Mayton Trust.’
‘Then you’ll just have to do all the groundwork yourself, Sloan, won’t you? And if you ask me, Sloan, you should follow the money. First principle of policing. And don’t forget that cash cows, even potential ones, are an endangered species. So get out there and check on the other legatees before anything happens to them, too.’
‘Yes, sir, of course, sir.’ He cleared his throat and went on, ‘Simon Puckle says as far as he had been able to establish, Mrs Port was a retired civil servant with an impeccable record.’
‘I’ve met some of them in my day,’ said Leeyes. ‘Dangerous people.’
‘Civil servants?’
‘No, Sloan, people with impeccable records. They need watching.’
‘Sir?’
‘It’s not natural, is it? Think Dennis Nilsen.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sloan smoothed down the page in his notebook and said, ‘We’re going to need access to the deceased’s house next. Now that I know it’s possibly a case of poisoning, however brought about, I’m arranging for scenes of crime to give it a good going-over soonest while forensics get on with the lab work. Then I’ll just check that all those other people who saw her at the solicitors don’t know anything more about her than Simon Puckle thought.’
‘Let’s hope nobody’s been in the house first and tidied it up,’ said Leeyes pessimistically.
‘PC York will know,’ said Sloan. It would have been Ted York who, as coroner’s officer, would have arranged for Mrs Port’s body to be conveyed to the mortuary. ‘Bound to.’
PC Edward York, when consulted on the matter, agreed that he had indeed locked up the house at Bishop’s Marbourne after supervising the removal of Mrs Port’s body to the mortuary.
‘And, Seedy, I checked with the neighbour that there weren’t any animals to be taken care of.’
‘The dog had been rehomed,’ said Sloan absently. ‘Anything out of the ordinary about the house, Ted?’ he asked. ‘No signs of disorder, panic and so forth? Or intruders?’
‘It was all a little bit untidy, like you’d find when someone’s been ill for a while, but that’s all. I did give it a bit of a going-over since food poisoning had been mentioned, but I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary in the kitchen before I locked up. I looked in her medicine cabinet in the bathroom and there was nothing there except a bottle of tablets from the hospital labelled “Take two every four hours for pain” and the usual home remedies – for indigestion, mostly. I’ve seen worse in my time, I can tell you.’
‘I’ll bet you have. Tell me, did you look for the name and address of any next of kin?’
‘I sure did. It was in her bureau, all written out nicely, her having been a civil servant and all that.’
‘Find anything?’
‘You’re going to like this, Seedy.’
‘Go on.’
‘A godson called Terry Galloway domiciled in Australia, who,’ he grimaced, ‘is said from his postcard to her to be presently backpacking his way across Europe to England.’
‘Mobile phone?’
‘Not responding to calls.’
‘Him or it?’
‘It,’ said the coroner’s officer pithily. ‘He must be out of range of any mast. Looks as if he was last heard from in that postcard from India. I found that in her bureau, too.’
