“We’re left with the eternal problem of: why, how and who? Any suggestions?”
“Plenty. Too many. I thought we’d sort them out together. Two heads are better than one even if they’re sheep heads, my ma used to say. We’ll go off into darkest Suffolk at crack of dawn tomorrow and poke about a bit. Tweak a few ears. I’ve hired you a motorcar from Simpson’s car hire firm down Mill Road. Nothing too showy but smart enough to impress those who like to be impressed. I thought, in the circumstances, we’d avoid using police vehicles and back-up. We’ll interview the medical expert, who was never asked to hand in a report—no, I wasn’t directly involved in the case when it first came up. Close member of the family and all that, the Chief Constable thought it better if I kept out of it. And he was right. Though it didn’t stop me from making subsequent off-the-record enquiries, of course.”
“Medic? I read Frobisher’s excellent autopsy account.”
“Well, that’s not without its puzzles but I’m talking about the report on the body by the animal doctor. The veterinary surgeon, I hear, was on the spot faster even than the local doc. He shot the beast dead but he took the trouble to stay around until daylight and then carried out a careful examination of the horse’s body before it was carted off to the knacker’s yard. I have this information from the lads. ‘Doc weren’t easy about it,’ they told me. ‘Muttered an’ cussed. Found something he didn’t like the look of.’ I’ve not had a chance to speak to the vet myself yet. We’ll see him together. He can see us in his office at eleven o’clock.”
Joe smiled to hear again the undisguised evidence of preplanning. Should he have felt resentment or pressure at being so manoeuvred? Undoubtedly. But professional efficiency to a good end never irritated him and his dignity was not so fragile he had to strengthen it with bluster. “Sounds good to me,” he said agreeably. “What about the staff? Are we booked in to see them? And the Dowager Lady Truelove—is she putting the kettle on?”
“It’s all taken care of. You don’t ask, so I’ll tell you—James will not be present. He always spends four weeks after term’s end in London. He has a flat in London and that’s where he’s going to be until he goes north to a cousin’s estate in Scotland for the shooting. I checked with the valet he keeps down there. But then, I expect you checked, too.”
“Same result. Sir James has a full appointment book. Sir James is hardly the grieving widower it would appear. His life continues as busy as it ever was. Which means he’s conveniently out of our hair. What else have you set up?”
“I asked the management here to put you in a room with a big desk.”
“They did. Let’s go up and cover it with documents, shall we. Leaving a corner for the Glenmorangie.”
“FROM A COUNTRY doctor, this death certificate and autopsy report are impressive,” Joe said.
“It was a double-handed effort,” Hunnyton explained. “If you look at the signatures you’ll see that of the local doctor, Thoroughgood, who attended at the scene, and also the name of the pathologist, Mr. Frobisher, here in the hospital in Cambridge where the body was brought for further inspection—at the insistence of Thoroughgood himself. He stayed to witness the procedure and helped draw up the statement, which they both signed.”
“Unusual? The doc could, in a clear case of misadventure which this was, have just dealt with it and got a colleague to provide the second signature on the certificate. No fuss. No one would have questioned it.”
“Obviously the good doctor had a question in his own mind to make him go to this trouble. It is a trouble. Transporting bodies about the place, hospital involvement and all that, it’s time-consuming and appears fussy. Truelove himself might well have been a bit miffed.”
“He was. At the first suggestion. He quickly changed his attitude to one of resigned acceptance, I hear. Look, Sandilands, you can make your own enquiries, get your own answers. I just pass on to you as impartially as I can what was said to me.”
“Understood. In that case,” Joe said, riffling through the sheets, “have you an explanation for this? Which page was it now? Ah, here we are … I’m wondering why, when the victim has succumbed to the most appalling and evident wounds, the doctor advised the surgeon—‘at the request of Dr. Thoroughgood’ —to investigate the lady’s internal organs. Heart, liver, blood tests done—just as you’d expect in a case of suspicious death. He further states that the victim was not pregnant. I’d say this is a matter the local doctor wished to have clarified.”