The Killings at Badger's Drift(47)

‘Darling, I’m sorry but I had to ring. Didn’t you get my note? . . . What d’you mean there’s nothing you can do? You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to . . . You must have some money . . . I’ve done that. I’ve sold everything that I thought he wouldn’t notice, even my coat . . . No, it was being stored for the winter . . . How the hell do I know what I’ll say? . . . Three thousand and it cost him ten so I’m still nearly a thousand short. For God’s sake - I’m only in this mess because of you . . . You bastard, it wasn’t me who said I was counting the hours - I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. Darling? I’m sorry - don’t hang up! Please - you must help. It’ll be the end of everything here if he finds out. You don’t know what my life was like before. I’ll never go back to that. I’ll - hullo, hullo . . . ?’

Feverishly she clicked at the receiver rest. She stood for a moment, her shoulders drooping in despair, then she slammed down the phone and ran back upstairs.

Judy stepped back from her narrow secret observation post and smiled.





The surgery was empty. As they entered, a woman, her skin the colour of clay, came out of the consulting room and stood looking around in dazed disbelief. The receptionist hurried out from her cubicle but the woman pushed past her and the two men, almost running from the room. Doctor Lessiter’s buzzer sounded and a moment later they were shown in. He was replacing a file in a big wooden cupboard. ‘Horrible part of the job,’ he said, sounding brisk and unconcerned, ‘there’s no way to break bad news is there?’

‘Indeed there isn’t, Doctor Lessiter.’ Barnaby could not have wished for a neater opening. ‘I favour the straightforward approach myself. Could you tell me what you were doing on the afternoon of Friday the seventeenth of this month?’

‘I’ve already told you.’ He sat behind his desk and got on with a bit of knuckle cracking. ‘What an inefficient lot you are, to be sure. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten already.’

‘You stated that you were watching the Test match on television.’

‘That’s right.’

‘All afternoon?’

‘Absolutely.’ He pulled a final finger. The crack sounded very loud in the quiet room. Suddenly the silence seemed to thicken; change character. The doctor was staring at his fingers with some surprise as if he had never seen them before. He looked at Barnaby’s grave features, at Troy and back to Barnaby again. ‘Yes. Absolutely . . . that’s right.’ But the certainty had gone. It was no longer a statement of fact. He had the air of a man who knows he’s been rumbled but doesn’t yet know how.

‘The light stopped play at eleven that morning. For the day.’

‘Oh . . . well . . . maybe it was Thursday I watched. Yes, actually it was. I remember now—’

‘You have your rounds on Thursday. Or so you declared in your previous statement.’

‘Oh yes - of course I do. How silly of me . . .’ Sweat beaded his forehead and started to roll, like transparent little glass beads, down his nose. His eyes flickered around the room seeking inspiration from the instrument cabinet, the chrome, rubber-covered examination trolley, the big wooden cupboard. ‘I don’t see the point of this, you know. I mean we all know the old lady died in the evening.’

‘I can assure you our inquiries are very relevant. We don’t waste our own and the public’s time unnecessarily.’

Trevor Lessiter still did not reply. Barnaby was anxious not to give him too much leeway. Already he could see the doctor rolling with the punch of his broken alibi, trying to dredge up a suitable alternative. Time for the frighteners.

‘You would not deny that you have the knowledge and equipment here to prepare an infusion of hemlock?’

‘What! But that’s ludicrous . . . you don’t need special equipment. Anyone could—’

‘Not anyone could sign a death certificate.’

‘I’ve never heard such an outrageous . . . I was here all evening.’

‘We only have your word for that, sir.’

‘My wife and daughter—’

‘Went out, if you recall.’

‘I swear to you—’

‘You swore to us about your whereabouts that afternoon, Doctor Lessiter. You were lying then. Why should you not be lying now?’

‘How dare you.’ He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple rode furiously up and down as if seeking an escape from his throat. ‘I’ve never heard such—’

‘Can you explain why, when you were the last person to use Miss Simpson’s telephone, no prints were found on it?’