‘Well . . . er . . . Barnaby’ - he handed it back - ‘I can’t give you long.’ He didn’t invite the other man to sit down. The chief inspector explained the reason for his visit.
‘Don’t see any problem there. Elderly lady, bad fall, too much for her heart. A very common problem.’
‘I assume you attended Miss Simpson at some time during the two weeks before her death?’
‘Oh yes indeed. You can’t catch me out, Inspector. The death would have been reported otherwise. I know the law as well as you do.’
Leaving this unlikely possibility aside, Barnaby asked, ‘For what reason?’
‘She had a touch of bronchitis. Nothing serious.’
‘She didn’t die of bronchitis, surely?’
‘What are you implying?’
‘I’m not implying anything, Doctor Lessiter. I’m simply asking you a question.’
‘The cause of death, which occurred several hours before she was discovered, was heart failure. As I’ve already stated. The bruise was a large one. She must have fallen quite heavily. This sort of shock can be fatal.’
‘I can see that would be the natural deduction -’
‘Diagnosis.’
‘- and that you would not be looking for anything untoward. Perfectly natural under the circumstances. But if you could cast your mind back for a moment was there nothing which perhaps’ - he searched for the most tactful phrase - ‘didn’t quite fit?’
‘Nothing.’
But there had been a brief hesitation. And a note in the doctor’s voice that ran counter to the strong negative. Barnaby waited. Doctor Lessiter puffed out his cheeks. His head was as round as a turnip and his cheeks the colour of russet apples. His nose was reddish too and thin crimson threads fanned out over his eyeballs. Lurking behind the acceptable aroma of soap, antiseptic and strong mints the chief inspector thought he could detect a whiff of whisky. Doctor Lessiter’s hands took a break and rested on his pot belly. When he spoke his tone was judicial, implying that he had finally decided that Barnaby could be trusted.
‘Well . . . there was something . . . oh hardly worth mentioning, really. There was rather a funny smell.’
‘What sort of smell?’
‘Umm . . . like mice.’
‘That’s not surprising in an old cottage. Especially if she didn’t have a cat.’
‘I didn’t say it was mice. I said it was like mice. That’s the nearest point of comparison I can make.’ Doctor Lessiter rose, a fraction unsteadily, to his feet. ‘And now you’ll have to excuse me. I have a very busy day ahead.’ He pressed the buzzer and moments later Barnaby found himself in the open air.
The surgery was behind the house, a splendid Victorian villa. He walked down the long gravel drive and entered a narrow lane bordered by hawthorn and cow parsley. It was a lovely sunny day. He broke off a bit of hawthorn and chewed it as he walked. Bread and cheese they had called it when he was a lad. He remembered biting into the sweet green buds. It didn’t taste the same now. Bit late in the year, perhaps.
Badger’s Drift was in the shape of a letter T. The cross bar, called simply the Street, had a crescent of breeze-block council houses, a few private dwellings, the Black Boy pub, a phone box and a very large and beautiful Georgian house. This was painted a pale apricot colour and almost smothered on one side by a vast magnolia. Behind the house were several farm buildings and two huge silos. The post office was a two-up two-down, no doubt suitably fortified, called Izercummin, which doubled as the village shop.
Barnaby turned into the main leg of the T. Church Lane was not as long as the Street and ran very quickly into open country - miles and miles of wheat and barley bisected at one point by a rectangular blaze of rape. The church was thirteenth-century stone and flint, the church hall twentieth-century brick and corrugated iron.
As Barnaby strolled along he felt more and more strongly that he was being watched. A stranger in a small community is always an object of keen interest and he had seen more than one curtain twitch as he passed by. Now, although the lane behind him appeared to be deserted, he felt a spot of tension develop at the base of his neck. He turned. No one. Then he saw a rainbow of light bobbing near his feet and looked up. In the loft window of an opulent bungalow close to the Black Boy a prism of light flashed and a face turned quickly away.
Miss Bellringer lived in a small modern house at the end of the lane. Barnaby walked up the narrow path of pea shingle encroached by a tangle of luxurious vegetation. Rhododendrons, laurel, hypericum, roses all running amok in all directions. On the front door was an iron bull’s head and a notice in a clear plastic envelope which read KNOCK LOUDLY. He knocked loudly.