Bring Forth Your Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

ago now, you know.’ She was suddenly defensive. They waited for her to elaborate, but she looked resolutely down at those elegant shoes and said nothing. This time Lambert was sure that she was concealing something, but equally sure that she would not be drawn into admissions at this moment if he pressed her.
    ‘All right, Mrs Lewis.’ She looked up at him quickly, and gave herself away in the relief which flashed briefly across her face. She had expected to be questioned harder; that only convinced him that she had been determined to reveal nothing more. ‘Thank you for helping us to begin compiling our list of facts. We shall be back, of course, as the investigation develops and we become more interested in certain areas.’ It sounded like the threat he realised he had half-intended. ‘In the meantime, if you remember anything else that you think might be of interest to us, please contact us immediately.’
    She stood up quickly then, and saw them to the door, as no doubt she had seen thousands of other visitors over fourteen years. She was polite but relaxed; they wondered how far her relief was a perfectly normal reaction to the end of an interview with a Superintendent pursuing a homicide inquiry.
    Margaret Lewis watched the big Vauxhall all the way to the end of the avenue before she shut the heavy oak door and went back into the big, silent house. She looked at the telephone for a full minute before she picked it up. When the young man’s voice answered her, she did not trouble to introduce herself.
    She took a long breath and said only, ‘The police have just left here. They know now that Edmund was murdered. You’d better keep away.’

 
    4
     
    There are not many deaths like that of Edmund Craven, where a poisoner so nearly gets away with murder. When they do occur, the first person to fall under suspicion is the patient’s doctor. In a few cases, he may be the deliberate agent of death: he is the person in the best position to administer poison without detection. In other, fortunately even fewer, cases, he may be an accessory after the fact, deliberately concealing evidence to protect someone, usually a lover. The law has dealt harshly with the small number of medical men known to have gone astray in this way—there are few women doctors who have been detected in such actions. Equality will no doubt in time bring its inevitable side-effects, here as elsewhere.
    In a much larger proportion of these cases, it is possible to detect a degree of negligence in medical practice, where the doctor in question has failed to spot that death did not occur from the natural causes he specified and signed for on the death certificate. Such omissions are not always publicised, medical men being more than usually charitable towards their fellow practitioners. All professions are conspiracies against the laity, Lambert reminded Hook, as the big car moved smoothly towards the house of Dr Carroll; he was sure Bert would have been a wholehearted supporter of Shaw’s Fabianism had he been given the opportunity.
    Carroll lived in a box-like modern house with a trim front garden, modest and characterless after the Edwardian confidence of Craven’s house, but no doubt much more convenient to live in and to run. Mrs Carroll, who was at the door before they had time to ring, was as trim and well-organised as her house. It was still quite early in the afternoon, but she brought in the tea-tray without asking if they required it, to Bert Hook’s undisguised approval. Then, having poured the tea, she left them alone with her husband.
    Dr James Carroll was scarcely the best advert for the efficacy of his own profession. He was probably not more than two years older than his wife, but he looked ten and behaved more. His hand shook as he offered them the cups and saucers, so that Hook sprang forward to take over the duty. His wife had fussed over him maternally in arranging the seating arrangements; where her movements had been