The Killings at Badger's Drift Read Online Free PDF Page A

the gesture. ‘I suppose your next step will be to talk to the doctor?’
    ‘That’s right.’ Barnaby laid down his knife and fork. You could ask just so much from ordinarily tempered cutlery. ‘Probably after his evening surgery, so I might be late again. Don’t worry about keeping anything hot. I’ll eat out.’
     
    ‘You may go in now.’
    Barnaby had turned up, at Doctor Lessiter’s suggestion, at eleven the following morning. He entered the consulting room to find the doctor seated behind his desk and as busy as a bee. All through their conversation his fingers were never still: fiddling with pencils, tidying a stack of pharmaceutical literature, pulling down his cuffs or just drumming away on his blotter. He glanced quickly at the chief inspector’s warrant card.
    ‘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