The Remorseful Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

son—four of the principal players in the Lower Swinstead case.
    He concentrated as well as he could, in spite of those cruel words still echoing in his brain. And after a while he found himself progressively engaged in the earlier, more grievous agonies of other people: of Frank, the husband; of Sarah, the daughter; of Simon, the son; and of Yvonne, the mother, who had been murdered so brutally in the Cotswold village of Lower Swinstead, Oxon.

Chapter Six
    The English country gentleman galloping after a fox—the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
    (Oscar Wilde)
    At first he'd felt some reluctance about an immediate interview with her. But finally he decided that earlier rather than later was probably best; and in tones considerably less peremptory than those in which Strange had summoned Lewis three days earlier, he called her to his office at 4:30 P.M.
    At which time she stood silent and still for a few seconds at the door before knocking softly, feeling like a schoolgirl outside the headmistress's study.
    “Come in!”
    She entered and sat, as directed, in the chair opposite him, across the desk.
    Professor Turner was a fair-complexioned, mild-mannered medic, in his early sixties—the internationally renowned chief-guru of the Radcliffe Infirmary's Diabetes Centre in Oxford.
    “You wanted to see me, sir?”
    Yes, he wanted to see her; but he also wanted to put her rather more at ease.
    “Look, we're probably going to be together at lots of do's these next few months—years, perhaps—so, please, let's forget this ‘Sir’ business, shall we? Please call me'Robert.'”
    Sarah Harrison, a slimly attractive, brown-eyed brunette in her late twenties, felt her shoulder muscles relax a little.
    Not for long.
    “I've sat in with you once or twice, haven't I?”
    “Three times.”
    “And I think you're going to be good, going to be up to it, you know what I mean?”
    “Thank you.”
    “But you're not quite good enough yet.”
    “I'd hoped I was improving.”
    “Certainly. But you're still strangely naive, I'm sorry to say. You seem to believe everything your patients tell you!”
    “There's not much else to go on, is there?”
    “Oh, but there is! There's a certain healthy and necessary skepticism; and then there's experience. You'll soon realize all this. What I'm saying is that you might as well learn it now rather than later.”
    “Is there anything particular… ?”
    “Things, plural. I'm thinking of what they tell you about their blood-sugar records, about their sexual competence, about their diet, about their alcohol intake. You see, the only thing they can't fool you about is their
weight.”
    “And their blood pressure.”
    Turner smiled gently at his pupil. “I haven't got
quite
as much faith as you in our measurements of blood pressure.”
    “But they don't all of them make their answers up.”
    “Not
all
of them, no. It's just that we all like to pretend a bit. We all tend to say we're fine, even if we're feeling lousy. Don't we?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “And
our
main job” (Turner spoke with a quiet authority) “is to give
information
—and to exert some sort of
influence
—about the way our patients cope with what, as you know, is potentially a very serious illness.”
    Sarah said nothing. Just sat there. A little humiliated.
    And he continued: “There are a good many patients here who are professional liars. Some of them I've known for years, and they've known me. We tell each other lies, all right. But it doesn't matter—because we
know
we're telling each other lies … Anyway, that's enough about that.” (Turner looked down at her folder.) “I see you've got Mr. David Mackenzie on yourlist next Monday. I'll sit in with you on him. I think he did once tell me his date of birth correctly, but he makes everything else up as he goes along. You'll enjoy him!”
    Again Sarah said nothing. And she was preparing to leave when Turner changed the subject abruptly, and in an