The Queen v. Karl Mullen (21 page)

“Of course, my dear,” said Dr. Moy-Williams. It seemed to him that he might be a very necessary shield between Dorothy and the brusqueness of a police surgeon.

As soon as the solicitor had departed to use the telephone, Dorothy grabbed him by the arm and said, “What - what does it mean? Why should he have put that in his will? Why should he want another doctor?”

“I’m afraid, my dear, that you’ve jumped to the wrong conclusion. I would doubt very much whether he knew the rule about a certificate leading to cremation having to be signed by two doctors. Nor do I think he was questioning my—ah—competence.”

“Then why?”

“It’s a fact that people do insert a clause in their wills with the understandable object of making certain that they are dead before they are buried. Sometimes it takes the form of the provision of a small sum of money to a surgeon to open their veins. Or to ascertain by some recognised method that life has indeed departed.”

“I see,” said Dorothy faintly. “You must think I’m stupid, but I couldn’t help wondering—”

She was cut short by the return of Mr. Pauling, who said, “That’s all right, then. I was lucky enough to catch Thorn before he left the hospital. He’s coming straight round here.” He looked at his watch. “Ten thirty. I’m already late for an appointment so I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you to it.”

He did not add that, speaking on the telephone, Dr. Thorn had given him his professional opinion of Dr. Moy-Williams. It had been a terse thumb-nail sketch. Clearly there was every possibility of ructions and he considered, as a prudent solicitor, that he would be wise to steer clear of them.

When Dr. Thorn arrived he wasted no time. He said, “As you know, doctor, I have two jobs imposed on me by the regulations. The first is to discuss the whole matter with you. The other is to speak to the nurse who was in charge of the patient at the end. It might be sensible, in this case, to carry out the second function first.”

“As you wish,” said Moy-Williams. “No outside nurse was involved, but the deceased’s wife acted in that capacity – under my superintendence – and was with him during the onset of the last attack.”

“Thank you. Then, if there is somewhere we could be private.”

Dorothy said, “There’s a room my husband used as an office.” She indicated a door at the foot of the staircase. “It’s very small, I’m afraid. Just room for a table and two chairs.”

“Two chairs will be all we want,” said Dr. Thorn pointedly.

“Then you don’t wish me to be present?”

“I always find, doctor, that in these cases it is better for me to form my own opinion, quite independently. In here, you mean? Yes, that will do excellently.” He followed Dorothy in and he closed the door behind him.

In the sitting-room Dr. Moy-Williams listened, with growing impatience, to the murmur of voices. Most of it seemed to be Dorothy, who was speaking with increasing fluency, her voice rippling along like a shallow stream, breaking against an occasional boulder in the form of a question from Dr. Thorn.

There was no conceivable pretext for him to intervene. Thorn was not bullying her. But he was certainly leading her on. They had been together for more than half an hour. What could they be finding to talk about?

When the door opened at last Thorn came out and crossed the hall towards the living-room. Dorothy did not come with him. She started slowly up the stairs.

Thorn said, “I’m afraid I trespassed on your department. She’s had such a trying two days that I suggested that she should go up and lie down for a wee while.”

“The more rest she gets the better,” said Moy-Williams shortly. He did not add, though tempted to do so, that the most trying part of the morning must have been her recent session with Thorn. “I imagine,” he added, “that you’d like now to discuss the medical aspects of the case with me.”

“Yes,” said Thorn. He had wandered across and was looking out of the window at the smooth lawn and weedless paths. “Certainly. We shall have to discuss that. I have already been able to obtain some useful information from Mrs. Katanga. Did you know that she was a trained nurse?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“She had to do a lot of that sort of work in her father’s mission station in Africa. However, I did not feel able to put to her the one question which will certainly have to be answered.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean as well as I do,” said Thorn, swinging round and looking the other in the face.

There was a long moment of complete silence. Then Moy-Williams said, “Explain please.” But he said it in a tone of voice which suggested that he guessed what was coming.

“The object of using that bougie was
not
, of course, to clear the oesophagus. It was to keep the scar which had developed there soft. If it was not treated regularly it would harden and shrink and might cause total atresia of the gullet.”

“Which is, of course, why I recommended that particular treatment.”

“Certainly. But can you explain why, when this treatment was used yesterday,
it had exactly the opposite effect
? The bougie, far from softening the scar, would appear to have burst it open.”

“Not necessarily. It is quite possible that the oedema which had been forming in the gullet had spread to such an extent that it caused a corresponding blockage in the windpipe. That would account for the spasmodic difficulty in breathing.”

“But surely, the process you are describing is quite a slow one. This was quick – and fatal.”

“I can see,” said Moy-Williams coldly, “that you have a solution to propound. Might I hear it?”

“The only answer that makes any sense to me is that there was some other substance
on the bougie.
Something added, perhaps to the olive oil in the jar. Something strong enough to break down the scar altogether and precipitate oedema into the windpipe.”

For a moment Moy-Williams seemed to find difficulty in speaking. Then he said, in a voice which anger and disbelief had reduced almost to inaudibility, “No doubt, since you are producing such ingenious theories, you would like to go a little further and suggest what member of this household could have done such a thing. You have a restricted choice. Mrs. Katanga or the girl, Anna. Or perhaps you would like to add me to the list.”

It was Thorn’s turn to look surprised. He said, “I thought you had questioned Mrs. Katanga about the events of yesterday.”

“Certainly. She told me that the first sign of trouble was when her husband refused his lunch—”

“But nothing about the earlier part of the morning.”

“I saw no reason—”

“So you were not aware that Karl Mullen – you know who I am talking about?”

“Of course.”

“You were not aware that he telephoned at about ten o’clock and that Anna told him that Katanga was out, at a meeting with his publishers and his wife was out shopping? She told him that both of them were expected back at about midday. Mullen thanked her and rang off.
But it seems that he took care to arrive in very good time.
In fact, he was here before half past eleven. Anna let him in. Having done so, she naturally retired to the kitchen.”

“Leaving Mullen alone in this room.”

It was clear from the tone of voice in which Moy-Williams said this that he was being driven from the defensive. It was not yet a medical alliance, but it was approaching it.

“Exactly. And I hope that answers your question.”

“It is suggestive, though not, I think, conclusive. I have been following the Mullen case in the papers – in so far as they were allowed to report anything – and it seems clear that Mullen had pressing reason to—well—to hope that Katanga would not be in a position to give evidence against him.”

“If you mean,” said Thorn, with youthful brutality, “that he had every reason to finish him off, why not say so?”

“Possibly because I am an older man than you,” said Moy-Williams. “And therefore slower to jump to conclusions. Tell me, if you happen to know. What excuse, if any, did Mullen give for calling?”

“Yes, as it happens, I do know that. But let me continue with what Mrs. Katanga told me. Her husband got back to the house ahead of her and by the time she arrived he was already in deep discussion with Mullen in here. So she joined Anna in the kitchen. As you may have noticed there is only the thinnest of partitions between kitchen and living-room. The two women were able to hear almost everything that was said. After a few insincere civilities Mullen came straight to the point. Katanga’s mother and his two sisters had been arrested and were being held by the police in Pretoria on charges of suspected terrorist activity. Evidence had been found. Here, it seems, Katanga interrupted to say ‘or planted’. Mullen brushed this aside. He said the evidence would no doubt be supported by statements made, eventually, by the women. The way in which he said this admitted of no doubt as to what was in store for them.”

“Unless Katanga did what he was told.”

“Exactly.”

“And what did Katanga do?”

“He told Mullen to go to hell. Mullen said, ‘On your head be it’, or words to that effect. As it was clear that the meeting was breaking up, Anna went out to open the front door. The two men left the room together. When they were out in the hall Mrs. Katanga couldn’t hear clearly what they said, though Anna, no doubt, could. Anyway, they went down the front path, still arguing. Anna watched them from the front door. She saw them stop, once or twice, to continue their argument – ‘both very angry’, she said. Finally Mullen got into his car and drove off. Katanga came back. Anna shut the door and went into the kitchen.”

Dr. Moy-Williams was not a man whose mind moved very quickly, or very clearly. He was trying to grasp the implications of what he had been told and was finding it difficult. One step at a time was enough for him.

He said, “How do you suppose that a man in Mullen’s position would get hold of poison?”

“Unfortunately there are poisons which are only too easy to get hold of. I was admiring the garden and the way the paths had been cleared. No one nowadays bothers about weeding by hand. They just go to a gardening shop and ask for the latest weedkiller. They used to be nicotine-based. Now they’re even more deadly. Paradol is one I use myself. It’s based on paraquat. A touch of anything of that sort on the bougie would break down the scar at once and a mass of oedema would penetrate the windpipe with immediately fatal results.”

“Yes,” said Moy-Williams. He said it reluctantly. The things that were being discussed were still possibilities, not probabilities. None the less, if matters did develop in the way Thorn was suggesting, everything they now did and said would come under the microscope of the law. Action might be fatal. Inaction might be even more so. He said, “So what do you suggest?”

It was an armistice proposal.

“On the assumption that your certificate may have to be amended, we must put the coroner in the picture. We shall have to agree to an autopsy. The best person to carry it out would be my old chief at Guy’s, Dr. Summerson. If he’s available, he’d do it at once.”

“We must tell Mr. Larch to suspend any preparation of the body and ask him to transfer it to the mortuary. I’d better do that. He’s more likely to accept instructions from me.”

“Right. You do that first. I’ll tackle the coroner and Summerson.”

In the kitchen Anna had her ear unashamedly pressed to the door. She did not grasp everything that had been said. She spoke English better than she understood it and some of the technical terms had gone over her head. But she had heard enough to make her both excited and worried.

She heard the doctors go out into the hall and the sound of dialling; then one of them, the fat doctor she thought, saying, “Mr. Larch? Moy-Williams here. Look, there have been developments—”

Dr. Summerson was one of the honorary Home Office pathologists who shared the workload that had killed Sir Bernard Spilsbury forty years before. He was reputed to be the most meticulous and the most cold-blooded of the three. He picked up the telephone.

The number that he dialled was unlisted. It bypassed both operator and receptionist and took him straight to the desk of Trevor Underhill, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions. Both men were aware of the explosive potentiality of the names Mullen and Katanga and it took Dr. Summerson very few minutes to explain what had happened and his own involvement in it.

He said, “I’m not throwing any stones at the family doctor, an old buffer called Moy-Williams. His professional qualifications aren’t staggering, but knowing what he did about the earlier accident it was quite a reasonable conclusion to come to – that cumulative oedema in the gullet might have exerted pressure on the windpipe. What he had overlooked was some severe blistering at the back of the mouth and tongue and in the oesophagus.”

“Perhaps he didn’t look for it.”

“Maybe not. But remember that until he heard about Mullen inviting himself round there on Thursday morning he had no grounds for suspicion.”

Underhill grinned. One doctor sticking up for another. He said, “Point taken. What next?”

“I’ve made sections of the oesophagus, the larynx, the trachea and the stomach. I gather that speed is important in this case.”

“No question about that.”

“I did think of carrying out the analysis in my own laboratory at the hospital. Or of bringing in the Metropolitan Police Laboratory. But I rejected both ideas. Though the Police Laboratory will strenuously deny this, we’re neither of us as well equipped as the Home Office Central Research Establishment at Aldermaston. I propose to send them the sections, along with the glass jar of olive oil and the bougie.”

“Fingerprints?” said Underhill.

“I tested them myself.”

“The jar and the bougie?”

“Yes. Several sets muddled and overlapping on the bougie. One plain set on the jar. They all looked to me to be from the same hand. The Police Laboratory will tell us when they see my photographs.”

“Will sending the stuff to Aldermaston involve delay?”

“No. I shall take it up by car myself. I know Gadney, the doctor in charge, very well. He’ll co-operate. In fact, I’m sure he’ll work all night if necessary. You shall have a preliminary report by tomorrow midday at the latest.”