Free Doctor at Large by Richard Gordon Page A

finality.
    ‘Oh, go on! I’ll give it back. Dr Azziz let me have it.’
    ‘Well, Dr Gordon won’t.’
    ‘Fetch us a bit of nembutal from the cupboard, then. I love nembutal.’ She rubbed her stomach and rolled her eyes. ‘Lovely grub, it is. Sends you to sleep and makes you forget what a bloody old miser the Doctor is.’
    ‘That hardly seems the way for a woman to talk about her husband.’
    Suddenly she made a grab for my waistcoat pocket. ‘Come on! Give it over!’
    ‘For God’s sake, woman – !’
    ‘Ooo! Let go! You’re hurting!’ she cried pleasurably.
    ‘Damnation! Can’t you control yourself?’
    We struggled over the chair and fell on to the floor. Jasmine was a sturdy girl and obviously experienced in parlour fighting. I had managed to push her from above me with difficulty, when Dr Hockett came in.
    I scrambled up. My collar had flown from its stud, my face was red, I was sweating and breathless. Hockett stood in his overcoat in the doorway with his hands behind him, staring at me in the usual way.
    ‘We – er – I had lost something on the floor,’ I explained.
    He nodded.
    ‘Jasmine – Mrs Hockett, that is – was helping me find it.’
    There was a long silence, while Jasmine smoothed down her clothes.
    ‘Time for dinner,’ Hockett said quietly. ‘My dear, it is surely not necessary to have the fire on at this hour of the morning? It is really remarkably warm for the time of year.’
    None of us spoke during the meal, which was sausage and mash. When Jasmine had cleared away the dishes and left, Hockett said in his usual voice, ‘Surprising the number of doctors who have sinned, isn’t it?’
    ‘Sinned?’ I looked at him uncomfortably. ‘You mean – er, sexually?’
    ‘I mean who have committed murder.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’ I said faintly. ‘I suppose it is.’
    ‘There was Crippen – Palmer the Poisoner – Neil Cream in London. And many more. Do you remember the Ruxton case? He cut them up in the bath.’
    ‘I suppose it’s – sort of tempting to have all the stuff around. To go murdering people with.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Ah, well!’ I said. I stood up, clutching the table for support. ‘I must be getting along.’
    ‘Many murderers are never detected, Doctor,’ Hockett observed.
    I ran to my room and wedged the bed behind the door.
     
    The evening nevertheless passed the same way as the one before. Dr Hockett sat beside the faint-heated fire and read the Express ; Jasmine knitted, and winked every time she caught my eye; I looked at the duck and read my Cyclopaedia .
    We went to bed at ten, parting as amiably as any trio which has shared for supper the same cod fillet. I heard Dr Hockett turn the electricity off at the main. I felt for my torch beside me, and went to sleep.
    The telephone rang at one-thirty. As it was my job to take all night calls I automatically climbed out of bed, crept downstairs, and answered it.
    ‘Fifteen Canal Place,’ a man’s voice said immediately. ‘And hurry up.’ The line went dead.
    I pulled on my clothes, started up Haemorrhagic Hilda, looked for Canal Place on my new map, and bounced over the deserted tramlines into the night. After losing myself three or four times I found the address at the far end of a long, narrow, twisting street too cramped for Hilda to pass. I walked the rest of the way, and as it was raining again I knocked on the door with my new suit soaked through to the pyjamas underneath.
    ‘You’ve taken your time, I must say,’ said the man who opened the door.
    I shone my torch in his face. ‘Wilkins!’
    ‘The very same.’
    ‘If this is some sort of joke–’ I began angrily.
    ‘Joke? I don’t play jokes, Doc. Some people say I ain’t got a sense of humour. It’s mother.’
    ‘What’s wrong with her?’
    ‘She’s dying.’
    ‘She is, is she? Well, we’ll see.’
    I found Mrs Wilkins in bed upstairs, suffering from the wind.
    ‘She wants to go into ’ospital,’ Mr Wilkins announced in a