Browne. âI made a point of doing that early on.â
Sloan made a note. Something else the good books stressed as important was the positioning of the interviewee. It wasnât like that here. Crosby had been relegated to the chair reserved for the patientâs friend or chaperon â well away from whatever action there was. And he, Sloan, was sitting on the patientâs chair, where the full light from the window fell upon his face.
âAt least two months ago,â said Browne calmly. It was the doctorâs face that was in shadow.
âI see.â Nor was Sloan sitting across a desk but at right angles to the medical man. It was hard to be confrontational â let alone bring pressure to bear â while sitting sideways on. As it happened, he wanted to do neither of these things: but he did very badly want to know everything he could about the life and death of Gertrude Powell.
âMoreover, she was in a uraemic coma at the end,â said Angus Browne briskly, âand thereâs no two ways about that.â
âAh, the endâ¦â Sloan began carefully. These days witnesses as well as suspects had to be handled with kid gloves. Not, naturally, that he had ever thought that it was fair to sit a man on a chair in the middle of a room and then circle round him, throwing questions at the man from behind his back so that he was forever spinning round, off-base, to face his interlocutor. âI wanted to talk to you about the end, doctor.â
âNot unexpected,â said Browne immediately. âAs it happened, I saw her the day she died.â
âYou were sent for?â
âI was sent for to see someone else at the Manor and naturally I looked in on her, too.â
âMay we ask who itâ¦â
âJudge Gillespie,â said Browne. âHeâs always been a bit of an old woman about his health. Yeâll notice his Hippocratic facies if you see him.â
âBeg pardon, doctor?â
âLower jaw hanging open as if he was dead.â He shrugged. âItâs not to be wondered at. Heâs been very, very shaky since he hit ninety.â
âLike that clock,â said Crosby.
âWhat clock?â asked the doctor.
âYou know,â said Crosby, beginning to chant, âthe one in the song that stood ninety years on the wall, tick tock, and stopped, never to go again, the day the old man died.â
âThe Judge hasnât died,â said Dr Browne, regarding the constable in a distinctly clinical way. âAlthough I agree some people do die when theyâve hit a new decade. Dangerous things, birthdays. Make you think. Especially when youâre suffering from too many of âem.â
âSo, doctorâ¦â resumed Sloan tenaciously.
âThe birthday,â carried on the doctor, âthat really worries a lot of menâ¦â
âForty?â suggested Crosby.
âNo,â said Dr Browne, recognizing a Freudian slip when he heard one. âItâs the one at the age at which their own fathers died.â The general practitioner pulled open the late Mrs Powellâs medical record envelope. âI get a lot of nervous men in then.â
Detective Inspector Sloan leaned forward, undeterred. âMrs Powellâ¦â
âIt so happens, Inspector,â said the doctor, neatly playing a trump card, âthat I had asked one of the hospital consultants to take a look at her a week or so before she died.â
âYou did?â Sloan tried not to sound too interested. He was aiming for what was known as an open-ended interview. In theory, the semi-structured format allowed respondents to talk at length about any matter that concerned them yet still left the interviewer scope to explore difficult issues. In reality it seemed the doctor was making all the running. âDo you always do that?â
âNo.â
âSo why would that have been in this case