Free Stiff News by Catherine Aird Page A

then?’
    â€˜Can’t be too careful these days, Inspector.’ Browne shrugged. ‘It makes for defensive medicine, of course, and that’s bad, but it’s better than afterwards having people think you could have done more for their nearest and dearest.’
    â€˜Would it have been true to say that you wished you had done so in the case of the late Mrs Maude Chalmers-Hyde?’
    â€˜It would have been true to say that in the event, it would have saved there having to be a postmortem in her case,’ conceded Angus Browne, in no whit put out. ‘And spared the Matron out there a little concern which ultimately turned out not to have been justified. That’s all.’
    â€˜Better safe than sorry,’ put in Crosby.
    â€˜In this case, yes.’
    â€˜This other doctor who saw Mrs Powell…’ persisted Sloan.
    â€˜Dr Edwin Beaumont, one of the physicians from the Berebury Hospital Trust,’ said Browne, shaking a letter out of the patient’s medical record envelope and onto his desk. ‘He examined her at my request and confirmed that there was nothing more to be done for Mrs Powell.’
    â€˜In writing?’
    â€˜Aye, man. In writing.’ The bushy eyebrows became even more prominent. ‘Ye’ll be interested to know that in Beaumont’s opinion – and I may say he’s a man greatly respected within the profession – as well as in my own, the patient was well beyond aid. That good enough for you?’

Chapter Eight
    And plant fresh laurels where they kill
    â€˜Very difficult to say at this stage, sir.’ Detective Inspector Sloan had next been driven by Detective Constable Crosby to the home of Lionel and Julia Powell on the other side of the county. He was addressing Lionel Powell.
    The two policemen might have left Dr Browne’s consulting rooms behind at Larking but Sloan anyway had not quite abandoned the medical mode of doling out only such information as was absolutely necessary for his own purposes.
    â€˜Later, perhaps, sir.’ Indeed, it had occurred to Sloan as he sat in the comfort of the Powells’ sitting room that the amount of strictly accurate knowledge given out by the police to anyone involved in an investigation – including the press – was every bit as carefully controlled as that released by a skilled medical practitioner with bad news to impart to a patient.
    Knowledge was power all right.
    â€˜You will understand, Inspector,’ said Lionel Powell, ‘that we need to know where we go from here.’
    â€˜You can’t just leave things hanging in the air like this, Inspector,’ supplemented Julia Powell. ‘It’s not right.’
    â€˜I can assure you we’re doing our best, madam.’ Sloan supposed the doctor, too, could always utter this comfortable platitude. Both professionals, though, could choose to release news – good and bad – in their own time and that was what mattered. In the handling of a difficult situation timing could be of the essence. Having the timing in one’s own hands was power, too.
    Lionel Powell underlined his wife’s remark. ‘Obviously certain matters must be attended to as soon as possible.’
    â€˜That is one of the things we are looking into,’ murmured Sloan. Dr Browne, he imagined, might say something very similar about the significant result of an X-ray which the doctor already knew and the patient didn’t. He, on much the same basis, did know what the immediate outcome of the postmortem on Mrs Powell, senior, had been, and it was a good deal too inconclusive for his liking.
    â€˜My mother-in-law’s funeral can’t be postponed indefinitely,’ said Julia Powell more specifically. ‘It isn’t seemly.’
    â€˜Indeed not, madam,’ lied Sloan.
    He forbore to say that it could be postponed just as long as the law wished. One thing was certain, anyway, and that was that