Dumb Witness (Hercule Poirot 16)

“But not in her last illness.”

“Don’t think so.”

Poirot said, smiling:

“I gather, Miss Peabody, that you don’t think much of him as a doctor?”

“Never said so. As a matter of fact you’re wrong. He’s sharp enough, and clever enough in his way—but it’s not my way. Take an instance. In the old days when a child ate too many green apples it had a bilious attack and the doctor called it a bilious attack and went home and sent you along a few pills from the surgery. Nowadays, you’re told the child suffers from pronounced acidosis, that its diet must be supervised and you get the same medicine, only it’s in nice little white tablets put up by manufacturing chemists and costs you about three times as much! Donaldson belongs to that school, and mind you, most young mothers prefer it. It sounds better. Not that that young man will be in this place long ministering to measles and bilious attacks. He’s got his eye on London. He’s ambitious. He means to specialize.”

“In any particular line?”

“Serum therapeutics. I think I’ve got it right. The idea being that you get one of these nasty hypodermic needles stuck into you no matter how well you feel, just in case you should catch something. I don’t hold with all these messy injections myself.”

“Is Dr. Donaldson experimenting with any particular disease?”

“Don’t ask me. All I know is a G.P.’s practice isn’t good enough for him. He wants to set up in London. But to do that he’s got to have money and he’s as poor as a church mouse, whatever a church mouse may be.”

Poirot murmured:

“Sad that real ability is so often baulked by lack of money. And yet there are people who do not spend a quarter of their incomes.”

“Emily Arundell didn’t,” said Miss Peabody. “It was quite a surprise to some people when that will was read. The amount, I mean, not the way it was left.”

“Was it a surprise, do you think, to the members of her own family?”

“That’s telling,” said Miss Peabody screwing up her eyes with a good deal of enjoyment. “I wouldn’t say yes, and I wouldn’t say no. One of ’em had a pretty shrewd idea.”

“Which one?”

“Master Charles. He’d done a bit of calculation on his own account. He’s no fool, Charles.”

“But a little bit of a rogue, eh?”

“At any rate, he isn’t a namby-pamby stick,” said Miss Peabody viciously.

She paused a minute and then asked:

“Going to get in touch with him?”

“That was my intention.” Poirot went on solemnly, “It seems to me possible that he might have certain family papers relating to his grandfather?”

“More likely to have made a bonfire of them. No respect for his elders, that young man.”

“One must try all avenues,” said Poirot sententiously.

“So it seems,” said Miss Peabody drily.

There was a momentary glint in her blue eye that seemed to affect Poirot disagreeably. He rose.

“I must not trespass any longer on your time, madame. I am most grateful for what you have been able to tell me.”

“I’ve done my best,” said Miss Peabody. “Seem to have got rather a long way from the Indian Mutiny, don’t we?”

She shook hands with us both.

“Let me know when the book comes out,” was her parting remark. “I shall be so interested.”

And the last thing we heard as we left the room was a rich, throaty chuckle.