A Body in the Village Hall by Dee MacDonald (non fiction books to read TXT) 📕

‘Did you know that Dr Dickie has one of the largest collection of medical instruments in the country?’ Sue went on. ‘You’d find it fascinating, if a bit creepy. Some of the scalpels and things go back centuries.’

‘How interesting,’ murmured Kate. ‘I’d love to see it.’

‘Well, just ask him. He’s very proud of it, particularly as the BBC came down to film it a year or so ago.’

As Kate drove up to Higher Tinworthy she realised this could be her one and only chance to have a chat with the old doctor. And, as a nurse, she had every reason to be fascinated by his collection of medical instruments, creepy or not. Please be at home, she prayed.

There was no sign of Dickie when she arrived. The door was opened by a tiny lady in a floral pinny brandishing a feather duster. ‘Come in,’ she said, leading the way through the hallway into the sitting room. ‘Mrs Payne will be with you in a minute.’

Kate looked around; no sign of Dickie. Just her luck.

‘How nice to see you again!’ Clare exclaimed as she propelled herself into the room.

‘Hello,’ said Kate. ‘How are you?’

‘Not so bad,’ Clare said. Then, shouting: ‘Mabel! Can you bring us both a cup of tea?’

Mabel mumbled something vaguely affirmative from the hallway.

While Kate attended to the leg she asked casually, ‘Where’s the doctor today?’

‘Oh, he’s around somewhere,’ Clare said. ‘He’s not too happy because he wanted to go to a retired doctors’ conference in Bristol, which would have necessitated him having to stay up there overnight, and the police have forbidden him to go. I don’t understand it at all, particularly as they now have a self-confessed murderer in custody.’

‘It does seem strange,’ Kate agreed.

‘What more do they want?’ Kate could hear the agitation in Clare’s voice. ‘They have someone in custody who’s admitted to the murders; surely it couldn’t be simpler?’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Kate concurred. ‘And I can’t think why they suspected your husband in the first place. It seems incredible to me. Just because he was out for a little while at the time of Fenella’s murder.’ She wondered for a moment if she’d gone too far.

‘Hopefully they’ll find the cashier who served him.’ Clare sighed. ‘You haven’t been here very long, have you, my dear? Dickie was very friendly with Fenella, you know. Very friendly. They’d been friends for years and years. But she was a demanding woman and she and Dickie fell out. That’s the crux of it. Something quite trivial, I believe. They’d fallen out and everyone knew about it.’

Kate wasn’t sure what to say next. ‘He chose a bad time to go for the milk,’ she said after a minute. ‘But why did neither he nor his car appear on the closed-circuit televisions at the supermarket?’

‘How do you know that?’ Clare asked shortly.

Kate hesitated. She’d better tread carefully. ‘I heard it somewhere,’ she said.

‘I would say that the fault stems from a non-operating camera, not from Dickie,’ she said firmly. ‘These things don’t pick up everyone, you know.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Kate said hastily. ‘It’s just that I find the case fascinating and I like to get everyone’s angle on it.’

At this point Mabel appeared with a tray with the tea things on it, and a small plate of biscuits. Kate sipped for a moment.

‘Well, my dear,’ Clare continued, ‘I should be concentrating on the Greys if I were you. He came back from wherever he’d been specifically to commit these awful crimes and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that she assisted him. Let’s face it, they never got over losing their child, so one can have some sympathy I suppose.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ Kate murmured as she finished bandaging.

‘Not that I’ve had children myself,’ Clare said, ‘that wasn’t to be. But I can imagine how dreadful it must be to lose a child. Dreadful.’

‘That’s your leg done,’ Kate said as she began to pack everything away. ‘I’m disappointed not to see the doctor though; I understand he has a very impressive collection of medical instruments?’

‘Oh, he’s around somewhere,’ Clare said and, as if on cue, the door opened and in walked Dickie.

‘Ah,’ he said as Kate drained her tea, ‘it’s our new nurse again.’

‘Yes,’ Clare said, ‘and she’d like to see your collection, darling.’

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ Kate put in.

‘Oh, it’s no trouble at all, my dear,’ said Dr Dickie. ‘If you’ve finished here then do come with me.’

Kate got to her feet, set her empty cup down on the tray and said goodbye to Clare, before following him out of the room and down a long corridor with a threadbare dark green carpet at the back of the house. The grey-painted walls were adorned with graphic anatomical diagrams: bones, muscles, veins and arteries. Kate felt as if she was walking through one of the textbooks from her student nursing days. He stopped at the far end, withdrew a key from his pocket, unlocked a door and ushered her into an enormous room, shelved from floor to ceiling, with tables in the centre, and every surface jammed full of labelled exhibits. There was an array of instruments such as scalpels, syringes, forceps, clamps, stethoscopes, jars and cases with weird contents, among them a pickled appendix in a glass container, and there was even an iron lung positioned at the far end of the room. There was also a display of surgeons’ gowns, masks and gloves.

‘Some of these instruments go back hundreds of years,’ Dickie said proudly.

As she looked around it seemed to Kate to be more out of a horror film than anything else. She moved quickly away from a thumb in a glass jar, her appetite for lunch destroyed. She shuddered.

He noticed. ‘I wouldn’t have thought a nurse would be squeamish,’ he said.

‘I’m just not too keen on seeing body parts on display,’ Kate said, ‘particularly if they’ve been around for a hundred years.’

‘Oh, really?’ he said.