“I would like to be,” he said, “very much, but I simply haven’t the time. You must let me know how it works out.”
I said I would, we shook hands and I went out. A fat woman in a coat much too warm for the day that was shaping up was sitting in the waiting room. I gave her my hard-boiled look and she squirmed a bit. Mrs Steiner was looking flustered and she pressed the wrong button on the intercom when Pincus buzzed her. She got it right on the second try.
“Mrs Hamersley-Smith is here doctor.”
Pincus said something inaudible to me and Mrs Steiner repressed a smile. She raised a finger which boasted a long, blood red fingernail. Mrs Hamersley-Smith waddled past me and reached the door just as Pincus opened it. Beautiful timing. I smiled at Mrs Steiner.
“Can you tell me when Dr Pincus is due at the hospital and how long he’ll be there?”
The twenty minutes of the boss’s time had done me a power of good in her eyes. She flicked at her desk calendar and ran the crimson nail down a page of the appointments book.
“He’s there for an hour and a half,” she said, “from two o’clock until 3.30.”
I thanked her and left. I carried the image of her dark, bottomless eyes with me all the way back to the street.
I had a few hours to kill which isn’t supposed to happen to a private detective busy on a case but sometimes does. I could have killed it by doing some banking and writing cheques for people who could legitimately expect them, or I could have gone to my dentist for a check-up or I could have put the car in for a service. I didn’t. I walked across to the Public Library and ordered a batch of newspapers for the year 1972. They came on microfilm in fifteen minutes. I worked through the papers pretty fast looking at the business news mostly and checking the correspondence columns trying to get a feel for the shape of things as they were then.
Mark Gutteridge got a fair bit of coverage as a canny and successful land developer, but there was nothing out of the ordinary about it — no shady deals hinted at, no subsidiary companies collapsing and ruining shareholders. His death got a big spread and there were follow-up stories over the next few days. I read this stuff closely to brief myself for the meeting later in the day. The reporters were starved of facts from the start. The cops were close-mouthed about their investigations and the coverage soon tailed off into human interest material about Gutteridge and his family. There were a couple of good photos of Ailsa, an indifferent one of Bryn and one of Susan that was so poor that it took imagination to relate it to the person I knew. There was no mention of robbery, no details on the gun or the wound, and the coroner’s verdict came in as smooth as silk stockings on shaved legs — “Death by his own hand while of unsound mind”. I made a few notes, tucked them away in my pocket and told the attendant that I’d finished with the papers.
I left the library looking for somewhere to have lunch. I approached a cafe in a new chrome, concrete and glass building and a name on a directory board jumped out at me. Sleeman Enterprises’ office was on the fourth floor and I took the lift up just for the hell of it. The decor was all plastic, glass and middle-of-the-road wall to wall carpet. There were a few pot plants, not so many as to prevent the employees seeing each other, and a general air of work being done. A desk just outside the lift had a sign reading “Inquiries” hanging above it and a dark-haired girl looked up from her typing when she saw me peering keenly about. A good sign that, a receptionist who can type. She asked if she could help in a voice that suggested she was serious about the offer. I took out my wallet and extracted a card a little guy who’d come to my office a month ago had given me. He gave me the card but he knew I was a lost cause.
“My name is Riddout,” I said, “Claude Riddout, I’m from Simon’s Office Furniture and Decor.”
“Yes Mr Riddout?”
“Well, I was just visiting a client on another floor and I thought I’d glance in on a few other establishments just to see if our services might be required.”
“I don’t think…”
I waved both hands in the air. “No, no, I can see that everything is very nice here, very tasteful indeed, I compliment you, it must be very pleasant to work in such surroundings, very pleasant indeed. You wouldn’t believe the drabness I see in some places.”
I’d succeeded in boring her silly in half a minute which is good going.
“Yes, it’s fine, now uhmm… is there anything…?”
“No, no, if I could just look about a little, take a wander down a corridor or two? I promise I won’t intrude on anyone. I’d hate to interrupt the workings of such a smooth running organisation. Just a peep, just a professional peep.”
She grabbed the out although she had to cover herself. “Well, I really shouldn’t allow you to, but if you make it brief I suppose it’ll be all right. The stairs are at the end of that corridor.”
She pointed, I ducked my head at her and set off down the passage. There were three offices off to the left along one passage, one on each side of a short connecting corridor and a further three or four on both sides of another passage. Some of the offices had names on the door, some didn’t. Some were partitioned to permit a secretary to work away out of sight of her master but within beck and call. Along one wall was a large map of Australia and the Pacific islands. Little pins with red heads were stuck in at various points — all the mainland capital cities as well as places like Geelong and Wollongong, and here and there among the islands — Port Moresby, Suva, Noumea, Pago Pago.
The biggest office had Walter Chalmers’ name on the door. The next biggest was occupied by Ross Haines. I opened the door to Haines’ secretary’s cubicle and said “Oh sorry” to a startled blonde. I did the same to Chalmers’ secretary and got an ice cold look from a middle aged woman wearing violently dyed red hair and a Chanel suit. I went back to the lifts past the receptionist who saw me coming, put her head down and kept it there like Anne Boleyn on the block.
I grabbed some fruit from a street stand and made do with that for lunch.
At 3.45 I was at the hospital and as unpopular as a bikini in a nudist camp. I’d been shunted about from reception desk to waiting room and back again, but, given the size of the place, I’d made it fairly fast into the hospital director’s office. He had a couple of medical degrees, Harvard business administration ticket, a hyphenated name and he didn’t like me. He looked clean-cut like an American lawyer and he spoke in a clipped upper class voice like an English doctor.
“This is all extremely irregular, Mr Hardy. Hospital routines are delicate things, not to be tampered with lightly.”
I didn’t say anything, the fact that I was there meant that I was going to get what I wanted and if I had to take a little crap from him along the way I would. He ran his hand over his greying crewcut and riffled through some papers on his desk.
“However, the two ladies are not dangerously ill, private patients of course so no one will be disturbed.”
What he meant was that the two ladies were rich and rich people who’ve been well treated in hospital sometimes remember that when they’ve got their chequebooks out. I nodded.
“Dr Pincus and Sir John concur in the matter,” he went on, “so I think it can be arranged.”
I don’t know how hospital directors are fixed for status and prospects, but this one had elected to keep two medical heavies very firmly on side. That was fine with me. I grinned at him infuriatingly. He levelled up his papers and plonked a solid silver paperweight in the shape of a kidney on top of them. It was my day for making people glad to get me out of their sight. He flipped an intercom switch.
“Are we ready for Mr Hardy?”
He looked relieved at the reply and even more relieved when the door opened and a male nurse presented himself. The boss said, “Nurse Mahony will attend to you, Mr Hardy.” I said, “Thank you” and he pretended not to hear me.