Giotto's Hand

He also had a tendency to be snappish with newcomers, on the grounds that if he presented a suitably ferocious appearance, he might head off some of the more timorous before they could make some supposedly whimsical comment. He wasn’t very good at this, being naturally a lazy, amiable man, and so the result was more bizarre than frightening.

When Flavia marched into his room, stretched out her hand and pumped his up and down, then sat uninvited on his patient’s chair, such pre-emptive strikes were unnecessary, and for a simple reason: Flavia had never heard of Samuel Johnson, and was absolutely unaware that there was anything even faintly amusing in the fact that a doctor should rejoice in both or either of two fairly common English names.

Dr. Johnson found this quite a refreshing change and, as the woman was both perfectly pleasant and an agreeable physical presence, he found himself out-Johnsoning Johnson, overdoing the urbane and civilized Englishman routine in a fashion his family, friends and colleagues would have found embarrassing.

Flavia loved it. though, and thought the way he chuckled as he peered at her between thick shaggy eyebrows and the top of his reading glasses was perfectly delightful. She was a bit surprised at the only partly housetrained way he spilled his tea down his shirt and dabbed at it absent-mindedly with his tie while he talked, but this she put down to eccentricity.

In other words, they got on handsomely, and Dr. Johnson found himself being far more forthcoming in his desire to charm than he would otherwise have been. Flavia’s visit was one of desperation, searching after any smattering of detail which might give an insight into Forster and Veronica Beaumont. Argyll’s thesis was all very well as far as it went, but it didn’t go that far yet. And whatever their relationship was, it had been an odd one: they’d known each other in Italy, but had not got on. Then, over twenty years later, Forster appears, gets paid a salary which Miss Beaumont could scarcely afford to do a job which doesn’t need doing. Or so it seemed. All right, perhaps he was merely using the position to launder paintings. But was Miss Beaumont really so batty she didn’t notice?

The trouble was that sources of information were few and far between. Mrs. Verney had been only an irregular visitor before she’d inherited and was a bit vague on the details. There were few other relations and almost no friends. Apart from the vicar—an unobservant man who had been less than illuminating when the police had talked to him, and the cook who was similarly uncertain of details due to the fact that she was only in the house a few hours a day—no one had known the woman very well.

But Veronica Beaumont had been ill, and that meant doctors, and that led her to Dr. Samuel Johnson, MD. Doctors frequently knew a great deal. The trouble was, they often had this finicky conscience about retelling it.

But at least the rubicund figure with the egg stains seemed as though he wanted to be helpful. Yes, indeed, he said. Miss Beaumont had been a patient of his after his predecessor retired about five years ago, although on the whole there was little wrong with her that he could treat. Her death had been a great tragedy, although for his part he was not entirely surprised. Although no psychiatrist, you understand…

“I gather she died of an overdose. Is that correct?”

He nodded. “It’s all in the coroner’s report, and so there’s nothing secret about it. She was on sleeping tablets. One day she took far too many of them and died.”

“Deliberately?”

Dr. Johnson took off his glasses and rubbed them clean on the tail of his shirt, then put them back on, leaving the shirt tail hanging out. “Officially, I think they concluded that there was no reason to think it was anything but an accident.”

“And unofficially?”

“Pills like that have an odd effect when taken with alcohol, so it’s possible. Personally, though—and you must remember I’d known her for decades—I would very much doubt that she would take her own life deliberately. She was undoubtedly unbalanced. But not in that way. So I like to think it was an accident.”

“Unbalanced? Mrs. Verney said she was crazy.”

“No, no,” the doctor replied. “Only poor people are crazy. The Beaumont family has had a fair smattering of oddness, though. It was before my time, but Mrs. Verney’s mother was more than a little wayward, I understand. In the next generation it was poor Veronica.”

“What sort of unbalanced?”

“Delusions, insane fears, compulsions. That sort of thing. It sounds serious, but it was only very periodic. She could go for years perfectly normally, then have what the family called a little attack. Which was always discreetly covered up.”

“But what exactly did they cover up?”

Dr. Johnson waggled his finger. “There we risk trespassing on the medical secret. If you want to know that, you’ll have to ask Mrs. Verney. I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

“Not even a hint?”