Doctor Hooves
“Good morning, Superintendent Silver, Miss Melody.”
Doctor Hooves rose from his chair and offered a clean hoof smelling of soap and carbolic.
“How are things going?” he went on.
Superintendent Silver glanced round the comfortable consulting room before answering.
“Well, Doctor Hooves, strictly speaking, they’re not going. They’re standing still.”
“There’s been nothing much in the papers, I’ve been glad to see.”
“Sudden death of the well-known Mr. Blood at an evening party in his own house. It’s left at that for the moment. We’ve had the autopsy – I brought a report of the findings along - thought it might interest you - ”
“That’s very kind of you; it would. Hm - cervical third rib, etcetera. Yes, very interesting.” He handed it back.
“And we’ve interviewed Mr. Blood’s solicitor. We know the terms of his will. Nothing of interest there. The Royal Family is distraught of course, but not as much as you’d think. And then, of course, we’ve been through all his private papers.” I spoke for the first time since entering the room.
Was it fancy or did that broad, clean countenance look a little strained - a little wooden?
“And?” asked Doctor Hooves.
“Nothing,” said I said, watching him.
There wasn’t a sigh of relief. Nothing so blatant as that. But the doctor's figure seemed to relax just a shade more comfortably in his chair.
“And so you’ve come to me?”
“And so, as you say, we’ve come to you.”
The doctor's eyebrows rose a little and his shrewd eyes looked into mine.
I looked back blankly.
“Want to go through my private papers - eh?”
“We had hoped so.”
“Got a search warrant?”
“No.”
“Well, you could get one easily enough, I suppose. I’m not going to make difficulties. It’s not very pleasant being suspected of murder, but I suppose I can't blame you for what's obviously your duty.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Superintendent Silver with real gratitude. “I appreciate your attitude, if I may say so, very much. I hope all the others will be as reasonable, I’m sure.”
I nodded in agreement.
“What can’t be cured must be endured,” said the doctor goodhumoredly.
He went on. “I’ve finished seeing my patients here. I’m just off on my rounds. I’ll leave you two my keys and just say a word to my secretary and you can rootle to your heart’s content.”
“That’s all very nice and pleasant, I’m sure,” said Silver. “We’d like to ask you a few more questions before you go.”
“About the other night? Really, I told you all I know,”
“No, not about the other night. About yourself.” I said.
“Well, ask away. What do you want to know?”
“I’d just like a rough sketch of your career, Doctor Hooves. Birth, marriage, and so on.”
“It will get me into practice for my curious patients,” said the doctor dryly. “My career’s a perfectly straightforward one. I’m a Trottingham stallion, born there. My father was in practice there. He died when I was fifteen. I was educated at Canterberry and went in for medicine like my father before me. I have slight heart trouble, nothing serious, but you’ll have all the medical details already, I expect.”
“I looked you up, yes. You an only child or have you any brothers or sisters?” Superintendent Silver was franticly scribbling down notes.
“I’m an only child. Both my parents are dead and I’m unmarried. Will that do to get on with? I came into partnership here with Doctor Troth.
He retired about fifteen years ago. Lives in Trotland. I’ll give you his address if you like. I live upstairs here with a cook, a parlormaid, and a housemaid. My secretary comes in daily. I make a good income and I only kill a reasonable number of my patients. How’s that?”
Superintendent Silver grinned. “That’s fairly comprehensive, Doctor Hooves. I’m glad you’ve got a sense of humor. Now I’m going to ask you one more thing.”
“I’m a strictly moral stallion, Superintendent.”
“Oh, that wasn’t my meaning. No, I was just going to ask you if you’d give me the names of four friends - ponies who’ve known you intimately for a number of years. Kind of references, if you know what I mean."
“Yes, I think so. Let me see now. You’d prefer people who are actually in Ponyville now?”
“It would make it a bit easier, but it doesn’t really matter.”
The doctor thought for a minute or two, then with his quill he scribbled four names and addresses on a paper and pushed it across the desk to me.
“Will those do? They’re the best I can think of on the spur of the moment.”
I scrutinized the names, nodded my head in satisfaction, and passed the sheet of paper over to Superintendent Silver. He then read it carefully, nodded, and put the sheet of paper in his pocket.
“It’s just a question of elimination,” I said. “The sooner we can get one person eliminated and go on to the next, the better it is for everyone concerned. We’ve got to make perfectly certain that you weren’t on bad terms with the late Mr. Blood, that you had no private connections or business dealings with him, that there was no question of his having injured you at any time and your bearing resentment. I believe you when you say you only know him slightly, but it isn’t a question of my belief. I’ve got to say we’ve made quite sure.”
Doctor Hooves rang a bell on his desk.
Almost immediately the door opened and a competent-looking young mare appeared. “You rang, Doctor?”
“This is Miss Daisy, Superintendent Silver from Trotland Yard.”
Miss Daisy turned a cool gaze on me. It seemed to say, “Dear me, what sort of ponies are these?”
“I should be glad, Miss Daisy, if you will answer any questions Superintendent Silver and Miss Melody might put to you, and give them any help they may need.”
“Certainly, if you say so, Doctor.”
“Well,” said Hooves, rising. “I’ll be off. Did you put the morphia in my case? I shall need it for the Lockhaert case - ”
He bustled out still talking and Miss Daisy followed him. She returned a minute or two later to say, “Will you ring that bell when you want me, Superintendent Silver?”
We thanked her and said he would do so. Then we set to work.
Our search was careful and methodical, though we had no great hopes of finding anything of importance. Hooves’ ready acquiescence dispelled the chance of that. Doctor Hooves was no fool. He would realize that a search would be bound to come and he would make provisions accordingly. There was, however, a faint chance that we might come across a hint of the information we were really after, since Hooves would not know the real object of our search. Superintendent Silver opened and shut drawers, rifled pigeonholes, glanced through a checkbook, estimated the unpaid bills - noted what those same bills were for. I scrutinized Hooves’ passbook, ran through his case notes, and generally left no written document unturned. The result was meager in the extreme. I next took a look through the poison cupboard, noted the wholesale firms with which the doctor dealt, and the system of checking. I re-locked the cupboard, and passed on to the bureau. The contents of the latter were of a more personal nature, but Silver found nothing germane to his search. He shook his head, “Well, Octavia, either he’s clean, or he’s coved his tracks very carefully.”
I said nothing, shattered by the lack of anything of use.
Superintendent Silver sat down in the doctor's chair, and rang the desk bell.
Miss Daisy appeared with promptitude.
I asked her politely to be seated and then sat studying her for a moment, before I decided which way to tackle her.
I had sensed immediately her hostility, and I was uncertain whether to provoke her into unguarded speech by increasing that hostility or whether to try a softer method of approach.
“I suppose you know what all this is about, Miss Daisy,” I said at last.
“Doctor Hooves told me,” said Miss Daisy shortly.
“The whole thing's rather delicate,” said Superintendent Silver.
“Is it?” said Miss Daisy.
“Well, it's rather a nasty business. Four ponies are under suspicion and one of them must have done it. What I want to know is whether you’ve ever seen Prince Blue Blood in person?”
“Never.”
“Ever heard Doctor Hooves speak of him?”
“Never - No, I am wrong. About a week ago Doctor Hooves told me to enter a dinner appointment in his engagement book. Mr. Blood, eight-fifteen on the eighteenth. I didn’t know that it was the actual Prince Blue Blood.”
“And that is the first you ever heard of the Doctors association with Mr. Blood?”
“Yes.”
“Had you seen his name in the papers? He was often in the fashionable news.”
“I’ve got better things to do than reading the fashionable news.”
“I expect you have. Oh, I expect you have,” said the superintendent mildly.
“Well,” I went on. “There it is. All four of these ponies will only admit to knowing Mr. Blood slightly. But one of them knew him well enough to kill him. It’s our task to find out which of them it was.”
There was an unhelpful pause. Miss Daisy seemed quite uninterested in the performance of Superintendent Silver and my task. It was her job to obey her employer’s orders and sit here listening to what Superintendent Silver and I chose to say and answer any direct questions he might choose to put to her.
“You know, Miss Burgess,” the superintendent sounded slightly pain staked, but he persevered, “I doubt you appreciate half the difficulties of our job. Ponies say things, for instance. Well, we mayn’t believe a word of it but we’ve got to take notice of it all the same. It’s particularly noticeable in a case of this kind. I don’t want to say anything against your sex, and Miss Melody’s, but there’s no doubt that a mare when she’s rattled, is apt to lash out with her tongue a bit. She makes unfounded accusations, hints this, that and the other, and rakes up all sorts of old scandals that have probably nothing whatever to do with the case.”
“Do you mean,” demanded Miss Daisy, “that one of these other ponies has been saying things against the doctor?”
“Not anything precisely,” I said cautiously. “But all the same, I’m bound to take notice. Suspicious circumstances about the death of a patient. Probably all a lot of nonsense. I’m ashamed to bother the doctor with it.” I watched her closely while I spoke.
“I suppose someone’s got hold of that story about Mrs. Fall,” said Miss Daisy wrathfully. “The way ponies talk about things they know nothing whatever about is disgraceful. Lots of old mare’s get like that; they think everypony is poisoning them - their relations and their servants and even their doctors. Mrs. Fall had had three doctors before she came to Doctor Hooves, and then, when she got the same fancies about him, he was quite willing for her to have Doctor Ruby instead. It’s the only thing to do in these cases, he said. And after
Doctor Ruby she had Doctor Steel and then Doctor Farmer - until she died, poor old thing. She traveled all over the place for each new doctor.”
“You’d be surprised the way the smallest thing starts a story,” said Silver.
“Whenever a doctor benefits by the death of a patient somepony has something ill-natured to say. And yet why shouldn’t a grateful patient leave a little something or even a big something to their medical attendant?”
“It’s the relations,” said Miss Daisy. “I always think there’s nothing like death for bringing out the meanness of equestrian nature. Squabbling over who’s to have what before the body’s cold. Luckily Doctor Hooves has never had any trouble of that kind. He always says he hopes his patients won’t leave him anything. I believe he once had a legacy of one hundred Bits and he’s had two walking sticks and a gold watch but nothing else.”
“It’s a difficult life, that of a professional stallion,” I said with a sigh.
“He’s always open to blackmail. The most innocent occurrences lend themselves sometimes to a scandalous appearance. A doctor’s got to avoid even the appearance of evil; that means he’s got to have his wits about him good and sharp.”
“A lot of what you say is true,” said Miss Daisy. “Doctors have a difficult time with hysterical mares.”
“Hysterical mares. That’s right. I thought, in my own mind that that was all it amounted to.”
“I suppose you mean that dreadful Mrs. Cloudfair?”
Silver pretended to think, “Let me see, was it three years ago? No, more.”
“Four or five, I think. She was a most unbalanced pony! I was glad when she went abroad and so was Doctor Hooves. She told her husband the most frightful lies; they always do, of course. Poor stallion, he wasn’t quite himself; he’d begun to be ill. He died of anthrax, you know, an infected shaving brush.”
“I’d forgotten that,” said Silver untruthfully. I hid a smile.
“And then she went abroad and died not long afterward. But I always thought she was a nasty type of mare - stallion mad, you know.”
“I know the kind,” said Silver. “Very dangerous, they are. A doctor’s got to give them a wide berth. Whereabouts did she die abroad? I seem to remember –“
“Elephantia, I think it was. She got blood poisoning - some native infection.”
“Another thing that must be difficult for a doctor,” I said, making a conversational leap, “is when he suspects that one of his patients is being poisoned by one of his or her relatives. What’s he to do? He’s got to be sure - or else hold his tongue. And if he’s done the latter, then it’s awkward for him if there’s talk of foul play afterward. I wonder if any case of that kind has ever come Doctor Hooves’ way?”
“I really don’t think it has,” said Miss Daisy, considering. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
“From the statistical point of view,” said Superintendent Silver, “it would be interesting to know how many deaths occur among a doctor’s practice per year. For instance now, you’ve been with Doctor Hooves some years - ”
“Seven.” I said.
Miss Daisy looked at me, surprised. “How did you know that?” she asked.
“I saw your file whilst searching through some papers.”
“But that didn’t say when I was employed.”
“But it did say your age. You look as though you are perfectly familiar and relaxed with this office, and you are of an age where full time employment would have come available to you approximately eight years ago. This office was established eight years ago, and their was one part time employee before you on exchange from Austneighlia, they were here one year.”
Silver and Daisy stared at me, speechless.
Superintendent Silver just looked at me with bored contempt.
I shrugged, “Simple deduction.”
Silver sighed, “Right, seven. Well, how many deaths have there been in that time offhand?”
“Really, it's difficult to say.” Miss Daisy gave herself up to calculation. She was by now quite thawed and unsuspicious. “Seven, eight - of course I can’t remember exactly - I shouldn’t say more than thirty in the time.”
“Then I fancy Doctor Hooves must be a better doctor than most,” said Silver genially. “I suppose, too, most of his patients are upper class. They can afford to take care of themselves.”
“He’s a very popular doctor. He’s so good at diagnosis.”
“The Doctor and I find common ground.” I muttered. And then, louder, “We should be going now, Superintendent.” Went over to the door to retrieve my coat.
Silver sighed and rose. “I’m afraid I’ve been wandering from my duty, which is to find out a connection between the doctor and the late Prince Blue Blood. You’re quite sure he wasn’t a patient of the doctor’s?”
“Quite sure.”
“Under another name, perhaps?” Silver handed her a photograph. “Recognize him at all? He didn’t go out in public very often.”
“What a very theatrical-looking pony! No, I've never seen him here at any time.”
“Well, that’s that.” I sighed, having retrieved my coat. “We’re much obliged to the doctor, I’m sure, for being so pleasant about everything. Tell him so from me, will you? Tell him I’m passing on to number two. Good-by, Miss Daisy, and thank you for your help.”
I made my exit and waited for the Superintendent.
Silver said his goodbyes and departed. Joining me outside, he took a small notebook from his pocket and made several entries in it under the letter H. I watched silently.
Mrs. Fall? Unlikely.
Mrs. Cloudfair?
No legacies.
Investigate deaths of patients. Difficult.
He closed the book and we both left.
We walked for approximately twenty three minutes (give or take a second or two), before turning into the Thatch Gate branch of the Ponyville & Canterlot bank.
The display of his official card and my incomprehensibly perplexing explanation of my part in our reason for being their brought us to a private interview with the manager.
“Good morning, sir. One of your clients is a Doctor Jaffrey Hooves, I understand.”
“Quite correct, Miss Melody.”
“We shall want some information about that gentlestallions account going back over a period of years.” I said, shortly.
“Oh, er - I will see what I can do for you.” The manager cantered away.
A complicated half-hour followed. Finally Silver, with a sigh, tucked away a sheet of penciled figures. I donned my coat. We had found nothing.
“Got what you want?” inquired the bank manager curiously.
“No, we haven’t. Not one suggestive lead. Thank you all the same.”
It was as I was attempting to rectify the creases in my stubborn coat collar, that an idea stuck me. “I say, Silver,” I said, my eyes lit.
As Superintendent turned to say something, I, most unlike my usual manner, seized the Superintendent’s coat sleeve and galloped back to the office of Doctor Hooves, the poor Superintendent trying his best to keep up and not fall on his face in the process.
We soon arrived, panting outside the door to the Doctors office.
Barely having caught his breath, Silver hissed, “What the Devil are we doing back here, Octavia?”
I said nothing but hastily signified for him to hush, by placing my hoof on his face.
He simply fell to an expression of pure defeat and irritation.
I removed my hoof quietly walked to the door and quite audaciously, applied my eye to the keyhole.
Doctor Hooves was washing his hooves in his consulting room, just beyond his office. The consulting room was previously blocked from view by a curtain. The curtain was now drawn back.
Inside there were two ornate wooden chairs, a comfortable looking armchair and a lounge couch. He said over his shoulder to Miss Daisy, who was in the office, “What about our stolid sleuths, eh? Did they turn the place upside down and you inside out?”
“They didn’t get much out of me, I can tell you,” said Miss Daisy, setting her lips tightly.
I narrowed my eyes. Silver now had his ear to the crack. We looked at each other, then returned to out eavesdropping posts.
“My dear filly, no need to be an oyster. I told you to tell them all they wanted to know. What did they want to know, by the way?”
“Oh, they kept harping on your knowing that Prince Blue Blood– suggested even that he might have come here as a patient under a different name. They showed me his photograph. Such a theatrical-looking pony!”
“Blue Blood? Oh, yes, fond of posing as a modern Mephistopheles. It went down rather well on the whole. What else did they ask you?”
“Really nothing very much. Except - oh, yes, somebody had been telling him some absolute nonsense about Mrs. Fall - you know the way she used to go on.”
“Fall? Fall? Oh, yes, old Mrs. Fall! That’s rather funny!” The doctor laughed with considerable amusement. “That’s really very funny indeed.”
And in high good humor he sat down to eat his lunch.
Slowly, Superintendent Silver and I moved our heads away from the door.
I was blushing furiously.
Silver was looking at me like he wanted to bellow. He had gone red and was clearly holding back curse words. We had wasted our time. I thought that perhaps we might have heard something of significance. We didn’t.
Thank you ever so much for reading the ninth instalment of The Murder Of Prince Blue Blood!
Feel free to verbally speculate on who you suspect in the comments!
Keep an eye out for the next gripping chapter!
Thanks again, Tavi4. 
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Aw. Someone gave it a down vote.
Well, the comments have died.
6004991 no they haven't
6014207
Huzzah! Revival!
6014279
Thanks, mate.
6014279
I hope you enjoy it.
i know i loved it
6014318
Thanks. That means a lot to me.
C-3------cervical rib? stabbed in the c-3 is a neck wound. T-3 rib in thorax ?
peeking in keyholes???? Warrantless Search?
Comment revival V2
rady for the next chapter, but must get test done.
I'm keeping my deductions to myself.
Why are they blushing?
...Am I looking too much into this? Are our sleuths just angry over being wrong about their suspicions?
Or is he - are they - doing what I think they're doing?
The Doctor's secretary did seem awful... zealous against perceived threats against him.