The Summer of Sir Lancelot

letter.‘
    It was addressed simply, ‘Sir Lancelot Spratt, MD, MS, FRCS.‘ He opened it.
     
    ‘Dear Sir Lancelot, [it said]
    I was utterly delighted to hear you were seen back in St Swithin‘s the other day, and have presumably resumed your private practice in London. I am sure it would be a terrible loss to surgery if you persisted in living in the country. Believe me, as your last house surgeon before you retired, I am enormously relieved that I can once again call upon your wise counsel for my clinical problems. These at the moment, I regret to say, are heavy.
    I have a general practice in this suburb, but I find the work somewhat hard going and not at all as things were in St Swithin‘s. I should be glad if you would kindly give me your opinion of this patient to begin with. I have been trying to make an appointment but something seems wrong with your telephone arrangements. However, I remember Mondays are your usual private consulting days. He is Mr Bovis, a wholesale grocer, who has had dragging pains in his left side for thirty years. I can make nothing of him.
    With best wishes from your ever grateful former pupil,
    Clement E Dinwiddie.‘
     
    ‘Dinwiddie?‘ Sir Lancelot‘s eyebrows shot up. ‘Sound feller. In g.p., eh?‘ He grunted. ‘Pity he‘s got the wrong end of the stick about me.‘
    He turned the letter idly in his hands.
    ‘Where did you put the visitor?‘
    ‘In the waiting-room, sir. The new drawing room, that is.‘
    ‘H‘m.‘ Sir Lancelot stroked his beard. ‘Er - Mrs Chuffey, I presume my couch and so on are still in Mr Nightrider‘s study?‘
    ‘Oh, yes, sir.‘ She looked shocked at such mention of sacred relics. ‘I would never let them be moved for a moment, sir.‘
    He paused. He looked at the letter. He rose. ‘You know, I think I rather fancy the idea of getting my hands on an abdomen again. Mrs Chuffey -show the patient in.‘
    He strode from the room with the expression of one setting out on a promising morning for Witches‘ Pool.
     

9
     
    ‘Here we are,‘ announced Mr Nightrider, as their taxi turned into Harley Street, at lunchtime.
    ‘By the way, did anyone hear the score?‘ asked his old friend the Bishop of Montserrat, a fat man with the same sallow complexion as the pawpaws he regularly enjoyed for breakfast on his island.
    ‘We were all out for 351,‘ grunted General Bunch. ‘Last I heard, the Australians were ten for one. Jowler got Foreman pretty quickly.‘
    ‘I shall take my pleasure tomorrow afternoon at Wimbledon,‘ smiled Mr Nightrider. ‘I fancy von Schiermacher might well beat Gary Burkett.‘
    ‘My country will soon be playing at Wimbledon,‘ asserted the fourth passenger, a delegate from one of those African states which these days keep turning up so confusingly with a brand new name, Hag, and national anthem, and a prime minister we‘ve just let out of clink. ‘Our honoured President is very keen on sport. Oh, yes. He has opened many acres of tennis courts in our capital.‘
    ‘I doubt if the weather will hold,‘ complained Mr Anthony Waterfall, who was being squeezed into the corner. He was anyway a thin fellow, a good deal craggier than the photographs on the dust jackets of his books. If he always looked pretty miserable, it was through having a tortured soul. His soul had been tortured as regularly as the appearance of his publisher‘s autumn list for about twenty years, and he did rather well out of it. The lunch was to persuade him into lecturing about this soul all over Africa, preferably at his own expense.
    All five glanced anxiously heavenwards as they climbed from the taxi. Like every previous day that June it had started as clear and blue as a starling‘s egg, but by midmorning great surly clouds were elbowing their way across the sun, until the sky now looked as grey and unattractive as a plate of cold porridge.
    ‘You must find this house remarkably convenient, Geoffrey,‘ observed the Bishop of Montserrat as the taxi was paid off.
    ‘Yes, I rented it for the summer from my brother-in-law. He‘s Sir Lancelot Spratt, you know — the surgeon.‘
    ‘Ah, yes.‘ The Bishop nodded. ‘He took the stomach out of Mandalay.‘
    ‘A surgeon?‘ Anthony Waterfall looked startled. ‘I hope there is nothing surgical left about? I have such a horror of things like that. I always faint immediately at the sight of blood.‘
    ‘Dear me, no, Mr Waterfall,‘ his host assured him. ‘All the medical impedimenta are