Ezra Holbeck

Ezra Holbeck is 66 and has spent forty of those years as a physician. He was born in Harrogate, in the north of England, the son of a minister who dreamed of seeing his son in the healing waters of a spa town, and studied medicine in Edinburgh. He returned to England with ideas about cold baths, fresh air and patience, and for two decades was the name that the ladies of south London pronounced in a low voice. Today he still signs prescriptions with the flourish of someone who remembers that.

He lives two streets from the Tilney house, in a dark brick town house with a study on the ground floor full of anatomy books, a large copper bath that served as a demonstration in lectures and a fireplace he lights in autumn to read. He takes tea at five, in silence, and writes letters by hand with a steel pen until late. His housekeeper says he converses aloud with the portraits on the wall, rehearsing replies to insults no one has made him.

He has a high forehead, full white side-whiskers and an always-shaven chin, thin white hair combed back with a damp comb. He wears a black frock coat worn at the cuffs, which he insists on calling classic, and a gray waistcoat with a silver watch chain. He speaks like someone giving a lecture, with calculated pauses, and takes offense easily: it is enough for someone to doubt a diagnosis of his for the cordiality to cool ten degrees.

He was Beatrice's physician during her widowhood and, in his words, a friend. He says that ended before the marriage, that she chose a young man and that he wished her happiness. On Tuesday he was called by the gardener at 10:30 p.m., arrived at eleven and sent for two more colleagues from London. Before anything else, he makes a point of recalling that antimonyantimony A metal-like element whose compounds are toxic and cause violent vomiting; used in old medicines. is not treated with cold water, and that his medicine does not admit improvisation in an emergency.

Holbeck knows that an old physician, friend of a widow and called at night to her husband's house, arouses suspicion before opening his bag. When the detective accuses him, the lecturing tone turns to offense: forty years of medicine, he says, and they call him a poisoner. It may be the wounded vanity of a dignified man. It may be someone who uses indignation as a curtain. The detective will have to decide which.