Piffling Lives: The Casebook of Dr Edgware

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How many doctors does it take to keep an island healthy?

On Piffling, the answer is one.

The perseverance of Dr.

Edgware is second to none, and yet so little is known about him.

But from the arrival of Chapman to the trial of Rudyard, he's been there behind the scenes, and his story must now be told.

This is the village of Piffling Vale, and these are Piffling Lives.

Wooden Overcoats presents the casebook of Dr.

Edgware.

Thursday, 20th of August.

Got back for my rounds at 3am.

Slept an hour and a half before being woken by the telephone.

Esther says I should take it off the hook.

Now and again, Henry.

Just now and again.

But I'm a doctor.

I'm on call.

She has to realize that.

Arrived at Antique Shop, 5 a.m.

Owner Stanley Carmichael.

Head entirely pulverized by granite sundial.

Otherwise, unharmed.

Attempted resuscitation.

No beneficial effect.

Knapped against his forearm for 20 minutes, woke up, tried again, still no effect.

Admitted to family that patient was, to the best of my knowledge, deceased.

Granite sundial, still in good condition.

Positive murmurings from the family.

Left antique shop before the ransacking began in earnest.

Went back home for breakfast.

Poured milk onto cereal, 7 a.m.

Phone rang at one minute past.

Esther said I should leave it.

I didn't.

I disobeyed her.

She just wants what's best for me, I tell myself.

I'm lucky to have her.

Esther stares at me as I reach for the phone.

I realize that in my exhaustion, I've been speaking all this out loud.

Even this bit now.

I look away, embarrassed.

put down my typewriter and talk into the phone.

Miss Scruple concerned about her bunions again.

They're probably still bunions, I tell her.

She won't listen.

I pick up my bag and coat, kiss Esther on the cheek and run out the door.

Behind me, I hear...

Now and again, Henry.

Just now and again.

Tuesday, 25th of August.

Called out at 10am.

A fun funeral.

Knowing how they usually end, I pack extra savlon and bandages just in case.

Several bludgeonings, one fatality.

The widow, Mrs.

Geraldine Carmichael, aged, elderly.

Took a swing at her son-in-law and fell headfirst into her husband's open grave.

I examined the body and officially declared her a Class A write-off.

Handed out bandages to the wounded and left the battlefield.

Felt I had to make it up to Esther, so I stopped off at Petunia Bloom's flower stall, deflected three gropes from Petunia and two invitations to dinner, and escaped with a bunch of begonias.

I get

three

feet from my front door when my pager beeps.

The Grim Reaper has finally pulled his bony finger out and he's poncing over to see my old PE teacher, Mr.

Asky.

If I run, I can still be there in time.

In my haste, I drop the begonias in the street where a pigeon nips at them, successfully picks them up, and delivers them to a very impressed female pigeon nearby.

Some pigeons have all the luck.

I somehow fall asleep while sprinting over and wake myself up by running directly into the side of the village hall.

Eventually arrive at Mr.

Asky's Bijou residence, dazed at 4 p.m.

Find Nurse Dixon keeping watch, while an unfamiliar face, a stranger to the village, butters Asky up like a prize scon.

Asky sees me enter and croaks in a rattling gasp, Edgeware, you pansy.

Can you do a pull-up yet?

I performed your triple bypass two years ago, I reply.

It's a miracle you're still alive.

Mr.

Asky chuckles, coughs, makes various unsavoury comments about my masculinity, and then dies.

I grip his wrist, look for a pulse, make him hit himself in the face a few times, and leave.

As I go,

the stranger,

blonde, not necessarily handsome, but with a charming everyman quality, waves at me and tells me to enjoy myself.

If only.

Saturday, 29th of August.

Mrs.

Sinclair has apparently fallen on a poisoned letter opener.

No sign of foul play.

Sunday, 30th of August.

Mrs.

Cottington has apparently fallen on a poisoned letter opener.

No sign of foul play.

Monday, the 31st.

Call to the home of Colonel Hubbard at 2am.

Enter kitchen to find it covered top to bottom in Colonel Hubbard.

Widow Hubbard tells me that the Colonel's eyesight wasn't what it used to be and that he was always a fiend for a late-night diet cola, though how that hand grenade got in the fridge she had no idea.

Deprived of my usual bedside manner by the fact that I've been awake since 4am on Saturday, I told the widow Hubber that her husband was the most dead man I'd ever seen in my life and asked whether she had a Hoover.

I settled for a dustpan and brush and began sweeping the kernel up.

I haven't seen Esther in

three days.

Saturday, 5th of September.

Ecstatic.

No appointments for a whole day.

Book dinner for myself and Esther at the yacht club.

We get the last available table for French provincial kitchen night.

Was considering a pastise from the aperitif menu when the Maitre D announced a phone call for me.

I looked to Esther for approval.

She just picked silently at her legumes.

I took the call.

8:30 p.m., the Allerton bungalow.

Open and shut case, excessively springy settee, dangerously low ceiling fan.

I always thought Mr.

Allerton looked rather like a Humphrey Bogart type.

Now he looks like a pile of toast.

Saturday, the 12th of September.

My old friend and occasional drinking partner Basil Corbett, the town council's vice-chairman, has been fatally knocked down by a cyclist at the bottom of a 60-foot mineshaft.

No sign of foul play.

I'll miss Basil.

He had a funny moustache.

Sometimes it's the little things that get you through the day.

Friday the 18th of September.

After a long night of rounds at Piffling St.

Sprat's, today I get another opportunity to make things up to Esther.

A village fate.

Perfect.

We skip down together expecting candy floss, popcorn, and teddy bears,

and find tears, heavy rain, and Lady Templar combing the grass in search of her glass eye, knocked out by a coconut from a deadly coconut shy.

I find her eye and cup it deftly back into its socket, but when I looked round,

Esther had flown the coop.

Another opportunity lost.

And then

that...

that blonde stranger, the one for Mr.

Asky's bedside, was

hauling out to us, ordering us to arrange the stalled tables in a circle.

He...

He was gentle,

reassuring.

I found myself at one of the tables opposite the mayor.

Light conversation ensued, mostly concerning whether or not I thought the Reverend was looking over at us, but my exhaustion took hold and I blacked out for an uncertain amount of time.

A loud bell woke me, and I found myself facing Petunia Bloom, fielding a tidal wave of crass floral come-ons.

Bulb this and stamens that.

I feel the heavy hand of an angry newspaper editor on my shoulder, and I get away, calling for Esther.

Esther!

Forgive me!

Things can change.

Monday, the 21st of September.

Mr.

and Mrs.

Clutch, the ones who live above the haberdashes, summon me to investigate an odd smell coming from the flat next to theirs.

Mrs.

Clutch told me they thought it was rotting food, then perhaps a dead mouse in the wall, and then Mr.

Clutch's celebrated halitosis before insisting on more serious investigation.

I arrive at 8am.

As soon as I hit the threshold, the smell is overpowering.

The clutches live in 13A.

I square up to the doorway of 13B, brace my shoulder, fall asleep for three and a half minutes, and then barrel full force into the door.

Inside,

a sad scene.

A woman I can't identify lies peacefully on her sofa, a half-eaten can of tiny pineapple sitting on the table next to her, and a half-red novel propped up on her chest.

From the look and smell of the body, I deduced that she'd been there for at least two weeks.

Rooting through the unread post, it became clear that this woman was Miss Amelia Lonesome.

I attempted to engage the clutches in conversation about the concept of nominative determinism, but Mr.

Clutch just said nomi-wat and believed on me.

And when I came round and picked myself up from the floor ten minutes later, I examined Miss Lonesome and saw that her expression was not one of shock, but of acceptance,

resignation.

It said, I might as well go out joking on a tiny pineapple.

I didn't have anything else planned today.

What must it be like to be so completely alone,

entirely ignored?

I thought of Esther.

Oh, God, Esther,

what am I doing to you?

Tuesday, the 22nd of September.

Call to Yacht Club, 8pm.

Deceased businessman, Seymour Profit, 35, pinata stick lodged in the cranium through the left eye.

Pocket square and smug sense of entitlement still immaculate even in death.

The waitress was attacking the body and yelling, Perfetito, perfetito, when I arrived.

No sign of foul play.

Wednesday, the 30th of September.

St.

Spratz Sprat's is in utter chaos.

We're entirely out of hand sanitizer.

No money to buy more.

Try my best to keep on top of the rounds, but the lack of sleep is beginning to affect my judgment.

The other day, I administered an injection of morphine to a beach ball.

It was ineffective at best.

My only blessing is the blonde stranger

who appears as if by magic every time a patient is on the brink of death.

His eyes and his glowing smile appear to cast a spell on them.

From yowling and threatening to have me struck off to happily chatting, finding acceptance and booking deluxe funeral services.

How much of my liver would I have to have plucked out to play Prometheus and steal just a small ember of the fire in his eyes?

That afternoon, I declared two seagulls dead while an overweight sea captain sobbed uncontrollably nearby.

What's happening to me?

Thursday, the 1st of October.

Enough is enough.

I take the day off.

I leave the phone off the hook.

Within the hour, Piffling Matters publishes the front page headline, Lazy NHS doctor leaves piffling patients for dead, but I don't care.

I barrel into the living room where Esther sits watching television.

She seems baffled to see me, but pleased.

I tell her that things are going to be different from now on.

Tonight, everyone in town has been invited onto the stranger's yacht for a classy shindig and come hell or high water, Esther and I will be there.

We all delight in each other's company and enjoy cocktails and games and Michael Douglas.

I put on my finest suit and quickly look up fun in in the encyclopedia just to make sure I still know exactly what's involved.

I think I've got the general gist.

I have a very good feeling about this evening.

This is it, Tester.

Things are going to be different.

How wrong I was.

The party is delightful.

Games enjoyed by all.

Cocktail is incredibly alcoholic.

Michael Douglas on good form.

And then

the mayor's speech.

He praised the blonde stranger.

Waxed lyrical about what a difference his arrival has made to our little village, which is apparently very nearly a town.

With the rest of the crowd, I cried out in agreement.

And while the stranger bowed his head and smiled bashfully at our applause, I felt that for just a moment, he caught my eye with an expression that seemed to say,

It's all right, Him.

It's all going to be all right.

He knew.

He understood.

But then the next words out of the mayor's mouth left me trembling with...

I don't know what.

With triumph, with arms held aloft, he declared, We can now boast two hospitals.

My head swelled.

My blood ran cold.

I couldn't even look Esther in the eye.

How could this happen?

Had I really been so busy that I hadn't noticed an entire hospital being built?

The crowd murmured their approval, Bay Clap, cheered, patted me on the back.

The mayor called over to me, the blonde stranger smiling encouragement at his side.

I'm sure Dr.

Edgware will be pleased as punch about that.

I've got nothing.

My throat is dry.

The moisture for my strawberry Bellini has evaporated from my mouth.

Struggling to speak, my body shaking with stress or frustration, I find it in me to cry.

We need more doctors.

We

need

more doctors.

Friday, 2nd of October.

My first day of work at the Chapman Community Hospital.

My 1,312th day of work at St.

Sprat's.

A strawberry hangover.

doesn't help.

That afternoon there's some kind of kerfuffle outside.

An angry mob goes tearing past St.

Sprat's.

The first since the 15th century.

But I couldn't go.

I'm busy.

I've got two hospitals to run.

Saturday, 3rd of October.

I read the morning's edition of Piffling Matters at the breakfast table.

The blonde stranger has been killed,

murdered, by the little bloke with the weird sister.

I haven't got time to mourn.

I've got to get to work.

Esther picks at her breakfast,

avoids my gaze.

I can tell she's trying her best to be understanding,

to support me.

But still,

she urges me to give up my responsibilities,

to rest,

to recharge, to be with her.

Take the phone off the hook, Henry, she cries.

Just now and again, Henry

just now and again

I grab my coat and bag.

My heart is heavy.

Before heading out the front door,

I hold Esther fondly in my arms and tell her that

somehow,

some day,

I will make it up to her.

It won't always be like this.

Things will change.

I'll make sure of it.

I can tell she wants to believe me.

she truly does.

But how much can a parrot really understand

how much

The casebook of Dr.

Edgware was written by Tom Crowley and David K.

Barnes and was performed by David K.

Barnes as Dr.

Edgware with Steve Hodson as the mayor and the music was composed and conducted by James Whittle.

The programme was recorded at the RNIB Talking Book Studios and was directed and produced by Andy Goddard and John Wakefield.

The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish.

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