Detective Sergeant Sidney Love had that happy
degree of appreciation of works of art that is unlikely ever to
become soured by scholarship. Nor was he acquisitive by nature,
if the single exception be made of a complete set of “Giants of
Steam” that was his legacy from an uncle who had smoked himself
to death in the cigarette card era. As an aesthete, he was an
all-rounder; honest and unpretentious: a sunset man, not soppy over
gnomes, but ever ready to be pleased by a waterfall. Of cottages,
too, he highly approved.
It was upon a cottage—or upon a representation of one—that
Sergeant Love was gazing at ten minutes to nine one Thursday
morning in the Volunteers’ Hall, Flaxborough.
At half-past ten there was to begin one of the town’s regular
sales by auction of valuable antiques, that being the trade term
for broken furniture, thrown-out pictures, cracked crockery, out-worn
domestic machinery and discarded odds and ends of domestic
adornment.
Most of the dealers had taken their view and had gone outside
to drink from flasks of coffee in the cabs of their pick-up trucks or
leaning on their estate Wagons. The more observant had noticed
Love’s presence in the hall. It added to the interest of the occasion
a possibility that one or more of the lots were on the police’s
stolen list.
But the sergeant was not in search of stolen property. He was
off duty until lunch-time and had been turning over in his mind
the adventurous idea of actually taking part in the bidding. A model
of a cottage, a bas-relief plaster cast, painted and framed, strongly
commended itself to Love as a suitable tribute to his young lady,
whose “Ooo, dinky!” he had learned over a courtship of several
years to value as the highest encouragement of his intentions in
that direction.
He looked about him and considered.
All the goods on offer in the well-heated but dreary building
were arranged in moveable rows at the further end, with big
articles such as wardrobes towering darkly against the yellow-painted
brick wall. In front of the wardrobes were stacked tables
and cupboards and commodes; gramophones that would still wind
up and clocks that would not; a bread mixing bowl and a magic
lantern and a set of records to teach Spanish; a bundle of golf
clubs and a public house mirror advertising stout; a game suitable
for all the family called Trippo; four refrigerators; a gas cooker
with a herb-drying attachment; a meat safe; half an Encyclopaedia
Britannica; a urinal and a knitting basket. There were other
remarkable things of which Love took no notice.
The cottage upon which he had set his desire was at great remove
from all these. It was not even dignified by a lot number of its
own, having been tossed into one of a number of trays and shallow
boxes in which miscellaneous bric-a-brac was offered for sale in
small and unrelated batches. The cottage was accompanied by a
pair of mauled golf balls, a tumbler formerly belonging to the
London, Midland and Scottish Railway, a small meat mincer lacking
means of being clamped anywhere, two decanter stoppers and a
soap dish feverishly embellished with roses (Love’s practical turn
of generosity had already chosen his landlady as recipient-elect
of this).
Prospective buyers had been free to walk about the saleroom
since eight o’clock. Many had come and left again after laying
claim to one of the chairs set in rows throughout the hall. A coat
or a shopping basket or even a catalogue was recognized as sufficient
tally. At this particular moment, though, the place was almost
empty. Apart from the assistant auctioneer, his clerk, two porters
and a dealer, all of whom were gathered near the auctioneer’s
pulpit-like desk, no one was present but Sergeant Love and a man
almost immediately behind him, a man in dark, unobtrusive clothing,
who was as deeply preoccupied with a pair of cast-iron door
knobs as was Love with his cottage.
This man, had Love been observing the elementary rules of his
profession and keeping one eye on anyone within coshing distance,
would have been noted by him as being a little shorter than himself,
with a sallow complexion and black hair that he was constantly
smoothing back until it gathered in a ragged hank at the
nape of his neck. The sergeant would have noticed also that he
had a small mouth permanently held a little open by protruding
teeth. This, together with an air of readiness to listen and a faint
but enduring smile, gave the man an expression of simple, almost
childlike amiability.
“Like a character out of Wind in the Willows,” Love might have
described him to Detective Inspector Purbright, and the inspector
would have understood what he meant. Purbright would not,
however, have dreamed of offering the comparison either to Flaxborough’s
patrician chief constable, or in any circumstances where
it might arouse the fatuous derision of such hard-hats of literary
criticism as officers Harper, Brevitt and Braine.
Not that Purbright was ever called upon to do so, for Love
remained unaware of his companion’s existence, let alone the details
of his appearance, up to the very moment when the door knob
struck the back of his head just above the collar line and endowed
him with almost immediate unconsciousness.
The sergeant fell silently, loosely and vertically into folds. From
his new position on the floor he could be seen by none of the group
near the auction stand. When next one of them happened to glance
in that direction, he noticed that the tall, very clean-faced young
gentleman (a policeman, was he?—yes, so he was, although terribly
young surely?) had gone, presumably by one of the emergency
exits, and that there now was no one else in that part of the hall but
a man of middle years who appeared to find breathing somewhat
difficult.
As soon as the casual observer—it was, in fact, the auctioneer’s
clerk, Lewcock—had turned away once more, the man bobbed
down and resumed the task from which physical exhaustion allied
with a sense of self-preservation had prompted him to rise for air
and a look round.
Sergeant Love had settled into an inert heap that was proving
difficult to shift. His assailant abandoned trying to turn him over
by heaving on one arm. He set to work on a leg. This was even
less promising of result. Next he tried to get both hands under
one shoulder whilst crouching astride the sergeant. By now he was
breathing very heavily indeed and he soon had to surface once
more, without having achieved anything.
Very cautiously, he rose and glanced towards the group by the
auction stand. The porters were drinking mugs of coffee, their
backs turned. The dealer had moved further away and was in
conversation with some new arrivals at the main door. Other people
came in. Lewcock was writing in a ledger at the dictation of the
assistant auctioneer.
The man took half a dozen slow, deep breaths, then knelt beside
the policeman to make a final effort to retrieve the object which
Love, in his last moment of consciousness, had clutched and buried
beneath his sixteen stones of body.
The man insinuated the fingers of his right hand between the
floor and Love’s chest. He pushed. He felt, or thought he felt, the
edge of a hard, square article. But already he had lost his chance.
The sergeant sighed, groaned, stirred. The man, who had been
watching Love’s closed eyes, was alarmed to see the lids tremblingly
begin to part. He tugged his hand free and half ran, half crept
towards the escape door he had noted earlier.
His departure was unremarked.
Not so the elevation of his victim, whose attempt to hold himself
steady toppled a Benares tray and several smaller articles of
percussion. Everyone in the hall turned and stared.
Harrap, the assistant auctioneer, a young man of solemn but
scarcely commanding appearance, tried to look outraged. He made
what he hoped were authoritative gestures with his pen, indicating
Love to the two porters, as if to order his arrest. One of the porters
began to move reluctantly in Love’s direction. Then he recognized
the sergeant and stopped.
“It’s a policeman,” he said to Harrap.
Harrap peered, scowlingly. “That makes it all the worse.” He
raised his voice. “I say...over there...what do you think you’re
doing?”
Love swayed and explored the back of his head with one hand.
Others in the hall, seeing his paleness, hurried forward. First to
reach him was a middle-aged woman.
“Sergeant, whatever have you been doing?” She grasped his arm
and urged him towards a kitchen chair, which she tested first with
a dubious little shake.
Love stared at her face for several seconds after sitting down,
then smiled suddenly. “I don’t suppose it was you who hit me, was
it, Miss Teatime?” The smile died. The sergeant looked very sorry
for himself.
Miss Lucilla Teatime, dealer in objets d’art and proprietress of
the House of Yesteryear, in Northgate, Flaxborough, gave a frown
of concern. She knew that it must have taken a considerable blow
to render Mr Love amenable to being led to chairs.
“I think,” she said to the clerk, Lewcock, who had just arrived
with others, “that you should send at once for an ambulance.
Sergeant Love has suffered an accident. He could be quite poorly.”
Lewcock had never before seen a policeman with a paper-white
face. He made for the telephone without question or argument.
Love sat meekly in the chair, which was too low for him, and
gazed at what still he held incongruously cradled in his big hands.
Miss Teatime saw it too and decided it was time to make a little
conversation before onlookers put an unflattering interpretation
upon what had been going on.
“What a charming little model, sergeant. The ideal cottage for
your retirement—is that how you see it?” (At least the fools
shouldn’t get the idea now that she had pinched it.)
Love’s regard for what he held grew fond, but he did not say
anything.
“I very much hope that article was not removed from one of the
trays of sale exhibits.” The voice of Harrap; his errand not mercy
but supervision.
Miss Teatime looked on with interest. Was it feasible to commit
shoplifting in a saleroom? If so, it certainly would be the first case
figuring a police officer as defendant.
The porter who had spoken earlier was consulting a bundle of
papers. “It’s with thirty-four.” He took the plaster cast from
Love and restored it to the company of the glass, the golf balls, decanter
stoppers, meat mincer and soap dish.
“Anything else missing?” asked Harrap.
The porter gave him a scowl.
An ambulance arrived in less than five minutes. Love, much
embarrassed and growing increasingly resistant as his head cleared,
found himself escorted from the hall like a common drunk by
two uniformed attendants with bespectacled, rather motherly faces,
who smelled of tobacco and disinfectant and kept using wrong
names.
Before suffering the final indignity of being thrust into the
ambulance, Love managed to twist around and address the dozen
or so people who had gathered to watch. He complained that he,
an officer of the law, had been attacked, had been knocked out, in
fact; that his assailant was still at large; that he—the said
assailant—had shown himself by his behaviour to be a cunning and violent
character; and that members of the public would do better to report
matters to Fen Street police headquarters and help hunt the criminal
than to stand idly by and see an officer prevented from doing his
duty.
The speech was worthy of Sidney Carton, let alone Sidney Love, whose public
utterances until then had been restricted to a comic monologue, “
’Ere, ’old me ’elmet, says I”, at a charity concert, and
the reading of a flood-warning in the market place after the river
bank burst in 1972, immobilizing the police loudspeaker van. But
whatever effect his words might have had was cancelled by the
sight of the two ambulance men slamming shut the rear doors of
their vehicle and securing them with a set of levers and bolts that
seemed better suited to a bank or a cold store. That, everyone knew,
was Authority; so the poor young chap inside must either be drunk
or have gone funny.
The spectators went back into the saleroom, to which also
returned, in his own good time, the man who had hit the sergeant.
He took a seat at the side of the hall, not far from the front.
Harrap, back in his place, spoke quietly to Lewcock. “Did you
see anybody hit that policeman?”
“I didn’t see anybody anywhere near him.”
“Nor did I,” said Harrap, meaningfully.
“I don’t think he was on duty,” said Lewcock. “Not that one can
tell.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he’s a detective, isn’t he? Plain clothes man.”
Harrap sniffed. “It’s as well Mr Durham hasn’t arrived yet. He’d
not take kindly to policemen coming in here and playing ducks and
drakes with the lots, in or out of uniform.”
By the time the ambulance arrived at Flaxborough General Hospital,
its unwilling passenger had developed a full-scale headache and
was feeling sick. He offered no objection to being transferred, with
kindly efficiency, to a wheelchair and having a blanket put about
his shoulders. “Sharp’s the word, Roger, old son,” one of his escort
informed him. “We’ll have you between sheets in no time, Jack,”
declared the other.
Love felt that a joke of some sort was being offered him. He
smiled and chuckled to show that he bore these friendly, if misinformed,
men no blame for, the ridiculous mistake of which he
had been made victim. Or he tried to. The actual result was a
sudden lopsidedness of face and a sound suggestive of the death
rattle of a sheep.
He was taken up seven floors in a lift and wheeled along a
corridor. Droopy men in dressing-gowns stared at him impassively
as he was whisked by. His escort seemed now to have embarked
upon some kind of race. Eventually the chair was given a sickening
half-turn and halted. “Everything all right, Frank?” he was asked.
They were in a small annexe. Love’s chair had been parked in
front of a table so that its occupant was squarely presented to a
woman in a white coat seated at the opposite side of the table.
Before her lay a ledger, some piles of forms and two card-index
boxes.
“Name?” The woman’s tone, though kindly, was automatic. Her
pen was ready over a clean page of the ledger. Love had the feeling
that whatever she now set down would commit him to a process
that could never be revoked or modified.
“I am a police officer and I wish to report at once to my station,”
declared Love. His voice sounded terribly loud in his own ears, and
truculent, too. “Sorry,” he added,“but some person attacked me.”
The woman smiled patiently. She was wearing small steel-rimmed
glasses. Her hair, which was ash-blonde, hung to the same
length all the way round her head. Like a dust cover, thought Love.
“I’ll have to ring my inspector,” he said.
“Name?” the woman asked again, in exactly the same tone.
“Purbright is his name. Mine’s Love. Detective Sergeant
Sidney...”—he paused—“...Montgomery Love.”
The hospital porter who had piloted Love from the ground floor
leaned and spoke in his ear. “It’s all right, Harry, they’ve put
a call through from reception downstairs. To the police station.
They know you’re here.”
The woman asked the sergeant his address and he told her.
“Religion?”
“Congregational,” Love said. “Well, more or less.”
He supposed it was his indecisiveness that made the woman
frown, but the real reason was the narrowness of the ledger
column.
“C of E—that’ll do, won’t it?” she suggested.
“It isn’t the same.”
She put down Cong.
Love asked the porter anxiously: “Are they telling my people
that somebody had a go at me? I mean, I don’t want them thinking
that it was just an accident. There should be someone there at that
saleroom.”
“Has he given a urine specimen?” The woman had switched into
that special third person form of address whereby hospital patients
are given a sense of suspended existence.
“He’ll be on Nine B,” she said finally,“if they decide on admission.
He’d better go along to X-Ray for the moment.” And she
handed the porter a card.
“You’ll be there in two ticks, Jack,” confided the porter in
Love’s ear. The wheelchair lurched out into mid-corridor and began
to gather speed.
The message from the general hospital was to
the effect that a Constable Lovell had been admitted with suspected
appendicitis.
Detective Inspector Purbright, accustomed to the ever-increasing
uncertainty of communications, was only momentarily disconcerted
by the errors in rank and name. What did puzzle him, though,
was the tentative diagnosis. Love’s appendix had been removed
long ago. He decided to visit the invalid in person.
Love had had his X-ray and was lying, gloomily resigned, upon
a trolley in the corridor of the casualty ward.
“I haven’t to move my head for a bit,” he explained to Purbright.
The inspector had been searching for him for some minutes. He
peered down now at the blanket enshrouded sergeant with a hesitant
smile, as upon a well-meant but useless birthday present.
“What does the doctor say?”
“The radiologist,” Love amended, “says there’s nothing broken. I
think they want to keep me in overnight, though. You can’t play
about with concussion,” he added.
“Indeed, you cannot, Sid.” Purbright, having made the fairly
easy deductive transfer from appendicitis to a knock on the head,
realized with a touch of shame that he was prepared to humour
his unfortunate sergeant and to discount his replies as probable
delirium.
Love frowned with unwonted severity and raised himself a little
upon one elbow. “The trouble is, I can’t even give a description.”
“You can’t?” The inspector made a don’t-worry face, then looked
about him. A man in a white coat was issuing from a nearby door.
Purbright waylaid him. They held brief conversation.
Purbright returned to Love. “Apparently somebody took a crack
at you.” He sounded surprised and slightly apologetic.
They tell me you’re quite lucid, actually,” Purbright added. “It’s
thanks to the thickness of the bone structure. So now we can get on
with things.” He gave Love’s trolley a business-like tap, as if it were
a shop counter.
The sergeant shrugged beneath his blanket. There was a pause.
Purbright supposed him to be sorting out the medical compliments.
“What on earth were you doing at an antique sale, Sid?” tried
Purbright for a start.
Another shrug. “There was something I might have put a bid
in for,” said Love with a certain airiness. “A cottage for my young
lady.”
“A cottage?” The inspector’s doubts returned.
“Yes. In miniature. Very cleverly done. And a soap dish sort of
made out of roses. There are,” explained the sergeant with the
assurance of the novitiate, “some rather nice things to be snapped
up at these sales—if you keep your eyes open.”
“It’s rather a pity you didn’t do just that when...” the inspector
was beginning, meanly, when a pair of white-clad orderlies presented
themselves at head and foot of Love’s trolley and launched
it into one of those speed trials that seemed to be the accepted
means of transporting the sick.
By the time it was possible to continue the interview, the
sergeant had been weighed, measured, induced to pass urine,
encased in a pair of hospital-issue pyjamas of the kind more
usually associated with chain-gang wear, and put into a bed.
In this interval, Purbright had made a couple of telephone calls.
He told the sergeant that three men from Fen Street were on
their way to the saleroom and that Mr Hector Durham, the
auctioneer, had agreed to postpone the sale a while if that should
seem helpful.
“I’ll go straight over, Sid. Now are you certain you saw nothing
at all of the gentleman who put you in here?”
Love said he had given the question much thought but was convinced
that no part of the attacker had come within his range of
vision. “I’ll bet he wore soft shoes, though,” he added. “The floor
in that hall is wood; you can hear the slightest footstep or scuffle.”
“But you didn’t.”
Love stared in silence at the ceiling for a moment, then looked
at the inspector: “I tell you what I did hear though. When I was
being hit—you know, just a fraction of a second before whatever
it was arrived on the back of my neck—there was a sound that I’d
have thought queer if only I’d had time to think about it.”
A nurse entered. She hung a chart-board on the bottom bedrail
and, almost in the same movement, stuck a thermometer in Love’s
mouth. She hooked a couple of plump, very white fingers around
his wrist. For the next half-minute she gazed alternately at her
watch and at Purbright’s face. The watch, Purbright felt, was an
easy winner.
The girl read the thermometer with grave concentration. Love,
watchful for intimations of mortality, jumped when she gave it
two violent shakes and bolstered it in a little tube at the back of
the locker.
“This noise, Sid,” prompted Purbright when the nurse had
departed.
Love stopped wondering if the taste of the disinfectant on the
thermometer meant that he had suffered brain damage.
“All I can remember,” he said, “is a sound like somebody trying
to open a door. But it came from there, right there.” He pointed
to the back of his head.
“When you say door...” Purbright frowned, and with a gesture
invited Love to elucidate.
The sergeant said merely: “Yes, well...” and looked sulky.
Purbright tried other lines of questioning. “You’re sure, are you,
Sid, that you saw no one in or near the Volunteers’ Hall who might
have a grudge against you?”
“Against me?”
“A misconceived grudge, naturally.”
“I didn’t see anybody I knew—apart from Mr Harrap and one
or two of the saleroom people,” Love said. “There were plenty outside
who looked pretty villainous, mind you.”
Purbright recognized that one of Love’s infrequent jokes was
on the way.
“You know—dealers,” explained the sergeant.
The inspector drew a rough sketch in his notebook. “If that’s the
saleroom, with the auctioneer’s stand there, whereabouts were you?”
Love put a cross. He thought a moment. “The stuff I was looking
at was lot number thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll find the place from
that, if the sale hasn’t started.”
The sale had not started, but more than a hundred people had
taken their seats.
Purbright sought out the auctioneer.
Mr Hector Durham, the senior—indeed, the sole surviving
original partner in Walker, Durham and Tait, was known as Old
Noddy by reason of the sympathetic reflex movement that had
begun simply as an encouragement of bidders but now was involuntary and permanent.
Oh, yes, nodded Mr Durham, the inspector was welcome to
make what investigations he liked. Would he mind, though, if the
first lot were put up at eleven o’clock? There were more wardrobes
than usual this week and wardrobes did drag a bit.
“Sorry to hear about young Love,” said Mr Durham, his big,
kindly head going up and down like a beam engine. “Was he trying
to arrest somebody or what? Nobody here saw what happened.”
The inspector was directed to what Old Noddy understood to be
the area in which the sergeant had been attacked.
“I’m going for my breakfast now,” said Mr Durham, “but Mr
Harrap will look after you.”
The inspector crossed the hall. Nearly all the front six rows of
seats were occupied, three-quarters of them by women. Most of
them seemed to know one another. There was quite a festive air.
A policeman in uniform, Constable Hooley, marked the scene
of the assault as surely as a lighthouse amidst a shoal of rocks. The
inspector told him that he might take his helmet off if he liked.
Hooley did so but he continued to hold it, like a chalice, perhaps
for fear that setting it down would invite its being swept into the
sale.
Purbright stopped and surveyed lot thirty-four. He saw Love’s cottage.
It was inscribed in one corner: “At the End of Life’s Lane”.
He turned it over. Nothing. Plaster, was it? He scratched at one of
the roses round the cottage door. The red flaked off, leaving chalky
whiteness.
“Quite artistic, isn’t it?”
Purbright turned. Lewcock, Mr Durham’s clerk, was behind
him. The probability was that Harrap had sent him to see that
nothing was messed about with; Mr Harrap’s distrust of humanity
did not exclude police inspectors.
He replaced the cottage and looked over the other items in the
tray. Lewcock offered no further opinions but kept close.
Purbright examined the floor. He saw the table that Love had
pulled down with him. It had since been replaced. Purbright
strolled past it. He looked to his left. A door, marked Emergency
Exit. It opened easily enough. Beyond it was a narrow lane. No
one was in the lane.
Purbright returned to lot thirty-four. Nearby were six or seven
similar collections of miscellaneous articles. He began methodically
to search through those that were within reasonable reaching
distance of where Love had stood.
Lewcock and PC Hooley watched. They noted with due solemnity
that he did his poking around with a pencil. “Prints,” breathed Mr
Hooley to his companion.
Suddenly Purbright paused. He draped a handkerchief over
something in one of the trays and carefully withdrew it. The others
saw first the shape, then the object, as the inspector shook back
the folds of the handkerchief. He held a heavy, cast-iron door-knob,
connected by a square spindle to its smaller fellow.
The assembly rattled when shaken. But there was no doubt that
it would have served tolerably well as a club.
“I’m afraid,” said Purbright to Lewcock, “that I’m going to
have to take charge of this for a while. Mr Durham will understand
when you explain. Now then—a box, perhaps? Nothing elaborate...”
When PC Hooley had departed for Fen Street with the parcelled
evidence and some simple but careful instructions, Purbright moved
into the main body of the hall and found himself a seat.
The early part of the sale, the “warming up” in the language of
auctioneers, was being conducted by the ascetic Mr Harrap. He
took bids with great condescension. Some starters he refused to
countenance, treating them either as feeble jokes or as the interjections
of lunatics.
Two pounds fifty was offered for a tin box containing a soup
tureen, a pair of spanners and assorted curtain rings. “Doesn’t
anyone realize,” asked Mr Harrap with censorious surprise, “what a
collectable item today is the Victorian curtain ring?”
No one did, it seemed, for the two-fifty went untopped. Mr
Harrap eyed the next item anxiously. It was a child’s toy baking
set, circa 1949, almost complete, in original box, very collectable.
Ten pence was offered. Mr Harrap declined to hear.
Lot thirty-four was reached after about half an hour.
The tray was brought for display to the audience. The porter
held it as if it contained a selection of rare gems. He swung it
slowly before him, so that everyone might have a view.
Purbright could see the plaster representation of the cottage in
the centre of the other things. It was propped up slightly. Probably
by one of the decanter stoppers. The mauled golf balls had settled
into a corner of the tray.
“There is in this lot,” explained Mr Harrap, “an item that is
much sought after these days. I do not have to tell you what it is.”
The porter did not need telling, either. He reverently shifted
the meat mincer to a more prominent position.
“Do I hear five pounds?” inquired Mr Harrap. His expression
implied that it might have been fifty but he was playing safe.
Someone laughed. The auctioneer looked shocked.
There was a long silence.
“Four pounds.”
The bidder was a sturdy, compact woman with a much-lined
face and an air of authority. In her seventies, perhaps, she still
conveyed an impression of indifference to wear and tear. Her rather
dingy woollen coat was belted determinedly. She wore an outsize
hat, not unlike a lifeboatman’s in style.
Mr Harrap’s almost deferential acknowledgment of this woman’s
bid established that she was familiar to him. He gazed into the
outfield.
“I have accepted a call of four pounds as opener, ladies and
gentlemen. A very modest opener. Again, do I hear five?”
Most of the audience sat hunch-shouldered, keeping hands low
and still, in case of misinterpretation. No one in particular could
be seen talking, yet there was a great deal of noise from general
conversation. It was substantially a crowd of spectators. The actual
participants, the bidders, formed a tiny minority scattered among
the rest like spies sending secret messages. Only the quicksilver
eye of the auctioneer divined their purpose from the flutter of a
catalogue, the lift of an eyebrow.
Regular salegoers had had very poor expectations of lot thirty-four.
A first bid of four pounds for such poor trash came as quite
a surprise. It was not like the shabby but astute Mrs Moldham-Clegg
to set the pace so high. Had stolen glasses from the London,
Midland and Scottish Railway suddenly acquired rarity value?
Purbright had been to such a sale only once before in his life.
His sole concern at this one was to see if anybody present qualified—in
the light of the inspector’s special knowledge of Flaxborough
grievances—as the opportunist who had felled Sid Love in that
temporarily deserted corner of the saleroom.
He gazed about him for several minutes but failed to spot a
likely candidate.
Meanwhile, the bidding for lot thirty-four had risen, quite unaccountably,
to ten pounds and promised to go even further.
Mrs Moldham-Clegg led a small field of some half dozen contenders.
She put in each bid with stern assurance as if it were an
instruction for the goods to be knocked down to her at once and
delivered to the tradesmen’s entrance.
But her few rivals were perverse and kept jacking up their
offers.
Miss Teatime showed no sign of interest for several minutes,
during which she seemed to be giving full attention to a quiet
conversation with her neighbour. Then, suddenly, up went her face
and a sweet but distinct, “Twenty pounds.”
Purbright directed at her a frown of disbelief.
She smiled at him and made a little inclination of the head in
recognition and greeting.
Purbright repented of the frown. He nodded and smiled back.
“Twenty-one,” declared Mr Harrap, triumphantly. He pointed
with his gavel in Purbright’s direction.
Auction novice though he was, the inspector knew he was in a
situation governed by a rule exactly similar to that applicable to
drowning: don’t struggle. He resisted the huge temptation to
shake his head and cry denial. Silent, motionless and dreadfully
apprehensive, he waited for rescue.
It came after what seemed a very long time. “And fifty,” barked
Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Purbright sent her a grateful glance but
otherwise stirred no muscle.
Bidding rose to thirty pounds. Mr Harrap looked as nearly jovial as it was
constitutionally possible for him to look. When Miss Teatime took it to
thirty-five, he was so tipsy with success that he essayed a witticism about
“the lady’s age” but mercifully spoiled it by fumbling the words.
At forty pounds, Harrap had sobered up again. His face showed
something approaching bewilderment, and he paused for a while
to confer with his clerk.
The sale went on. Miss Teatime did not bid again, but Harrap
was now receiving signs from two directions other than that of
Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Forty pounds. Forty-five. Fifty. All chatter
in the hall ceased. What seemed a mad contest for a tray of junk
held captive a silent audience.
Purbright tried to see who the other two bidders were. Neither
made any gesture visible from where the inspector sat, so he had
to look at the faces of other people who were watching them, and
work out a solution geometrically by a system of crossed bearings.
One, he decided, was Mr Clapper Buxton, a Flaxborough
solicitor’s confidential clerk.
The other appeared to be a man Purbright had noted a little
earlier as a stranger to the town, a man with protruding teeth and
an air of wanting to be helpful.
The hundred-pound mark was reached and passed. There had
set in a rhythm of bid and counter-bid that was raising the price
more quickly. Only one voice was to be heard, though. Mrs
Moldham-Clegg’s. It was now perceptibly grittier and edged with
a sort of patrician contempt. Mr Harrap gave it heed, then turned
his eye without delay to collect the silent instructions first of Mr
Clapper, then of the stranger.
Both seemed prepared to give stony assent for ever, or for as
long as Mrs Moldham-Clegg cared to defy them.
“Two hundred and fifty pounds.”
Purbright saw the squaring of the woman’s back, the rug she
gave at the big lifeboatman’s hat. Generations of Flaxborough
shopkeepers had quailed before such intimations of prerogative.
Harrap looked in Clapper’s direction and raised his brow. “And
sixty?” Then, at once, to the stranger: “May I say seventy, sir?”
Taking elaborate care to make no movement that might be
construed as a bid, Purbright eased himself along to the end of
the row. He heard the command of Mrs Moldham-Clegg: “Two
hundred and eighty pounds.” He waited a moment, then cautiously
crossed the aisle and stood in the lee of the side wall.
The offers continued to rise. Harrap looked pale; he was beginning
to wonder if he were being made the victim of some conspiratorial leg-pull.
Purbright moved slowly up the hall, keeping close to the wall.
“Twenty-three, sir?”
The inspector was level with the front row of seats. He gained
the shelter of the auctioneer’s stand, and, stooping, edged towards
the clerk’s table.
Lewcock saw him. He leaned sideways in his chair, presenting
an ear. Purbright whispered good morning into it.
“Morning, inspector.” A breathed greeting, as in church.
“What,” whispered Purbright, “is he selling-the Mona Lisa?”
“I reckon,” Lewcock confided, “that either they’re barmy or they’ve
got the wrong lot.”
“It’s there to be seen, though. They can’t all be mistaken.”
Lewcock shrugged. “Barmy, then. It’s rubbish. I’ve looked at it.”
Above them waved the auctioneer’s arm, conjuring more bids
with dream-like ease.
“Give him a message, will you, Mr Lewcock,” murmured the
inspector.
“Not during bidding, I can’t.”
“That’s up to you, but I think it’s only fair he should know that
the goods he is now offering for sale will not be immediately
available.”
“What do you mean?”
Purbright was writing in his notebook. “They are, as you might
say, impounded. Temporarily, one hopes.” He half-turned to check
what he had written with the contents of the tray still held dutifully
by the porter. “Here is Mr Harrap’s official receipt.”
Lewcock regarded the torn-off leaf in bewilderment.
“I think you had better tell him at once,” the inspector said.
“Confidentially, though. Don’t give any impression of alarm.”
Across the clerk’s face spread the sunshine of a guess that something
was up. “Ah—not to stop the fish biting,” he remarked, with
a maddeningly knowing lift of one eyebrow.
Purbight gave him as much of a smile as he could summon: a
thin, neuralgic wince.
Lewcock rose. He touched Harrap’s sleeve. The auctioneer
looked anxious and angry, but he bent to listen. What he heard
seemed to intensify both the anxiety and the anger. He addressed
Purbright in a whisper that could be heard all over the hall.
“These items are the property of private clients. You cannot
interfere with a correctly conducted sale. I am in the middle of
taking bids, inspector. You must excuse me.”
And he gazed out over the heads of the, by now, much intrigued
audience.
“Oh, God!” breathed Purbright to himself. “Tell him,” he said
to Lewcock, “that nobody’s stopping his sale, but that I can and
will if he’s going to be awkward. A policeman has been hurt here
this morning. And now there is this very odd bidding. Somebody
has to explain it. I am not being unreasonable.”
The intermediary went aloft again. This time Harrap paused
before delivering a reply and then it was for the hearing of Lewcock
alone.
“He says,” Lewcock reported to the inspector, “that you can do
as you like as long as you take responsibility, but can he finish
taking bids first. It’s the commission, of course,” Lewcock confided.
“He wants the old man to feel inferior.”
“I shall want the names of bidders,” Purbright said. “Every person
who has put in a bid for this lot number, I mean. Also the name
of the owner. Can you do that for me?”
The clerk nodded. “I can jot them down now, actually. Well, all
but one.” He sat straight and peered into the hall. “Oh...”
Purbright saw the frown of puzzlement. He knew, before
Lewcock spoke, what had happened.
The stranger who had seemed so keen to acquire lot thirty-four
against the opposition of Mrs Moldham-Clegg and Mr Buxton
was no longer in his seat.
So far as Purbright could make out in a quick, sweeping scrutiny,
the man had departed altogether.
“Don’t let anyone shift that stuff. I’ll be back for the names in
half a minute.”
Careless now of obtrusiveness, Purbright strode to the back of
the hall. There he was assured by PC Phillips and Detective Harper
that no one had left the hall by the main doors. Perhaps one of
the three emergency exits...? Helpful.
“Ask people,” he told them. “Particularly near the doors. Man
in dark clothing, probably a quiet stepper. Receding chin. Rather
friendly face, actually.”
Mr Harrap, all too aware that his brief and fantastic transposition
into a Sotheby’s-like world was about to come to an end, was
announcing for a second time that the bidding stood at three
hundred and seventy pounds and was with the lady on his right.
He watched without interest Purbright’s return to the clerk’s table.
“At three hundred and seventy pounds...” Mr Harrap rolled
the words around his mouth with valedictory relish. “For the third
time...” The gavel was held high.
Four more seconds went by. Mr Harrap stared invitingly but
quite without avail at Mr Clapper Buxton, who appeared suddenly
to have gone into a state of deep inner contemplation.
The gavel descended and was held out to indicate the victor. Mr
Harrap gave Mrs Moldham-Clegg a respectful, tight-mouthed
smile. She did not look at him, but instead crooked one finger to
summon the porter while she reached down with her other hand
for a huge square shopping-bag of plaited leather.
The auctioneer coughed apologetically and leaned out of his
stand to make a counter-gesture to the porter.
Mrs Moldham-Clegg paused, looked up sharply at Harrap.
Again he tried out a smile. “With respect to lot thirty-four...”
“Well?” She regarded him with chilly discouragement.
“The items cannot be released immediately, I’m afraid. There
are certain formalities.” He added in a whisper, “Police routine,
nothing more.”
If Purbright was dismayed by the ineptness of Mr Harrap as a
soother of customers, he was even less prepared for Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s
reaction.
Allowing her head to roll back, she opened her mouth, turned
up her eyes, assumed the colour of wallpaper paste, and half-slid,
half-rolled in a dead faint to the floor.
The silver-haired chief constable of Flaxborough, Mr Harcourt Chubb,
was sufficiently old-fashioned to hold fainting to be a natural prerogative
of womankind. It was “rather nice”, he considered, for sensitivity
to be so highly developed. Dogs were much the same: the better the pedigree,
the greater the propensity to have fits.
Even Mr Chubb, though, was incredulous on hearing of the
collapse of Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
“Tough as boots, I would have thought, Mr Purbright. A bit of
a thruster in her time.”
“How old is she now, sir?”
Mr Chubb gave the question unhurried thought. He was standing
by the window in his cool, white-painted office at the Fen Street
police headquarters, calmly but systematically examining, leaf by
leaf, a very healthy-looking potted geranium.
“Seventy-eight, I should say,” he said at last. A little later, and
with a trace of a smile that Purbright suspected was meant to be
roguish for his benefit, “I expect you wonder how I know that?”
“Sir?”
Mr Chubb flicked an alien insect from one of the leaves of his
plant. “Nicky Moldham had her coming-of-age party in the same
year that my father returned from India. In 1921. We were at
Strawbridge then, as you know.”
The inspector knew no such thing. One of Mr Chubb’s devices
for implanting in his subordinates a healthy sense of inadequacy
was to drop into the conversation from time to time an apparently
innocent presumption of the other person’s familiarity with some
matter of which he could have known nothing.
“Strawbridge,” Purbright echoed without hint of hesitancy. “Of
course. It must have been quite a party for it to be so memorable.”
Mr Chubb regarded him carefully. “So my parents told me in
somewhat later years. It was remembered by their generation as
one of the last of the big occasions at the Hall.”
“The Moldhams seem to be considered a rather unlucky family,
sir.”
“Indeed? Yes, well, I suppose they have had their troubles.”
“If they were financial troubles, it seems a little strange that one
of them can now afford to pay nearly four hundred pounds for a
few worthless bits and pieces at a sale.”
“Worthless?” Mr Chubb repeated, reflectively. “On the face of
it, yes. But sentiment will exact a very high price, you know.”
Purbright recognized that Mr Chubb was in that frame of mind
which would prove obstructive, perhaps even dictatorial, in the face
of novelty or radicalism. Loyalties—the more difficult to identify
because they were ancient and private loyalties—had been stirred
and were now at work behind those courteous, ascetic features.
“I shall not put Mrs Moldham-Clegg to the bother of coming
into town again, of course, sir.”
The chief constable nodded and wrinkled his nose. “Quite.”
“I shall give her time to recover, then have a word with her at home.”
Mr Chubb blew gently through pouted lips while he stared out
of the window into the middle distance. The inspector watched
and waited for him to try something in the nature of discouragement.
At the moment when he saw Mr Chubb about to speak, he
broke the silence himself instead.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I have been forgetting the matter you’re most
concerned about. The hospital people told me a little while ago
that Sergeant Love is making a good recovery from that attack.”
“Ah... Oh, splendid,” declared Mr Chubb. He looked, the
inspector thought, slightly winded, but he soon recovered from the
reminder that inspectors of police, even in Flaxborough, are expected
to put crime before social obligation to the County.
“There must be no effort spared to find that fellow,” he said
sternly. “I don’t want you to feel inhibited in your investigations,
you know, Mr Purbright. People like the Moldhams are very
understanding if they’re approached properly.”
He nodded pleasantly and walked to the door like a host.
“Mind you,” Mr Chubb murmured as Purbright passed him into
the corridor, “Nicky is getting on a bit. Wouldn’t be nice to press
her too hard.”
“Nicky?”
“Short for Veronica. Mrs Moldham-Clegg.”
“I see, sir.”
“And please see that my best wishes for his recovery go to
Sergeant Love, won’t you.”
Purbright made his way to the CID room. It compared with
Mr Chubb’s office not as a poor relation with a rich, but rather as
a railway waiting-room might offer contrast with an abbot’s private
study. It had recently been painted what Mr Chubb’s wife termed
“a cheerful, sunny colour” and the more rickety chairs had been
replaced with plastic indestructibles, but the long, heavy wooden
table, pocked with cigarette burns, still occupied most of its area
and, together with a massive, black-leaded cast-iron fireplace that
never contained a fire, kept faith with the days of the lock-up and
the drunkards’ cart. It was the kind of room in which men are
disinclined to take off their overcoats. Beneath the fume of the
cheerful new paint there lingered the smells of tea-soaked biscuits
and of metal polish.
“Those prints. They’ve got a result.”
A sheet of paper was handed to Purbright by PC Braine, whose
fat, purse-like face and short sight gave him a quite extraordinary
resemblance to a spectacled toad. Purbright thanked him and sat
down. Braine went over to where Detective Pook stood drinking
a mug of tea. “Villain from the Smoke, apparently,” said Braine.
Pook stared irritably into the steam from his drink. “Fancy that.”
Detective Harper was in the room. Also PC Wilkinson and
Patrolman Brevitt. All looked as if they were on their way to
somewhere else.
A little self-consciously, the inspector donned a pair of gold-rimmed
reading glasses, recently acquired. He felt like the tutor
of an adult education class.
Voices were raised outside. The door opened. Harper, who was
standing facing it from the other side of the room, made noises of
boisterous surprise.
The arrival was Sergeant Love. He grinned apologetically.
Purbright looked pleased to see him.
“An appropriately-timed revival, Sid. I have just learned the
name of your suspected assailant.”
Love took a seat opposite the inspector and assumed an attentive
expression.
“He is a London gentleman,” Purbright began, “whose name
when last sentenced was Dean Francis O’Dwyer. He is otherwise
variously known as Charles Chubb,” (there were appreciative whinneys
for this piece of lèse-majesté) “Victor Henry Scoggins,
Victor Charles Priest and ‘Slopey’ Cavendish.”
“Which one hit you, sergeant?” interjected Wilkinson, who was
inclined to regard any assembly of more than three of his colleagues
as an occasion for waggishness.
Love’s face glowed with the pleasure of notoriety as he tenderly
touched the back of his neck. “All of them, by the feel of it.” It
was, as he told his young lady afterwards, his bonest mot for
months.
For a moment Purbright regarded him anxiously. Then he
resumed his summary of Mr O’Dwyer’s record.
“Last known address was in Finchley, North London. Age forty-seven.
Married. Also several partners, believed bigamously acquired
but never the subject of proceedings. Sent to borstal in 1948 for
breaking and entering, theft and causing actual bodily harm.
Convictions as an adult include four of violence, three of breaking
and entering and eight of theft. His attempted larceny of a chalice
was treated as sacrilege, for which he received two years.”
“It sounds,” commented Detective Constable Harper, infected
by Wilkinson’s levity, “as if the sergeant was laid out by a real
professional.”
Purbright had been reading ahead quickly and silently. He
shook his head. “Habitual, perhaps, but not terribly successful, it
seems. Slick but careless. Small takings, usually recovered. Not
worth all that prison, one might have thought.”
“What about the violence, though, sir?” asked the patrolman,
Brevitt.
“Four cases are listed, as I said. And quite gratuitious violence,
by all accounts. So whatever we may think of Mr O’Dwyer as a
master criminal, he obviously is a dangerous fellow with an unpredictable
temper.”
The inspector played a moment with his new glasses.
“I shall ask London to collect him for questioning if he does
surface there, of course. There is a chance, though, that he has not
yet left Flaxborough.”
There were glances of surprise. Pook took his cue. “The inspector’s
talking about a car we’re checking on,” he explained. “It was
parked overnight on the Northway Estate and nobody round there
knows who it belongs to, but what we do know is that PC Phillips
saw somebody get into a very similar car outside the saleroom
yesterday, that somebody being the character we’re after. Right, sir?”
The inspector confirmed that such, indeed, was the case.
“The general instruction at the moment,” he said, “is that every
officer on duty should be watchful for this man, whatever his name,
and prepared for him to be violent, despite his appearance, which
I can vouch for being amiable to a point of simple-mindedness.
Mr Braine—run off some copies of the official description, will you,
and see to their distribution.”
Beckoning Love to accompany him, Purbright left the room and
crossed to where a spiral of steep, narrow and noisy iron stairs led
to his own office.
“Feeling better now, Sid?”
The sergeant said yes, oh yes, fine. As if to bear witness to his
restored physique, the staircase swayed and rattled like a skein of
iron plates.
“I didn’t say anything about it downstairs,” Purbright said quietly
when Love had finished his climb and stood beside him, “but my
belief is that Mr O’Dwyer is very seriously concerned indeed to lay
hands on something that was on that tray of rubbish. He stayed
with the bidding into the three hundreds.”
Disbelief creased Love’s face. “Three hundred? Pounds?”
“It went to nearly four, actually.”
“Who got it, then?”
Purbright pushed open his office door and stood aside for Love
to enter. “I did.”
The tray was on a small deal table close to the desk. The sergeant
stared at the cottage so lately coveted by himself, then at Purbright.
“You could say that it is an exhibit in custody,” the inspector
explained. “The owner, strictly speaking, is Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
Her’s was the top bid.”
“Must be barmy,” declared Love, then, defensively and a little
sadly: “I thought I’d go to a couple of quid perhaps. No more.”
“We can’t keep these long. Unless something in this lot can be
proved stolen or to have associations of some kind with an actual
crime, we shall have to pack it all off to Moldham Hall and tug
our forelocks in contrition.”
Love was holding the meat mincer and scraping with a thumb
nail the black impacted kitchen grease on its handle. “There was a
case once of gold being melted down and cast in some shape that
wouldn’t be noticed.”
Purbright picked up the china dish and cover. The dish had
inside it a perforated false bottom on which a tablet of soap could
drain. He lifted it.
“Drugs?” Irrepressible Love.
“A nice thought, Sid, but I scarcely think so. I must ask around
and see if soap dishes are attracting fancy prices. What do you
make of the glass stoppers?”
The sergeant considered. “They look as if they’re out of vinegar
bottles.” A pause. “Big vinegar bottles.”
The inspector gave the LMS refreshment room tumbler fond
but brief regard and prepared to examine carefully the plaster
model of the cottage “At the End of Life’s Lane”.
The frame was a simple, mass-produced plastic affair, clipped
to the plaster plaque at four places. It was corded for hanging.
The plaque itself was solid—or it seemed so—and the back had
the slightly bubbled surface characteristic of a plaster that has set
rapidly and freely exposed to air. Purbright could see no marks of
identification.
With the handle of a small penknife, he tapped gently over the
whole area of the picture’s back, after unclipping and removing
the frame. There came the same dull response at every point. If a
hollow place existed, it would need to be small and deep-set.
“Micro-film?” Love threw in, heroically.
Purbright turned the plaque over. The cottage was delineated
in relief. A mould, probably of rubber, must have been used. The
colouring was conventional; neatly executed but nothing more.
“Have you seen this sort of thing before, Sid?”
The sergeant thought he had. At least, he had seen a kit in a
shop but had not realized its connection with real art. “Kastaplak”
it had been called.
For two or three minutes more, Purbright made close inspection
of the plaque. He squeezed it between fingers and thumb, shook
it and tapped it close to his ear, made several discreet incisions
with the smallest blade of his knife and even pared away one corner
that would be concealed by the replacement of the frame.
“We’ll let Forensic play with it for a day,” Purbright said at last.
“Perhaps they will find what makes it worth £400.”
Later, he was conveying the same intention in rather different
phraseology to Mr Richard Loughbury, solicitor, of Church Close,
Flaxborough.
“Rich Dick” Loughbury was the senior, and only generally visible,
member of Loughbury, Lovelace and Partners. He occupied a
room of such generous size and gracious proportions as to take up
the entire first floor of the Georgian terrace house that once had
accommodated a succession of clergymen, their large families and
retinues of curates. The firm’s offices, in a workaday sense, were on
the ground floor. Into them were crammed three desks, two typewriters,
a duplicating machine, some dozens of black japanned
deed boxes, a sink, kettle, cups and saucers, a wooden filing cupboard,
two women wearing woollen jumpers, a box of coal, and
Mr Clapper Buxton, Loughbury’s confidential clerk. The two
partners, neither of whom was called Lovelace, had rooms on the
second floor where they were believed to do conveyancing.
Purbright had summarized for Loughbury’s benefit the events
of the previous day. “You do act, I understand, for the Moldham
family?”
“I am Colonel Moldham’s man of business.” Loughbury pronounced
it busy-ness: the word, like the phrase, bespoke the old-time
lawyer (or else, Purbright reflected, somebody anxious to
sound like one).
“And Mrs Moldham-Clegg...?”
“Is the colonel’s aunt. She is widowed and lives now at the
Hall.” The replies came smoothly and without hesitation in a
pleasant voice that had been trained carefully, perhaps self-consciously,
on the base of a fairly expensive education. Rich Dick’s
was not a big firm even by Flaxborough standards, but Purbright
could well understand why it had come to be entrusted with the
affairs of most of the county families and big land-owning interests.
“The reason for my coming to you,” the inspector said, “is a
hope that we can clear up a little mystery connected with yesterday’s
sale without having to bother the lady so soon after her collapse.”
“Collapse?” Mr Loughbury, whose large, square, pink face, with
its laundered-looking white moustache and eyebrows, proclaimed
his own robust health, clearly assumed a similarly sensible constitution
on the part of his clients.
“Oh, yes, she did faint,” Purbright insisted.
“Indeed. And the little mystery?”
“We should like to know why Mrs Moldham-Clegg bid close on
four hundred pounds for a very ordinary household picture on
plaster-of-Paris, together with three or four odds and ends, the
total value of which cannot be more than a few shillings.”
Mr Loughbury smiled. His teeth looked as good as the moustache.
“We live in an age of inexplicable prices, inspector. Especially
where so-called art is concerned. And who are we men to tell the
ladies they are extravagant?”
As Purbright was to observe to Mr Chubb later, jocularity on the
part of a solicitor is one of the surest signs of evasiveness. He
decided to tighten his questioning at the risk of Mr Loughbury’s
displeasure.
“I should have described her buy as something more than extravagance,
sir. It smacks of either extreme eccentricity or of special
knowledge. And Mrs Moldham-Clegg is, by all accounts, a very
level-headed lady.”
“What do you mean by special knowledge, inspector?” The
voice was good-humoured as ever, the white brows a little lowered
in friendly concern.
“I mean awareness of something valuable in lot thirty-four, something
that would escape notice in the ordinary way. Something
concealed, even.”
“Ah, the painted-over Van Dyke.” Mr Loughbury laughed, but
not derisively. “No, no, I do see what you mean, Purbright—but
Mrs Moldham-Clegg? Hardly a hunter of masterpieces.”
“She is your client, sir...”
A finger rose in polite correction. “The family, inspector—the
family is my client.”
“Very well, sir; from your knowledge of the family, including
Mrs Moldham-Clegg, can you suggest what significance she saw in
those seemingly worthless objects that persuaded her to part with
nearly £400?”
“Do you intend to put that question to her?”
“As part of my general inquiries? Yes, if necessary.”
“But inquiries into what, inspector? Buying at auction is not a
felonious act, surely.”
“I have not suggested that it is.”
The solicitor remained silent for some seconds, as though
slightly discomfited and regretful that the policeman had introduced
a note of asperity into his last reply. Then he brightened.
“May I make this suggestion, inspector—that I have a word
myself with the good lady. It happens that I am going over to
Moldham tomorrow morning to discuss some estate matters with
the colonel. I’m sure that Mrs Moldham-Clegg will be as frank
with me as the circumstances warrant—perhaps even a little more
so, who knows?” A glint of good-fellowship in the clear, pale blue
eyes, and a reassuring tightening of jaw that puckered the smooth
chin.
Mr Loughbury watched the very faint, sad smile the inspector
had assumed and mistook it for a sign of assent. He rose and held
forth his hand.
Purbright took the hand, which was large, warm, smooth and
confident.
He had said nothing about the presence at the sale of Loughbury’s
confidential clerk, George Robert Buxton.
Inspector Purbright did not doubt that Mrs
Moldham-Clegg’s man of business would telephone her long before
he, Purbright, could call upon her in person. That could not be
helped. He set off towards Moldham village at such speed as was
still possible in his ageing official car.
The Hall was in open country a little west of the village, which
the shrinkage of the agricultural population during the past twenty
years had reduced to a handful of houses now refashioned to the
taste of commuting businessmen and shopkeepers from Flaxborough
who had acquired them. There was no store in the village,
no post office, no inn. The tiny church, fussily restored by a
Victorian architect with the money of farmers whose personal piety
embraced a desire to see the virtue of humility inculcated in their
labourers, was open for services only half a dozen times a year,
when the dank and dim little stone box held all too easily a
congregation garnered by bus from ten square miles of indifferent
countryside.
As Purbright drove by, he saw sheep grazing in the churchyard.
One, framed against the black hollow of the porch, held itself very
erect and gave Purbright a direct stare of disapproval and challenge.
He thought of Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
The Hall’s surrounding parkland had a common boundary with
the church, to which a private path still led. The inspector could
just discern the glimmer of the white wicket gate between two yew
trees. The house was invisible from the road until he reached the
entrance to a drive flanked with chestnuts and sycamores, at the
end of which and looking much smaller than such an approach
promised, was a square, two-storeyed building in dark, rusticated
stone. It could have been a moorland farmhouse, save for its
battlemented parapet—an addition conceived by a nineteenth
century Moldham whom a hunting accident had led to a brief but
influential incursion into the works of Sir Walter Scott.
A pair of tall wrought-iron gates stood across the drive. Mainly
rusty now, they bore vestiges of black and gold paint. Purbright
decided that to leave the car outside them and walk to the Hall
would be easier than involvement with bolts and catches of dubious
efficacy. He also decided that a painted notice, Private—tradesmen
next entrance, was not intended to apply to him.
He took his time to walk the length of the avenue, savouring
the scents of cow parsley and meadowsweet and the underlying
spiciness of mouldering leaves. Greenery had made broad inroads
across the gravel, so that his steps were carpeted almost to silence.
Thus he was only a few yards short of the corner of the house
when an old man busy at a window in the side wall heard him
and peered round over his shoulder.
“Ah,” said the old man. He had short, grizzled thatch on his
nearly flat head, a little more around his chin. He wore blue knitted
mittens, with the back of which he wiped from time to time a nose
of considerable size and bulbosity.
Purbright Ah’d a return greeting. The old man resumed his task,
but not dismissively. After a while he said that it looked like being
a nice day.
Purbright watched him running a knife around the edge of a
window pane and catching the snake of surplus putty in his other
hand. On a sheet of newspaper spread beside him were shards of
glass.
“Terrible price, now, glass,” offered the inspector.
There came from the old man a husky blowing noise, signifying
unqualified agreement.
Purbright waited a while. Then, with immense casualness: “Not
in a place you’d expect it to get broken.”
The old man licked his little finger and carefully smoothed
away a blemish in the new putty.
“Didn’t,” he said.
“Didn’t get broken?”
“They niwer brok it. I brok it. They cut it.”
The old man spoke without a halt in the slow, patient perfecting
of the setting of the new pane. Purbright looked at the pile of
glass on the ground. He saw one piece whose edge conformed to
the arc of a circle.
“You mean,” he said, “that you had to smash the glass because
there was a hole in it?”
“Ah.”
“I see.”
“It was the burglars as cut it.”
With which slow, matter-of-fact statement of the obvious, the
old man returned his knife to a tool-bag, an open leather pouch,
and squatted back to survey his work.
“When was that, then?” Purbright asked.
“What, the burglars?”
“Aye.”
“In the night, they reckon.”
“Anyone told the police?” The inspector sounded as if the
question was of but the slightest interest.
“Bound to ’ave. Well, he’s a magistrate, an’t ’ee?”
“The colonel? Yes, I believe so.”
The old man thought a moment. A slow grin. “That buglar’d
larf all right if ’ee come up in front of Mester.”
Purbright smiled back, bade him goodbye and hastened to the
corner. This suddenness of departure was in response to a reflection
that the term “Mester” was unlikely to have been used by an odd
jobs man summoned from elsewhere. And if the old man was one of
whatever permanent staff the family could still afford, his usefulness
as an informant would not survive his being seen in close company
with a policeman.
The front door was slightly ajar. It was a big panelled door and
had been painted dark green a long time ago. Now the paint was
just dark. It was lustreless and had split away in the corners of the
panels. Against this shabbiness, the shine of the heavy, ring-shaped
brass knocker testified to regular polishing. Purbright raised and
let it fall twice. The house sounded empty.
After a while he heard an unhurried approaching footfall, but
not from within. He turned.
“Yes?”
Colonel Brace Pendamon Moldham, a tall, stringy, brownish
man in a rugged-down tweed hat the colour of lichens, was standing
on the gravel a few yards away. The twelve-bore couched from
armpit to forearm looked as if it had grown there. He had an
exactly rectangular black moustache, high cheekbones and soft
brown eyes that hardly ever moved.
Purbright wished him good morning and announced his identity.
Colonel Moldham acknowledged the former with the slightest of
nods but appeared totally unimpressed by the latter.
“I should like to speak to Mrs Moldham-Clegg for a moment or
two, if that would be convenient.”
“About what, pray?” The tone was not hostile, but sounded a
note of formal discouragement as if to give notice that one’s present
suppliers were satisfactory, thank you, and one did not buy at the
door in any case.
Purbright said: “I am making inquiries concerning an attack
upon one of my officers yesterday morning, sir. It took place in an
auction room and I have reason to believe that there may be some
connection between the assault and certain articles that were
subsequently sold-by pure coincidence, no doubt-to Mrs Moldham-Clegg.”
The colonel regarded Purbright in silence and without altering
his stance. Five seconds went by. The inspector began to think that
this was some kind of freezing tactic. He spoke again.
“Does Mrs Moldham-Clegg happen to be at home, sir? This
matter need not take up much of her time.”
Colonel Moldham leaned forward and turned his head by a
fraction. “Purbright, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
A nod of endorsement. “Yes, well, Purbright, I’m not at all sure,
you know, that aunt can see you. She’s been a bit off colour.” A
pause, then, stockily: “You see?”
Purbright smiled pleasantly. “That precisely is why I have come,
sir. I wish to be able to release her property without putting her to
the trouble of travelling to town to answer questions.”
“Release her property,” the colonel repeated half to himself, as
though doubting the commission of so audacious an act as distraint,
however temporary, upon anything belonging to a member of the
Moldham family. He frowned, then smiled with half his mouth.
“I don’t quite follow, Purbright.”
At that moment the old man who had been mending the window
appeared from round the corner. Colonel Moldham at once stepped
forward and pushed open the door. “Perhaps we had better go
inside.”
The inspector found himself in a dark hall, from which two
arched corridors ran left and right. The stone floor was bare except
for the strip of well-worn matting that crossed from one corridor
to the other. The walls were in part plaster, in part big wooden
panels deeply buried in greenish-grey paint. He saw a chest,
similarly painted, and a grandfather clock in a black timber case;
its dark, cracked face and faded numerals offered little in the
matter of time-telling, but the pendulum swung still and the
“glunk” of its escapement echoed irregularly through the damp air
like the beat of an old and much battered heart.
The hall smelled of mould, of burning pine cones and of dog.
A door was being held open by the colonel. Purbright entered
the light, airy room beyond and was dazed for a moment by reflections
of incoming sunshine in the white painted panels of tall, deep
window embrasures and in the glassy surface of an oval table that
looked nearly half as big as the room itself.
Until he realized that the colonel was addressing someone other
than himself, he did not see Mrs Moldham-Clegg. She was seated
in one of the two tapestry-covered wing chairs near the fireplace, her
head bent forward in concentration.
“This gentleman is a police” (he pronounced it “pleess”)
“inspector, aunt. He says he would like to ask you some questions. Do you
wish him to ask you some questions?”
Purbright made a small bow in her direction and bade her good
morning. He found interesting the colonel’s manner of introduction:
the Moldhams clearly considered co-operation with the law
to be like paying bills, a matter of patronage.
There came from the direction of the chair a faint “pop”. Mrs
Moldham-Clegg was shelling peas.
Three pops later, she spoke.
“If the gentleman is a policeman why does he not wear a
uniform?”
“It’s all right, aunt. I know Mr Purbright. He is a detective
inspector from Flaxborough.”
Another soft pea-pod explosion and the sound of the peas cascading
briefly against the side of a colander. “Purbright?” murmured
Mrs Moldham-Clegg, as if tasting the name. “You wouldn’t be... No,
I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“No, no; not from Dorset, if that’s what you’re thinking of,”
said the colonel, brusquely. “He wishes to ask you something.”
Turning to the inspector, “Now then, what was it you wished to
ask, Mr Purbright?”
Purbright resisted the temptation to reply For a chair; his host
seemed to assume in others his own perpetual preference for
standing.
“I trust you are feeling better now, ma’am.”
She glanced up suspiciously. “Yes, thank you.”
He went on: “I’m sorry that yesterday’s sale provided such
unwelcome excitement, but...”
“I fainted, Mr Purbright, by reason of the heat in the auction
room. For no other cause.”
“Of course. But it must have been annoying after all those bids
to have your purchase taken into custody, as it were.”
“Very annoying, naturally. Quite frankly, it struck one as a most
high-handed piece of behaviour.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg took another pea pod from a basket on the
floor beside her. She scowled across at her nephew.
“Bruce, Mr Purbright is looming. Kindly bring him a chair or
something. I cannot see when people loom.”
The colonel looked about him as if he did not know what a
chair was. Purbright withdrew a little and also glanced around.
For a fraction of a second he allowed his attention to be claimed by
something on the further side of the room.
Beside the keyhole in the red-brown lid of a small rosewood
bureau was a splintered eruption of veneer.
Colonel Moldham, who had shed the gun at last, pulled forward
a Victorian carving chair. “This do?” He himself remained standing,
gauntly watchful, close to the window and to his propped-up gun.
“I should tell you at the outset, perhaps,” Purbright resumed
from his more lowly position, “that a serious assault was made
upon a detective sergeant at the back of the hall just before the
sale began. We believe that there may be some connection between
the attacker and the articles for which you, ma’am, successfully
bid.”
“That,” declared Mrs Moldham-Clegg, “is perfectly ridiculous.”
“Not perfectly, I’m afraid. For one thing, the sergeant was
examining that particular lot when he was attacked. For another,
we believe his assailant was one of the bidders when the same
articles were put up for auction.”
The old woman gouged open another pod and thumbed forth
its peas. “I really do not understand what you hope to gain from
these fanciful connections you have seen fit to make. I am sorry,
naturally, for this officer who has been hurt. But I am not responsible.
Why should I be deprived of my property? Are there
not enough thieves for you to track down that you harass decent
people who have paid for what they possess—or, indeed” (and
here Mrs Moldham-Clegg gave a creamy, mirthless laugh) “what
the police will not allow them to possess?”
“Oh, come now, aunt,” the colonel began, then thought better of
intervening.
Purbright met the old woman’s eye steadily.
“There is no shortage of thieves, Mrs Moldham-Clegg, nor of
thefts. That is why we are intrigued by any instance of a price that
is mysteriously low—or high.”
“Are you implying, Mr Inspector, that I am some sort of trafficker
in stolen goods?”
“Not at all. I’ve no doubt that you are a bona fide purchaser. It is the
purchase that I find puzzling. I do respectfully suggest”—and here
Purbright turned as if to invite the arbitration of the colonel—“that
much trouble would be saved if you would offer a simple
explanation of why you considered it worth offering £370 for lot
number thirty-four.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg paid tight-faced attention to the next pod.
It was her nephew who spoke, after thoughtfully stroking his
cheek.
“I’m not sure, you know, that you’re on good ground legally,
Purbright. I mean, this business of your right to deprive somebody
of what has been bought in good faith.”
“Not necessarily permanently, sir,” amended Purbright.
“Yes, well, even so...”
“Your solicitor does know about our inquiries, incidentally,
colonel. I’m confident he will advise you concerning the legality of
our...”
The inspector’s brief hesitation over a choice of word allowed
Mrs Moldham-Clegg bitterly to supply her own.
“Seizure...”
There was a pause, not an easy one. Neither the colonel nor his
aunt followed up the reference to Loughbury. His surmise had
been right, Purbright reflected: Rich Dick had wasted no time.
“Can I not persuade you, ma’am, to answer my question?”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg sighed, set her features in a smile of cold
patience and rocked a little from side to side as she said: “My dear
man, I really cannot understand why you go on so. I’m sorry, but
I prefer to regard the matter as a strictly private transaction, and
that is the end of it. Now would you like me to have Alice bring
you a cup of coffee?”
“Yes,” said Purbright, “I should like that very much.”
For a moment Mrs Moldham-Clegg sat motionless, staring at
him. The inspector gazed back with an expression of genial
innocence. She swallowed and looked past him at the colonel.
“Brace—would you mind?” Her voice was restrained, cross.
The colonel shrugged and ambled off. Purbright watched him
walk past the rosewood bureau.
“What a pity,” he said, when the colonel had gone, “that such a
nice piece of furniture should get damaged.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg had resumed her pea-podding. “Do you
often come into the country, Mr Purbright?” she inquired evenly.
“Not as often as I would wish, ma’am. The only occasions nowadays,
I’m afraid, are afforded by crime of some kind. House-breakings, mainly.”
“Your work must be very interesting.” Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s
tone succeeded in making the job of a detective inspector sound
like the management of a massage parlour.
“It consists substantially of exercising patience.”
She nodded. “A primary virtue. We were taught a lot of it when
I was a girl.” The word came out as gairl.
The cup of coffee arrived after about five more minutes. It was
borne on a round, painted metal tray, not by a domestic but by
Colonel Moldham himself, looking lamentably unused to the task.
He set the tray down at one end of the big oval table and stared
at it for a while, as if making a count.
Mrs Moldham-Clegg gestured the inspector to help himself.
“Mrs Anstead was busy with something or other,” the colonel
informed his aunt. He went back to his place by the window and
lapsed into an unfocused stare.
Purbright stirred the coffee. Irregular reddish-brown patches on
the surface proclaimed its having been made from a concentrate.
Cup and saucer were of fine quality china, heavily decorated with
cornflowers. On a second saucer were two Bath Oliver biscuits.
They were damp. The coffee tasted of salted peanuts.
“If you would like to smoke,” said Mrs Moldham-Clegg, “please
do so, but you must not mind if we cannot provide any of the
paraphernalia.” She looked across to the colonel. “Although I suppose
there could be an ashtray in the coachhouse: was Herriot a
smoking person? I really can’t remember.”
The inspector assured her that he himself had long since ceased
to smoke, then addressed himself to Colonel Moldham.
“I was remarking just now, sir, what a shame it is that so fine
a little bureau should get damaged.”
“Bureau? Oh, that. Yes. Looks rather bad, but one doesn’t think
at the time.”
“Think what, sir?”
The old woman spoke. “There’s a little man in town does these
things. He’s really very good.”
“Ah, you had to force the lock yourself, did you, sir? That must
have been quite a heart-breaking decision.”
The colonel shrugged. He looked bored. “When one mislays the
only key, one hasn’t much choice. Not with a fellow waiting at the
door for one’s cheque.”
Purbright grimaced sympathetically, sipped his coffee, then subjected
the bureau to a speculative stare.
“Do you not think your glazier might repair it?”
“Glazier?” The colonel looked puzzled.
“The gentleman mending a window round the side of the house.
I noticed he had a bag of very professional-looking tools.”
The colonel and Mrs Moldham-Clegg looked at each other. She
frowned at her nephew. “Benton, does he mean?”
“He’s my gardener,” said the colonel. “Odd jobs, that sort of
thing. Very useful chap. Not exactly a furniture restorer, though,
one would have thought.” “Hardly,” agreed the aunt. The exchange
was obviously for Purbright’s benefit but neither looked away from
the other while it went on.
Purbright put down his cup.
“How did that window get broken, colonel?”
“My dear fellow...” Colonel Moldham’s lean face once again
stretched into the lop-sided contours of false amusement, like that
of a man with a slight stroke. “How does a window get broken?
Children... Careless servants...”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg had finished shelling peas. She smoothed
level those in the colander and put it on the table. She, too, was
smiling wryly.
“If you would care for more coffee, Mr Purbright...?”
Purbright rose, shook his head, and made a small bow. He
walked straight to the bureau and knelt before it. Around its lock
an area of about the size of a playing card was ruptured and
splintered. Marks suggested that a chisel or broad screwdriver
had been used to lever open the lid. The surrounding surface
appeared to have been wiped.
Getting to his feet, the inspector strolled back towards the
colonel.
“I’m sorry, sir, but nothing is going to persuade me that the
owner of an attractive and, no doubt, valuable article such as that
is would perpetrate so crude an assault upon it, however pressing
the occasion.”
It was as though Purbright had not spoken. The colonel, blank-faced,
addressed his aunt: “I have to go over to Gosby with that
saddle I promised Mallory. Tell Benson to see to the melon house
door, will you? He knows about it.”
The old woman quitted her chair. Purbright saw now that she
was wearing trousers. They were of crumpled cavalry twill. In the
loose grey cardigan that covered a blouse and a purple silk scarf
knotted at her throat was a brooch, an enamelled miniature of a
spray of roses, set in heavy gold.
“It was good of you to call, Mr Inspector,” she said, not looking
at him but busying herself with collecting colander and spent pods.
The door was being held open by the colonel.
“Give you a lift, Purbright?”
“That’s very good of you, sir.” The inspector passed by him into
the half-light of the hall. “I do happen to have my own transport.”
“Splendid,” murmured the colonel, flatly. He remained standing
on the porch step, legs a little apart, gun cradled once more within
his arm, staring mildly at no part in particular of the Moldham
family acres.
When Purbright reached the corner of the house,
he looked round it to see if Benton, the odd-jobs man, were still
about, but there was no sign of him. The inspector followed with
his eye the gravel path, a broad spur from the main drive, which
continued past where Benton had been mending the window. It
led to the back of the house. There, presumably, would be found
the coachhouse to which Mrs Moldham-Clegg had referred.
Purbright decided to have a look. Herriott—whoever he was—had
been mentioned in a way that suggested he had lived in the
building. Was it still in occupation by somebody—Benton, perhaps?
Or the Mrs Anstead who had been too busy to make coffee?
Somewhere not far away, dogs were barking sporadically. He
halted. The colonel’s voice reached him, raised in command. Then
silence, followed by the sound of a car being started against its
will. Purbright glanced about for cover, then remembered the
overgrown gravel and the latched and rusty gates; the colonel was
not likely to use that way as an exit. He remained where he was.
Gradually the noise of the car diminished to a distant grumble. An
old and large car, he decided, not very well maintained.
The coachhouse was revealed as soon as Purbright drew level
with the back of the house. It formed the further side of a walled
and flagstoned court and consisted of three arched carriage bays
and an upper storey. This was reached by an outside staircase on the
gable end. There were two small windows in the upper wall, both
curtained.
One bay, in the rear of which Purbright could discern a bench,
tools and an oil drum, obviously served as a garage. In another
was a stack of shallow wooden boxes, some piles of neatly folded
sacks, an old motor-driven mower and a number of gardening
tools hanging from nails. There was movement, also. Into the light
emerged Benton. He was unravelling what looked like a screwed
up piece of cloth. Purbright heard a door open, not far away. He
drew close to the wall.
“Benton, you’ll not forget the melon house, will you?”
The old man neither looked up nor spoke. His only acknowledgement
of Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s instruction was a non-committal flap of the hand.
The door slammed shut.
Benton continued slowly to cross the court towards the inspector,
whom he gave no sign of having seen. He was so preoccupied that
twice he nearly lost his footing on the slimy mosses that covered
some of the flagstones.
When he did look up and see Purbright, by then only two or
three feet in front of him, he observed merely: “Ah, y’aint gone
yit, then.” He spread and held aloft what he had been holding,
and added: “Dunno what you think but I reckon ’ee winged the
bugger.”
“What bugger?” responded Purbright, cosily. He was careful
not to appear impressed by the blood that had soaked into Mr
Benton’s exhibit.
“That burglar, o’ course. I thought I heard ’im loose off two
barrels.”
“Wake you up, did it?”
Benton chuckled wheezily. “Wok me up, d’y’ say? Y’can’t
wok up a chap as dunt sleep, mate.”
“No, I suppose you can’t.”
“If I git two hours a night, it’s plenty. Plenty, that is. Sleepin’s
nowt but bein’ dead on account.”
“Ah,” said Purbright, in a way that the old man seemed to accept
as marking the approval of a fellow-insomniac, for he opened a
door in the courtyard wall and companionably ushered the inspector
through.
“Old Knickers wuz on about the melanus. ’Ear ’er, did you?”
Purbright translated “melanus” easily enough: they had emerged
beside a lean-to glasshouse containing vine-like plants. The epithet
for Mrs Moldham-Clegg surprised him, though. Mr Benton he
had supposed to be something in the old retainer line and not given
to such brashly disrespectful references.
“ ’Knickers’?”
“Har. Veronica. Nicky, she gits from family ’n ’er county
friends.” The old man looked up, craftily. “You ’adn’t nivver
’eerd ’er called Knickers, then?”
“No, I don’t think I have.”
“Har.” For several seconds, Mr Benton gazed into the distance
nostalgically, before meeting Purbright’s eye again with his own,
which he then slowly closed.
“What would you say, mester, if somebody wuz to tell you that
there wunce wuz a time when Nicky Moldham wuz a thruster an’
a cum-onner? A lot o’ yeers, mind. When they still ’ad munny.
Aye, b’God, that ’un liked ’er stick, nivver you fret.”
Allowing his eyes to grow large, Purbright nodded, lips compressed,
in token both of his belief and his discretion. He hoped,
though, that Benton had not forgotten about the burglary.
“Mind you don’t get any of that blood on your jacket,” he said
as a reminder.
Benton shook his head. “Dry,” he said. “Must ’a bin there all night
a’most.”
“You heard the shots fairly early on, then,” remarked the
inspector.
Round about one o’clock, Benton reckoned. And who had fired
the shotgun?—why, Squire, of course, who else?—but a bloody
terrible shot was the colonel: his having drawn blood with only
two barrels was nothing short of a miracle.
“It would have been dark,” the inspector pointed out, in fairness
to the absent marksman.
“Dark? Niwer dark in the country, onny in towns.”
“True.”
Purbright waited for Benton to open the melon house door. The
old man bent to examine a place where it was sticking against the
frame.
“I suppose,” Purbright said, “that you didn’t actually see the
bloke get shot, did you?”
Mr Benton blew noisily to signify denial. “Heerd ’im pelt off,
though. Up the old carridge road as you cum in on. Heerd ’is motor
start, an’ all.”
“From the road?”
“No—down in the yard.”
“He’d driven right up to the house, then?”
“Yis. Must’ve done, cheeky bugger.”
“Ah,” said the inspector. A pause. “Funny thing, that he didn’t
hang on to that piece of cloth if he was trying to stop the bleeding.
Where did you find it?”
“In the yard. Just by the garridge there.”
“May I see?”
Benton handed him the cloth. It was a piece of thin towelling,
grubby as well as bloodstained. Purbright examined it closely.
Near one corner, initials had been chain-stitched in red cotton.
FSSC. Flaxborough Social Services Committee.
The inspector sighed. “I really ought to have told you before, Mr
Benton, that I am a policeman.”
“Har, thought so,” said the old man, with neither surprise nor
rancour. He nodded in the direction of the house. “Anythin’
took?”
“They seem a bit uncertain at the moment. It would be as well
if you didn’t bother them with questions for a while.”
“You’ll be wantin’ that.” The old man pointed to the towel,
then sorted out a plastic bag from several on a shelf. Purbright thanked him.
Again Benton’s head jerked towards the house. “Not much woth
burglarizing in there, y’know. Not nowadays. Tim wuz when
there wuz jools.”
“Really?”
“Oh, ar. Knickers had jools up to ’er goin’ to London. Green
’uns in a little string. Woth god knows how much, they reckoned.”
“Went to London, did she? When was that?”
The old man pondered. “Forty yeer...no, more—she’d be in ’er
early thutties, would Veronica. She went off to live with relations of
’er mam’s. Titled lot, they wuz. Had the Queen’s cousin to dinner
wunce. Then back she cum ’ome when ’er mam died in nineteen ’n
fifty.”
“Wasn’t she married by then, though?”
Benton took a chisel and began to pare thin shavings from the edge of the
door. “Yip, but she didn’t bring ’im. O’ course,
’ee wuzn’t quality. Chap called Clegg. Dead now. She might ’a got
some of ’is munny, but they don’t reckon ’ee ’ad all that
much.”
The inspector was beginning to feel his role to be that of
gossip rather than interrogator. He changed the subject.
“Tell me, Mr Benton, have you ever seen a picture of a cottage
over at the house? Quite a small picture—modelled—made to stand
out in the frame, if you see what I mean.”
The old man shook his head. The only pictures he’d ever noticed
were old dark things in those great gold frames. Why—was that
what the burglar had pinched?
No, said the inspector, it was just a thought. And, at once, he
had another thought: would Mr Benton mind fishing out the bits
of broken window from where he had put them?
“Har, fingerprints,” responded the old man with knowledgeable
relish. He at once abandoned carpentry, selected another plastic
bag from his store and trotted off towards a bin.
Sergeant William Malley, a ponderous man of indestructible good
humour, was well equipped for his duties as coroner’s officer. He
was kindly in manner and intent, and would rather leave a few
holes in forensic orthodoxy than add officiousness to the ordeals
of the bereaved. At the same time, he was shrewd and diligent
to a degree that might have been thought surprising in one so fat
and seemingly promotion-proof (Malley had been a sergeant for
twenty-three years). These qualities, together with a certain inborn
and quite inoffensive curiosity, had brought so many people within
his circles of acquaintance that the sergeant served at Fen Street as
a live Who’s Who for Flaxborough and district.
Purbright was hopeful that he might have something Debrettish to offer
as well.
“Bill, what do you know about the Moldham family?”
Malley rubbed the side of his nose with the stem of a squat,
toxic-looking pipe.
“Pretty clunch lot,” he said, after deliberation.
“Yes, I got the impression they’d not give much away. And they
seem to have equally reticent friends.”
Malley smiled understandingly.
“There was a break-in at the Hall during the night,” said Purbright.
“They’ve a hole in a window, damage to furniture, a
bloodstained rag and a gardener who heard a couple of shots—but
nobody knows anything—except the gardener—he loves talking.”
The sergeant nodded. “Old Benton. Aye, he’ll talk, all right.
You’ll get nothing out of the others, though.”
“I gather the colonel isn’t married.”
“No, him and his aunt are the only ones left, apart from cousins
and things. Old Moldy, the colonel’s father, died some time in
the sixties, and his mother about thirty years ago. You remember
old Moldy, though, don’t you?”
The inspector did. The old squire had succumbed to a splendidly
characteristic apoplexy on discovering that his more timid son had
been paying secretly the bills which his father (“They have my
custom, don’t they—what more do they want?”) for years had been
throwing into the ancestral fireplace.
“Who was Clegg?” Purbright asked, after a while.
“Veronica’s husband, you mean?”
“Yes. Not top drawer, I understand.”
“Well, not by the Moldham stud book, I suppose, but probably
as good as anything else she could get at short notice. He was a
stockbroker or an accountant or something.”
“They parted, though.” Purbright again drew on Benton’s saga.
Malley shook his head. “No, not really. Nothing drastic. She
came home when her brother was left on his own, and Clegg
carried on living in London. He used to stay at the Hall sometimes
but he wasn’t keen on the country.”
“Now deceased?”
“So I believe.”
The telephone on Purbright’s desk rang. PC Braine begged to
inform him that the car believed to have been abandoned by
Sergeant Love’s assailant was now in the yard, and that the
inspector’s instructions were awaited.
“I’ll be down in a moment.”
The inspector returned his attention to the coroner’s officer.
“Who’s Herriott?” he asked.
“You’re still talking about Moldham, are you?”
“Aye.”
Malley viewed with half-closed eye the paper clip he was using
as a pipe-cleaner. The wire was still emerging from each trip up
the stem with a heavy black viscous coating. “Herriott,” he said,
“was the general dogsbody, though they called him the chauffeur.
He took over when Whippy Arnold left.”
“Which was?”
Up went the sergeant’s shoulders. He evidently did not consider
Moldham Hall a particularly rewarding topic. “Oh, twenty years,
maybe. A long time. Nearer thirty, perhaps.”
“Dead now, is he? Herriott?”
“Must be.” Malley had transposed his pipe to belly level and was
reaming out the bowl with a huge clasp knife. Purbright tried not
to look.
“Funny we should mention Whippy, though,” said the sergeant,
suddenly glancing up. “They cremated the old bugger not two
weeks ago.”
When Purbright arrived in the yard he found Detectives Pook
and Wilkinson sitting in the front seats of a toffee-coloured Austin
1100 and intently studying a magazine. They did not notice the
inspector until he leaned down and tapped the windscreen. Pook
immediately thrust the magazine into his colleague’s lap and opened
the door on his own side. He got out with athletic haste, as if bearing
dispatches from a battle.
Purbright looked past him to see Wilkinson twist round and
slip the magazine among some newspapers on the back seat.
“Whole lot of good prints,” announced Pook. He spread a hand
in eager indication of steering wheel and facia. “All done. All in
the can, sir.”
“Good,” said Purbright, without making it sound like praise.
“What about blood?”
Pook looked bewildered. Wilkinson, who had come round to
stand beside him, said: “Nobody asked about blood, sir.”
Purbright did not wish Wilkinson, a mild and reasonably
conscientious man, to share a reprimand with Pook, who was not
only heavily armoured with self-esteem, but would doubtless find
his own portion of blame as easy to pass on as a pornographic
magazine, so he said merely: “Never mind, let’s see if we can find
any now.”
They could, and did. There were smears of blood on the side of
the driver’s seat, on handbrake and gear lever and on the off-side
door panel. A chastened Pook took swabbings.
Purbright viewed earlier discoveries. They included three one-litre
cans of oil, two hammers, a roll of broad adhesive tape, a
jemmy and several tyre levers, as well as a box of tools of fairly
catholic usefulness, a butcher’s knife and what appeared to be a
shearing device with huge leverage. Bolt cutters, Pook said.
“An engagingly candid man,” remarked Purbright. “He could
scarcely have advertised his trade more effectively if he’d put a
board up.”
“There was no sign of a weapon anywhere,” Wilkinson said.
Purbright shook his head. “He may not be very clever, but he’s
not so stupid that he can’t improvise—as poor Love knows to his
cost.”
Wilkinson thought a moment. “But why should he have hit the
sergeant, sir? He’d only to wait for him to go away and he could
have pinched that thing he was looking at—and no bother.”
The inspector shrugged. “O’Dwyer’s a Londoner: he probably
knows very little about auctions. Anyway, he’s a bit of a thruster.
Anybody pugnacious and impatient watching Mr Love evaluate
a work of art might think that knocking him out was the simplest
way of getting a look at it himself.”
“Thruster, sir?” Wilkinson echoed, hungry for upper-rank mots justes.
“Hunting expression,” said Purbright, and left it at that. There
seemed no point in admitting that he had first heard it himself
only that day.
The next morning was Saturday, the day on which
the chief constable traditionally escorted his wife around the shops.
It was partly duty, but Mr Chubb did not mind that. He quite
enjoyed shopping, even in the huge bin-walks which had superseded
so many of Flaxborough’s small family concerns, in each
of which, it now seemed to him, the same fresh-faced, bald, bobbing
man in a white apron once had offered slivers of cheese for approval,
or held up entire flitches of bacon which he would proceed to
guillotine with the most cheerful prodigality at a nod from the
customer, or weighed half a pound of Oval Osbornes or Bath
Olivers (whole ones, no bits) from a tin that had had to be opened
by riffing a blade round its sealed lid, And the next, please...
“Whatever next will they find to obstruct this yard?” remarked
Mr Chubb of the toffee-coloured Austin. He could, with a little
trouble, have manoeuvred his own Rover into its reserved space,
but this was Saturday: he was entitled, surely, to some respite
from coping with awkwardness on this one day. He switched off
his engine and got out.
Inspector Purbright, who had been talking to the nodding
auctioneer, old Hector Durham, and felt slightly less than steady
in consequence, was entering the yard from Field Street. He crossed
to the Rover in time to assist Mrs Chubb to alight. She gave him
a motherly beam before turning to extricate from the back of the
car a big straw shopping bag, which she handed to her husband.
The chief constable waved the bag towards the toffee-coloured
car. “That does not belong to one of our people, does it, Mr
Purbright?”
“No, sir. It was abandoned in Cherrytree Avenue by the man I
think was responsible for the attack on Sergeant Love.”
The chief constable stared at the Austin with sharper attention.
“Stolen, I suppose. Have you checked with the licence people?”
“The car isn’t stolen, as a matter of fact, sir. It is registered in
the name of Chubb.”
“Chubb?”
“Charles Chubb.” Purbright’s voice was very level. “It is one of
the aliases used by the man whose fingerprints were on the door
knob.”
“Indeed.” The chief constable was silent a moment. “I think that
it would be politic, Mr Purbright, if some alternative could be
found. As a point of reference, so to speak.”
Purbright agreed. There was Scoggins, or Priest, or Cavendish.
His own favourite was Dean Francis O’Dwyer, which happened
also to be the choice of the North London police who had had most
to do with the man.
“Sounds like a Dublin clergyman,” said Mrs Chubb, preparing
to disengage. She put a hand on her husband’s sleeve. “I shall just
call at Wilson’s for your All-Bran and then go on to the Karri-Ko.
All right?” She gave the inspector a big don’t-keep-him-too-long
smile and departed.
The chief constable folded the shopping bag in two and put it
under his arm.
“I have been talking to Mr Durham,” the inspector said. “He told
me something rather surprising. Lot thirty-four at Thursday’s
sale—which included the plaster cast picture that seems so highly
thought of—was entered by the local authority. It appears to be
council property, sir.”
“Our council, you mean? Flaxborough?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very odd. Councils do not normally traffic in plaster pictures,
do they? Not,” Mr Chubb added, acidly, “that I would put anything
past them nowadays.”
“Mr Durham said he understood the welfare department was
responsible. Unfortunately, there’s no one available there on a
Saturday.”
The chief constable pouted gravely and shifted the folded shopping
bag to his other arm. He said nothing.
“Oh, by the way, sir, the North London police are sending an
officer to pay us a visit.” Purbright sounded as if he expected Mr
Chubb to be very pleased. He added: “The notification is on your
desk. We didn’t think you would consider it a matter to justify a
call to your home on a Saturday.”
“That was very considerate of you, Mr Purbright, but I cannot
remember inviting a London force or any other to send a representative
to Flaxborough.”
“No, sir; it is on their initiative. They feel that their special
knowledge of O’Dwyer may be useful to us. I also got the impression
during a short telephone conversation with the superintendent
that he feels responsible. O’Dwyer is supposed to report there
every day. They have had a call out for him since Thursday. He
sounds a pretty troublesome person, sir.”
“I should have thought that we are quite capable of dealing with
troublesome people without the assistance of officers from London.
In any case, why should it be assumed that the fellow is still in
this neighbourhood?”
Mr Chubb’s displeasure was of the quiet, subcutaneous kind. Its
only outward manifestation was a little irregular tic at the corner
of his mouth.
Purbright indicated the Austin. “His car, sir. He had no reason,
so far as we know, to return to London without it. And without
his housebreaking tools, incidentally.”
Mr Chubb raised his brows.
Purbright went on: “The London superintendent also said that
O’Dwyer is remarkably home-loving, considering his record. His
current wife has actually reported him missing.”
The tic became more obvious. Purbright tried putting a note of
concern in his voice.
“They sound quite anxious, sir.”
The chief constable stared coldly for several seconds at a patch
of oil that was spreading from beneath the car of the errant
O’Dwyer. “Indeed.” He adjusted his yellow washleather gloves
without losing grip of the shopping bag under his arm. “Perhaps
you’ll have someone see to the mess that car is making, will you,
Mr Purbright?” And he set off for the Karri-Ko supermarket.
An hour later, the inspector made his way to the station in time
to meet the noon train from King’s Cross. He was not sure what
protocol demanded on such occasions, but supposed that parity
of rank would come into it somewhere. Anyway, it would hardly
predispose Detective Inspector Eric Bradley to view Flaxborough
favourably if the first native he encountered were to be PC Braine.
A few minutes after Purbright’s departure, Mr Richard Loughbury
loomed expansively at the reception counter and asked to
see him, “or does he not come in on Saturdays?”
“We all come in,” retorted PC Braine, sourly.
“In that case...”
“But he’s gone out again.”
Mr Loughbury, who really had nothing else to do, made an
extravagant lever movement with his left arm in order to bring his
watch to the consultation position. He appeared to see in its face
an impending event of immense significance.
“Perhaps I had better have a word with his deputy. If the
inspector then wishes to ask me anything, he can always make an
appointment.”
“Please yourself,” said the accommodating Mr Braine. “Sergeant
Love’s in, if you want to see him.”
Rich Dick followed the route prescribed by Brain and found
himself in a corridor with glossy, primrose-painted walls. The
three electric bulbs that lit it were set in suspended shades of white
glass like coolie hats; nothing of the kind had been seen in the
offices of Loughbury, Lovelace and Partners since the 1930s. In
the distance were animated voices and the clink of thick pottery.
Now and again there crossed the end of the corridor an unjacketed
policeman, bearing a mug of tea, who would spare Loughbury a
sidelong, mistrustful glance.
Love arrived almost at once. He ushered the solicitor into a
small, square, bare-walled room with two wooden chairs and a
plain table. Mr Loughbury, whose avoidance on principle of anything
as unremunerative as court work had left him unacquainted
with the shabby austerity of police stations, was not sure whether
to be sympathetic or offended.
Love spoke first. “I’ll get you some tea if you like. It’s mugs as
a rule, but they keep a cup specially for visitors.”
Mr Loughbury raised his big pink hand. “A very brief call,
sergeant. My object is simply to leave an item of information—of
explanation, rather—for the benefit of your superior officer.”
Love frowned, as if the identity of that person were going to
take some working out.
“The inspector came to see me yesterday with a little problem,”
Loughbury said. “It concerned an auction sale.” Suddenly, the calm,
excellently-maintained face came nearer and expressed anxiety.
“But of course—the auction sale, so far as you are concerned,
sergeant—the most unfortunate auction sale, am I not right? And
how are the injuries? A complete recovery, I trust?”
Love blushed and said, oh, that? Well he was expected to live.
His modesty earned him one of the chin-up smiles that Mr Loughbury
distributed in lieu of tips.
“There was an item offered at that sale,” the solicitor continued,
“which attracted bids far beyond its obvious value. Mr Purbright,
naturally enough, was intrigued—indeed, I might almost say
suspicious—and when the subject arose in conversation at my office,
he clearly hoped that I might throw some light on the incident. I represent,
you see”—and Mr Loughbury leaned a little forward—“the
lady who finally purchased the item.”
“It was a cottage,” the sergeant said.
“Ah...it was, yes; one might say so—a representation of a
cottage. A poor enough thing, goodness knows, but prized by
someone. By someone, you may be sure. And thereby”—Mr Loughbury
raised a finger—“hangs a tale.”
Love looked at the finger.
“You see,” continued Mr Loughbury, “what the inspector did
not know is that my man, the excellent Mr Buxton, was also present
at that sale and, moreover, actually putting in bids for the said
picture, plaque, cottage, or whatever. Now, why should Mr Buxton
have been doing that?”
Love shook his head. Rich Dick regarded him with roguish
satisfaction.
“To raise the price, sergeant. And to raise it generously. Those
were his instructions. What do you think of that? I don’t know
what your Mr Purbright would say, but I fear conspiracy is a word
that might occur to him. Conspiracy. Yes, sergeant?”
Mr Loughbury’s humorous rhetoric having run its course, he
waited a moment for Love to recover, then solemnly shook his head.
“No, no, no—I am having a little joke, of course. The facts are
these. They are quite simple.
“The person to whom the trinkets comprising lot thirty-four
belonged was an old gentleman, lately deceased, who for many
years worked loyally and well for the Moldham family. It came to
Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s knowledge that the old servant had died
and that those few rather pathetic possessions were to be sold up.
“Now, then, what did this excellent woman decide?—and
remember, sergeant, that she is well in excess of three score and ten
herself—what, I say, was her plan? Why, to seize the opportunity
of making that proud old man’s dependants a gift which neither
he nor they would have dreamed of accepting in a direct form.
You see what I mean, do you not?”
Love said he thought he did, but the solicitor was taking no
chances. “Mrs Moldham-Clegg and Buxton were bidding against
each other by arrangement,” he explained. “Then, when the price
reached the figure the lady had suggested, our Mr Buxton stood
down.”
“Neat,” commented the sergeant.
Mr Loughbury looked pleased. “I venture to think,” he said, “that
your excellent inspector will appreciate the element of noblesse
oblige. It is all too rarely encountered in these days of self-interest.”
Love said he would mention it.
“I trust you will also convey to Mr Purbright my apologies for
keeping this little matter to myself until I could take instructions
from my client. We are not, alas, our own masters where confidentiality
is at stake.”
“The lady gave you the go-ahead, then, did she?” Love asked.
“Mrs Moldham-Clegg signified that she had no objection, provided
the information goes no further,” Mr Loughbury said carefully.
Love took out his notebook. “Can I have the party’s name, sir?”
he inquired.
“The party?”
“The old deceased gentleman whose relatives are to get the
money.”
Mr Loughbury’s lips puffed forth in a tea-cooling way. “Ooooh,
I don’t know... Do you suppose it matters, sergeant?”
“Yes.”
There was nothing officious or impatient about the “yes”. Love’s
expression of youthful helpfulness was undimmed. Yet Mr Loughbury
could not avoid feeling a little less than easy.
“Arnold was his name, actually. Frederick Arnold.”
Love’s tongue-tip came out to supervise his committal of the
name to paper.
“Address, sir?”
“Arnold’s, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“He was an inmate—is that the word, inmate?—or resident,
perhaps we should say—anyway, he lived in the council’s old
people’s home.”
“Twilight Close,” said the sergeant. He wrote it down. “A senior
citizen.” He looked blandly at the solicitor.
Mr Loughbury summoned back something of his expansive
manner. “Now, here’s an interesting fact, sergeant. Did you know
that old Arnold was a coachman at one time? He drove the
Moldhams’ family carriage for years. Hence his nickname of
‘Whippy’. You did not know that, perhaps?”
Love said it was news to him. Could Mr Loughbury tell him the
names of any of the beneficiaries from the sale of Mr Arnold’s
goods.
“I’m sorry, but I really have no idea. It is scarcely my province.”
“Suppose there aren’t any,” suggested Love.
Mr Loughbury made an airy gesture of non-involvement.
The sergeant also looked unconcerned. “It’s just that I was
wondering what would happen to all the money, but I suppose
that that’s Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s problem.”
“Exactly,” agreed Rich Dick.
“Is there anything else you wanted the inspector to know, sir?”
“No, no. The matter probably is of no moment, but I did not wish
Inspector Purbright to gain the impression that I had been less
forthcoming than was reasonable.”
Love nodded amiably. However, he remained thoughtful for
several moments. Just as the solicitor was about to announce his
departure, Love said: “I wonder what the mincer was for.”
Mr Loughbury stared. “The what?”
“The mincer. The meat mincer. It was among his things. That
and a soap dish and a couple of glass stoppers.”
“Ah, sergeant, who knows what memories dwell within the
seemingly commonplace trivia cherished by the elderly? Perhaps
Mr Arnold preserved the mincer to remind him of domesticity in
earlier days.”
“Of his wife, do you mean?” Love, who was still holding a pencil,
looked as if he expected an answer, and intended to record it.
Rich Dick chuckled indulgently and said that he must be getting
along.
The so-called London train—it was in fact a two-coach
section that had been nipped off the main body fifty miles
to the west—rolled obsequiously into Flaxborough Town seven
minutes late. A handful of passengers alighted and began to file
across the footbridge to the ticket office and station exit. Purbright
stood by the bookstall and prepared to guess which arrival was the
visiting detective inspector.
His deductive powers were not needed. The third figure to appear
at the turn of the steps from the bridge bore round his middle a
sash-like sheet of paper bearing the word BRADLEY in big
pencilled letters.
Purbright watched the man’s unhurried descent. He was not
much less than six feet in height, but a general broadness of
construction made him look more stocky than he was: an impression
strengthened by his wearing a short, dark grey overcoat, into the
collar of which he seemed desirous of withdrawing as much of his
neck and chin as possible. The face, though of high colour and
already stubble-shadowed in the couple of hours since his morning
shave, was gentle and reflective. He had a moustache, or, to be
more accurate, a small area of upper lip left more or less unmown.
One hand was in his overcoat pocket. The other carried a leather
suitcase large enough, Purbright reflected, for a fortnight’s holiday.
Slung from his shoulder was a bolstered tape recorder.
As soon as Bradley reached the platform, Purbright stepped
forward in greeting. Bradley carefully set down his case and shook
Purbright’s hand with a Stanley-Livingstone zeal that might have
been considered fulsome save that the accompanying gaze of
appraisal warmed quickly to friendliness. Then he took off his
sash, folded it and put it in his pocket.
“It was very kind of you to come and meet me.”
Bradley made the observation sound like a considered statement.
They walked out into the station square. It was flooded with
hot sunshine. Three taxi drivers leaned talking to one another in
the lea of their cars; with cap-shaded eyes they marked the emergence
of the few passengers and followed them to reunions with
waiting friends. Only one arrival appeared to want a taxi. A driver
reluctantly peeled himself off the side of his cab and got in.
Purbright led Bradley to his own car. He hoisted the case into
the boot; it was as heavy as it looked.
“I’ve brought one or two books,” Bradley explained. “A couple
of cassettes, as well.” He declined, despite the heat, to add his
overcoat to the luggage.
“We must see if we can make this a little holiday for you—at
least in part,” said Purbright.
“I have been much looking forward to something of the kind.
The opportunity presents itself dismally seldom.”
“Do you know anything of this eastern side of England?”
“I once was confined to camp at a place somewhere near Skegness.”
“I was confined to one somewhere near Vienna.”
“Ah, it was very important in those days to know one’s place.
Promiscuity in any military sense was most unwise. You did not,
incidentally, get to the opera by any chance?”
“Not on that occasion, no.”
“I am fond of opera, but the English in general seem to regard
it as pretty offensive.”
“Have you ever come across something called amateur operatics?”
“Ah, now there’s an exotic aberration for you.”
“It is still practised in Flaxborough.”
By the time the car drew up in the yard of the Roebuck Hotel,
the heady exchange of unprofessional pleasantries, verging as it
did upon the fatuous, had given both men a slightly intoxicated
feeling.
“We might as well book you in and then have a drink in the
bar,” Purbright suggested. “Your meeting my chief constable is
unlikely until tomorrow or Monday.”
“Good,” said Bradley.
The receptionist, a tall girl with big, pink-framed spectacles and
a loose-knit jumper that draped her bra like a net over whelk shells,
watched very attentively the forming of Bradley’s slow, small, neat
signature. She turned the book round again, examined the signature
right way up, and handed him his key.
Purbright noticed the number.
“Ah, you’ve got the room that Dr Meadows’s murderer
occupied.” 1
Bradley glanced at the key, then slipped it in his pocket. He
shook his head. “Spoiling me.”
1 Reported in The Flaxborough Crab
Mr Maddox, the manager, was in personal charge of the bar.
He was not by nature a cheerful man and he somehow invested his
present role with clerical dignity rather than anything in the
hospitality line.
Purbright introduced his new friend. Mr Maddox’s solemnity
deepened.
“Ah, inspector...” He took a good look, then turned to Purbright again.
“A colleague of yours, sir?” He leaned nearer. “A police
colleague?” The voice was lowered to a quite intimidating level of
what Mr Loughbury would have called confidentiality.
Purbright also leaned forward. “Food and drugs division,” he
whispered.
They found seats near a window that overlooked the street. For
several minutes Bradley took small, reflective sips of beer while
he gazed at the conflict, perpetual in East Street between motorists
and pedestrians—or, to be more accurate, between people who had
managed to park their cars and those who had not.
It must have reminded him, at least, of another motorist on
whose account Mr Bradley now found himself in Flaxborough.
“No sight yet, I presume, of our friend O’Dwyer,” he said.
Purbright shook his head. “He certainly hasn’t been to ask for his
car back.”
Bradley pondered a little longer before saying: “You know,
that is distinctly out of character.”
“In the circumstances, I’d have thought it very sensible.”
“Ah, but Frankie is not sensible. He is a woefully inept criminal.
Would there were more like him.”
“On his record, he should be fairly easily catchable,” said
Purbright.
Bradley said, “Hm,” and looked at his beer. “In London,” he said, “the
most heinous malefactors are the brewers.” He shrugged back
to the subject in hand. “No, we really are worried about Frankie.
Domestically, he is very much a creature of habit. He always rings
home after a job to put Edna’s mind at rest. I find that quite
touching.”
“Edna being...?”
“His common-law wife. A large, industrious woman with yellow
ringlets. I went to see her last night. She was very upset. She feels
strongly that Frankie is dead.”
“Is that your opinion, too?” Purbright was frowning.
“Not opinion, exactly. Shall we say that I shouldn’t be surprised?”
“What I find especially perplexing at the moment,” said Purbright, “is
the man’s presence so far from his own territory. Why
should a London burglar—that is his main vocation, I understand?—yes,
well, why should he take it into his head to cross
half England and turn up at a small town auction sale?”
Bradley smiled slowly. “Yes, it is rather bizarre. But I think I
have part of an answer.” He brought out a handful of folded pieces
of paper and envelopes from an inner pocket and began to sort
through them. “Have you,” he asked “heard of a Mr Anderson?”
“Any particular Anderson? It is not a very uncommon name.”
Bradley selected one of his pieces of paper, unfolded it and
placed it carefully on the table beside his beer. “This one signs
himself simply ‘Mr Anderson’. There is a certain regality in that,
I think; a presumption of universal recognition. Particularly as he
sees no necessity to give an address.”
Purbright picked up the paper. It was dark blue, lined, and the
writing had been done with a leaky ball-point.
Dear Chas, it began. Purbright looked up. “Chas?”
“One of our man’s spare names,” Bradley explained. “Chas—Charlie—Charles
Chubb. The envelope was correctly addressed to
his place in Goldhawk Road, anyway.”
Purbright grinned. “You realize, of course, that my chief
constable...”
“Heavens, yes. What a felicitous coincidence for him.”
Purbright resumed his reading.
Dear Chas, I have to tell you that my old friend and yours of course Mr Arnold passed on a couple of weeks back it was very peaceful they tell me although I was not with him at the end worse luck. That is not the only thing I had got to tell you though because there is this promise I made to Mr Arnold when I first come aboard here. It is about his gear. He said you know about it and of course I never asked him what was not my business but he said if anything was to happen to him sudden I was to see you got it. Well I have kept an eye on what they were doing to poor Mr Arnolds gear and everything is going to be sold that I do know. So you want to be at the auction room at what they call the Volunteers Hall here in Flax on Thursday July 21th before half past ten am. I have not said anything to them here as they dont take notice of anybody least of all the poor residents thats a good one residents we are just prisoners in irons. Yours very faithfully—Mr Anderson.
Bradley rose and took their glasses to the bar, where the manager
had been furtively examining his spirit measures. Mr Maddox
smiled winningly at his guest and asked what was his pleasure—two
similar, would it be?
“I shouldn’t have been offended, you know,” Bradley told him,
“had you used the phrase ‘same again’. It has been legitimized
by custom.”
Mr Maddox threw back his head and dosed his eyes as if in the
throes of huge amusement. “Oh, very good, sir!” He selected two
fresh glasses, held them to the light and filled them meticulously
to the brim. “There we are, sir. Two similar.”
When Bradley returned, Purbright had read the letter through
again.
“Where did you get this?” he asked.
“From Edna. With his usual carelessness, Frankie had left it
behind. Not that it would appear incriminating in any other
context, although I suppose it could be construed an enticement to
steal. Anyway, Edna was too worried to withhold what she regards
as a species of death warrant.”
“From another world?”
Bradley gave a little shrug. “You must not underestimate,” he
said, “the Londoner’s native simplicity. The commercial traveller
who returns from Luton is treated like Marco Polo.”
“I’m pretty sure I know the source of the letter—the place, if
not the writer, and he should be fairly easily identifiable.”
“Some kind of an institution, I should have thought,” said
Bradley. “One notices the jaundiced tone. A hospital, perhaps?”
Purbright shook his head. “Twilight Close.”
“Good heavens,” said Bradley, very quietly. He drank some beer.
Purbright looked pensive. “Anderson...I’m wondering if it could be
the same Anderson we were always trying to knock off in the old days for
taking bets. 2 It would be helpful if it were;
he was an observant old villain.”
2 Reported in Hopjoy Was Here
“Had your friend been to sea, by any chance?”
“Ah, of course...” Purbright skimmed quickly back through the letter.
“Yes—‘when I first come aboard’—that certainly sounds
like old Crutchy. The age would be about right, too. Late seventies by
now.”
“This is quite a district for soubriquets, I notice. Would it be
too much to hope that Mr Anderson is a one-legged sailorman?”
“By no means. That is exactly what he is. Or was. Welfare
authorities consider wooden legs antipathetic to a well-run establishment.
They have probably fitted Crutchy with a plastic imitation
one.”
“In simulated flesh tones,” Bradley added, grimly.
The bar was beginning to be crowded: not with farmers, corn
chandlers and auctioneers who in former years would have shoved
and bellowed in contentious good humour about the fireplace,
serious only when they counted change, their faces like red lanterns
swinging in the smoke cloud; but with younger men very conscious
of new moustaches but never looking at the paper money they
pulled from tight hip pockets to buy lager and lime which they
bore to wives left perched on guard over plastic carriers containing
three-minute-meals for a week.
“I hope you will take lunch as my guest,” Bradley said. “Then
we can give thought to the possible whereabouts of O’Dwyer’s
body.”
“You must not be pessimistic.”
“About lunch?”
“No, that would be understandable. About O’Dwyer, I mean.”
Rather to their surprise, the two inspectors found in the dining-room
that they were to be waited upon by the manager himself,
who somehow had arrived before them.
“Not on duty, I trust, gentlemen?” whispered the ubiquitous Mr
Maddox in a rasp that could have been heard in the street.
Bradley placed one finger against the side of his nose and
swivelled his eyes. “Does that door lock?” he asked, softly. Mr
Maddox regarded the sole means of communication with the
kitchen. He looked very alarmed and said nothing else.
They ordered something called Beef Wellington, on the strength
of Purbright’s attractive theory that it was cooked in a boot. A
bottle of Burgundy was also called for.
“Do you mind if I telephone my wife?” Purbright asked. “She is
not expecting me to lunch, but I do not like to indulge in these
sybaritic interludes without letting her know. I expect she would
also appreciate notice before the shops shut that you are joining
us for a meal tomorrow.”
When he returned, he described to Bradley in some detail the
sequence of events since Love’s encounter with their present quarry.
Bradley listened attentively, chin on chest, while he gazed at the
patterns in the linen tablecloth between them, as if they represented
for him an impromptu map of Flaxborough.
“Cherrytree Avenue—do you attach any significance to it in
relation to whatever O’Dwyer came here to do, or to find?” he
asked when Purbright had told his story.
“I know of no one living there who would qualify as a burglar’s
confederate. They mostly are people who either were born here
or have lived in the town for a good many years. It is the kind of
neighbourhood that used to be called respectable.”
“Nothing suggestive at all?” Bradley asked. He had moved a
pepper pot to the side of the table and looked anxious to participate
in something tactically demonstrative.
“Only,” said Purbright, picking up the salt, “that Cherrytree
Avenue is very near the old people’s home in which Mr Anderson
considers himself to be incarcerated.” He set the salt next to the
pepper.
“And where, in relation to that area, is the stately home you
suspect O’Dwyer of breaking into?” Bradley had the mustard pot
in his hand.
“This”—Purbright traced the perimeter of their
table—“being Flaxborough?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, it would be somewhere near the next table but one,
I’m afraid. Moldham lies a few miles along the main road that goes
more or less north east to the coast.”
“That would be in the opposite direction to the London road?”
“It would.”
Bradley nodded and replaced the mustard. “So when Frankie
had finished breaking into Moldham Hall, he might have considered
it convenient to take Twilight Close into his homeward
itinerary.”
“At two-ish in the morning?”
“He was not a man to stand on ceremony.”
“No,” said Purbright, “it seems not.”
Mr Maddox, looking stern and steamy, arrived at their table.
He frowned at Cherrytree Avenue and Twilight Close and tweaked
them back instantly to their proper positions. Then he stood aside
in awful supervision of the seventeen-year-old youth, his face scarlet
beneath a chef’s hat, who served Purbright with Bradley’s order
of egg mayonnaise and Bradley with his guest’s smoked eel.
“All right, sir?” inquired Mr Maddox of each in turn while he
side-eyed the youth with a wolfish smile. They said yes, fine, and
began to eat what they had been given.
When they were alone again, Bradley said: “Do you think I
should remonstrate with that man on the subject of the boy’s hat?
The poor lad is painfully embarrassed, as well as he might be.”
Purbright counselled him to temper compassion with tact.
“Maddox will undoubtedly suppose the boy to have slipped you a
note of complaint if you say anything.”
Until the next appearance of the manager and his hostage, bearing
the main course on a trolley, they talked about the late Mr
Arnold.
“It looks,” said Purbright, “as though Arnold was O’Dwyer’s
confederate, if he had one.”
“Confederate in what, though?”
“Theft of some kind, on the face of it. We may know more
about that when the forensic people have finished with the picture
from the auction sale.”
“What do you know of Arnold?” asked Bradley.
“Not a great deal. I hadn’t even heard his name until yesterday,
when my coroner’s officer mentioned it. He died about a fortnight
ago.”
“In that old people’s home?”
“So it seems.” Purbright was silent a moment, then added: “If
you are going to ask if Arnold ever had anything to do with the
Moldhams, the answer is that he was employed there at one time.”
“It would be tempting to postulate the man’s having purloined
the family jewels and lain low until it was safe to turn them to
account,” said Bradley.
Purbright smiled. “Tempting, indeed. It would be too much in
the tradition of the thirties’ detective story, though.”
Bradley spread his hands. His normally sleepy eyes suddenly
brightened. “My dear friend, what is this but a thirties’ detective
story? Why else do you think I came here?”
The superintendent registrar of Twilight Close
was called Vernon Wellbeloved, and Inspector Bradley had
received from the name expectation of a large, pastoral person,
very beneficient in manner, a sort of municipal Saint Peter. He
was introduced instead to a sinewy little man with a head shaped
like a mason’s mall and nearly as bald. It was a hard-looking head,
with two holes left in it for even harder-looking eyes, one of which
Mr Wellbeloved kept permanently half-closed as if in surreptitious
scrutiny. Bradley was convinced that at night the other eye would
be kept permanently half-open.
Purbright apologized for their having called on a Saturday afternoon.
Mr Wellbeloved gave no sign of his finding the apology
other than appropriate.
Purbright said that he and his colleague were wishful of talking
to Mr Wellbeloved about the late Mr Frederick, otherwise known
as Whippy, Arnold; and would appreciate in addition an opportunity
of putting some questions to Mr Anderson, one of the residents.
The superintendent registrar considered these requests in
hunched silence, far back in his chair, while he turned between
the fingers of both hands a long, green pencil with a very sharp
point.
When he spoke it was quietly but with a suddenness that had
just as alarming an effect as a shout.
“Excitable, these old people. Very. You do realize.” A trace of
Welsh accent.
“Mr Anderson will naturally be approached with consideration
for his age,” said Purbright.
Mr Wellbeloved stared as if to challenge a blatant lie. Then he
rocked himself forward and took a folder from the desk drawer.
Holding the pencil at its end, like a wand, he used it to trace an
entry on one of the sheets the folder contained.
“He is not well.”
Bradley blinked. “Incapacitated not well? Or just fed up not
well?”
The inquiry attracted the full one-and-a-half eye power of Mr
Wellbeloved’s displeasure. “I have here”—he poised the pencil
delicately above the folder—“the daily medical report sheets. The
doctor has categorized Anderson as RC. Nothing to do with religion.
Restricted communication is what that means. The old chap is not
quite himself. Understand me?”
“Perhaps for the moment,” said Purbright, stiffly, “we should
address ourselves to the other matter. Mr Arnold’s death. There
are several rather...”
“May I ask,” Mr Wellbeloved interrupted, “why these inquiries
of yours are being made? Has there been a complaint of some
sort? Eh?” He turned sharply to scowl at Bradley. “An allegation
by somebody? Eh?”
“No, sir,” said Purbright. “But we are interested in certain
property that was sold on behalf of Mr Arnold’s estate, as I suppose
the lawyers would describe it.”
“Estate?” repeated Mr Wellbeloved. “Property? What property?
I recall being shown two or three rubbishy bits and pieces when
his room was being cleared. Are those what you call his estate?”
Bradley spoke. “Inasmuch as they seem to have been his sole
possessions, may we not now be considerate enough to avoid words
like rubbish? Estate may be a conceit, but I see nothing wrong in
that.”
Again Mr Wellbeloved subjected him to a baleful stare. “Did you
say you were from London?”
“I did not say so, but London is where I usually work.”
“I see. Well, in Flaxborough, Mr...”
“Bradley. Detective Inspector. No MBE.”
“...Inspector Bradley—in Flaxborough, I say, we do not indulge
in conceits. Some of my old charges are fanciful enough already. It
would be mistaken kindness to encourage in them delusions of
grandeur.”
Purbright intervened. “Mr Wellbeloved, our aim is simply to
establish one or two facts concerning the late Mr Arnold. Matters
of record. Firstly, how long had he been a resident of Twilight
Close?”
“Four years.” The answer came without hesitation.
“Thank you, sir. Secondly, how old was he?”
Another folder was disinterred, without enthusiasm but not
noticeably grudgingly. The long, sharp pencil went seeking.
“Born 1898, or so he said.”
“A local man?”
“We think not, though he had worked in the locality for many,
many years. He claimed to be an Australian.”
“Was he married?”
“No.”
“Children?” asked Bradley.
The little man in the chair made no reply. He was now looking
exclusively at Purbright.
“I take it,” said Purbright, “that he had no close relatives, so far
as the welfare authority is aware.”
“Correct.”
“Did he leave a will, sir?”
“If he did, it was not lodged in the custody of the Department.”
“Does that explain why his property—such as it was—came to be
sold by auction after Mr Arnold’s death?” This question was slipped
in by Bradley and Purbright much feared that it would be forfeit
as coming from a persona non grata. After consideration, however,
Mr Wellbeloved issued a reply.
“The Department serves these old souls in many capacities, you
must understand. Lawyer—trustee—undertaker. In most cases, it
is a tidying-up operation that is called for. Tiresome, but necessary.”
“The funeral, do you mean?” The mild tones of Bradley again.
“No, I do not mean the funeral, inspector. I mean the considerable
trouble taken by myself and my staff to recoup a few
coppers of public funds through the sale at public auction—and
under public supervision if you like—of the worthless bits and
pieces that we are happy to allow our sentimental old magpies to
collect about them, bless their hearts.”
“Provided,” said Bradley, “that they are intestate magpies, I
presume?”
“Of course,” snapped Mr Wellbeloved.
Purbright took over. “You will have heard, I expect, sir, that
the sale of Mr Arnold’s possessions realized nearly four hundred
pounds. Can you imagine what prompted someone to pay such a
high price for what you term worthless bits and pieces?”
“Not for a moment. A preposterous sum.”
“Which will go into public funds,” softly added Bradley before
Purbright could head him off.
Wellbeloved, though, was not to be drawn again. Ignoring the
provocative interloper from London, he favoured the native policeman
with the nearest thing to a friendly smile that the Department
strictures upon subjective attitudes permitted, and said: “Inspector
Purbright—you, I know, will appreciate the funny...no, not
funny—droll, rather—the droll side of what we have been discussing.
That picture, you see—the thing that people must have been
bidding for—didn’t belong to old Arnold at all, bless his heart. It
was council property. He made it in our little workshop here in
the Close. Occupational therapy. Thanks to public funding, gentlemen.
Public funding.”
“Ashes to ashes,” murmured Inspector Bradley.
“Did Mr Arnold ever have any visitors?” asked Purbright.
“If he did, it was very rarely. Very rarely indeed. Of course, that
is not to say that he had no communication with the outside world.
He was free to go out, you understand. In the PPs.”
“The PPs, sir?”
“Perambulation periods,” explained Mr Wellbeloved.
Before Bradley could deliver the question that he was giving
signs of gestating, Purbright asked: “Was Mr Anderson a friend
of Mr Arnold’s?”
“I think,” said Mr Wellbeloved, in whom an antipathy towards
Inspector Bradley seemed to be inducing a corresponding affectation
of helpfulness for Purbright, “that I may safely claim that all our
residents are friends, one to another, bless them.”
“Yes, sir, but I mean those two special friends—in the sense of
confiding in each other?”
“Were they buddies?” amplified Bradley.
“Buddies,” murmured Mr Wellbeloved to himself, with infinite
distaste. He told Purbright no, he was not aware of any particular
liaison between Arnold and Anderson.
“Never mind, sir. Mr Anderson will doubtless be able to deal
with that point when we talk to him.”
Mr Wellbeloved said nothing.
“Which will be?” Purbright pressed.
The superintendent looked gravely regretful. “That is not in
my hands, Mr Purbright. You will have to take the matter up with
Dr Gule.”
“Gule?”
“Dr D. Gule—D. for Damion, I believe.”
“He is your resident doctor?”
Wellbeloved smiled thinly. “Dr Gule is a consultant physician
with specialized application to geriatric psychiatry. He is not a
resident, but we are fortunate in having the benefit of his retained
attendance.”
“He is not upon the premises now, I take it,” said Purbright.
“Oh, no.”
“Can you tell me when he is likely to be available?”
“Monday possibly. If not, it will almost certainly be Tuesday
afternoon.”
“The prognosis is very vague.” The observation was Bradley’s,
but he was addressing his colleague, who nodded and turned back
to Wellbeloved.
“I’m afraid that inquiries cannot be delayed that long, sir. Perhaps
it would be better if I were to approach the doctor directly. May
I have his address?”
Wellbeloved scowled at Bradley, who was not looking, then
quickly donned a more conciliatory expression for Purbright’s
benefit. “It’s possible that I could get you an appointment for
Monday,” he offered.
“I prefer not to put you to that much trouble, sir. His address
will be sufficient. Or his telephone number, perhaps.”
The superintendent reluctantly consulted the back pages of a
pocket diary. He read out a Chalmsbury number.
After making a note of it, Purbright conferred quietly with his
proscribed companion. Again he faced Wellbeloved.
“Would it not be possible,” he asked, “for you to ring Dr Gule
now and ask if he would agree to our having a very short interview
with Anderson before we leave? It would save time and trouble
for everybody.”
The superintendent shook his head emphatically and began to
tidy his folders.
“The doctor may be telephoned from this office only in case of
emergency. I cannot make an exception to that rule. In any event,
I know exactly what his reply would be.”
“Oh? What would it be, Mr Wellbeloved?”
“He would refuse. No question about it.” Back into the drawer
went the folders.
“And why are you so sure, sir?” Purbright persisted.
Again the narrow, unamused, secretive smile, but no reply. They
waited. Somewhere outside, heavy, quick footsteps pounded on
one of the asphalt walks; a woman’s voice, loud but cut into
portions by breathlessness: “Not that...way, Mr Pawley...now
you know...that very well...” Three or four quavering catcalls
answered in the distance.
“If there is anything further I can do for you, inspector...” Mr
Wellbeloved had quite suddenly left his chair and was stepping
past Purbright to reach the door.
Without haste, Inspector Bradley moved in the same direction
until he was inescapably in the forefront of the superintendent’s
field of vision.
“Is Anderson dead?” he asked.
There was a short silence, then the prim voice of Mr Wellbeloved.
“Certainly not. Why should you think that?”
“His having been forbidden visitors does seem rather drastic,”
Purbright suggested.
“Not at all. These old souls are easily excited. When one has
suffered a shock, perhaps a violent encounter, something of that
sort, he needs to be kept quiet for a bit.”
“What was the nature,” persisted Bradley, “of the violent encounter that Anderson suffered?”
“I said nothing about...” Wellbeloved’s mouth clamped shut.
He was looking flustered. He appealed to Purbright: “If you have
more questions, I should much prefer that you put them to Dr
Gule. I really cannot discuss medical cases with outsiders, even if
they have some claim to authority.”
The door stood open. Bradley stepped into the hallway and
waited. Following him, Purbright paused and turned. “There is
just one point I think you might be able to clear up, sir, without
involving the patients.”
“Residents,” murmured the superintendent, automatically.
“Of course. I’m sorry. No, I wanted to ask you simply if there
had been a visit here recently by a man calling himself O’Dwyer.
A Londoner. He might have used another name. Chubb, possibly;
even Scoggins.” Seeing Wellbeloved shake his head dubiously,
Purbright added: “All perfectly memorable, you will notice, sir.”
“We have many visitors, inspector. This place is virtually home
from home. Isn’t that right, Reuben?” This last question was
directed in a raised voice to an old man in a cap who was crossing
the hall. The old man looked immediately in their direction and
smiled in greeting.
“Home from home. I was telling the gentlemen this is home
from home.” The words boomed out like a missionary’s message to
a deaf aboriginal.
The old man’s smile broadened. He winked at the two policemen,
as if in acknowledgement of a joke, and went his way.
When he was alone once more in his office, Mr Wellbeloved
sat far back in his too-big chair and stared at the point of the long
pencil that he held still. He brought it closer and closer to the
centre of his forehead, altering the angle of the pencil until it lay
along the plane of his nose, like a crusader’s sword. Then, suddenly,
he flung it to the far side of the room and reached for the
telephone.
The two inspectors made their way across the hall towards the
main doors that led from this, the administrative block, to the
grounds in which lay the residential buildings, a small infirmary,
and workshops.
Bradley walked gingerly; the floor of the now deserted hall had
been polished to the semblance of a sheet of water. There was a
faint smell of disinfectant in the air. The only sound was that of
their own footsteps. They passed the half-open doors of empty
rooms and saw shrouded typewriters and duplicating machines.
“Growing old seems to require a huge servicing organization,”
Bradley remarked.
They emerged into hot, white sunshine. The lawn encompassed
by the driveway before the main entrance was partly shaded by a
big copper beech. Beneath it, three or four residents had, in defiance
of prohibitory notices, set their chairs. One of them, Purbright
recognized. He waved and was acknowledged.
He and Bradley walked over.
The man in the chair was big and bowed and dark-eyed and
had three protruding front teeth the size and colour of old pub
piano keys. He was wearing four woollen waistcoats, two in
shades of grey, one blue, one puce. His head, surmounted by
short and scrubby hair, still nearly black, jutted forth from his
knitted carapace like a turtle’s.
Purbright introduced him to Bradley as Walt Latter, far famed
in the best days of Flaxborough’s shrimping fleet. He saw no
reason to add that he had last seen Walt in the dock at Lincoln
Assizes twelve years ago patiently explaining the circumstances of
a recent bereavement.
“I was just wondering,” said Purbright after exchange of greetings, “if
you’d seen anything of old Crutchy lately. They tell me
he’s been poorly.”
“Ah, they say so,” confirmed Mr Latter, warily, and with a hint
of inquiry as to what his fellow mariner was wanted for.
“He’s in the infirmary, is he, Walt?”
“So they reckon.” At the end of each reply the old man carefully
drew down his long upper lip over the piano-key teeth. This had
the curious effect of making him look secretly amused.
Several of the other trespassers showed signs of wishing to join
the conversation.
“Not like old Crutchy to be ill,” Purbright said. “I remember him
being out in all weathers.”
An old lady with thick, custard-coloured hair giggled into her
knitting and said aye, taking betting slips. The others smiled but
watched the two policemen. Purbright and Bradley laughed with
the old lady. Everyone looked pleased.
“Mr Anderson had a bit of a set-to. That’s the top and bottom
of it. He’s not ill. Not sick ill. They’re just keeping him quiet.”
The author of this contribution was a small, red-complexioned
man. He rearranged his chair to face the new arrivals and sat
forward in a businesslike way.
“A set-to?” Bradley sounded intrigued yet at the same time
deferential. The red-complexioned man hitched his chair a fraction
nearer and opened his mouth to say more.
“That he never!”
The interruption came from a fourth member of the group, a
very fat old lady who appeared to be worked by steam, of which
a considerable excess was discharged with speech.
“Harold never had no set-to,” she insisted. (Purbright blinked;
he had never heard the villainous old mariner called Harold before.)
“He had a visitor and it was too much for him. I told you that
yesterday, Arthur.”
“Visitor?” challenged the small man, scornfully. “What, at supper
time?”
Walt Latter unsheathed his piano-key teeth. “Ah, a woman,
most like!” His earlier caution had given way to heavy-jowled
roguishness.
The two ladies signified, one by a dive into her knitting, the
other by a steamy shriek, that the idea appealed vastly. Arthur,
though, was unamused.
“He was knocked about, was poor old Crutchy. One of the ladies
on ‘B’ was going past when somebody opened the door and she
saw him. He’d had a bash on the face, she said.”
“She’d say anything, that one,” said the fat lady.
“You don’t know who it was. I never said.”
“You didn’t have to. It was that Lily Harrison, out of George
Street.”
The old lady with the knitting spoke. “The doctor was with
him yesterday morning, I know that. He came special.”
“Who was this visitor he was supposed to have had, then?”
inquired Arthur, not quite so contemptuously, of the fat lady.
She gave a shake of the head, steamed a little, then turned to
Walt. “Somebody said he looked like a clergyman—who was that?”
(Walt did not know.) “Aye, well, he did.”
“Fine sort of clergyman he turned out to be,” said the knitting lady.
By now the two inspectors were being either ignored altogether
by those taking part in the conversation or treated as friendly
neutrals to be smiled at and invited to bear witness to the things
said.
After ten minutes or so, they wandered off and compared gleanings
as they strolled along one of the paths that promised to lead
eventually to where they had left their car.
“It would appear,” said Bradley, “that my Mr O’Dwyer paid a
personal call on his correspondent on Thursday night. At supper
time—that does sound characteristic.”
“But it hardly squares with what we thought at first,” said Purbright.
“His car having been left nearby, we supposed he had paid
his visit here after the Moldham break-in—about two in the
morning.”
“He could have come twice.”
Purbright looked doubtful. “Too risky, surely. That ‘set-to’ we
heard about must have put the night staff on their guard. O’Dwyer
would realize that.”
Bradley was silent for a moment. Then he asked: “Why, do you
suppose, was Mr Wellbeloved so much worse informed of attacks
on residents than Lily Harrison of George Street?”
They were walking past a long brick outbuilding. Purbright
glanced into one of its windows. He pulled at Bradley’s sleeve and
pointed to a bench inside the hut.
Laid on the bench were three rectangular plaster casts, at various
stages of painting. One picture, though incomplete, Purbright
recognized as a fellow of lot thirty-four. Some empty frames also
were on the bench. Hanging on the wall nearby were several moulds.
“The source,” remarked Purbright, “of Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s
work of art.”
They walked on.
“We were talking of Mr Wellbeloved,” said Inspector Bradley,
“and his failure to know about a visitor who beat up one of his
dear old souls.”
Purbright was looking with some concentration at the next
outbuilding on their route. “If I am not mistaken, that is where
the dear old soul in question will have been put.”
“The infirmary?”
“I believe so.”
A concrete ramp led from the path to white double doors in
the building’s gable end. When they drew level with it, they stopped
and glanced at each other.
“I wonder,” said Purbright softly, as they pushed and found
yielding one of the doors, “if he still takes bets?”
Beyond the double doors was a small lobby and a
further door. Purbright knocked gently. There was no response.
He pushed it open.
Bradley followed him into a white-tiled room with a sink, cupboards
and a desk. It looked likely to be a combination of dispensary
and office. A door in the opposite wall was ajar. They heard the
sounds of light footsteps and of glassware being set down. Purbright
opened wide the door and beckoned Bradley to stand beside him.
“Good afternoon,” he called.
There were four very white-looking beds in the big, peach-glossed
room. Three were empty, their covers folded and set in a
neat pile on each. The second bed on the left was bulged by an
occupant. A young girl in nurse’s uniform with a round, button-nosed
face and a fringe of pale blonde hair was standing by the
bed, half turned, looking surprised. She held a small conical glass.
“We are looking,” said Purbright, in a stage whisper, “for Mr
Anderson—Mr Harold Anderson.”
The girl raised her nearly colourless eyebrows and pointed at
the bed. She appeared to be somewhat at a loss.
The policemen moved nearer. Bradley gave the girl an avuncular
grin but desisted when she looked startled.
“I don’t think he’s supposed to see anybody,” she said.
“Are you family?”
Purbright said no, they were, regrettably, policemen, but they
would not trouble the old gentleman for long; they only wished
to ask him a couple of questions.
“It’s a pity you weren’t here five minutes ago,” the nurse said.
“Doctor’s only just gone. You could have asked him if it was all
right.”
“Doctor Gule, do you mean?” Purbright asked, quickly.
“That’s right.”
“He was here this afternoon?”
“Yes. You must have passed him at the gate if you’ve only just
arrived.”
There came a weak but cheerful croak from the bed.
“ ’Ullo, skipper.”
“Hello, Crutchy,” responded Purbright.
The bony old head on the pillow looked as if it had been knocked
about on jetties, hatch covers and pub doorways all its life. It was
pitted and creased with black, like long-weathered wood. On jaw,
cheek and brow were small strips of sticking plaster, startlingly
bright pink.
“What have they been doing to you, then?”
The head gave a little jerk of disgust and one of the cavernous
eye sockets creased into a dreadful wink. “Whurrh,” growled
Crutchy.
The nurse looked at patient and policeman in turn. “Doctor said
nobody, actually, but I suppose he meant ordinary people. Don’t be
long, though, will you? Mr Anderson’s just had a sedative and
he’ll want to go to sleep again.”
She gave the bed-covers a tweak and left.
Purbright recognized in Anderson the drowsy amiability of the
slightly drunk or doped; this was going to be like playing twenty
questions.
“It was this fellow Charlie Chubb, was it, who duffed you up on
Thursday night, Crutchy?”
The old man hesitated, then shrugged one shoulder. “Aye, I
suppose so.”
“Who is he?”
“I dunno. Fellow from London.”
“Yes, but not just any fellow. You wrote to him and told him
about a picture and things that Whippy Arnold wanted him to
have.”
Craftiness surfaced through Anderson’s dose of sedative. “I never
’ad no picture, skipper. Dunno about it.”
Bradley took a turn. ‘Why was Chubb so mad at you, Mr
Anderson? Did he blame you for not having got hold of the
picture—as we know you didn’t—and keeping it for him?”
“Ah, that’s about it, matey. I reckon you’re right.”
“Have you no idea,” Purbright resumed, “what Chubb was to
your friend Arnold? Was he a relative? Had Arnold ever talked
about him?”
One of Cratchy’s eyes had begun to close. Bradley took a pound
note from his trouser pocket and examined it. The eye snapped
wide open again.
“Talked about him...ah, well, no, not to say talk. But Whippy
sometimes sent letters to him. I thought perhaps he was his nevvy.
He didn’t have no fambly, did Whippy.”
“Did no one ever come to see him?” Purbright asked.
Crutchy shook his head, feebly. “Can’t say as they did. Not while
I’ve been here.”
“This man Arnold...” Bradley was reflectively rubbing his
lower lip with the pound note. “What did you know about him,
Mr Anderson? He seems to have been something of an enigmatic
character, doesn’t he?”
“You wot?”
“Bit of a dark horse, wasn’t he, your friend Whippy?” Purbright
translated.
Crutchy gave the question thought for so long that Bradley
feared the sedative had triumphed over hopes of reward. But then
the old man gave a sniff followed by the opinion that Arnold had been for
some time before his death “a point or two off his bearings”.
“Why do you think that, Mr Anderson?”
“Well, for one thing, Gilly Gully was always in and out, wasn’t
he? And you’ve got to be pretty low in the water before he bothers
to come aboard.”
Again Purbright played interpreter. “He says that Arnold was
often attended by Dr Gule, who does not normally visit a patient
unless he is very ill.” He turned again to Anderson. “Perhaps you
can tell Mr Bradley and me a little bit more about what happened
here on Thursday night.”
“Not here, skipper. I was in my cabin. They’d just brought
supper round, and I hear this knock at the door and I think, funny,
they’re smart off the mark with seconds, but it’s not seconds, it’s
a pussy-footed cove with a grin and sticky-out teeth, and he pushes
in and shuts the door behind him and says, You Anderson? he
says, and I says, Mister Anderson to you or you’ll be over the side,
matey, and then he takes his hand out of his overcoat pocket and he
doesn’t stop smiling but just leans over and touches the side of my
face with his hand and it’s like walking into the boom on a dark
night, not a word of a lie, and he says very smarmy but very nasty
as well, ’Ow’d you like your hartificial limb up your arse, Mister
Anderson? and I know as this isn’t a cove I can monkey with, for
all his soppy looks.
“So anyway, he says, Wot you got for me from Mister Arnold,
and I says, Nothing can’t you read a letter? and he leans over and
I walk into the boom but with the other side of my face this time.
And then he asks who’s this old pussy with a double-barrelled name
who goes round—and this is what he says, not me, skip—who
goes round buying what belongs to somebody else, and I
says, how the hell and high water do I know? but he starts leaning
over again and I remember something Whippy said once about
working for these harris...”
The old sailorman’s eyes had been slowly dosing for some time,
but without diminution of speech. Now, though, the words began
to present difficulties.
“...these harristocro...” He smiled as if in sleep.
“...tocrofats...remembered what he said...”
“You told the man who was threatening you that Arnold used
to work out at Moldham Hall, did you, Crutchy?” Purbright
prompted.
Anderson half opened his eyes. Some of the old craftiness was
in them as he tried to shake his head with some show of indignation.
They closed completely. “Arrh,” he said, and slid into peaceful
sleep.
The two policemen sought out the young nurse. She was seated
drinking a cup of coffee in the dispensary-cum-office and staring
out of the window. As they came through the door from the ward,
she turned and rose.
“He’s asleep,” Purbright said, softly.
She looked relieved. “I wasn’t sure that you ought, really...I
suppose it’s all right, though.”
“Is he very ill, then?” asked Bradley.
“Oh, no, not ill,” she said at once. Then, “Of course, he did get
a bit of a fright, but you’ll know all about that.”
Purbright smiled at her. “Your knock-out drops certainly seem
effective, nurse.”
She smiled back, but not with ease. “Dr Gule had a little trouble
with him at first. He’s a very wilful old gentleman. They don’t
realize how important rest can be in getting better.”
Purbright said, “How true,” and they took their leave pleasantly
enough.
Outside, he frowned at his companion and said: “How can he
be getting better when he hasn’t been ill? I know Crutchy of old.
It would take more than Mr O’Dwyer to put him out for long.”
“The people who run this place—the local authority, presumably—must
be feeling nervous. Authorities always do when something
happens that they haven’t bargained for.” Bradley smiled at
a recollection. “I received the impression from Mr Wellbeloved
that we should have qualified for sedatives if it had been up to him.”
Purbright glanced back at the infirmary building. “The girl wasn’t
altogether happy about doping old Anderson. She must know it
was a pretty stiff dose.”
They walked on in silence for a while. “I wonder,” Bradley said
at last, “if it is simply a question of an institution’s good name—of
its administrators wishing to avoid unwelcome publicity concerning
what I suppose would be called today a ‘security issue’. One could
sympathize with their trying to bamboozle the Press. Bamboozling
the police, though—that is not a sensible course.”
“Wellbeloved is not a stupid man,” Purbright said.
“No, I did not think so.”
“Of Gule, I know very little. He has a reputation for imposing
upon susceptible young women and also for owing a lot of money
to tradesmen, but in Flaxborough these are not accounted disqualifications
from high office.”
“Nor in London,” Bradley assured him.
They reached the car. Purbright opened the door on the passenger’s
side, then, got in himself. There had been no unlocking.
Bradley remarked upon his faith in the honesty of Flaxborough
folk.
Purbright shook his head. “Not honesty. Discrimination.”
He hesitated. “I was wondering if we ought to use what is left
of the afternoon to introduce you to the harristocrofats. On second thoughts,
though“—he pressed the starter—“we’d better leave them
until we know more about the picture they are so eager to acquire.”
By the time they reached Fen Street, the town had a dusty,
slightly somnolent air, enriched in the area of the market by the
scent of warm fruit. The police headquarters, built by late Victorians
out of authoritative red brick and ornamental tile, looked over-baked.
Inside it was pleasantly cool. Bradley peered through the relative
darkness to where the thick spectacles of PC Braine gleamed inquisitively.
Braine was in shirt sleeves. He gave a jerk to his
globular, slightly flattened head and emitted a sound. The sound,
though not recognizably verbal, conveyed with quite extraordinary
economy not only challenge and inquiry but contempt, indifference
and pride in having been born in Yorkshire.
“How like a frog he is,” remarked Bradley after Purbright,
ignoring the monosyllabic custodian of the front office, had led him
into the corridor beyond.
They found Sergeant Love in the billiards room. He was losing
a game of snooker fairly rapidly to Patrolman Brevitt. Only five
colours remained. Purbright waved the pair to finish. Love nodded
cheerfully: it was his turn and the green ball was hanging at the
very edge of a pocket. He aimed with great nonchalance and
mis-cued. Brevitt sank the lot. His “Bad luck, Sidney” sounded
like the condolence offered by a public executioner on piecework.
In Purbright’s office, Love gave an account of Loughbury’s visit.
He held his notebook low down so that Bradley could see that it
contained shorthand.
When he had finished, he looked at each inspector in turn with
bright and innocent so-now-you-know satisfaction.
Purbright asked Bradley what he thought of the solicitor’s explanation
of the high price reached by lot thirty-four.
“A singularly tortuous form of philanthropy, surely,” said Bradley.
“It is also rather odd,” Purbright said, “that they went to all that
trouble—Mrs Moldham-Clegg and her legal advisers, that is—without
making sure that old Arnold had any dependants.”
Bradley glanced at Love’s still open notebook, to the sergeant’s
immediate and obvious gratification, and said: “Judging from the
very full report we have been given of what Loughbury had to say,
he did not simply assume the man had a family; he specifically mentioned
dependents who ‘would not have dreamed’ of accepting a direct
gift.” He looked at Love. “That is so, is it not, sergeant?”
Blushing happily, Love sent a finger wiggling amongst his
Pitman’s. After a few moments, he nodded and stood very erect.
“Yes, sir, that’s right...would...not...have...dreamed...of...”
He frowned. “Of gasping...?”
“Accepting,” Bradley corrected gently. “Very similar outline.” He
turned to Purbright. “I suppose we must not rule out the possibility
that O’Dwyer really was a relative of the old man? In a perfectly
genuine sense?”
Purbright shrugged. “And that Mrs Moldham-Clegg and
Loughbury knew of his existence, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“They would have needed to be especially broad-minded to
accept a burglar as a beneficiary.”
“He wasn’t a very successful burglar,” Bradley observed. “Anyway,
they were not to know his profession; he always comes up
in court described as an unemployed watchmaker.”
“I still find Loughbury’s tale unconvincing,” Purbright said.
“What about O’Dwyer’s appearance at that auction sale? A needy
relation doesn’t come all those miles from home and bid into the
hundreds for a memento of his old uncle.”
“True,” Bradley conceded. “But why should Mrs Moldham-Clegg
have suspected anything? I don’t suppose for a moment that she
would remember any of her ex-coachman’s family, even if she had
ever seen them. O’Dwyer was just another bidder as far as she
was concerned. She may even have supposed that he had been
planted by Loughbury in addition to his clerk, Buxton. As for
Buxton, he was there simply to carry out instructions. Or so I
understand matters.”
Love took the opportunity of assuring Bradley (whom he already
considered a crime-buster in the suavest Yard tradition) that he had
read the situation absolutely correctly.
“We’d love some tea, Sid,” Purbright informed him, by way of
reward. Love paused at the door and looked back indecisively. He
caught Purbright’s eye and mimed “Cups?” with his mouth. Purbright
nodded. Bradley thoughtfully looked for several moments
at the door through which the alacritous sergeant had departed.
“You know,” he said, “our Frankie must have had a depth of
viciousness which even I had not suspected if he could slug a lad
as young as that.”
“Sergeant Love,” said Purbright, “is forty-four.”
The telephone rang. It was Braine.
“PC Phillips is on the line,” he announced. “There’s been an
accident at Pennick and he thinks you ought to know about it.”
“What kind of an accident? I do happen to be rather busy.”
Purbright never found it very difficult to suspect Braine of deliberate
unhelpfulness.
“Accident—that’s all he says. He wants to talk to you about it.
Whatever it is. Sir.”
Purbright said he would take the call. Braine pressed the wrong switch and
lost the line. “He’s cut off,” he explained. Soon afterwards
Phillips rang again and was put through.
“I’m out at Pennick at the moment, sir. We had a call about
twenty minutes ago from the lock-keeper. There’s a body in the
lock. The keeper thinks it floated in last time he opened the doors
for some boats going up river.”
“Does Sergeant Malley know about this?”
“He’s not in, sir.”
“No, of course. I’ll get a message round to him. But I’m told
you wanted especially to talk to me.”
“Yes, sir. I thought you’d be interested in this impression I got.”
Phillips sounded now more hopeful than confident. “Yes, naturally,”
said Purbright, at once.
“Well, sir, I’ve not actually seen this body—not close up, it keeps
circling more or less under the surface—but I do get an impression
that it’s the same bloke that I saw outside the saleroom on Thursday,
the one who assaulted Sid Love.”
There was a pause.
“Tell me, Mr Phillips; if the lock-keeper was aware of the body
twenty minutes ago, when you say his call was received here, why
has nobody fished the thing out of the water?”
“It’s a bit unfortunate, actually, sir. He lent his only boathook
to the Strawbridge man last week and he’s not got it back yet. The
lad’s cycling over now to fetch it.”
By the time Purbright and Bradley arrived at the lock-side at
Pennick, the lock-keeper, Phillips and three men from a narrow
boat that had moored above the lock were fishing for the corpse
with an improvised grapple.
It was not an easy task. The lock was full, but there was still
some turbulence beneath the surface and the body was circling in
a grotesque, nerveless waltz at constantly changing depths. The
keeper, a fat and florid man named Gort, held a long rope, to the
end of which had been lashed two meat hooks, donated for the
occasion by the crew of the narrow boat. The hope was that a lucky
throw of the rope would sink the hooks a little beyond the body
so that a deft pull-in might enable one or both to catch the clothing.
Acting as commentator and range-finder in this operation was
PC Phillips from a point of vantage on the little handrailed bridge
that spanned the basin. Already he had mastered, on Gort’s tuition,
such appropriate references as up-river and down-river and had
even tried out a couple of athwarts, though he lacked the boldness
to emulate the keeper’s familiar and frequent use of “Belay”.
The two inspectors found themselves standing on something
very similar to the platform of a country railway station, except
that below its scrupulously white-washed edge was water instead
of rails and sleepers. The words PENNICK LOCK were proclaimed
in white letters on a blackboard, much in the manner of the
old station names, while at intervals along the stone-flagged quay
were polished bollards, curiously suggestive of stout little porters
spaced out in expectation of a train. Wallflowers and marigolds
grew in white and green painted tubs and troughs, and their rich
scents overlay the brackish smell of the water.
Mr Gort was proud of his lock and his present uncharacteristic
outlay of energy was inspired less by a sense of public duty than
by the wish to see it tidy again.
Purbright watched him make a cast. He set the hooks spinning
on a short length of rope. Phillips called out: “About three feet
from the far wall. Half a fathom. A point up-river from your
opposite bollard.” Gort released his hold. The hooks flew up, then
down, trailing the rope. A double plop.
“Bloody good shot!” Phillips had one arm aloft. “Hang on...I’ll
tell you when... Right-now!” And the arm flashed down.
Purbright and Bradley peered into the water but could see only
dark undulating patterns.
“You’ve got him! You have, you’ve got him. Gently, now. One
of them’s caught in his coat, I think.” Phillips was pacing sideways
along the bridge, towards them, not taking his eyes from the water
beneath.
Very slowly the keeper drew in the dripping line. It was neither
taut nor slack. His mouth, half open, framed a pink tongue tip,
trembling with concentration. He was sweating.
Bradley squatted dose to the edge, ready to assist. Purbright,
half kneeling beside him, put one arm around a bollard and braced
himself experimentally.
For the first time they discerned the body in the greenish,
clouded depths. The face, very white, flat, curiously idiotic, was
distorted by surface corrugations into the semblance of muscular
movement like the face of a man making sullen complaint behind
a locked glass door.
“It’s Frankie, all right,” Bradley declared.
Purbright nodded. However unhappily transformed those
features now appeared, they undoubtedly were those of the late
contender for Whippy Arnold’s worldly goods.
Edna O’Dwyer arrived next day on the only train
running on a Sunday from London to Flaxborough. She was met
by Policewoman Sadie Bellweather, taken to the mortuary at the
General Hospital, and thence to the little cave-like room at Fen
Street in which the coroner’s officer cobbled upon a big, old-fashioned
typewriter the statements of those he liked to call his
customers.
For ten minutes or so Sergeant Malley set himself to comfort
rather than question the witness. She was as much upset as might
have been expected after the view of a consort not only waxenly indifferent
to her but disfigured by a rash of little mauve pock marks.
It was the marks that seemed chiefly to bother her. They extended
over the face and upper chest of the corpse in an even pattern. Who
or what had done that to Frank? Had he caught something and
died of it? Had the doctors made the marks? Or had somebody
else? What were they?
The plump, bucolic Sadie had soothed the questions away with
promises of future enlightenment from higher authority. Now
Edna besought Malley to tell her what had happened.
The sergeant sent for tea. Then he wound paper into his typewriter,
took a few exploratory finger-pecks at the keys, half-turned
to face Edna and leaned a little forward. He seemed now to have
plenty of time, but he gave at once what answer he could to her
central worry.
“We don’t know very much at the moment, Mrs O’Dwyer, but
it does look as if there was a gun involved. A shotgun. The marks
are almost certainly pellet wounds.”
He watched her for signs of shock or outrage. But the big,
tear-streaked face showed no change, save for a deepening of its
tiredness. “Not a disease, then,” she said.
“No, no, not a disease, Mrs O’Dwyer.”
She sniffed and nodded. After a little while, she asked: “What’s
this about drownding?”
“It’s true that your husband’s body was in the river, but we don’t
actually know the cause of death. There’ll have to be what we call
a post-mortem. It’s just a sort of medical examination.”
“What, cut him about, you mean?” The eyes were wide, scared.
“They want to open him up?”
The sergeant very gently shook his head and glanced down at
the massive reassurance of his own unopened-up flesh. “No more
than’s absolutely necessary: don’t you go getting upset about that.
We have to know what caused your husband’s death.” He regarded
her in silence a moment. “You want that, too, don’t you? To know.
Not knowing is worse, love.”
Staring past him, she felt with a finger knuckle the edges of
her parted teeth, then made an almost unnoticeable movement of
assent. Malley heaved himself round and gave his typewriter
carriage an affectionate slap.
After Edna had deposed, with Malley’s help, that the body she
had been shown that morning was that of a man known to her,
Edna Theresa Jupp, as Francis O’Dwyer, aged fifty-seven, of the
same address as her own, where she had last seen him alive and
in good health three days previously, she drank her tea, combed
her yellow ringlets and was escorted by Policewoman Bellweather
into the presence of Inspector Purbright.
A few moments later, Bradley joined them.
Edna stared, as at an old friend unaccountably transposed. Then
she wept afresh. Bradley put an arm round her shoulder. Purbright
fetched a chair.
Between sobs, Edna asked who would want to shoot her Frankie.
Bradley noticed with mild interest that several scars about her face
and neck gleamed more whitely in contrast with the flush of
emotion.
“Can you think of anybody, Mrs O’Dwyer?” Purbright asked.
She shook her head.
Bradley spoke. “What was he doing up here, Edna? Have you
no idea?”
She looked up at him as if the displacement of persons were
now general and therefore not to be questioned. “Frankie was on
business,” she said, simply.
“What kind of business?”
“He had a shop-fitting business. You know that, Mr Bradley.
Since the watch-repairing packed in. Anyway, you’ve got the letter
I gave you. That says why he was here.”
“To attend an auction sale,” said Bradley.
“That’s right. You got the letter.”
“But Mrs O’Dwyer,” said Purbright, “the letter about the sale
was addressed to someone called Charles Chubb.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, it was.” She paused. “That’s his business name.
Uses it in business.”
“I see. So the man the letter was about—he’s dead now but he
was called Arnold, remember—was a business acquaintance, was
he?”
“I suppose he must have been. He’d had letters from him before.
Frankie had, I mean.”
“Did you happen to see any of those letters, Mrs O’Dwyer?”
Instead of answering Purbright, she looked nervously at Bradley.
“Well, I...”
“It’s all right, Edna. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She turned again to Purbright. “There weren’t many. About
three, perhaps, all told. That’s as many as I saw.” Defensively,
she added: “He’s a terror for leaving things about.”
They led her over the dim, almost featureless ground of her recollection
of O’Dwyer’s correspondence. The letters seemed to have
been of an unvarying hope-this-finds-you-as-it-leaves-me-at-present
uninformativeness. Just like any other letters, she explained. It
was not a field in which Edna had very high hopes, apparently.
Did any money pass? Ah, now, she did get that impression, now
that the inspector mentioned it. She’d once glimpsed notes, and
after the arrival of other letters Frankie had been flush for a bit.
He was very good about housekeeping when he was home.
Purbright forestalled the further tears that this memory
threatened to set flowing. “Picture,” he said very firmly, and raised
a finger. “That letter you gave Mr Bradley was about some things
that included a picture. Your husband knew all about it, according
to Mr Anderson. And the owner of the picture—Mr Arnold—is
supposed to have wanted your husband to have it. I want you to
think very carefully, Mrs O’Dwyer, and see if you can remember
anything that you may have heard from your husband, or seen in
a letter, about a picture. Take your time and make yourself comfortable.
Mr Bradley and I will be back very shortly, then we can
talk about your fares and somewhere to stay and that sort of thing.”
In the corridor, Purbright and Bradley encountered Sergeant
Love. He was carrying a rectangular parcel and looking pleased.
Love handed the parcel to Purbright. “I think it’s that cottage of
mine. Forensic sent it over by car. Just arrived.”
Purbright was about to re-enter his own office, but changed his
mind. He led Bradley and Love to an interview room on the ground
floor.
In the parcel were the framed plaster-cast, wrapped in polythene;
three small, transparent envelopes, in two of which were fragments
of plaster and in the third a yellow, metallic clip; and a long, sealed
manilla envelope, addressed to Purbright.
This he opened at once and read the single sheet of typescript
it contained. The report was short.
“Hardly sensational, but quite intriguing.” He handed the sheet
to Bradley.
For Love’s benefit, Purbright summarized the laboratory findings
while he examined in detail the parcel’s contents.
“They aren’t very complimentary about the art work, I’m afraid,
Sid. They consider it was cast in a rubber mould ‘of the kind obtainable
in department stores’ and then ‘crudely coloured’. Never mind,
they did X-ray the thing. And this”—he held up the metal
object—“is what they found.”
Love looked, rather sulkily.
“Gold,” said Purbright. “Part of a necklace fastening. They can’t
date it accurately, but it’s not modern. And these strands still
knotted to it are silk, apparently—again, not modern. They say the
quality of the fastening suggests quite expensive jewellery.”
Bradley finished reading. He watched as Purbright turned the
cast over and indicated a small, square shaped excavation.
“This is where they chiselled down to get the little gold piece out.
See envelope ‘A’—‘common plaster, household grade’. But
here”—and Purbright pointed to a second hole in the back of the
cast—“is a very odd discovery. See envelope ‘B’—‘superfine plaster, dental
or surgical grade’.”
Bradley took the cast in his hands and angled it to catch the
light from the window. He nodded. “The difference is quite
obvious.”
Purbright outlined with his finger a patch of plaster paler and
smoother than the rest. It accounted for about a third of the area.
He gave Bradley an inquiring glance. “Dug out and refilled.”
“It would seem so.”
Curiosity was beginning to act as balm upon Love’s wounded
artistic sensibility. “The odds are,” he said, “that this was a secret
cache.”
“Mmmm,” said Purbright, wide-eyed.
“Containing?” Bradley asked the sergeant, in a tone of kindly
encouragement.
Love pointed without hesitation at the gold clip. “The rest of
that necklace.” A pause, then, not quite so confidently: “Wouldn’t
you say?”
Purbright patted his arm. “Easily the best suggestion up to now.”
Whereupon the sergeant was dispatched to organize, as best he
might on a Sunday, something systematic in the way of inquiries
into how O’Dwyer may have come to be in the river.
“How did you get on with our chief constable?” Purbright
asked Bradley, when they were alone.
Bradley seemed at first to avoid answering. “You know, I’m
terribly sorry,” he said, earnestly, “that our wretched Frankie chose
to end his undistinguished career in this area. You deserved better.
And now there’s all this embarrassment. Understandably.”
Purbright smiled faintly. He waited.
Bradley smiled too. “Rather nice fellow, I thought, old Chubb.
He has that kind of courtesy that self-confidence allows one to
afford but he doesn’t let it seem patronizing.”
“He doesn’t care much for this case, does he?” Purbright said.
“Hence the look of pained regret.”
“I thought perhaps he had a hernia.”
“No, no; it is just that he considers crime—which he much
deplores, incidentally—to be a defect peculiar to the working class.
On this occasion, respectable people appear to be implicated.”
“Unwillingly, surely?”
“Oh, yes. Perhaps innocently. But there is an involvement. That
worries Chubb, and he reacts by pretending to be stupid.”
“Does that mean he will be obstructive?”
Purbright shook his head. “Oh, no, just heavily dubious. You
will get used to it. And on our part, we spare him the pain of
knowing in advance the sensitive areas we mean to incise.” He
glanced at his watch. “The Moldham squirearchy, for instance.”
They went back to Purbright’s office. Edna was drinking more
tea and talking about Southend-on-Sea to Policewoman Bellweather.
Purbright showed Edna the plaster cast. “That’s pretty,” she said.
Her eyes were blank.
Purbright enfolded the picture loosely in its wrapping and put
it aside. He did not bother to put to her the question he had had in
mind.
Bradley had been considering something. He spoke to the woman.
“Edna, you remember Frankie did a bit of dealing in second-hand
jewellery and that kind of thing in his watch-repairing days?”
She looked up at him, warily. “Well, sort of...”
“Did his friend Mr Arnold ever send him anything in that line?”
She shook her head. The ringlets quivered like brass springs.
“Not that I know of. But he wasn’t forced to tell me, Mr Bradley,
was he?”
Purbright said: “No, but you’ve said already that your husband
was a terror for leaving things about.”
She smiled. “That’s true. I never saw no jewels, though.
Anyway”—her manner sharpened—“they’d have come registered.
And nothing ever came registered.” Wistfully, again, “ ’Cept
summonses.”
There was a knock. Malley entered. He spoke close to Purbright’s
ear.
“They’re doing the PM now. Heineman’s secretary rang me from
the General.”
Purbright drew Malley a little aside. “Lead or water, do you
think, Bill?” he asked softly.
The sergeant’s huge shoulders rose fractionally. “Wouldn’t bet
either way, but the odds are on drowning. Some of the gunshot
wounds look pretty superficial to me.”
“Inquest opening tomorrow morning, then?”
“Aye,” said Malley, and departed.
Sadie Bellweather undertook to find Edna some lodgings. They
left together.
“A fence, was he?” Purbright asked. He waited for Bradley to
pass him into the corridor, then shut, but did not lock, the door.
“Frankie? Oh, yes, he tried receiving for a short time, but he
had no head for business, whatever poor old Edna may believe.”
Purbright led the way towards the staircase. “Living with so inept
a criminal must have put a fairly severe strain on her loyalty.”
“Inept, yes—but consistently vicious, don’t forget. It was that
which commanded the loyalty. And the admiration.”
They spoke no more until the spiral stair had been successfully
negotiated. Then Purbright indicated the direction of the CID
room. “We’ll take a posse. Show of strength.”
“I thought,” said Bradley, “that the landed gentry had too much
sang-froid to be intimidated by numbers.”
“Oh, that’s true,” Purbright conceded, “but what I’m hopeful of
is that so long as they are showing their sang-froid in the drawing
room, they won’t get round to practise intimidation of their own
elsewhere on the estate.”
“What, would you say, is Mr Chubb’s attitude?”
Purbright, about to open the door of the CID room, glanced at
Bradley. “In his capacity as chief constable? He fully supports me,
warrant and all. Or do you mean privately?”
“Yes, I do.”
Purbright grinned. “He thinks I’m a cad.”
Two cars were needed for what Mrs Moldham-Clegg
was to call the quite unwarrantable foray by the Flaxborough
police. In the first were Purbright and Bradley and two detectives,
Wilkinson and Harper. Three uniformed constables sat in the
second, looking stiff and self-conscious.
Having passed slowly in procession through the secondary
entrance to the Hall, the ungated driveway reserved for tradesmen,
the two cars drew to a halt on the patch of gravel before the house
at a discreet distance from its shabby front door.
The seven policemen climbed out and assembled in a group.
Those in uniform at once donned helmets, each by a similar procedure
of holding his helmet like a basin before his lowered head,
as if about to bathe a scalp wound, then tipping both head and
helmet up and back in unison.
Purbright could be seen talking and pointing, in the manner
of the official guide to some stately home. Heads and helmets
bobbed now and again in acknowledgement of his instructions.
He paused. There were questions. Then the group split into ones
and twos. Several began to make their way towards the sides and
back of the house. One man in uniform pulled from his pocket a
tape-measure the size of a tea cake. Harper had a camera; he glanced
up at the sky and licked a finger.
Purbright and Bradley approached the front door. Today it
looked to be closed.
“In London,” said Bradley, “one of the indications for which you
instinctively look on occasions like this is the bottle of milk on the
doorstep. I presume it would not be appropriate here.”
“Not at the front door,” Purbright agreed. “For signs and
portents, one would approach the back.”
He gave a knock with the immaculately polished brass ring.
Bradley peered at it admiringly. They waited, Purbright knocked
again.
As upon his former visit, response came not from within the
house but from behind them. It was Bradley who first heard the
chop of hooves into gravel. He glanced back and at once tugged
Purbright’s sleeve. Looming over them was a horse that appeared
to Bradley to be as big as a London bus. And perched atop the
great beast, distant but obviously secure and undismayed, was a
little woman with a weather-beaten face and a hat like a coal
heaver’s.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Moldham-Clegg.” Purbright raised his
own, less flamboyant, hat. Bare-headed Bradley made a neat bow
and looked the horse in the eye, which was huge, moist, brown
and incredibly gentle.
“Good afternoon,” said Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Her voice was
quite firm, but it seemed to be reaching them from another county.
Bradley glanced round the porch for possibly sanctuary should the
horse decide to be assertive.
“Is Colonel Moldham at home?” inquired Purbright.
“Why do you wish to see him?”
Counter-questions in this tone and at this altitude had, Purbright
well knew, thwarted inquiries at Moldham Hall since the Conquest.
He did not make the mistake of attempting self-justification.
“If he is not at home, ma’am, I think you may do just as well.
At this stage, anyway.”
The woman made no move to dismount. She stared down coldly.
“You are...?”
Purbright regarded the landscape with mild affability and recited,
to no one in particular: “My name is Purbright. Detective Inspector
Purbright. I am making inquiries into matters concerning the death
of a Mr Francis Dean O’Dwyer and believe that you may be able
to help me with those inquiries.”
“Last time,” Mrs Moldham-Clegg said, incautiously, “it was something
to do with a policeman having been assaulted.”
“So it was,” Purbright agreed, still staring into the distance. He
became aware of someone approaching from the right. It was the
old odd-jobs man. Benton halted a few yards off and stood waiting.
It was Inspector Bradley who fractured the ice in which the
whole scene seemed threatened to become set.
Cheerily, he addressed the horse.
“Now, then, old chap. And what does your mistress call you?
Trigger?”
Whether it was the horse that jumped, or Mrs Moldham-Clegg,
was not clear, but only the prompt reaction of Mr Benton, who
seized the bridle, restored calm.
The rider, her face very tight, climbed down.
“All right, Benton; you may take Churchill back to his box.”
The old man hesitated. “Beggin’ your pardon, but there’s some
fellers round the back pokin’ about.”
Purbright intervened. “Those are police officers, Mrs Moldham-Clegg,
and they do have authority to be here.”
“Not mine, Mr Purbright.”
“In the present circumstances, it is your co-operation rather than
your authority that we shall value, ma’am. I am sure that Colonel
Moldham, as a magistrate, would appreciate that.”
To Benton, Mrs Moldham-Clegg gave a dismissive nod. He
ambled off, leading Churchill. She took a latchkey from the pocket
of her riding jacket and made for the door.
“My nephew is elsewhere on the estate. Perhaps you had better
come in and explain what all this nonsense is about.”
Instead of the big white-painted room to which Purbright had
been admitted on his former visit, he and Bradley now found themselves
in one that was only slightly smaller but a good deal darker
and more shabby. The walls were papered in a churchyard green,
marked off in panels by faint gold lines. One wall was disfigured
by a mould-dappled patch of damp shaped like a map of India.
The recess at each side of the broad chimney-breast had been sealed
off with panelled doors painted dark brown. There was a very old
harmonium in the room; also a squat square safe, the indentations
in whose green paint showed it to be an eighth of an inch thick.
Mrs Moldham-Clegg seated herself on a music stool with her
back to the harmonium. She did not take off her hat. Purbright
and Bradley selected seats for themselves from half a dozen
Victorian dining chairs ranged along one wall, and brought them
forward.
Purbright made formal introduction of his London colleague,
who was forthwith stared at and asked: “And which Bradleys
would they be?” rather as if he had cropped up in a seed catalogue.
“Hounslow,” proclaimed Bradley, loudly and without hesitation.
The old woman’s lip twitched with the briefest of smiles and
the parchment-like lid lowered a fraction over one eye. She hmm’d
reflectively and said: “Your conversation with Churchill led me to
suppose it would be somewhere like Arizona. However...”
Stern once more and erect, she turned to Purbright.
“Now, inspector, your explanation, please.”
The chair seat was covered in a sort of woven horse-hair; it was
glassily cold and as yielding as a slab of anthracite. Even the
furniture, Purbright thought to himself, was under instruction to
be inhospitable until further notice.
“I think,” he began, “that your best way of receiving an explanation
is to let it emerge in the course of our putting questions to you.
“For instance, when I ask if you have any personal knowledge
of the man Francis Dean O’Dwyer, it will be clear to you that a
connection of some kind between O’Dwyer and this place does,
in our opinion, exist. Shall we proceed from that point?”
“I have never heard of a man of such a name,” declared Mrs
Moldham-Clegg.
Purbright nodded. “The name perhaps does not matter. He had
others. Mr Bradley will show you a photograph.”
Silently, Bradley passed a print. The old woman regarded it
stonily and handed it back. “No one of my acquaintance,” she said.
A smile from Purbright. “Not in a social sense, perhaps. But are
you sure you have never seen the man before? At the auction sale
on Thursday, for instance? Or in the early hours of the following
morning when he was engaged in breaking into your house?”
“Again this nonsense about a burglary. There has been no
burglary, Mr Purbright. No one has broken into the house. If
anyone had, I assure you the police would have been notified.”
“And if I were to tell you that fingerprints of the man O’Dwyer
have been found on pieces of glass from the window on the ground
floor here that was broken Thursday night, would you be surprised,
ma’am?”
“Not particularly.”
There was a pause. Then Bradley spoke.
“Why not, Mrs Moldham-Clegg?”
“Because I have better things to do than express surprise for
the edification of policemen. I know nothing about fingerprints.
For all I know, they blow about like dandelion clocks.”
“Mr Benton,” said Purbright, “was in no uncertainty regarding a
break-in. He spoke of ‘the burglar’ almost familiarly.”
“Mr Benton,” retorted Mrs Moldham-Clegg, “is not always a very
reliable old gentleman. You would probably find, if you were to
speak to him today, that he has a completely different set of fancies.”
“Yet you keep him on?” Bradley remarked.
“Certainly, inspector. One does not dispense with one’s people’s
services simply on account of age or even a little eccentricity.”
Bradley seemed to find the point interesting. He leaned a little
forward. “Mr Arnold, though—he went into retirement pretty early,
didn’t he? Or so I understand.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg looked bewildered. Nothing was said for
several moments. Then she frowned angrily, not at Bradley but at
Purbright.
“I cannot imagine what relevance your friend’s question is supposed
to bear to the matter in hand. Perhaps you could enlighten
me, Mr Purbright?”
Purbright spoke soothingly. “We are just trying to assemble a
number of loose ends; I’m sorry if you find some of them confusing.
Let us first dispose of the man whose photograph Inspector Bradley
showed you. Did you not see him during Thursday’s auction sale?”
“I did not. On these occasions, one is too busy watching the
auctioneer to stare around at other bidders.”
“We did not say he was bidding,” observed Bradley.
The old woman stared at him. “Of course you did. Don’t be so Agatha Christie.”
Purbright patiently assembled another question. “Early on Friday
morning—round about one o’clock, perhaps, were you awakened
by an unusual noise, the sounds of a crudely conducted search
downstairs, one that involved the forcing of locks?”
“I was awakened by nothing, Mr Purbright. If you did more
riding, you would sleep better, I’ve no doubt.”
“Not by the discharge of a firearm?” Purbright persisted.
“Twice?” added Bradley.
Mrs Moldham-Clegg murmured a cross “Of course not!” The
tone expressed her opinion that the inquisition was in danger of
passing from the merely tiresome stage to one of actual bad taste.
“A shotgun was heard that night, you know,” said Purbright,
carefully, “and all I...”
“Now, now, now—you have had a fair innings, inspector. Let
me just put a question to you. No, two questions. What are all
those men hoping to accomplish by swarming over my land? And
when, pray, are you going to have the courtesy to return the property
you saw fit to seize?”
The “swarm”, it had to be admitted, was not accomplishing very
much. Some outbuildings had been examined, several yards of
gravel sifted in search of shotgun pellets, and tests for blood
made here and there. Benton had been asked by Detective Constable
Harper to make a statement relative to burglary and gunshots, and
had rendered a passable impersonation of a Fijian Islander suffering
from amnesia. Areas of undergrowth, explored by zealous
PC Phillips, had yielded several trails that might have been caused
by a dragged body—or a large foraging dog—or anything. He
further established that the nearest point at which the estate afforded
access to the river was a quarter of a mile away.
Not until the inspectors’ substantially abortive interview with
Mrs Moldham-Clegg was nearly over did anything patently significant reward the searchers.
The find was made by Wilkinson. He had made an excursion
of his own into the private avenue, gated at the road end, that
Purbright had used on his first visit. Twenty or thirty yards from
the house he noticed that the grass between two of the trees flanking
the overgrown driveway was flattened and that a patch of soil was
scored with wheel tracks. A car had been backed and turned there,
and very recently.
Wilkinson returned to the Hall to recruit the aid of PC Johnson,
who had been designated the expedition’s plaster man. Thwarted
so far by absence of footprints (“What do you expect on bloody
gravel?” Harper had observed, unhelpfully), Johnson gathered up
bag, bowl, bottle and trowel with new cheerfulness and trotted
off with Wilkinson to make casts of tyre marks. They also picked
a few late violets for Mrs Johnson.
It was then that Wilkinson saw, trodden into the grass, a
rectangular piece of pink paper. It was grimy but unfaded. He
turned it over and pressed it flat against his thigh.
“Receipt,” said Johnson, looking on.
“Oil,” said Wilkinson. The ticket had been issued by the Century
Service Station, Chalmsbury. He frowned at the pencilled date,
then saw what it was. “Twenty-seventh—when was that?”
“Thursday.”
Wilkinson was frowning again. “Lot of oil, isn’t it, four litres?”
“I’d have thought so.” Johnson had turned his main attention to
the bunch of violets. “Looks as if he splashed some around here.
Filthy sod.” Fastidiously, he picked out two of the little flowers and
threw them away, Wilkinson put the receipt into his notebook and
made another survey of the ground. He nodded once or twice.
“Black,” he said. “Must have been leaking from the engine.”
When they got back to the house they found Purbright standing
outside by a window that seemed to be the subject of a conversation
he was having with the inspector from London.
“He didn’t need to leave fingerprints, poor old Frank,” Bradley
was saying. “He really was a rotten burglar.” He pressed his forehead
against the glass and peered at the battered bureau. “Oh, God, yes.
Typical.”
They turned round on hearing the approach of the detective
and the constable. Wilkinson produced his notebook and made
something of a ceremony out of extracting the pink sales slip by
the very tip of one corner. He recounted their discoveries while
Johnson stood by modestly and kept three fingers in the breast
pocket of his tunic to ventilate the violets.
Purbright let the two men see him look pleased: occasions for
showing encouragement, he suspected, were going to be rare today.
In response to earnest representations by the
chief constable, augmented by the advice of Mr Richard Loughbury,
Colonel Moldham presented himself at Fen Street police headquarters
at four o’clock. Mr Loughbury accompanied him.
Mr Chubb and Inspectors Purbright and Bradley were waiting
in the chief constable’s office, to which a tea-tray was borne by
Policewoman Bellweather immediately after the guests’ arrival.
There were five cups and saucers on the tray, three of them
matching. The tea had been brewed from a packet fetched especially
from Hobley’s store, on the corner of Priory Lane, which kept open
until six on Sundays, and because it was an expensive blend it was
very stale.
Greetings were dispensed in accordance with personality and
social eminence.
“Good afternoon, colonel,” the chief constable said to the squire
of Moldham; then, in parenthesis, but courteously enough, “Afternoon, Richard,” to Rich Dick.
Colonel Moldham responded with a slight inclination of the
head and “Afternoon, Chubb.” He acknowledged the presence of the
two inspectors by splitting a brief, rather worried, stare between
them and murmuring, “Gentlemen.”
They stared back, but without sign of worry. “Colonel,” said
Purbright. Bradley said nothing.
For each policeman, the solicitor had brought one of his broadest smiles.
Purbright’s was inscribed Don’t-worry-we’ll-get-it-all-sorted-out;
and Bradley’s Bit-diferent-from-London-eh? There was
even one for Chubb, as well as the sonorous “Good afternoon,
Mr Chief Constable,” that Loughbury delivered with every
appearance of enjoying it himself.
The chief constable indicated his view of the seriousness of the
occasion by breaking with habit and actually sitting down. He
addressed the others.
“I regret to tell you, gentlemen, that something has happened
in Flaxborough which we have no choice but to regard as a possible
case of murder. Naturally, I make no judgment myself at this
stage, but you will appreciate, I am sure, that we are bound to
make prompt and diligent inquiries into every circumstance that
seems relevant.
“My officers have already initiated those inquiries, and, as is
only natural, some of them have been received with a little resentment—no,
not resentment—a little bewilderment, should I say?
Understandably. Oh, yes: understandably. It is always the same
on these occasions. And may I say that the police dislike having
to ask searching and sometimes embarrassing questions quite as
much as members of the public might dislike answering them.”
Rich Dick pursed his mouth and nodded several times. Colonel
Moldham gazed without expression at an empty chair on the other
side of the room. Purbright wondered flippantly if Mr Chubb were
about to propose a vote of thanks to the squire for having turned
up.
Instead, the chief constable presented a reasonably succinct
account of events at Thursday’s auction sale, of such subsequent
movements of O’Dwyer as had been deduced from evidence, and
of the recovery of his body from Pennick lock. He offered no
speculation as to why O’Dwyer had come to the district and he did
not mention the interview with Crutchy Anderson.
Nor did Mr Chubb make any reference to Veronica Moldham-Clegg to which her closest friend, let alone her nephew and her
man of law, might object.
Mr Loughbury was quick to cap the chief constable’s resume
with the general observation that the matter had been put in a
nutshell and that certain previously puzzling aspects either were
now plain or would be made so in the course of the next day or
so. Whereupon Rich Dick looked across at his client and gave a
shall-we-go? lift to his eyebrows.
But Colonel Moldham’s tired and chilly regard was elsewhere.
He was listening to Purbright’s first question.
It was a singularly direct one.
“Colonel, did you kill Francis Dean O’Dwyer?”
Rich Dick’s smile faded. The chief constable glanced at his
nails. Bradley’s eyes remained wide and innocent, like those of an
onlooker at a somewhat erudite quiz game. Moldham alone seemed
to find the question perfectly normal, almost commonplace. He
replied without hesitation.
“I did not.”
“But you did shoot the man?”
“I concede that that is possible.”
“Do you not know, sir?”
“Allow me to put it this way, inspector. An unauthorized person—a
man, as I believe—had come upon my property in the hours
of darkness. He did not answer my challenge. I aimed my gun at
a point above where I judged him to be hiding...”
“A shotgun, colonel?” The interjection was Mr Chubb’s.
“Naturally, a shotgun. Twelve bore. I fired one barrel. He ran
off; a little later I heard a car drive away. He must have left it
ready in the Church Avenue—that’s the old carriageway, as you
know.”
“And you did not then know who the man was,” said Purbright.
“But you have now learned, have you not, that the fingerprints on
pieces of glass from the window where he forced an entry have been
identified as those of a man called Francis Dean O’Dwyer?”
“So I understand. Whoever he might be.”
“You have never heard of him?”
“Never.”
Colonel Moldham was probably as relaxed as his customary
bearing allowed him to be, but Loughbury glanced at him occasionally
as if he were on the alert to prompt his client should it
prove necessary. Bradley noticed. He slipped in a question of his own.
“In your capacity as chairman of the board of management, do
you not consider it an interesting coincidence that the intruder at
Moldham Hall had earlier intruded violently upon an inmate of
Twilight Close?”
Moldham stiffened and frowned but made no reply.
Rich Dick stared at Bradley with ostensibly good-natured
reproval and said: “You know, Mr Bradley, I find the implication
of that question very difficult to follow. I do hope that Colonel
Moldham is not expected to enter some sort of defence in this
regard. Suppose it transpires that the late Mr O’Dwyer had a fight
that night in, say, the White Bear public house: would my client
then be required to justify his directorship of Flaxborough
Breweries?”
This humorous hypothesis seemed to please everybody, especially
Mr Loughbury.
Purbright resumed the questioning.
“When I called at your home on Friday morning, sir, I was
shown and removed for examination a piece of towelling that had
been found in the courtyard. Do you—or Mr Loughbury, perhaps—wish
to see it?”
The colonel shrugged indifferently. His solicitor, though, leaned
across the table. Purbright placed in his hand the polythene-wrapped
towel. Loughbury stared at it gravely and handed it back.
“The laundry code shows it to be one of the towels issued to
the residents of Twilight Close,” said Purbright. “As you can see,
it is quite heavily blood-stained. Have you an explanation of how
it came to be lying by your garage?”
“No. I certainly did not put it there.”
“There is a point regarding the gun which I should like to be
clear about, sir. Mr Benton says he heard two shots, not one.”
“He may well have done. I fired the second barrel when the
fellow ran off.”
“To frighten him, of course,” interposed Rich Dick.
Purbright looked at the colonel. “Just to frighten him, sir?”
“I didn’t shoot at the chap, if that’s what you mean.”
“You say he ran off, colonel. How far would you say he ran?”
Loughbury made dissenting noises. The inspector had heard it
was dark; how could he expect anyone to judge distance, particularly
in a moment of stress?
“The roughest approximation would be helpful,” Purbright
replied. “The colonel has told us that he heard O’Dwyer drive
away. I had hoped that he could estimate—even in the darkness—how
far off the car was when O’Dwyer reached it and started the
engine, as he doubtless lost no time in doing.”
This time Moldham was left to answer on his own. He said the
car sounded fairly distant, perhaps a couple of hundred yards down
the old carriageway.
This seemed to satisfy Purbright. Bradley, invited to put his
own choice of supplementary questions, shook his head.
Rich Dick interpreted this to signal the end of the interview. He
placed the tips of his fingers on the table before him and leaned
forward in preparation to rise. Mr Chubb looked similarly inclined.
“Now,” said Purbright, “we come to the question of why O’Dwyer
came to this part of the country and in particular what his object
was in breaking into Moldham Hall.”
The solicitor subsided back into his seat and began to stroke
his clean, white moustache with the end of his little finger. Mr
Chubb’s gaze wandered to the window: a sign, though still a mild
one, of diminishing approval.
“Was any of your property taken, colonel?” Purbright asked.
“No, nothing whatever.”
“Yet there was damage suggestive of a search inside the house,
was there not?” The question was a small open door, through
which Moldham might jettison his earlier dissimulation. He did so.
“A bureau was forced open, and some drawers and a cupboard
ransacked. As,” he added, “your chaps found when they went over
the place yesterday.”
“Do you recall,” Purbright went on, “employing on the estate a
man named Frederick Arnold some years ago?”
“Yes, I do.” Cautious, but unsurprised. “Quite a long time back.
Why?”
“Your aunt was anxious to buy something that had belonged to
Anold, sir. So, for some reason, was O’Dwyer. Our conjecture is
that he believed her to have been successful, and that he determined
to steal it. Do you find that a reasonable theory, sir?”
“On the contrary, I find it nonsensical. The truth is that my aunt
wished to make a contribution to Arnold’s dependents and she
devised, with Loughbury here, a little scheme to that end.” He
turned to the solicitor. “You did explain to the officer, did you not?”
Rich Dick nodded. “To his subordinate, yes. But, perhaps...”
“Detective Sergeant Love did report the conversation to me,”
Purbright confirmed. “However, it does not account for O’Dwyer’s
intervention at the sale. He, quite dearly, considered Arnold’s odds
and ends well worth bidding into the hundreds of pounds. Why,
sir?”
For the first time Colonel Moldham showed sign of irritation.
“You should be able to answer better than I, Purbright. You took
possession of the wretched things, and I don’t doubt they have
been all but pulverized by this time.”
“No, sir,” Purbright said, quietly. “Every care has been taken.
The tests have involved no damage to which Mrs Moldham-Clegg
could take exception.”
The chief constable ventured to intervene. “I must admit, colonel,
to finding myself a little in sympathy with my investigating officers.
Mr Purbright mentioned this scheme of your aunt’s to me earlier.
Quite frankly, I thought it eccentric.”
“She is an old lady,” said Moldham, dryly.
Mr Chubb fluttered an understanding hand. “Yes, yes, yes, we
do appreciate that, naturally.” He pondered a moment, then tried
again. “She was fond of this old servant, was she? A sort of...well,
family retainer relationship?”
“You might express it in those terms, I suppose.”
“The family was paying Mr Arnold a pension, in fact, was it
not, colonel?” Purbright asked.
“The estate made him certain ex gratia payments.”
“Which he accepted?” This from Bradley.
“Certainly he did. They would scarcely have been payments if
he hadn’t accepted them.”
Bradley nodded pleasantly. “No. True.”
“This little scheme of your aunt’s...” Purbright paused.
“Yes?”
“I presume she had been notified of Arnold’s death...”
“Of course. Wellbeloved reported it to me.”
“Ah, yes. But how did she learn of the impending sale of his
personal property? Was Mr Wellbeloved a party to the scheme
devised by Mrs Moldham-Clegg and Mr Loughbury?”
“I don’t much care for that word ‘party’, Purbright. You made
perfectly innocent little act of charity sound like a conspiracy.”
This time Moldham was clearly angry. Loughbury donned an
amensely conciliatory smile and addressed Purbright.
“If I may just intervene a moment, gentlemen... Of course, the
inspector is right to ask how Mrs Moldham-Clegg got to know
about poor old Arnold’s bits and pieces being put up for sale. And
there is a simple answer. I told her.” The smile broadened even
further. “I happened, for my sins, to be the old chap’s solicitor.” He
waited for this intelligence to take effect, then added: “So if any
conspiring has gone on, it is I who must plead guilty.”
Bradley looked as if he wanted to congratulate the solicitor.
Rich Dick waited, gazing at him equably.
“As the late Mr Arnold’s legal adviser,” Bradley remarked, “you
must have been professionally pained by the discovery that he died
intestate.”
Mr Loughbury sighed. “A stubborn old fellow, alas. And superstitious. If
only people would realize what difficulties they bequeath heir relatives by
failing to make simple provision...”
There was a short silence.
“Do you know Dr Gule, sir?” Purbright asked Colonel Moldham.
“Who?”
“Dr D. Gule. He attends patients at Twilight Close.”
“I know him, yes. See him at committee meetings and so on. I
don’t know him socially, if that’s what you mean.”
Purbright’s notebook had been lying before him, closed. He
jnow opened it and glanced at a couple of pages.
“Anything further, Mr Purbright?” the chief constable prompted,
softly but with distinct coolness.
“I don’t think so, sir.” The inspector shut and put away his book
and glanced at his London colleague. Bradley shook his head.
“Good of you to come, colonel.” Mr Chubb had risen, but did
not offer Moldham his hand.
In a flurry of brisk geniality, Rich Dick covered the withdrawal
of his client. The squire’s face was blank, his farewells murmured
monosyllables.
Purbright and Bradley did not leave at once, but resumed their
seats while Mr Chubb stood at the window, gazing out.
He spoke without turning round.
“Bruce Moldharn doesn’t take very kindly to this sort of thing,
you know.”
Purbright avoided Bradley’s eye. “No, sir?”
There was a further silence. Then, “Shy chap,” Mr Chubb said.
The chief constable crossed to the fireplace. He leaned lightly
against the column supporting the mantel-shelf. “I suppose,” he
said to Bradley, “that you find our little mysteries rather tame after
London crime.”
“I find them more convoluted,” said Bradley.
“Perhaps,” suggested Mr Chubb, “we in the country need to be a
little more...”—he sought a word—“...delicate in our
investigating than would be appropriate in a big city.” He smiled weakly.
“One has to live with these people afterwards, you see.”
“Not if one succeeds in sending them down the line. Not for
the next few hunting seasons, anyway.”
Purbright watched the chief constable examine his manicure.
When Mr Chubb was pleased, he would hold his hand flat and
pointing away from himself; displeasure always was signalled by
his turning the hand over and doubling the fingers like a half-formed fist. This was how he was regarding his nails now.
“Oh, I don’t think there is any question of sending Colonel
Moldham, ah, down the line, Mr Bradley,” said the chief constable,
very quietly.
Purbright regarded Mr Chubb with what looked like controlled
surprise. “He has admitted to shooting the man, sir.”
“Only up to a point, Mr Purbright. He has not specifically confessed to it.”
“He has not specifically confessed to telling lies,” said Purbright,
“but he has three or four sizeable ones to his credit already.”
“Oh?”
“He lied originally about the break-in and about the incidental
damage. Today he attempted to lie about the number of shots he
fired. He went along with the patently absurd story of his aunt’s
charitable plot. And he contradicted Benton’s account of O’Dwyer
and the car by saying that the car had been left a fair way off,
perhaps two hundred yards; Benton told me it was actually within
the courtyard itself.”
Mr Chubb pondered these inconsistencies for several moments,
then looked at his watch.
He turned to Purbright, who already was rising to leave.
“I shall be at home from about seven o’clock onwards, you know.
By all means telephone me if you need to.”
Apart from tests upon those parts of him that
had been abstracted and put into jars, the post-mortem upon
Francis Dean O’Dwyer was over. Purbright went with Bradley and
Sergeant Love to the General Hospital and met the secretary of
the resident pathologist in a little room off the dispensary that once
had been known as the matron’s sitting room. The secretary, Miss
Oolik, was said to have come from Iceland. She was prettily round-faced,
wore spectacles big as a bicycle, and could take medical
shorthand like mother’s milk. Love regarded her with unqualified
admiration.
“Ha, what a splendid fellow we had for this one, gents!” was
her introduction. “Home office special.” She perched on a high stool
and twined long legs about it like the stems of a healthy house
plant. “Whiskers, he had. Beaver.” Pouting, she stroked her cheeks
and chin. Love laughed.
Mackenzie, Purbright guessed. A gunshot specialist.
Miss Oolik peered into her notebook. “Now then, gents...I
think, I think, I think well be finding something funny about this
one...wait a moment, please.” She flicked pages over, noisily, one
neat foot jerking in time. Bradley watched the foot and some of
the leg.
Miss Oolik took less than five minutes to extract the essential
facts from her record of the doctors’ running commentary upon
their discoveries. Love jotted them down, aided every now and then
by a considerate and charming pause on the part of the transcriber
and even an occasional spelling-out that she managed to make
sound so unpatronizing that Love felt by the end of the recital that
he had been permitted to assist at an important operation, scalpel,
forceps and all.
“So he wasn’t drowned,” said Purbright, when Miss Oolik had
finished.
She looked at him, then at Bradley. “So sorry. That is what you
wanted?”
They smiled. So did Love. Then seriousness set in. Purbright
recapitulated the main findings, as he recalled them, while the girl
listened and nodded in confirmation.
No water had been found in the lungs, so death had taken place
before the body entered the river. Such injuries as there were on
the lower part of the body were superficial and attributable to
striking obstructions after death. The man was well nourished and
reasonably free of disease.
He had died of shock following the penetration of his brain
by a foreign body, presumably a shotgun pellet, one of several
which had lodged in the head and neck area. The distribution
pattern of these pellets suggested that two cartridges had been
discharged, at close-medium range, each from a different direction.
“What,” Purbright asked Miss Oolik, “did you mean a little while
ago by ‘something funny about this one’?”
“You cannot see it?”
“I can see several odd things. I was only wondering if Dr
Heineman—or Mackenzie, perhaps—had mentioned anything in
particular.”
She nodded. “It was Dr Mackenzie. Please, though, do not make
songs about this until the proper report.” Love unconsciously
stiffened his jaw and shook his head. Purbright promised tactfulness.
Miss Oolik turned back several pages of her notes. She raised a
finger. “Here we have it. You will remember? This strange fellow
has no teeth.”
Purbright looked slightly bewildered. “So? He probably had
false ones.”
Bradley said: “Dentures are quite easily lost. Vomiting can
do it.”
“Strangulation,” added Purbright, without conviction. “Or blows
on the head.”
“The body had been knocked about in the river a bit,” Bradley
added.
The sergeant, who had the vague feeling that it would be disloyal,
forebore from mentioning the case of his fiancée’s father,
who once had parted from his teeth simply by yawning in church.
Miss Oolik dismissed all this rationalization. “Not ever,” she
declared, “has a man—or a lady—been killed by a gunshot through
the brain pan with loss of denture consequently. So has said Dr
Mackenzie.” She gave Purbright an almost envious look: “He is
making the point special in his report for you.”
“I look forward to reading it.”
Despite the smell of iodoform that lingered still upon the person
of Miss Oolik, their departure from the neat, spinsterish little
room, with its flowery wallpaper and chairs in matching covers,
was more like the conclusion of a visit for tea than for an autopsy
summary.
“What an obliging young woman,” Bradley said.
A deeply preoccupied Purbright remained silent until they
reached the main corridor on their way out of the hospital.
“Do you know anything about guns?” he asked Bradley.
“Not a great deal.”
“Nor do I, but I should say that O’Dwyer was more than a little
unlucky to have that one pellet get into where it mattered. The
others didn’t do much damage.”
“Skulls do have unluckily thin bits sometimes. In Frankie’s case,
that would not surprise me in the least.”
“The squire of Moldham would seem to me to be a better shot
than the family retainer gave him credit for.”
“You mean the old gentleman who has now lost his memory?”
“Benton, yes.”
“Would he not be a better witness away from his tied cottage,
or grace-and-favour residence?”
Gloomily, Purbright begged leave to doubt it.
They had almost reached the intersection with the corridor from
the female geriatric wards when they were obliged to stand aside
to make way for a procession that was rounding the corner and
bearing down upon them.
It was led by a lady in a black-belted, square, dark blue dress,
walking rather faster than her length of leg was designed for; and
presenting in consequence an appearance of choleric determination,
which was very alarming.
She was followed by two young women, their white coats a-swirl,
in the leader’s slip-stream. One bore a deep tray containing instruments and bottles; the other, a bundle of files.
In the centre of the parade was a figure whose most immediately
noticeable feature was his style of locomotion, a sort of rolling
prance. Holding his shabby sports-jacket close by keeping his hands
in its pockets, he leaned forward as he advanced and peered ahead
over half-moon spectacles in an attitude of perpetual diagnosis.
The impression of rolling was given by a rather womanish, self-regarding sway of the hips. The feet, which were turned outward,
made no sound whatever: they were small and encased in very
soft shoes, plimsoles perhaps.
“Who’s the ageing matinée idol?” Bradley whispered.
“Gule.”
The procession was nearly level with them now. The rearguard
became identifiable. It consisted of three junior doctors, two black,
one white; and a woman physical therapist, much out of breath.
All were in white coats. The doctors wore stethoscopes, displayed
with meticulous carelessness.
Purbright moved forward. “Dr Gule, may I speak to you for a
moment?”
The half-moon glasses swivelled instantly in his direction. No
less swift was the consultant’s diagnosis. Disgruntled patient,
almost certainly National Health. He pranced on, scowling.
“Dr Gule,” tried Purbright once more.
The woman in belted blue made a sudden U-turn, leaving the
cavalcade to pursue its own way. She drew up beside Purbright,
red-faced and vibrant. “What is it you want?” she whispered angrily.
Bradley leaned toward her in an attitude of confidentiality. “I
think,” he said, “that you’ve left your engine running, madam.”
There was a moment of paralysis.
“Who are you?”
Before Bradley could exacerbate the situation, which he appeared
eager to do, Purbright took control
“You know very well who I am, sister. This is Detective Inspector
Bradley. We are here on official business and we wish to have a
word with the doctor.”
Outrage was gradually replaced by doubt. “He’s a very busy man,
Mr Purbright. Is it something important?”
“It is.”
She pondered, then pointed herself in the direction taken by the
cavalcade. “Stay here. I’ll find out if he can see you for a momentt.”
“Might I suggest you simply whisper the word ‘fee’ to him,
madam?” was Bradley’s parting advice. Purbright saw the sister’s
sternum jerk with indignation. “I devoutly trust,” he said to Bradley,
“that you will never need to enter here as a patient.”
They stood waiting. A young nurse went by. She eyed them
without curiosity and walked away up the long corridor, her shoes
clacking loosely upon the gleaming floor. A male orderly, coming
from the opposite direction, danced a few steps around the nurse
and slapped her bottom. He was wearing white rubber boots and
a Wild West marshal moustache. He winked ferociously as he
passed the policemen.
The sister returned.
“Doctor will see you in a few minutes.” She indicated the corridor
junction. “Just go round the corner and wait. There are some seats
there.”
The seats proved to be a plastic-covered bench against the corridor
wall. There were several doors nearby, unidentified except by
numbers. “Which is the Vatican, I wonder,” mused Bradley. He
went from one to another, listening against their panels, then
shrugged and sat down.
Five minutes went by. Then another five. Traffic was not heavy.
It consisted mainly of women patients, on their way, Purbright
surmised, to a lavatory or a washroom. All seemed very old. Tented
within the too-big, striped, hospital-issue dressing gowns, they
looked incredibly tiny, with gentle, anxious eyes and brown, frond-like
hands. They replied to his greeting with timid courtesy, as if
uncertain whether they might have to pay.
At the end of quarter of an hour, Bradley went back to the
doors. This time he began knocking on them and trying their
handles. The first two revealed empty consulting rooms. He was
about to broach the third.
“Whatever are you doing?”
It was the sister. She appeared genuinely surprised. Purbright
spoke to her.
“Will you kindly tell Dr Gule that we insist on speaking to him
at once.”
She looked from one to the other.
“Have you not seen him?”
Neither replied. She gave a little shake of the head.
“I’m afraid Doctor has left. He’s gone home.”
There was a long pause.
Then, as Purbright, grim-faced, was about to speak, Bradley
gave him a meaningful glance before addressing the sister with an
air of grave solicitude: “You understand, don’t you, sister, that we
cannot divulge the reason for our wishing to interview Dr Gule?”
“Naturally.” Brusque. On her dignity. But curious.
Bradley smiled, nodded, turned away; then, as if on afterthought,
back again.
“At least you might be able to help in a matter of perfectly
innocent male inquisitiveness. When a lady—one of your nurses,
say—leaves her handbag in a changing room or a ladies’ lavatory,
would she leave money in it?”
The sister, almost too awed by the question’s implications to
attempt an answer, said she supposed it would all depend.
“Ah,” said Bradley.
They took the Chalmsbury road after Purbright had telephoned
Fen Street from a public box in the hospital grounds and told
Love that until his return he might be reached at the Century
Service Station, Benstone Road, Chalmsbury, or, later, at the home
of Dr D. Gule, Mill Lane, Chalmsbury.
It was sunny still and warm when they reached the southern
outskirts of Chalmsbury. From Brocklestone and the coast, twenty
miles further on, the cars of holiday-makers were returning in a
steady stream. Through the approaching windscreens could be
caught glimpses of angry men clad in vests and women half-turned
in their seats to shout at tired, tear-streaked children. One, Purbright
noticed, had commandeered and was wielding in the interests of
discipline her infant’s wooden seaside spade.
The Century Service Station had a twin forecourt on each side
of the road. A queue of a dozen or so cars had formed at the
pumps opposite, but the nearside station was doing no business. In
a glass cabin an old man sat reading a page of newspaper. When
he saw Purbright’s car draw up, he folded the page very small
and slipped it under a mug of tea. He went outside and stood by
the nearest pump. “Which one, mester?”
On hearing that information and not petrol was being sought,
the old man looked relieved. He ushered both visitors into his cabin.
“The smell gets on your stomach. This weather ’specially.”
Asked, he said his name was Walker, Tom Walker.
“Are you on all night, Mr Walker?” Purbright inquired.
Aye, he was. Five nights a week. Until seven in the morning.
Was he here last Thursday night? Thursday?—yes, that’s right,
he was.
And had he, that night, served this gentleman in the photo?
Indeed he had. The one with a car like a colander. Gordamitey, he
needed his own private oil well, that fellow.
“Funny you should ask about him,” added Mr Walker.
“Oh?” Purbright let him wonder it out. The old man helped his
thought processes by pulling the end of his nose and twisting it,
like a dial that needed delicate adjustment. But “No,” he said at
last. “It’s no good.”
“You mean, you think you know this man?” prompted Bradley.
“Not to say know him. But that face. I reckon I ought to be able
to place it.”
They asked him other questions.
“What time did you serve him, do you remember?”
“Not real late. Ten-ish, p’raps. Or a bit after.”
“Was there anything unusual about him? Any marks? Did he
seem to be trying to hide anything?”
“I think he’d cut his hand.”
“His hand?” Purbright was frowning.
“I thought there was some blood on it. And there was a cloth
beside him, on the seat.”
“Bloodstained?”
“Aye, I reckon it was. Just a bit.”
“Did he have anything to say, Mr Walker?” asked Bradley.
The old man considered. He was fondling the ear of a little grey
cat that lay on a shelf beside him, its tail drooping perilously dose
to the tea in Mr Walker’s mug.
“No, not really,” decided Mr Walker. The cat half-opened an
eye and subjected Purbright to slow, supercilious appraisal. Mr
Walker remembered something. “Hang on, though—he did ask
me the way somewhere—he asked the way to Mill Lane.”
They thanked the old man, stroked his cat, and left.
“Your Mr O’Dwyer may not have spent very long in this part
of the world, but he certainly packed in a lot of social calls,”
Purbright said to Bradley, as they drove off.
“His friends on the Finchley Road will be impressed when they
hear. Dear me—a shoot with the landed gentry—hobnobbing with
consultants...”
“But not,” Purbright observed quickly, “in that order, you’ll notice.
Why, when he’d finished knocking respect into old Crutchy
Anderson, did he come chasing after Dr Gule, of all people?”
“We don’t know that he did.”
“He didn’t come all this way just to find an all-night garage.
Anyway, Mill Lane would be too much of a coincidence: there
aren’t above six houses from one end to the other.”
“You remember that when we talked to Anderson, he mentioned
having told Frankie of Arnold’s connection with the Moldham
family?”
Purbright smiled. “The harristocrofats, yes. Just before he passed
out.”
“He made it sound as if the information had been forced out of
him. Yet Frankie considered it less important, less urgent, than
something he’d learned about Dr Gule. Or so it would seem.”
Purbright agreed.
“Why, then,” Bradley asked, “did that otherwise talkative old
sailorman not tell us what it was?”
“Fear of O’Dwyer?”
“I doubt it. Frankie was a man who didn’t linger or return once
he’d got what he wanted. And Anderson, I should say, is the sort
of old rogue who would be able to size him up pretty quickly. It’s
somebody else he’s frightened of.”
They had reached a part of Chalmsbury set well back behind
the main road and served by a narrow lane shaded by huge chestnut
trees, where a speculative builder had, in the 1960s, created “for
the more discriminating home owner” his Villas in the Dell, a
scattering of extortionately priced single-storey dwellings that an
unimpressed council insisted on defining merely as one-to-seven
Mill Lane.
“As a reward for your percipience,” Purbright said to Bradley, as
the car turned into the broad gateway of “Sylvanus”, or number six,
“I’ll let you have first bite at the gentleman who kept us waiting so
long.”
The house was built on an irregularly-shaped
plot of land in such a way that most of what was to spare lay
between the front of the house and its flanking double garage.
The area was paved but a flagstone had been left out here and
there to allow rose bushes to be planted. These now were overgrown
and straggled across the concrete like brambles.
A big blue saloon was in the garage, one door of which was still
open. Part of the car’s rear bodywork was buckled, an old wound,
scabbed with rust.
Purbright took his time walking to the front door. He seemed
interested in the flagstones.
Bradley strolled alongside. They approached the big semi-circular
arch of dressed stone that served as entrance porch. In its
shelter, Purbright pointed back to the patch of oil-soaked concrete
he had spotted near one of the bushes. It was a foot across and
gleamed thickly in the evening sun.
“He was here for some time, by the look of it,” Purbright said.
There was no audible response to his pressing the bell button.
It seemed not to be working. He tapped sharply with a coin. Almost
at once, the door opened.
The girl standing there was young. She was pretty, but looked
tired. From beneath the long skirt, made of a russet curtain-like
material, peeped bare feet. She had enamelled her toe-nails green;
the feet, though, were childishly grubby.
“Yer?”
“My colleague and I,” Bradley began, “should be much obliged
if...”
“Yer wot?”
For a moment Purbright was beset by the notion that the poor
girl’s difficulty in enunciation, together with the seemingly
involuntary nodding and shaking of her head and shoulders, were
indicative of some palsy-like illness. Then he realized that they
were associated in fact with the sound he could hear somewhere
inside the house of a radio or record player. He withheld the nudge
whereby he was about to warn Bradley not to be unkind to a sick
girl.
Bradley tried again, in firmer tones.
“We are police officers and we wish to see Dr Gule. At once.
Please tell him so.”
“Wossy dunthen?”
Bradley preserved a stern silence. After a while, the girl shrugged
and called back into the house.
“Hey, Dey-do, s’few.”
She waited, half-turned in the doorway, looking upward with
her mouth a little open. Into the vacancy of her expression crept a
slow smile. “Scuppla dix,” she called, then listened again. She
winked mischievously at Purbright before calling once more.
“C’mon, s’few. S’fline squod.”
Beyond the girl, Bradley discerned movement. He stepped forward
and stood by her side. “Dr Gule, may we come in? I believe
you know who we are.”
Without looking at her, Gule took the girl by the wrist and
thrust her aside. She stuck out her tongue and ambled away
contentedly in the direction of the musical pulsations.
Gule was not wearing his diagnostic half-moons but nevertheless
regarded the callers by habit from beneath lowered brows.
“You say you are policemen?”
“We confidently assert it,” replied Bradley.
For several seconds Dr Gule continued to scrutinize his visitors
as if hopeful of decrying symptoms of imminent mortification.
Purbright gazed back, not defiantly, but with mild curiosity at the
patches of hair which survived the doctor’s otherwise fastidious
razoring of his grave, slightly eunuch-like face; they grew upon
cheekbones and adam’s apple and resembled little rolls of wire.
“You must realize,” said Gule, “that this is my private residence
and not an out-patients’ department. Could you not have called at
the hospital?”
Bradley looked politely interested. “Which hospital would that
be, doctor?”
“Flaxborough General. I was there earlier this evening. I would
have had no objection to making myself available, had you asked in
a proper manner.”
Bradley, watched by the admiring Purbright, leaned forward and
gave Gule’s upper arm a friendly squeeze. “Don’t reproach yourself,
doctor. What matters is that you are available now. Shall we
go inside?” And he stepped through the doorway, ushering Gule
into his own house.
Purbright followed. They were in a lobby which, though spacious,
did not quite allow that distancing of parties essential to the
proper display of indignation. Dr Gule nevertheless made no
move towards accommodation more suitable for that purpose. He
remained standing—tight-lipped and uncertain beside a table
bearing a telephone, a litter of magazines and a brassière.
Bradley glanced about him. There were three doors, one ajar,
revealing a lavatory; also an arched opening through which the
girl had retreated. Music pulsed out of it like a chain of muffled
explosions.
“What exactly is it you want?” Dr Gule inquired. “I have an
appointment very shortly.”
“I beg your pardon?” Bradley was cupping a hand to his ear.
The doctor swung about and marched out of the lobby. A moment
or two later the sudden muting of the sounds within was followed
by a nasal wail of objection. Gule reappeared, pale with
annoyance.
“Yes?” His look suggested that they had been waiting to try and
sell him an home pharmacopoeia.
“Look, sir,” said Purbright, “don’t you think it would be better
if we went inside and sat down comfortably to talk?”
“No, I don’t. I have an important appointment in a matter of a
few minutes.”
Bradley lit an understanding smile. “Come now, doctor:
Inspector Purbright and I are used to a little untidiness. You should
see some of the homes I’ve had to visit off the Caledonian Road.”
Dr Gule looked at Purbright. “What is your chief constable’s
telephone number?
“His home number is ex-directory, sir.”
“No doubt. You know it, though, surely?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well?”
“If you wish to speak to Mr Chubb, I could ask the station if he
is available and willing to receive the call on his extension line.”
“Do that.”
Purbright crossed to the telephone and disinterred it from the
pile of magazines. He dialled, then dangled the bra from one
finger, and held it out towards Gule in an absent-minded offer of
custodianship, which the doctor pointedly ignored. After a while
Bradley relieved Purbright of the brassière and, at the moment of
the doctor’s reaching to accept the phone, draped it reverently over
his forearm.
Purbright’s helpfulness was not uninspired by his knowledge that
Mr Chubb would, at this time of day, almost certainly be engaged
either in tending his greenhouse cultures or in grooming his Yorkshire
terriers: both tasks of pre-eminent importance to him. He
therefore was not surprised by the difficulty the consultant appeared
to experience in making his identity known and appreciated; nor
by the early termination—obviously on the initiative of the chief
constable—of the ensuing exchange.
When, trembling and white-faced, Dr Gule put down the
receiver, Purbright addressed him firmly and with seriousness.
“Let us waste no further time, doctor. We are investigating what
may be murder. It is in your own interest as well as ours that you
answer our questions as fully and clearly as you can. If you wish
me to emphasize that point, I shall have to tell you—and this is
no more and no less than the truth—that you, as far as the evidence
goes at the moment, were the last person to see the victim alive.”
“Victim? What victim?” The repetition of the word was made
quietly, without bluster, as though Gule found puzzling the use
by Purbright of so melodramatic a term.
Bradley answered. His attitude, too, was now more grave. “The
man’s name is O’Dwyer. A Londoner.”
“Why should you suppose I might know anything about such a
man? O’Dwyer... Who is he—a patient?”
“I doubt it, sir,” said Purbright. “But he did call to see you.
Here. Late on Thursday night.”
Gule’s implacably cold expression did not change, but there was
a distinct pause before he spoke again.
“And from what source did you obtain that piece of information?”
“Would you mind telling me why Mr O’Dwyer came to see you
on Thursday night, sir?”
The doctor stared defiantly at Purbright for some seconds longer,
then half turned aside, shrugging.
“Someone did call here, yes. Fellow in his forties. An unpleasant
and obstreperous man whose name I do not know and have no
desire to know. From the fact that...”
“Such a man?” Bradley was holding up by one corner the photograph of O’Dwyer.
Gule glowered at it. “Yes. Obvious psychopath. I gathered afterwards that he’d been causing trouble at the Close. He put his hand
through a glass door, apparently.”
“He was injured?”
“One hand was wrapped up. It had bled. I assumed that there
had been an accident nearby and that some fool had sent the
wretched man round to me. Consultants might as well be plumbers
as far as some people are concerned.”
“You did admit this man, though,” said Bradley.
“He pushed his way in,” Gule amended. The tone implied that
psychopaths and police inspectors had certain traits in common.
“Without explanation?”
“Without any coherent explanation. He raved and made threats.
I thought he was drunk.”
“What was the nature of his threats, sir?” Purbright asked.
“I have no idea.”
“You mean you have forgotten them, doctor?”
“I mean that I paid no attention to them. They simply did not
register.”
“You thought the man was drunk,” said Bradley, helpfully.
“I did, yes—as I have said already.”
“And ever since,” pursued Bradley, with no less solicitude, “you
have been anxious.”
“Anxious? Anxious about what?”
“A motor car was driven away that night by a man you assumed
to be drunk. You are a public-spirited citizen. You cannot have
been indifferent to the possible consequences.”
Dr Gule looked at his watch. “I have had more important things
to think about.”
Bradley considered, then nodded. “Which would explain why
you did not report to the police that a drunken stranger who had
forced his way into your house and threatened you was now at
large on the public highway in charge of a motor car.”
Gule by now was looking extremely angry. “If you have finished
with the insinuations, inspector...” He made as if to open the
front door. The move had no effect on Bradley. He made another
of his bland announcements.
“We are pleased to bring you reassurance, doctor. Mr O’Dwyer was not
intoxicated when he intruded upon your hospitality. My colleague”—with
a slightly courtly gesture he indicated Purbright—“will confirm that
the post-mortem showed his system at death to
have been absolutely innocent of alcohol.”
“You don’t know when he died,” retorted Gule.
Purbright regarded him sharply. “Do you, sir?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Do you own a shotgun, sir?”
“Why? Am I supposed to have used one on the fellow?”
“I am only asking you if you own a gun, doctor. You will be
able to attend your appointment much more promptly if you simply
answer these questions. You are not the only person to whom
they are being put, I assure you.”
Gule, a little mollified, conceded that he did own a gun. As they
would know if they consulted their licence list. And yes, he did
shoot occasionally. Where?—here and there. Moldham?—no, not
at Moldham. Did he know Colonel Moldham?—only in connection
with hospital administration.
Once Dr Gule had surrendered himself, so to speak, to the
disagreeable formalities of inquisition, the encounter lost much
of the entertainment engendered by mutual bloody-mindedness.
He continued stolidly to disclaim knowledge of O’Dwyer’s identity
or aims; and to parry every question concerning the late Mr Arnold
with a reference to medical ethics. His answers were beginning to
sound wearily disdainful like those of an ambassador defending his
diplomatic bag against the importunities of a couple of native
policemen.
At the end of quarter of an hour or so the two natives departed,
but not before one of them—it was Bradley—observed with a
ghastly jolly copper condescension that their going would doubtless
be appreciated by Mrs Gule, who henceforth would “be able
to have her music on again”.
Purbright stopped the car at the first telephone kiosk and rang
Fen Street. After giving Love instructions, he put a call through
to the superintendent of Twilight Close.
Mr Wellbeloved, ravished from enjoyment of a programme of
hymn singing on television, was not in charitable mood. This
somehow made it easier for Purbright to tell him, without equivocation,
that a police surgeon, accompanied by an officer, was on his
way to examine one of his, Mr Wellbeloved’s, charges, and that
under no circumstances was the man in question to be given any
medication in the meantime.
Rejoining Bradley in the car, Purbright shook his head. “There
is,” he said, “a terrible deal of righteous indignation around at the
moment. I am beginning to feel like Admiral Byng.”
“You can always put the blame on me,” suggested Bradley. “I am
manifestly uncouth and provocative.”
“What did you think of Dr Gule?”
Bradley smiled to himself. “An inordinately vain fellow, certainly.
But anxious. Personally disorganized. Probably unhappy.
Has he a drink record?”
“He would have had, I think, but for a blind eye or two in the
right quarter.”
“A womanizer?”
“Reputedly. His patients don’t mind; they seem to regard that
sort of thing as conferring cachet.”
“Odd, isn’t it,” said Bradley, “that a drunken and disreputable
physician has only to avoid actually killing somebody to acquire a
popular reputation for outstanding professional brilliance.”
“Doctors inspire quite different attitudes from those we adopt
towards other kinds of specialist,” Purbright suggested. “We aren’t
filled with gratitude and admiration for a service engineer just
because the washing machine he’s mended fails to electrocute us.”
“No, our expectations of the more mundane tradesmen are
paradoxically higher. If Gule were a plumber, he’d be out of
business in a fortnight. One does not wish one’s tap water to be
renewed by a libertine.”
“If Gule were a plumber,” said Purbright, “I fancy he would
be in trouble over the plumber’s mate. I much doubt if that girl is
yet sixteen.”
“In that case, she has a precocious taste in jewellery.”
“The necklace thing?” Purbright was frowning, as if at some
missed point.
“Those were no worry beads,” said Bradley, “unless we’re talking
about the worry of paying for them.”
“Expensive?”
Bradley did not reply at once. Purbright glanced at him and
saw that he was smiling. He looked again at the road ahead and
said: “Oh, dear.”
“Never mind; we couldn’t have done much about it. Not on the
spur of the moment.”
Purbright was not consoled. “He’ll get rid of the damn thing.”
“Only if he panics,” said Bradley. “Disposing of it would force
him into a blank denial of something that he must know very well
would then be construed as a motive for killing O’Dwyer. Anyway,
the girl won’t let him. She isn’t living with Gule for the sake of
his bedside manners.”
Purbright’s “They’re not emeralds, are they?” sounded like a
not very hopeful plea to be spared the worst.
“Oh, no,” Bradley assured him. “Not emeralds.”
“As a matter of fact, I thought they looked rather too gaudy to
be valuable—especially as they’d been strung together in that rather
home-made way.”
“The girl probably did that. The original setting will have been
unpinned and broken up.”
“In order,” said Purbright, gloomily, “to make it easier to hide
the bits in a plaster cast called ‘At the End of Life’s Lane’.”
“What a nice name for a pension fund.”
The road now was taking a wide sweep through parkland
bordered by giant chestnut trees. The low evening sun gilded
their branches and picked out in shadow the grassed-over ribs of
ancient strip farming.
“Some of the Moldham acres,” Purbright remarked.
“They smell very pleasant.” Bradley had wound down the window
and was sniffing the scents of roadside meadowsweet and cow
parsley mixed with the breeze-borne redolence of a distant field
of bean flowers.
“Perhaps our odour will be more acceptable at the Hall when
we bear tidings of rediscovered family treasure.”
“Treasure?” Bradley looked dubious. “Hardly. Nice stones, quite richly set,
but we’re talking in terms of some hundreds perhaps—certainly
not thousands.” He paused, as Purbright thought, uncomfortably, then
said: “You mustn’t mind this odious knowledgeability. I belonged for a while
to what journals of the lower sort like to term the Sparklers Squad.”
“Ah, so you’re not so ignorant—which I am—as to suppose
anything green and shining to be an emerald.”
“No, green glass is always my first bet. But Arnold’s hoard—if
that is what the girl is wearing—looks to me like Russian chrysoberyl. Did you notice the green colour change to purple when she
went out of the hall into a passage under artificial light?”
Purbright took his attention from the road long enough to give
Bradley a sidelong stare of admiration.
“Alexandrite, they call it,” added Bradley effortlessly. “Found in
the Urals and Ceylon.”
“Dr Thorndyke,” murmured Purbright, “rides again.”
When the two inspectors arrived at the little
infirmary in Twilight Close, they found Sergeant Love standing
in a sentry-like attitude outside the door.
“He’s being examined now,” said Love, making an indicative
movement of his head. “I couldn’t get Reynolds,” he added,
cheerfully.
“Police surgeon,” explained Purbright in an aside to Bradley.
“Why was that?” he asked Love.
“His wife said he wasn’t in, but that was only after I explained
what we wanted him for. I think he just didn’t want to come out
on this particular job.”
Purbright spoke again to Bradley. “I was afraid this might
happen. The local GPs will do anything rather than run foul of a
consultant.”
Love looked pleased with himself. “Dr Rambanajee didn’t mind.
He came straight away.”
Purbright drew a quick breath. He waited a moment before
saying: “Ah, well, that’s all right, then.”
“He is on the list of deputies,” pointed out Love, suddenly
apprehensive.
“Yes, of course. You’ve done very well, Sid.”
Bradley had been listening. He gave Purbright a questioning
glance. “Incompetent?”
“Far from it. Absolutely reliable. Gule would enjoy trepanning
him without anaesthetic.”
After about ten minutes the door opened and the little nurse
peeped round it daintily. She beckoned.
Cratchy Anderson was sitting up in bed. He leered sleepily at
the approaching policemen and raised in greeting a hand like a
piece of driftwood.
Beside him, Dr Rambanajee folded the inflatable cuff of his
sphygmomanometer, shut the lid of the instrument and packed it
with precision in his case. He looked up as Purbright walked to the
bed and declared jocularly: “He will live a while yet, this fellow.”
The head of Dr Rambanajee consisted of three circles: the face
itself, gleaming brown and expressive of reflective amusement;
and the big, exactly round lenses of his gold-rimmed spectacles.
“It was kind of you to come at such short notice, doctor,” said
Purbright.
The circles inclined forward gracefully.
“I explained,” put in Sergeant Love, “that Mr Anderson had made
a request for a second opinion.”
The sailorman’s grin broadened in confirmation. He groped
beneath the bedclothes and brought forth a bottle of Guinness.
He looked about him uncertainly, then raised the bottle to his
mouth.
Love, sharing the horror of the general impression that the old
man was about to bite the neck off, snatched the bottle away and
drew from his own pocket a pen-knife whose many supplementary
devices included a corkscrew and a bottle opener.
“I will write for Mr Anderson a report which he may care to
show you,” said Dr Rambanajee to Purbright. “For the moment,
it may be of sufficient interest to you to know that he is, clinically
speaking, in good health. He exhibits no symptoms that would
indicate need for medication of any kind. Certainly, nothing in
his condition would warrant sedation on any substantial scale.”
Bradley had been watching Anderson’s fumbling but happy
progress with his Guinness. “He’s very sleepy,” he said to Dr
Rambanajee.
“So should I be if I had swallowed eighty milligrams of Lotusol
in the last twenty-four hours. He will brighten as time goes on.”
With which assurance, Dr Rambanajee bowed to the company
and made his way primly out of the room.
Mr Wellbeloved, glum with Ancient and Modern, watched
from the superintendent’s lodge the departure of the doctor’s car
and mentally pictured the reaction of Dr Gule to what had been
going on. Who, he would demand, let that little dervish on to my
bloody ward? For was it not Dr Rambanajee, alone of all the
medical men in Flaxborough, who had happened to be available
to take a sample of the consultant’s blood that night when he had
been found driving an ambulance round and round the Market
Place after the Hospital Ball? Gule had been saved from prosecution only by simulating a heart attack long enough for colleagues
in the intensive care unit to set about oxidizing his gin intake with
a respiratory support machine.
It seemed to Purbright that Anderson would be of questionable
use as an informant until the residue of drug had been eliminated
from his system. On the other hand, his natural cunning—now at a
fortuitously low level—would increase with returning alertness. He
sought Bradley’s advice.
“It would be charitable,” said his colleague, “to let the poor old
chap sleep until he fully regains his faculties. He will, by then, be
able to lie easily in both senses of the word. I suggest that charity
be postponed.”
Love was sent off to help the nurse make some strong coffee.
Purbright, without pressing the matter to sadistic degree, coaxed
the old sailorman to let his Guinness first be held for him and
then put aside. (“A bit too soporific,” Bradley had tipped, from
knowledge of low life.) When the coffee arrived, they gave Mr
Anderson a huge mug of it and pledged him merrily in their own
plastic beakers.
“Down the hatch, mateys all!” cried Crutchy, aglow with
realization of a suddenly acquired importance.
He swilled nearly half his coffee in one go into a gullet long
since kippered to insensitivity by grog and tobacco juice.
“Aahh...” He slowly drew the back of his hand across his mouth.
In the quiet of the ward, it sounded like surf on a pebbly beach.
Purbright gave what he intended to be a comradely wink. “Not
a bad little berth, Crutchy.” He glanced around commendingly.
The old man considered the proposition. “Ar, not bad,” he
conceded, then pointed to his eye. “Not if you keep one of these
open all the time.”
“Which you do.”
Anderson chuckled, and tugged a leathery ear. “One of these
an’ all, skipper. All the time.”
Purbright conveyed by an expression of surprise and keen
interest that he would like to hear more about the vigilance of
Mr Anderson and about the circumstances that compelled it.
The sailorman leaned forward from his pile of pillow, looked
about him, and announced with croaky confidentiality: “They’d have
scuppered me, if they could.”
“No! Who would?”
Mr Anderson savoured with great satisfaction the shock on the
faces of his audience. He stroked the side of his long, tar-stained
nose and looked upon each in turn. Having selected Bradley to
receive his next revelation, he beckoned him and said: “They think
they’ve made me fast here. Think I can’t cast off. That’s what they
think. Gilly Gully and old Kiss-me-quick.”
“Really?” responded Bradley. “More fool them, I should say.”
Mr Anderson glared while considering if this reply were as
friendly as it seemed. Then he nodded, and grasped Bradley’s arm.
“I’m going to show you something. Just take a look over the
side there.”
Bradley peered obligingly at the floor in the direction indicated.
So did Purbright and Love.
“The locker, matey,” whispered Crutchy. “Go on, broach it. It
ain’t locked.”
Bradley pulled at the door of the bedside locker. It opened easily.
He glanced up at Anderson for further instruction.
A skeletal finger pointed to a newspaper-wrapped parcel of
curious shape that had been stuffed diagonally into the lower
compartment of the cupboard.
“Unship it, matey,” the old man invited.
Bradley drew out the parcel and held it on his lap. Anderson
signalled that he might take off the wrapping.
Awkwardly, Bradley removed the first of several sheets of the
News of the World. The headline, I stripped for Katie Selassie,
leered incongruously from the parcel’s broader end.
Soon there was a pile of newsprint on the bed. As Bradley
untucked the final sheet, Anderson glanced anxiously at the door
and then—with something like pride—gazed upon the emerging
object.
It was a wooden leg.
Bradley and Purbright immediately expressed admiration. The
sergeant actually patted the deputy limb and remarked upon its
robust construction.
“It’s been round the Horn a time or two, has that,” declared Mr
Anderson, with forgiveable licence. (He actually had lost his leg
by dipping it, while drunk, in a shrimp copper off Flaxborough
haven.)
Bradley offered his contribution to the general good feeling
and mutual confidence. He grinned at Crutchy. “So you’re not
beached, after all, shipmate, whatever old Gilly Gully thinks.”
A momentary cloud of suspicion passed over Anderson’s face.
Purbright prayed that his colleague’s dive into maritime metaphor
had not done too much damage. He handed the old man his
Guinness back.
“Cheers, shipmates!” declared Crutchy, once more as warmly
disposed as if they were forecastle mutineers who had set wicked
Captain Kiss-me-quick Wellbeloved adrift in the longboat.
He nudged Purbright and spoke close.
“They think they’ve done me out of Whippy’s things. Did you
know that, skip?”
“I didn’t, no. How’s that, then?”
“You knew he was no sooner in harbour than sold up, didn’t
you? Every stitch and spar. In the saleroom. You knew that?”
“Aye, I knew that.”
The old man cleared his throat. It sounded more as if he were
cutting it. “Pretended all his gear belonged to the council, on
account of him not being spliced. That’s what they said. So a lawyer
took it away and put it up and we never saw it no more. What do you think of
that? The pitcher an’ all—took that away to the sale.
Proud o’ that pitcher, was Whippy. Aye, b’God he was, poor old
sod.”
As if by mutual consent, there ensued a moment’s silence in
memory of the late artist.
Then Anderson slowly compressed one of his black, cavernous
eyes into a terrible wink.
He took from Bradley—to the evident relief of the London
inspector—the wooden leg he had been nursing, and set it before
him on the bed.
“Now, then,” he said, “what d’you reckon we’ve got on deck
now, eh?”
The old man looked at each of his audience in turn, then took
firm hold of the narrow cylindrical part of the leg in both hands.
He applied a twisting pressure. The leg emitted a succession of
thin squeals at first, then, as the unscrewing of its constituents
became easier and more rapid, accepted partition in silence.
From the disclosed cavity, Anderson drew a narrow roll of
paper. Released, it partly unfurled. He smoothed it flat on the
bedclothes.
“Know what this ’ere is?”
They shook their heads, unwilling to detract from the long
pleasure of his apocalypse.
“That’s Whippy Arnold’s will, that is. His last will and
testimonal. And it’s down here—all signed and witnessed proper
and on the line that Whippy’s cargo comes to me. His pitcher, his
ornument, his chopper, his golf things and his grog glasses. Ar,
an’ another thing...”—the old man pointed to a small piece of
paper, pinned to the larger document—“See what that is?”
Purbright bent forward and scrutinized the appended paper. It was a receipt
for thirty-two pence, paid by Mr F. Arnold for “materials, cottage
picture“, to the Social Services Department. The form, which appeared to
have been torn off a pad, was signed and dated February 4, 1977.
“If we wants to keep what we makes in the workship, we has to
pay,” explained Mr Anderson. “We gets one of these tickets from
Mrs Besker.”
“Mrs Besker?”
“She’s Theruppy.”
“I see.” Purbright turned to Bradley and said softly: “So much
for the council’s appropriation of the Arnold masterpiece. It looks
as if they owe the old boy four hundred quid.”
Though the aside could not have reached him, the old boy looked
on with an expression of gleeful approbation.
Bradley spoke to him.
“Tell me, Mr Anderson: why was it, when you had this proof
of Mr Arnold’s having made over his property to you, that you
let the authorities take the stuff off to an auction sale?”
The sailorman rubbed his chin and regarded Bradley out of
the corner of his eye. “You tell me, mester,” he suggested.
Bradley pretended to think hard. “No good,” he said at last. “I
can’t.”
“Nor can I,” added Purbright. He tugged the sleeve of Sergeant
Love, who had been trying to get a tune out of the hollow leg
shank by blowing across the hole. Love at once put it down.
“Hark, then,” said Anderson to the company at large. “Ain’t no
sense in raising sail when some other bugger’s ready to take you in
tow, right?”
“Right,” said Purbright.
The old man nodded. “Well, then.” He gave no sign of providing
a key to his parable.
Purbright waited a moment, then said: “You mean you would
have put the things into a sale yourself if the council hadn’t done
so?”
Anderson smirked sapiently. “Pitchers ain’t my line, skip. Nor’s
ornuments. An’ I ain’t likely to risk putting me old peg there into
a golfing ’ole, am I?”
For a moment Purbright debated within himself whether he
should risk losing the quarry by offering a more blatant bait. There
was all the time in the world. He decided to take a chance.
“Fetched a lot of money, I believe,” he said, as casually as he
could.
The old man wrinkled his nose. “Thought it would.”
Bradley, sensing that a point of delicate balance had been
reached, kept quiet. He stared at Love with bland commiseration,
like a fellow traveller in a very slow lift.
“What, fetch a lot?” probed Purbright, a fraction less casually.
“Aye.” A few seconds passed. “Lot of interest in that pitcher.”
“A large number of people interested, you mean?”
The lean old cheeks puffed rebuttal. “Didn’t need to be. Not if
the right ones was there.”
“Ah,” said Purbright. He winked. “And I should think you had
a fair idea of who the right ones were.”
Anderson grinned and made a rapid chewing motion. Bradley,
fearful of impending expectoration, drew back a little, but the
chewing proved only to be the prelude to a further confidence.
“Wrote to ’em.”
Purbright raised his brows. “Ah, of course—the gentleman in
London.” He made no mention of the gentleman’s present condition.
“Aye, ’im,” said Anderson, somewhat sourly.
“And...?”
There was a pause. Purbright waited for the outcome of a
struggle between the old man’s wiliness and his desire for attention.
Discretion lost.
“Wrote to ’er an’ all.” A leer. “That one was nonnymus,
though.”
“Naturally,” said Purbright. He considered. “I suppose you know
it was she who bid highest?”
The leer broadened.
“Stands to reason, don’t it?”
Bradley broke the silence. “That London gentleman,” he said, “was
very disappointed that he didn’t get your friend’s picture.”
A short, rasping laugh from the old sailorman.
“Why,” Bradley asked, “did you send him off that night to call
on Dr Gule?”
This time the amusement of Mr Anderson was so extreme that
deep drowsiness soon supervened. Slowly he sank into the bank of
pillow, eyes shut and mouth open. Purbright called the nurse.
“The sergeant,” he explained, “will be staying here until we can
arrange for another officer to keep Mr Anderson company. The
doctor thinks Mr Anderson will be fit to go back to his own room
tomorrow.”
The girl seemed a little hesitant. “The new instructions,” she
said, “are that he’s to have no more sedation.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The nurse nodded and gave the inspectors a little smile as they
prepared to leave. She looked, Purbright thought, much happier
than when they had arrived.
The impounded legacy of Crunchy Anderson was
set out on the desk in Purbright’s office. It was Tuesday morning.
Purbright and Bradley sat staring at the two hacked golf balls, the
railway dining-car tumbler, the floral soap dish, the meat mincer
and the Cottage at the End of Life’s Lane.
The decanter stoppers had been eliminated from the inquiry; it
having been ascertained that a dealer—the Miss Teatime who had
been for a while in the bidding for lot thirty-four—had inadvertently
replaced them in the wrong tray during view day, thus
rendering the parent decanters (which early in the sale happened
to be knocked down to her without much opposition) stopperless
and hence remarkably cheap.
The mincer could now be regarded in proper perspective, thanks
to the inquisitiveness of Sergeant Love. He had learned from one
of the older residents of Twilight Close that this useful machine
had been harboured by Whippy for neither sentimental nor speculative
reason but simply as an auxiliary to dentures that he contemptuously
termed his “parish choppers”.
There was a third person in the office. Sergeant Malley was
seated near the window. On a small table before him lay an old
leather-bound newspaper file, open. Slowly and with much interest
Malley reviewed its columns. However carefully he separated and
turned the tall, yellowed pages, dust drifted up from them. Every
few minutes he snorted gently or rubbed his nose on the shiny
blue serge of his sleeve.
Purbright looked across. “How are the researches, Bill?”
Malley grunted. “You’d never believe how many flower shows
there were in 1921.”
“Well, there were flowers to be shown in those days.”
“Are you sure we’ve got the right year? I shouldn’t care to carry
many of these back and forth to the Citizen office.”
“Mr Chubb is the authority, not me. He said it was the year his
father came back from India.”
Bradley made a suggestion. “Might it save time to concentrate
first on the births and deaths column? There’s usually the local
equivalent of a sort of court circular.”
Malley raised a finger in acknowledgement of the guest’s good
sense and began turning pages more swiftly.
In less than five minutes an exclamation rose from the archives.
“Here we are. Coming of Age. May 27. Moldham, Veronica
Mary.”
Purbright and Bradley came to stand by Malley’s shoulder. He
searched the next five pages of the same issue, then turned to the
sixth.
The Flaxborough Citizen certainly had done justice to the
occasion. The story extended over three columns, nearly a whole
one of which carried the names of everyone present. And there
were five pictures.
The deep bank of headlines was nothing if not explicit.
MISS VERONICA MARY MOLDHAM ATTAINS MAJORITY
INTERESTING EVENT NEAR FLAXBOROUGH
CELEBRATION BY WELL-KNOWN LOCAL FAMILY
VILLAGERS PAY RESPECTS TO DAUGHTER OF POPULAR SQUIRE
PERSONALITIES OF FARM AND FIELD “CAPTURED” THROUGH OUR LENS!
The photographs, though faded, were sharply enough in focus
and had been so faithfully rendered by the old flat-bed press that
every face was identifiable.
Veronica appeared in three of the pictures. At that age she was
a dark-eyed brunette whose assumption of the then-fashionable
shoulder droop and breastlessness was more than offset by alert,
sensually speculative eyes and voluptuous mouth.
“Bit of a thruster in those days,” Purbright remarked airily to
Bradley, who said he wouldn’t be surprised.
The first picture showed the girl standing by a horse in the
company of a young man wearing a blazer and a friendly, if
decidedly inane smile.
“Who’s the Wodehouse character?” inquired Bradley.
The caption was consulted. “Of course; it’s her brother,”
exclaimed Malley. “Old Moldy. Good Lord.” He stared at the picture
a moment longer in silence and shook his head.
In another photograph, Veronica was seated in an open carriage
with the foolish-looking young man and an elderly couple. She
held a parasol and appeared to be finding the occasion something
of a lark. Her parents clearly did not. They gazed sideways at the
camera with the solemn regality of a pair of Romanovs.
“That, I suppose, is Whippy Arnold.” Purbright pointed to the
coachman. They saw a man in his early twenties, wearing livery
that included a top hat, set very squarely on his small, neat-looking
head. His face, half turned towards the camera, had a sharp handsomeness.
He wore sideboards, black and razored very straight,
almost down to the angle of his jaw.
“Calculating eyes,” remarked Bradley.
“It’s a daddy of a whip he’s got.” The object of Malley’s admiration
was a splendid curly affair, long enough for a team of six.
It was to the third picture in which Veronica appeared that Purbright
paid closest attention. She was in a long evening gown and had been posed
alone, inside the house, holding a champagne glass and a rigid smile.
The photograph was headed: A TOAST TO THE FUTURE.
Its caption read: “Caught” in merry mood by our Photographer,
Miss Veronica Mary Moldham was attired for dancing in the
evening at Moldham Hall in this charming eau-de-Nil gown. The
beautiful “collar” necklace of matched Russian emeralds was Miss
Moldham’s twenty-first birthday gift from her parents, Major
General Archibald Bruce Pordack Moldham, DSO, CBE, JP, and
Mrs Moldham; and was supplied by Messrs Vacci and Benn, of
London.
Purbright indicated the caption to Bradley. “They obviously
thought they were emeralds in 1921. The local paper did, anyway.”
“And who,” asked Bradley, “were the Moldhams to correct so
flattering an error?”
He looked carefully at the photograph. “One can’t swear to it,
but I’d be willing to bet these now adorn the neck of Dr Gule’s
young concubine.”
“Housekeeper,” Purbright corrected, gently. The large sergeant
looked with mild amusement from one to the other and polished
his pipe bowl against the side of his nose.
“What I cannot understand,” said Purbright, “is how this piece
of very nice but not wildly valuable jewellery comes to have its
present significance. When Whippy pinched it—as it is reasonable
to assume he did—he had the perfectly comprehensible if unworthy
motive of winning an extra perk from his employers. When
Mrs Moldham-Clegg learned that it had not disappeared for ever
but was going to come up for sale, she had a good motive for
trying to get it back—sentiment, family loyalty, that sort of thing.
She might even be forgiven for paying over the odds.
“Again, I can conceive of an inept little London thief following
a tip and coming up here to make an easy pound or two.
“But burglary? Assaulting the police? Murder? Surely not for
a handful of semi-precious stones.”
“Don’t forget,” said Bradley, “that they were considered worth
purloining by an eminent consultant the moment he could safely
get his hands on them.”
Malley grinned. “What, so that he could give them to his tottie?
Young Myra wouldn’t know the difference between rubies and
bicycle reflectors.”
“It does seem rather odd behaviour on Gule’s part,” said Purbright, thoughtfully.
“Oh, he’s not all that fussy,” Malley said. “I don’t mean he
wouldn’t pinch them on the spur of the moment—just that he
wouldn’t put himself out to please his girlfriend.”
“How would he have known about Whippy’s ill-gotten gains?”
asked Bradley.
“According to Anderson,” said Purbright, “Gule spent an unusual
amount of time with Whippy. Might he not have been pumping
him, Bill?”
Malley blew doubtfully. “They reckon Gule knows how to do
the old Svengali stuff if he wants. And Whippy wasn’t as fly as
he liked people to think. He was a boastful old sod at times.”
Bradley picked up the plaster picture from Purbright’s desk and
regarded it in silence for several moments. He turned it over. “The
coachman’s nest egg,” he murmured. A pause. “His security...”
Suddenly Bradley swung round. “If our old nautical friend
knew himself to be the beneficiary under Arnold’s will, why did
he not make his claim immediately when Arnold died? Why,
instead, did he write off to a London malefactor and a local lady
bountiful, telling them about the sale of his own property?”
“The answer depends on whether Crutchy knew about the necklace,” said Purbright. “If he did, he might have preferred to leave
others to bid for stolen property rather than handle it himself.
He’ll doubtless get the money as soon as he produces the will.”
“And if he didn’t know?”
Purbright shook his head. “He must have known. And he must
have known whose it was. Why else would he have written to
her—as he all but admitted to us?”
“In what terms? Dear Mrs Moldham-thingummy, the necklace
Whippy Arnold nicked off you is going to be sold by auction
disguised as a picture, please tell your friends.”
Malley chuckled, then looked thoughtful. “I don’t reckon,” he
said slowly, “that Whippy did pinch the thing. If he had—and I
know the Moldhams—they’d have chucked him out just on suspicion. The rest of the servants as well, probably. There were
plenty to be got in those days.”
“The pension,” said Purbright, suddenly. “Not only did he survive in his job, but was still being paid by the family after he’d
retired.”
“That’s certainly hard to believe,” remarked the sergeant. He
grinned and scratched the side of his jaw. “Old Moldy always said
that wages were demoralizing, let alone pensions.”
“One begins to get the impression that Mr Arnold did somebody
a favour at some time,” said Bradley. “A substantial favour, at that,
and one whose value he knew. I think...” There was a pause. “I
think that he was given that necklace. A sort of warranty, perhaps—or
even as a down payment.”
“It’s an attractive idea, I suppose,” Purbright began. Then he
looked aside. There had been a quiet knock on the door, which
now was opening,
“We are somewhat in need of attractive ideas at the moment,
Mr Purbright.” Mr Chubb closed the door as considerately as he
had opened it and walked towards the window. He paused to look
down at the open file of the 1921 Flaxborougb Citizen and to
restrain with a gesture Sergeant Malley’s windy effort to rise from
his too-small chair.
The photographs engaged Mr Chubb’s attention for nearly a
minute. Then he looked intently and solemnly at Bradley.
“Very distressing, is it not, Mr Bradley, this business out at
Moldham.”
Bradley was not sure how he was expected to reply; by his tone
and aspect, the chief constable seemed to ascribe to his guest some
measure of responsibility for what had happened. He said, simply:
“Yes, very,” and left it at that.
Mr Chubb noticed the picture in Bradley’s hand. “Ah,” he said,
more lightly, and glanced aside at Purbright, “the beginning of all
our troubles, eh, Mr Purbright?” He held out his hand. “May I?”
Bradley relinquished the cottage, and the chief constable took
it to the window. He viewed it closely in the light, held it at arm’s
length, pouted, and declared: “Quite picturesque, really.”
Suddenly Bradley found himself being smiled at.
“And are you artistic, Mr Bradley?”
In such a manner might Mr Chubb have asked Oscar Wilde
whether he supported the scouting movement.
Purbright intervened hastily.
“I suggest, sir, that Colonel Moldham be charged and taken into
custody this afternoon. I believe his solicitor has already advised
him to be ready to make himself available.”
Mr Chubb looked momentarily surprised. Then he frowned.
To Malley he said: “Would you mind leaving us for a moment,
sergeant?” Malley, totally unoffended, lumbered off.
“I suppose you are satisfied that no other interpretation can be
placed on this affair?” the chief constable asked Purbright. “Bruce
Moldham is not a man to evade responsibility once it is firmly
established. He won’t run away, you know.”
“I’m sure that you’re right, sir,” replied Purbright. “On the other
hand, the colonel has already made an admission that tallies with
the post-mortem findings. It would be unfortunate if any undue
delay in arresting the gentleman were to be construed by the defence
as a sign of uncertainty.”
“Or of partiality,” threw in Bradley, with a perish-the-thought
face, before Purbright could forestall him.
The chief constable gazed with icy concentration out of the
window at the distant cupola of the municipal buildings. During
the ensuing silence, Purbright sought a topic that might restore
some measure of mutual communion.
“There is another, less important, piece of unpleasantness, sir,”
he announced. “It isn’t without relevance to the man’s death at
Moldham.”
And he related the discovery of what promised to be Veronica
Moldham-Clegg’s long-lost necklace.
“Tell me if I read your suggestions aright,” said Mr Chubb, when
he had given the story thought. “Do I understand that Dr Gule
tricked the actual thief while he was a patient in his care, and
then gave the necklace to this girl with whom he appears to be
cohabiting?”
“The evidence does point that way, sir. A little earlier today we
found a technician in the orthopaedic department of the General
who recalled Dr Gule’s having asked him for a little plaster of
Paris about three weeks ago.”
The chief constable looked down at the picture, turned it over
and rubbed his little finger on the uneven surface. “He’d want it
to fill the hole he’d made in this, presumably.”
“That might well have been his intention,” Purbright said.
Mr Chubb nodded sagely. He held the picture to his ear and
shook it.
“Psychiatrist, isn’t he—Gule?”
Purbright said that he was, knowing that Mr Chubb would be
less inclined to discount the possibility of infamous conduct on the
part of a practitioner in so outlandish a discipline, as distinct from
those who rated the chief constable’s description as “proper”
doctors.
“Of course, it may well be,” said Mr Chubb, “that our unfortunate
friends at Moldham feel they have sufficient trouble to cope with
as it is, without rushing about identifying jewellery. And unless
it is identified, I cannot see that there would be any case for Gule
to answer.”
Bradley was looking very sympathetic. He first glanced deferentially at Chubb, then addressed Purbright.
“I do see the chief constable’s point. If I explain it to my divisional
chief, he may well agree to be accommodating.”
“Accommodating, Mr Bradley? I do not quite take your meaning.” Mr Chubb looked as if he would rather take hemlock.
Bradley gave the shrug of a reasonable man. “You see, sir, when
my superintendent agreed to my giving you assistance—insignificant
as it has proved—it was because the felonious Mr O’Dwyer was, in
a sense, our responsibility. He was on parole. Therefore, I do
owe my superintendent an explanation of O’Dwyer’s having contrived to be murdered so far from home. His intention to steal
jewels did seem a proper, as well as a demonstrable excuse. However, if you feel that a blind eye should be turned upon minor,
even though relevant, misdeeds, in order to spare local people
embarrassment...”
Purbright realized, with something akin to panic, that for the
first time in his life he was witnessing Mr Chubb in a state of real
anger. He looked on helplessly as the pale cheeks become mottled
with dark red; and the silvery eyebrows, usually elegantly arched,
began to lower and contract into tufts of bristle.
“Mr Bradley, I do not know and I do not very much care what
is considered proper by policemen in London; but I assure you
that there will be no turning of blind eyes in Flaxborough while I
am its chief constable.”
Having listened with grave attentiveness, his head a little on
one side, Bradley allowed the statement to be rounded with a short
silence. Then he nodded, gazed admiringly at the still transfigured
features of Mr Chubb, and declared: “May I say that I count it a
privilege to have known you, sir.”
The chief constable offered no further comment. He stepped
away from the window, tossed Whippy Arnold’s painting on to
Purbright’s desk and left the office, silently closing the door behind
him.
“Rather like Hamlet’s father’s ghost,” suggested Bradley, with
no sign of discomposure.
It was one of those moments when, had he still been a smoker,
Purbright would have lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, scratched his
chin, and said: “Mmm...” Deprived of such means of release, he
sat at his desk and moved things around.
Bradley watched. “I say, you don’t think I’ve...” He glanced at
the closed door.
“No, no,” Purbright said hastily, “he’ll settle down.”
Bradley looked satisfied. “Good. One tries to be diplomatic with
the Chubbs of this world, but the effort does seem to be wasted
sometimes.”
Purbright did not hear him. He was examining, at first with
mild annoyance, then with increasing absorption, part of the frame
round the Cottage at the End of Life’s Lane.
Whether by careless handling on the part of an unwontedly
agitated chief constable, or as a result of its having been thrown
brusquely on the desk, the plastic had split along what now
appeared to be a glued seam.
Purbright pulled the seam further apart. Within the hollow
frame was revealed something white. A roll of paper, about six
inches long. It came out quite easily.
Bradley had noticed Purbright’s preoccupation and was now
standing beside him.
Purbright unrolled the paper and smoothed it flat. It was slightly
yellowed and grubby, but the red print and the entries in spidery
black ink were perfectly legible.
Not until they both had read every word of the writing did
either speak.
“Well, well,” said Purbright, softly.
“And who,” added Bradley, “is going to tell the good news?”
The family solicitor was already in the drawing-room
of Moldham Hall when Purbright and Bradley, accompanied
by Sergeant Love, were ushered in by the colonel.
Mr Loughbury set down his sherry glass and rose to acknowledge
the policemen with a nod and a single, grave “Morning”. He helped
to find them chairs, then resumed his own.
This overture was watched with an air of amused detachment
by Mrs Moldham-Clegg, who sat very erect beside a window. The
light, crossing her face at an angle, rendered it lined as an old
map. She held some lemon-coloured crochet work on her lap and
occasionally glanced down to add another loop. Idle hands had
never been encouraged on the Moldhams’ distaff side.
“I believe,” Purbright began, “that you know why Inspector
Bradley and I are here.” He was looking at Colonel Moldham,
who was sitting on the edge of the oval table. Moldham compressed
his lips and examined the nail of one finger.
“The colonel is aware of your purpose, inspector,” said Mr
Loughbury. “I am here, of course, on his behalf, so if there are any
questions you wish to put to him—or to Mrs Moldham-Clegg—I’m
sure you will not object to my clients exercising the right to confer
with me before replying.”
“Not at all, sir,” said Purbright. He glanced at Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
“As a matter of fact, there are one or two points we should
like to clear up first.”
The solicitor gave a small but magnanimous bow.
“Did you, Mrs Moldham-Clegg, ever suffer the loss—by theft or
any other cause—of a fairly valuable necklace, a small green
necklace?”
Mr Loughbury looked with concern at the colonel’s aunt. She
frowned. “A necklace?”
“Yes, ma’am. Or collar. Of something called Alexandrite.”
She looked at Mr Loughbury. “He sounds quite a geologist.” To
Purbright she said: “I have no idea what Alexandrite is. And to
the best of my recollection I have never lost any necklaces. Or
collars,” she added.
“The necklace in question was a twenty-first birthday present
from your parents,” Purbright persisted.
Again the solicitor looked at the old woman as if warning her
to make careful reply, but she seemed not to notice him.
“Oh, that. Heavens, that was dim, dim ages ago. A girlhood
trinket. Whatever do you want to know about that?”
“Do you still have the necklace?” Bradley asked.
“Of course not. Don’t be tiresome.”
Mr Loughbury intervened. “That would seem to dispose of the
matter, inspector. My clients have been under some strain; do you
think we could dispense with these comparatively trivial inquiries
for the moment?”
“No, sir,” said Purbright, flatly. “I should like to know if Mrs
Moldham-Clegg’s necklace was ever stolen and, if not, how it was
disposed of.”
The solicitor raised his hand before the old woman could reply.
“I think,” he said, “that my client should know the reason for your
question before she answers.”
“Very well, sir. We believe that a necklace which has come to
light during our inquiries into Mr O’Dwyer’s death originally
belonged to Mrs Moldham-Clegg. It is important to know how
it came to change hands. If it was stolen, the lady is entitled to
recover it, naturally.”
Rich Dick turned to Mrs Moldham-Clegg and raised his brows.
She looked critically at her crochet for a moment, and said:
“Nothing, inspector, was ever stolen from anybody in this house.
As for the necklace you are making such a fuss about, it was
probably sent to a charity sale, or even given to one of the servants.
I really cannot remember.”
“To your coachman, perhaps?”
She gave a little one-sided smile. “Even to the coachman, yes.
Although I find it hard to believe that he wore it himself.”
Bradley smiled with the rest and had nothing but polite and
kindly interest in his voice when he asked: “Might not such a gift
have been in consideration of a favour on Mr Arnold’s part?”
Before the solicitor could voice the indignation that was so
dearly evidenced on his face, Mrs Moldham-Clegg remarked to
Purbright: “Your colleague seems to have a certain vulgarity of
approach. I’m sure that Mr Chubb would not much care for it.”
Bradley looked smug, as if savouring a compliment.
“Can’t we,” appealed Rich Dick, “get to the main purpose of
your presence here, Purbright? The colonel has been very patient.”
Bruce Moldham was, in fact, looking not so much patient as
sleepily indifferent. Love had no difficulty in surmising an appropriate cause: his mind already was organizing a search for the
empty phial in the bathroom and a call for an ambulance with
stomach pump.
“Very well, sir,” Purbright said. “I propose to put certain questions
to the colonel. He must understand that he need not say anything
unless he wishes, but that what he does say will be noted by the
sergeant and may be given in evidence.”
“Yes, yes, naturally,” came immediately from the squire, who
testily waved down an attempt by Loughbury to act as interpreter.
Purbright glanced at some notes. “When you came to the police
station on Sunday, colonel, you were asked if you had killed the
man known as Francis Dean O’Dwyer. You denied this, but admitted having fired your shotgun twice in order to frighten off
an unidentified intruder. Do you wish now to change that version
of what happened?”
Rich Dick leaned towards his client, but before he could say
anything, Colonel Moldham replied directly to Purbright.
“It is not my custom to go back on what I have said, inspector.
I did concede on Sunday, if you remember, that my having shot
the man was, as I put it, a possibility. It was dark, and he might
have got slightly peppered. If so, I regret it, of course. But I am
quite sure that I did not kill him.”
“When you say slightly peppered, sir, would that be a fair definition of two charges of gunshot, one on each side of the head?”
“My client is not here in the capacity of a gunnery expert,” put
in Rich Dick. “On my advice, he will not reply.”
Purbright waited a moment, then asked: “Do you maintain,
sir, that the man you encountered was subsequently able to run to
his car, which you heard being driven away?”
“He ran off, yes. As I said.”
“Can you suggest, in that case, how his body got into the river,
where it was found on Saturday?”
Loughbury again intervened. “My client cannot reasonably be
asked to speculate upon matters of which he knows nothing.”
“Do you confirm, colonel, that the shotgun which my officers
took away on Sunday was your property and that no other firearm
was or is kept on these premises?”
“Certainly I do.”
Purbright glanced at Love’s note-taking, then at Bradley, who
closed his eyes and gave a little shake of the head, and finally at
Mr Loughbury.
“Is that all, inspector?” the solicitor asked.
Purbright took a deep breath and faced the colonel.
“Bruce Pendamon Moldham, I must tell you that I am now
going to arrest you and take you to Flaxborough police headquarters,
where you will be charged with the murder by shooting
between July 27th and July 28th this year of Dean Francis O’Dwyer,
whom you may otherwise know under the name...”
“Mr Purbright!”
The interruption was not loud, but it had been delivered in so
authoritative a tone that it produced several seconds of shocked
silence. Every head turned towards Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
The old woman unhurriedly pressed flat the crochet work on her
knee, then spoke again, without raising her eyes.
“Thanks to the unaccountable wrongheadedness of my nephew,
you policemen are about to make fools of yourselves. I think I had
better correct one small misconception before worse comes of it.
My nephew, Mr Purbright, did not shoot that wretched burglar.
I did.”
Purbright looked at the colonel, then at Rich Dick. Both seemed
equally at a loss, but the solicitor recovered first. “I think,” he said
quietly to Purbright, “that the old lady is being a little...”—he
smiled, seeking the word—“...quixotic.”
“Don’t be so damned patronizing, Richard,” said Mrs Moldham-Clegg. “It is Bruce who fancies the role of gallantry, not I.”
Bradley realized that official litany was in danger of being outstripped
by events. He whispered to Purbright, who hastily delivered
the prescribed caution to Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
She brushed it aside impatiently. “You can say all that to
Loughbury. That’s what he’s paid for. I simply wish to cut through
these ridiculous complications and mystifications to what is a perfectly
straightforward matter. Now then, first of all, you can send
your young man to fetch something from upstairs.”
The “young man” looked about him with good-natured surprise,
then, hesitantly, rose. He looked like a Sunday school pupil responding to an invitation to take over the class.
“I think that either you or the colonel should accompany the
sergeant,” Purbright suggested.
The old woman nodded to her nephew. He was looking extremely
unhappy. “Now look here, aunt...”
“Bruce. You will kindly take the young man to my bedroom and
show him the drawer in the wardrobe.” To Love, she spoke more
gently: “I trust you are not as absurdly coy about ladies’ under-garments as those policemen who were supposed to be searching the
house the other day.”
By the time the sergeant returned he had almost stopped
blushing.
He handed Purbright a small rifle.
“BSA point two two repeater,” he said, offhandedly.
Purbright examined the weapon. He raised his eyes to the old
woman’s. She was regarding him shrewdly.
“Mr Purbright,” she said, “there is one thing I wish to be clearly
understood. If I am going to tell you everything that happened,
there must be no confusing side issues. I am too old to be bothered
with all this alias nonsense. Until now, the unfortunate person
whose behaviour obliged me to shoot him has been referred to
as O’Dwyer. I am accustomed to that name. I wish to hear him
given no other.”
For a moment their mutual regard held. Then Purbright said:
“The man’s wife has identified him as O’Dwyer. That is his name,
so far as we are concerned.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg gravely inclined her head. Her solicitor
sat motionless, determinedly avoiding the sight of Bruce Moldham’s
deeply anxious face.
“Very well, inspector,” the old woman said. “You had better get on
with that cautioning business, if you must, then we can clear the
matter up once and for all.”
It was, as Bradley remarked later, rather as if murder trials could
now be got at Harrod’s and Mrs Moldham-Clegg were putting in
her order.
It had been nearly one o’clock in the morning, she said, when
noises awakened her and she realized that there were movements
within the house. Not long afterwards, Colonel Moldham had
come to her bedroom and told her that he was going downstairs as
he believed that somebody had broken in.
“He was in his dressing-gown and was carrying his gun. At night
he keeps it in a corner of the landing. One never knows, these
days, and we’ve no living-in staff except old Benton, and he’s on
the far side of the court.
“When my nephew had gone, I went to the window and looked
out. There was a car down in the court. I opened the window at
the bottom and stood listening for a while. Suddenly I heard voices
downstairs. One was my nephew’s.
“It occurred to me that the burglar might get away from Colonel
Moldham and make for his motor car. I thought of the little
two-two in what we call the Caledonian room, next but one to my
bedroom, and I fetched it. I don’t shoot properly now, of course,
but I keep my eye in with the odd partridge, and it seemed sensible
to have a go at the burglar’s tyres.”
At this point, Mrs Moldham-Clegg halted her narrative and
peered helpfully towards Sergeant Love. “Are you managing all
right?” she asked.
He said yes, oh yes, fine; and she turned to Purbright. “I’m not
being tedious, am I? You must tell me if this is not the sort of
thing you want.”
“You are being admirably to the point, ma’am. Please go on.”
After a brief, indifferent glance at Bradley, she did so.
“I went back to the window and looked down. There was some
shouting and I heard someone running, then my nephew switched
the outside lights on and came out into the court.
“The burglar had nearly reached his motor, but when he looked
round and saw that Colonel Moldham had a gun, he stopped
straight away and stood still. My nephew went up to him.
“I was just about to come downstairs and telephone the police
when the burglar jumped forward and grabbed the gun. It was
Bruce’s fault, of course, for not pointing it at him, but one is
trained not to, and one doesn’t, and that’s all there is to it.
“However, in a very short time indeed, there was my poor nephew
on the ground, and there was the burglar, standing over him
and actually taking aim with Bruce’s own gun. It was quite a
terrible moment.
“Naturally, I did the only thing possible in the circumstances. I
shot the burglar before he could pull the trigger.”
And Mrs Moldham-Clegg took up her crochet work once more,
bending her head to the task.
After some seconds of silence, Purbright coughed. “And then,
ma’am?”
She looked up sharply. “Then nothing, Mr Purbright. I have told
you what you wish to know.”
More silence, increasingly uncomfortable for all save the old
woman, who seemed to have dismissed their presence from her
mind.
Purbright spoke to her. “There are two things you have not
mentioned, Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Your story of shooting O’Dwyer
with this rifle does not account for his having received shotgun
injuries. Nor have you offered any explanation of how his body
came to be in the river.”
She regarded him placidly. “The river is reasonably near,
inspector. It seemed not at all a good idea to leave the man on the
estate. Churchill and I took him to a little landing-stage at the end
of what we call Shapp’s Meadow.”
“You carried the body on the horse, you mean, ma’am?”
The question was not so much ignored as simply not received.
Mrs Moldhom-Clegg appeared to be waiting politely for them to
leave.
“Do you wish to say nothing about the shotgun wounds?”
Purbright asked.
She turned to her nephew. “Bruce, you must not forget about
the Askews and that thing on Friday. I think it would be as well
to drop them a note today.”
The colonel made vague acknowledgment. He was frowning.
His eye met Purbright’s and passed an unhappy appeal.
“I am going to ask you,” Purbright said to Mrs Moldham-Clegg, “to
come with us to police headquarters in Flaxborough, where you
will be formally charged.”
The old woman put aside her crochet carefully. She stood, rugged
straight her heavy woollen dress and again addressed her nephew.
“Mr Loughbury will come with me. I shall be back quite shortly.
Do not forget the Askews or that man who is calling about the tree.”
Purbright spoke to the solicitor, who had been alternatively half-rising
and sitting again for the past minute. “Perhaps you will be
good enough to take Mrs Moldham-Clegg to the car.”
The old woman ignored Rich Dick’s offer of an arm and went
before him to the door.
Purbright turned to the colonel.
“We needn’t bother your aunt with such matters now, sir, but
I’ll send a policewoman over later to collect her things.”
Moldham nodded grimly. He caught Purbright’s arm.
“You’ll look after her? She’s been through a very bad time, you
know.”
“She’ll be given every consideration, sir.”
The colonel stared unseeingly at the door through which Love
and Bradley had followed the others. “I suppose,” he said to
Purbright, “that you fellows saw through all that nonsense about
Arnold’s pension and helping his family and so forth.”
“The account was substantially that of your own solicitor, sir.
He is an officer of the court; we could scarcely assume that he was
trying to mislead us.”
“Loughbury’s a fool. Probably a knave, too, but that’s by the
way. The point is, that so-called pension was nothing but damned
extortion. Aunt had him on her back for years, you know. When
he died, Purbright, it’s no exaggeration to say the sun came out
for her. So just imagine what she felt when this confederate, or
side-kick, or whatever, of Arnold’s turned up-this O’Dwyer, as
you call him.”
For the generally laconic Moldham, this was quite a long and
emotional speech. Purbright decided to delay his departure long
enough to see if the seam of frankness was yet exhausted.
“You sound doubtful about O’Dwyer being his real name. Do
you know him under any other?”
The colonel shrugged, wide-eyed. “Don’t know him at all. I
understand he’s a petty criminal from London. Arnold could have
met him in some prison, I suppose. Isn’t that how these associations
usually begin?”
If Moldham were dissembling, he was doing it very well.
Purbright shifted ground.
“Are you,” he asked, “going to tell me now what it was that
Arnold used as the basis of his blackmailing your aunt?”
“I have no idea.” The reply was unhesitating and without the
slightest overtone. Purbright might as well have asked the time.
“Oh, come now, colonel; here is a secret or a scandal so potent
that knowledge of it can still command blackmail payments even
after more than forty years. Do you seriously wish me to believe
that your aunt has been able to keep it from other members of her
own family all this time?”
“From surviving members, yes. From me, certainly. I’m sorry,
but there it is.” Moldham smiled, painfully. “I’ve no wish to sound
flippant at such a dreadful time, but the fact is that I’d like to
know myself what she got up to all those years ago.”
Purbright walked thoughtfully to the door. He turned on reaching it.
“The shotgun...I’m right, am I not, in presuming that it wasn’t
you who fired it?”
The colonel hesitated, then looked down at his hands. “I don’t
know why she did that,” he said, quietly.
Purbright, who did know, left without further word.
Detective Inspector Eric Bradley left Flaxborough two days later.
Purbright went to the station to see him off. In expectation of the
most important train of the day, the refreshment room had been
opened and was now in session. Purbright bought two half pints
of bottled India Pale Ale and they sat in the corner of one end of
the long, narrow room, which once had had tables of white marble
and curly cast iron and a mahogany counter and a gilded mirror
and a wheezing tea urn big as Stephenson’s Rocket, but now was
fitted with plastic cantilever slabs and benches rivetted to the floor
as if in fear of their being stolen.
“All right, ducks?” the custodian of the bar inquired of Purbright.
She was a large woman, flushed and sweaty with an eruptive
cheerfulness that neither her place of work nor her occasional appearance
at petty sessions could long repress. She liked policemen—indeed,
some said she lusted after them—and Purbright was
taking no chances. “Good morning, Mrs Leaper,” he said, with
rather more formality than was natural to him.
Bradley said he was sorry to be returning to London. He would
miss the ubiquitous friendliness. Even Mr Chubb had been very
gracious at the last and had paid a call upon him at the Roebuck
Hotel.
“Chubb is a good deal less of a snob than my superintendent,”
Bradley remarked. “You can have no idea how my superintendent’s
self-esteem will have been enhanced by the elevation of one of his
parole customers to the Quality.”
“Posthumously,” Purbright pointed out. Bradley shrugged and
took a sip of his beer.
“Anyway, I’m not sure that the Moldhams are quite top rank,”
said Purbright. “As I understand it, they stem from a by-blow of
one of the minor robber barons.”
“Good enough for my superintendent,” asserted Bradley. He
asked a little later: “What are you going to do if the old woman
changes her mind about a manslaughter plea?”
“She won’t.”
“Because of her sense of honour?”
“In a way. She is aware that a bargain of sorts is implicit in
our leaving the identity issue obscure.”
“You are confident, are you, that bargains are kept by people
such as the Moldham family? I can only say that their counterparts
in London can be relied upon to put their own convenience first,
whatever undertakings may have been given.”
Purbright smiled. “I’m sure that that is generally the case, but
we in the country have less romantic expectations of our betters.
For example, it would not be found believable in Wimbledon or
Muswell Hill that a lady of good address could shoot down her
own son, then deliberately disfigure the features that bore so
embarrassingly close a family likeness to his late uncle’s, and finally
rope the body to her horse and drag it to the river. Here there
will be shock, certainly, but not incredulity.”
“O’Dwyer’s resemblance to the colonel’s father must have come
as a nasty surprise to the Moldhams.”
“Very nasty,” said Purbright. “Hence the fainting of the old
woman at the auction sale—in public, heaven help us—when
O’Dwyer got up to slip away.”
“But was that the first she’d seen of him? The bidding must
have been going on for quite a while.”
“Bidders never look at one another.”
Bradley accepted this axiom and glanced about him for a clock.
He caught the eye of the lady behind the bar. Mrs Leaper was
staring at him longingly.
Without removing the cupped hand that supported her face
while she leaned on the counter, Mrs Leaper murmured for his
benefit: “You’ve got six minutes yet, lovey.”
“Talking of sales,” Bradley said to Purbright, “has anyone suggested
why that solicitor’s clerk was putting in bids?”
“Buxton? I should say he was there ‘on behalf of a client’, as
lawyers say when they are trying to corner something for themselves.
Loughbury is astute enough to have guessed that old Whippy
had hidden something among his things that would be worth risking
a few pounds. He was not to know that Gule had beaten him to it.”
“Do you think he knew about the 1931 scandal and Miss
Veronica’s departure for North Croydon with the family coachman?”
“North Croydon?” Purbright was frowning.
“The registration sub-district on the birth certificate.”
Purbright took from his pocket the paper that had been concealed
in the picture frame.
“Yes, you’re quite right. Sixty-five Alderton Road, Croydon.
Relatives of Whippy, one assumes. They’ll have got a cash payment
to foster young Dean Francis.”
“Until he became old enough to run away and be a burglar,” said
Bradley. “Incidentally, how did Whippy describe himself?”
Purbright moved his finger to the seventh column. “Simply as
F. Arnold, Moldham Hall, Lincolnshire, informant.”
He passed the document across the table.
Bradley looked at it for a few moments, then smiled as he
returned it to Purbright. “I like the entry under ‘Rank or Profession
of Father’.”
Purbright grinned. “It is rather hard to accept that Dr Damion
Gule was ever anything as ordinary as a medical student.”
There had been growing pulsation within the building and its
captive plastic furniture. Now the windows began to tremble and
the bottles to dance in their chrome gallery above the bar. Before
the approaching train drowned speech altogether, Mrs Leaper
roused herself from her amative contemplation of Detective
Inspector Bradley and cried: “Christmas is coming! Look lively,
gents all!”