by Colin Watson
“It’s only fair,” he told her,” that you should know straight away that this is not a social call.”
She widened her eyes but continued to smile. “Oh, come, inspector; all calls are social if those who make them have the grace to keep their real purpose to themselves until the kettle boils.”
Purbright decided to qualify for the compliment. He and his hostess shuttled small-talk for a while, watched politely by Love in the manner of a tennis spectator. Soon tea was brought on a large lacquered tray by a deferential, tight-lipped woman whom the policemen assumed to be a maid. They looked at her surreptitiously and with curiosity, for servants were not common in Flaxborough households. It was a bit like the pictures, Love told himself, adding the sour qualification that in real life the circumstance suggested ill-gotten gains.
Perhaps Purbright thought the same. He said: “You seem to be managing fairly smoothly, Mrs Carobleat. On your own, that is. I admire you for it.”
“That is gallant of you, inspector. But you should reserve your admiration for my late husband’s insurance company. I take no credit.”
“Financial independence doesn’t always make widowhood easier to bear.”
“Doesn’t it?” She explored a plate of biscuits and picked out a chocolate one.
“I should have thought the lack of companionship was the hardest part.”
“You are being very Godfrey Winney today, inspector. What are you after? A confession of my awful goings on with the gentleman next door?”
“I wouldn’t dream of being so impertinent as to ask any such thing,” said Purbright. He turned to Love. “You ask the lady, sergeant.”
Love’s mouth fell open. Then he swallowed and grinned doubtfully. He was rescued by Joan Carobleat. She laughed and said: “Never you mind, sergeant—Mr Purbright is just pulling our legs. Now, then”—she faced Purbright again—“what is it you are really after?”
“The murderer of the gentleman next door.”
“Yes, I suppose you are...” Her voice was suddenly grave. After a long pause she began stirring her tea. As she watched a floating leaf whirl round the rim, she said: “You know I can’t help don’t you? I know nothing that could have the slightest bearing. I wasn’t even here.” She tried to capture the leaf on the tip of her spoon, but it went by, revolved once more, and sank.
“You saw a good deal of Gwill, didn’t you?” Purbright asked.
“I seem to remember your putting that question before—in the teashop, wasn’t it?”
“You said then that you had merely called occasionally as a neighbour. To cheer him up, or something.”
“That still expresses it adequately.”
“You were being facetious just now about some ‘awful goings on’.”
“I can be as facetious as I like about matters of which you are now unlikely ever to be the wiser.”
“Mrs Poole might have given me a fairly clear idea of your relationship.”
Mrs Carobleat smiled. “A half-witted old servant?”
“You don’t wish to confide in me any further, then? I assure you I am the soul of tact and broad-mindedness. Come, now—you and Gwill were more than pally neighbours, weren’t you, Mrs Carobleat?”
She frowned, but not with annoyance. “Look here, inspector: suppose just for the hell of it I admitted what Mrs Poole would call The Worst...just what would be its bearing on your inquiries?”
“I might be a little nearer to discovering a motive for what seems at the moment a singularly pointless crime.”
“Come, widows don’t provide motives—except sometimes for other men’s wives.”
“They occasionally have motives of their own. I don’t suppose they are proof against being discarded, scorned, dishonoured—all that sort of thing, you know.”
She broke into a little clatter of laughter. Purbright, too, was smiling. But his eyes were alert.
“And how do you suggest this poor widow avenged her dishonour, inspector? When she wasn’t even in the same town at the time?”
“You were in Hereford, you said?”
“Shropshire. The Lad’s county, you know.”
“Ah, yes. You spent Monday night in a pub with a peculiar name. The Brink of Discovery.”
“I fancy its proprietor would prefer you to call it an inn. But at least you have the name right.”
“Was anyone else staying in this house while you were away? Your...the young woman who brought the tea?”
“Anna? Oh, no. She goes to some friends on a farm when I take a holiday. You were going to call her a maid, weren’t you? She isn’t quite that, actually. You could say companion if that doesn’t make me sound terribly Bayswater. And old,” she added.
“You had no idea of what had happened here until you returned from Shropshire and heard of Mr Gwill’s death from me?”
“None whatever. It was hardly likely that the news would have reached me the same morning, even if anyone had thought I would wish to be told.”
“Hardly.” Purbright considered a moment. “Did Mr Gwill have any...any presentiment of harm coming his way? Did he mention to you the possibility of his having an enemy?”
She pouted and shook her head.
“How did he get on with the men I presume to have been his friends—those who visited him regularly? Mr Gloss, for instance?”
“Gloss was his solicitor. He had quite a high opinion of him, I believe.”
“Dr Hillyard?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Mr Bradlaw?”
“The undertaker, you mean? They were on good terms. They could do each other a certain amount of mutual good through the newspaper, of course. Advertising on one side, and help with lists of mourners and so forth on the other. It’s a common enough arrangement, I believe.”
“Was there anyone apart from those three with whom Gwill was on intimate terms?”
“Not since my husband died. And always excepting his guilty association with me, of course.” Mrs Carobleat sipped her tea and eyed Purbright over the top of the cup.
After another quarter of an hour of being stolidly inquisitive to no perceptible effect, Purbright rose and said: “You understand that I have no right at the moment to ask you this, but would you be willing just the same to let me have a look round your house?”
This, at any rate, seemed to find Mrs Carobleat unprepared. She looked at him doubtfully and said she couldn’t quite see why, but he could if he really wanted to. He smiled apologetically and motioned her to lead the way.
The rest of the house proved to be as tidy, expensively furnished and well tended as the room they had left. Purbright and Love silently followed Mrs Carobleat, who only once turned in time to catch the inspector closely examining a power point.
He also showed interest in a small leather travelling case containing brushes and shaving equipment that lay on the dressing table of one of the only two bedrooms that showed signs of regular occupation.
“Those were Harold’s,” she said expressionlessly. Purbright nodded and turned away.
Chapter Ten
On the morning following the publication day of the Flaxborough Citizen, an early telephone call was put through to the police station by George Lintz. Purbright had been in his office since the time he judged the first postal delivery would be made at the newspaper. He now hurried over to Market Street.
Lintz let him in and handed him fourteen letters addressed to the box numbers specified in the advertisements that had been inserted on his uncle’s directions. An hour remained before members of the staff would begin to arrive. Purbright and Lintz settled into chairs in a small office on the first floor and waited for a kettle to boil on a gas ring in the fireplace.
The first envelope from which the flap curled back at the persuasion of steam and the somewhat self-conscious inspector, contained a typewritten sheet and eight one-pound notes. The letter read:
Dear Sir,
In response to your ad. I shall be pleased to call Tues
day at 7.45 p.m. to see goods as specified (Japanese antique newel, ebony) and enclose cash entitling me to first refusal of same. If inconvenient, kindly send card.
Yours faithfully,
H. L. BIRD
The address at the top was 14, Burtley Avenue, Flaxborough. Purbright read the letter through twice and handed it to Lintz. “Bird...isn’t that the agricultural machinery fellow?” Lintz looked at the address and nodded.
“What do you make of it?” Purbright had selected another letter from the pile and was carefully passing it to and fro across the gently steaming spout.
Lintz shrugged. “He must be interested in antiques, I suppose. Not that I would have suspected Harry Bird of tastes in that direction. The money side of it is rather odd, isn’t it?”
For answer, Purbright held up another bundle of notes that he had extracted from the second envelope. He counted them. There were eight. “Standard rate, apparently,” he remarked and smoothed out the accompanying letter.
Dear Sir (it ran),
Re your advert, in this week’s issue, I wish to inspect goods on Thursday evening at 8 sharp. For preference Superior Antique Lampstand but would consider Jap Oak Antique Newel. Deposit herewith.
Yours truly,
N. SMITH
The address was Derwentvale, Pawley Road, Flaxborough.
“Who’s N. Smith?” Purbright asked, showing Lintz the letter.
“If he lives at that address, he’s Councillor Herbert Smiles.”
“A doubly cautious buyer of antiques. Deals with box numbers, and even then gives a false name. The cunning old councillor.” Purbright sounded far away. He was steaming another envelope with tender concentration as if it were a trout.
Once more he drew out notes—again eight. The letter followed the pattern of the first two, except that it contained a number of spelling mistakes. The signature, as far as Purbright could decipher it, was R. Ocklom. The address was that of a shop in Harbour Road. Lintz said he thought it was a newsagent’s and that it was an accommodation address. Purbright set to work on a fourth letter.
At the end of half an hour, the whole batch had been carefully disembowelled. Purbright took a large sheet of paper and began making a table of the various features of the correspondence. In the first column he set the name and address of each writer. In the second he put the date and time of the projected interview or appointment. The third received a description of the article that appeared to have been offered for sale.
Having completed this list, he restored the contents of all the envelopes, re-gummed the flaps and sealed them. Lintz took the bundle and returned the letters to the post box in the downstairs office.
A few minutes later, the first members of the newspaper staff came in. Avoiding them, Purbright and Lintz crossed the landing and went into the editor’s own room. Somebody found the abandoned kettle, shook it and gratefully made some lumpy cocoa with its contents as a prelude to a dreary morning of preparing in advance the following week’s ‘What’s On in Flaxborough’.
Purbright did not stay longer than was demanded by courtesy to one who now seemed less a suspect than a fellow conspirator. He enjoined Lintz, a little guiltily, to keep the oddities of Boxes CS.441/4 to himself and to place no obstacle in the way of the letters themselves being collected by anyone who might call for them. “But ask your people to make sure and remember who it is,” he added.
Back at the police station, Sergeant Love wanted to know if the inspector thought it wise to have allowed Lintz to be a spectator of the letter opening.
“I don’t see why not,” Purbright replied. “After all, if he is involved, and if this antique business has a bearing on his uncle’s death, it would be absurd for Lintz not to have used his position as editor to squash the whole thing. He had the opportunity to swipe Gwill’s ledgers. He could have cooked up some simple explanation of the advertisements even after we had become suspicious. And there was nothing to stop him pretending that there had been no replies. Lintz might be fly, but I should be very surprised if he has a clue as to what old uncle was up to.”
“Yet even so, that wouldn’t rule him out as the fellow we’re looking for. The box reply racket may have nothing to do with the murder.”
Purbright smiled. “In those letters that I’ve just steamed open there was money totalling a hundred and twelve pounds. When cash of that amount comes floating down into a murder case, you don’t need to do much cherching of femmes or looking into family cupboards. Now then, let’s see what we can make of all this.”
He spread out his tabulated digest of the box replies.
“Quite a social register,” Love remarked as he glanced down the first column. “Are they genuine, do you think?”
“I’m sure they are. One or two are hiding behind false names, but they’re pretty half-hearted deceptions. The addresses are real enough. Can you think why? That’s the first point to consider.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, the natural assumption is that the business, whatever it is, is shady. These respectable citizens must know it. Yet they pass cash over mostly genuine signatures and under entirely genuine addresses. That isn’t quite what one would expect.”
Love tried hard. “It suggests confidence, doesn’t it?”
“Ah,” responded Purbright, “you’re right. These people are confident. We can be fairly sure, then,” he went on, “that this means of communication, or doing business, or buying something—whatever it is—has been used by them over a long period. They trust it. Perhaps it’s a game they enjoy for the sake of some little element of risk or thrill, as well. Another possibility, of course, is that the writer must identify himself properly, or substantially so, in case a reply or a cancellation needs to be sent. One letter actually said ‘if inconvenient, kindly send card’. That was Harry Bird.”
“He makes reapers,” said Love, helpfully. The inspector considered this information for a moment but apparently found it irrelevant, as indeed it was. He waved his pencil over the second column of his table. “Dates and times,” he murmured. “What stands out here?”
Love read dutifully down the list, checking entries with the names and addresses beside them in the first column. “All the times are in the evening,” he announced.
“They are, aren’t they?”
“And on days during this next week.”
“Yes.”
“Well?” Love looked up.
“Nothing. I just wondered if a fresh young mind might spot something significant.”
The sergeant sniffed and glanced again through the list of times. “Seven to nine—they all fall between seven and nine.”
“So they do. Perhaps those are recognized antique viewing hours.”
The pencil hovered now over column three. “What,” asked Purbright, “is an antique Japanese newel, for pity’s sake?”
“A newel is a post. Something to do with a staircase.”
Purbright said, “Well, well,” and looked further down the inventory. “Quite a number of them, aren’t there? An old flourishing industry, do you think? In Japan, at any rate...Ah, no, here is an Egyptian newel, inlaid dodecahedronic.”
“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Love.
Purbright reached down a dictionary from the shelf above his head and plunged after dodecahedronic. “Something solid, with twelve equal sides,” he announced without enthusiasm. “Where does that take us?”
“A robbery split twelve ways?” suggested Love recklessly. “A fence’s code, you know.”
“How ingenious. And Superior Antique Lampstand? What nefarious coup would you say that concealed?”
Love scowled and began to pick his teeth with a match. “I know...” he said. “Try other words with the same initials. S, A, L...smash and, smash and...”
“Languish? What about Swipe Auntie’s Laundry?” Both stared a little longer at the table. Then Love shrugged impatiently. “There’s only one thing to do. Pull in a couple of these characters and drag out of them
what it’s all about.”
Purbright pondered. He shook his head. “No, not just yet. There may be a better way. Look—is there anyone in this lot who doesn’t know you, who you can be sure wouldn’t recognize you as a heavy-footed copper?”