Coffin Scarcely Used f-1

by Colin Watson

  Mr Chubb started and puffed out his cheeks. “Oh, look here,” he said, then subsided and murmured, “Good Lord,” with great restraint.

  “Yes, sir?” Purbright inquired respectfully.

  “Well,” said the Chief Constable, “it’s only that you’ve mentioned this chap Carobleat several times before. If you’re going to bring him up again, at least you might explain what he has to do with all this. I really don’t see the connection, except through the widow woman, so to speak.”

  “That is one connection, certainly,” Purbright agreed. “But I think I also mentioned Carobleat’s will, didn’t I, sir?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Which only turned up fairly recently.”

  “I don’t remember your saying that.”

  “No, sir. But that is what happened. And in view of the fact that Mr Gloss proves to have been Carobleat’s solicitor as well as Gwill’s, we might be forgiven for finding the unorthodoxy of the chain of events that began with Carobleat’s death somewhat disquieting. Particularly”—he forestalled another interruption—“as it is fairly clear that Carobleat, Gwill, Gloss, Hillyard and the undertaker Bradlaw were originally concerned together in some enterprise that they succeeded in keeping remarkably private, but which, if I am not mistaken, was illegal.” Purbright paused, then added with the air of having given the point some consideration, “And immoral, to boot.”

  Mr Chubb looked shocked. Love, too, seemed taken aback—but rather in the manner of a schoolboy who succeeds in getting two packets of cigarettes from a kicked slot machine instead of one.

  “Well, you know best what lines to work along, Purbright,” said Mr Chubb, “but do try and keep a charitable view of these people. Until you know the worst, of course. I don’t believe in sentiment where criminals are concerned. But background counts for a lot with me. Chaps don’t usually go off the rails overnight after years and years of being useful and respectable citizens.”

  Purbright looked up from his papers and smiled. “No, sir,” he said. “Some of them are off the rails all the time but manage to keep the fact to themselves.”

  The telephone on the desk rang. “Take it at the switch, will you, sergeant,” Purbright said to Love, “and tell whoever it is I’m engaged.”

  “Don’t mind me, my boy,” Mr Chubb protested, but Love was already through the door and the bell did not ring again.

  A few moments later, the sergeant came hurrying back into the office. His cherubic composure looked strained. “Excuse me—sir.” he said carefully to Purbright, “but perhaps you ought to know straight away. That was Mrs Gloss on the phone. The solicitor’s wife. She says Mr Gloss is dead. Someone took a stab at him as he was coming into his house a little while ago. That is what she alleges—sir.”

  Purbright looked at the Chief Constable. “It shortens the list of suspects, anyway,” he said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “But look here, doctor, surely you have some inkling? How big was the fellow? Which way did he go?”

  Mr Chubb, interrogator, was finding Dr Hillyard’s granite imperturbability very difficult to scratch.

  “I tell you I didn’t even see him. There was just a”—he carved the air with one of his long, oar-like hands—“a dark shape right under our noses, then Gloss seemed to lift. He gave a sort of squeak, that’s all, and went down outside the gate, there. Plonk. And I knelt down to see what was wrong. Aye.”

  The sitting-room of the house in St Anne’s Place gave the impression of being somewhat crowded, as rooms do when they contain men wearing overcoats. Actually there was no lack of space for the five people who occupied it, although one of them, the so lately late Mr Rodney Gloss, silently monopolized the whole of the large chesterfield in its centre.

  Dr Hillyard sat forward in an armchair, staring morosely at the sheet that covered the solicitor’s body. He stressed bony fingers in a consultative pyramid. The presence of three policemen appeared to distress him not at all.

  Love was busy folding a jacket and a dark overcoat, the darker stain on which he carefully left uppermost when he placed it with other clothing on a stool.

  Purbright sat on a chair arm near the window. His mop of yellow hair glinted against the background of grey velvet curtains. He watched Hillyard’s face with an expression that suggested kindly absent-mindedness.

  From his instinctively adopted post near the fireplace, the Chief Constable threw out another question. He sounded a fraction peeved and incredulous.

  “You say this assailant made no sound whatever, doctor? Said nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not a word to either of you?”

  “He didn’t ask to be introduced, if that’s what you mean.”

  “That is not what I mean, doctor,” said Mr Chubb coldly. “It simply seems extremely odd that murder is committed in a residential area of Flaxborough with the technique, as it were, of an oriental assassin.”

  Hillyard made no reply.

  Purbright asked him gently: “How do you account for the blood on your own clothing, sir?”

  “See if you can turn over a man with a heart wound and stay clean,” retorted the doctor.

  The inspector nodded as if satisfied. “What sort of a blow would you say had been used? Powerful, of course?”

  “Quite powerful. A deal of cloth had to be penetrated.”

  “And a body.”

  “Aye—that too.”

  Purbright stood up and stepped over to the walnut table near the Chief Constable. He bent and examined, without touching, the long knife that lay there on a sheet of brown paper.

  “It would be no use asking if you had seen this before?”

  “No use whatever,” confirmed Hillyard.

  Purbright went back to his perch. “When and where did you meet Mr Gloss this evening, doctor?”

  “He called shortly after surgery. About nine, I should guess. We talked awhile over a whisky or two.”

  “It wasn’t a professional call?” put in the Chief Constable.

  “From what aspect, may I ask? Medical or legal?”

  “Either.”

  “No.”

  “Would you care to tell us what object Mr Gloss had in calling to see you, sir?” Purbright sounded less insistent than Mr Chubb.

  “His objects, I suppose, were exercise, liquor and conversation, in that order. He achieved all three in moderation. I might add—in case misleading theories are burgeoning in your mind, inspector—that our talk was innocent, trivial and unsuggestive of violence.”

  “How long did he remain at your home?”

  “An hour, maybe. We left say twenty minutes before his wife called you on the telephone.”

  “And walked directly here?”

  “Directly. But in no haste.”

  “Why did you accompany him, sir? It’s not a particularly pleasant night for walking.”

  “Is it not? I hadn’t noticed.”

  “By the way, doctor, did you have a fairly busy surgery this evening?”

  Love looked quickly at Hillyard, who replied: “My surgery is always busy. Disease is like crime, inspector: there is a constant concentration of it in society everywhere.”

  “Both will respond to treatment, though?”

  “Aye—to a strictly limited degree.”

  “Yet perseverance is still worth while. Is that why you provide special clinical facilities at your house, Dr Hillyard?” Purbright’s expression was one of earnest encouragement.

  “Is that point...ah”—Hillyard grappled for a word—“germaine—aye, germaine—to your inquiries, inspector? Tell me that, will ye?” The emergence of the accent put sardonic challenge into the words. He held his head forward and askew, like a bird’s.

  Purbright let the retort go by. “You were acquainted, I believe, doctor, with the late Mr Gwill?”

  “I was.”

  “And with the late Mr Carobleat, who lived next door to him?”

  “I have been acquainted in my time wi
th many citizens now deceased, inspector. As a doctor, I doubt if I am unique in that respect.”

  “I don’t suppose you are. But it is possible that your special knowledge might help us to dispose of some rather odd coincidences and the sort of rumours that always follow them and hamper us in our work.”

  Dr Hillyard spread out his hands and smiled wryly.

  “You attended Mr Carobleat—we might as well proceed in chronological order—and signed a death certificate in respect of pneumonia and heart failure. That is so, doctor?”

  “To the best of my recollection.”

  “The illness was quite short?”

  “Short—but conclusive.”

  “And you have no reason, looking back now, to doubt the accuracy of your findings?”

  “None whatever. Why should I?”

  “What is your opinion, doctor, concerning the death of Mr Gwill?”

  Hillyard shook his head. “I have no knowledge of that. I’m sure your own police surgeon could give you more help than I can.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, sir. After all, you were in Mr Gwill’s company until very shortly before he died.”

  Hillyard regarded Purbright narrowly for a few seconds. Then he said: “I suppose you are indebted—posthumously”—he glanced at the sheeted form in the centre of the room—“to Gloss for that information?”

  “You were present that night, then?”

  “It was a social occasion, simply. Of the sequel, if whatever happened to Gwill can be called a sequel to a little informal conversation and a drink or two, I know nothing. Gloss will have told you that Gwill received a telephone call from someone or other and left the house. We did not see him again.”

  “You did not gather who made the call?”

  “No.”

  “What did you and Gloss do when Gwill failed to return, doctor?”

  “We waited perhaps half an hour and then went home.”

  “Was no one else there at the house?”

  “No, I think not. The housekeeper was away for the night.”

  “But, doctor”—Purbright leaned forward—“Gloss told me that Mr Bradlaw was there also. He arrived in his van, surely. And all three of you came back to town in it together. That is so, isn’t it?” He watched for the effect of the guess.

  “Of course,” said Hillyard, blandly. “That’s what I told you myself not half a minute ago.”

  The inspector stared at him. “I beg your pardon, sir. Bradlaw wasn’t mentioned until...”

  “Nonsense, man; ye’re bletherin’.”

  Mr Chubb had been watching the interchange between Purbright and the doctor in a dumbly pivotal manner. He found the drift of question and answer to be going further and further, in his opinion, from the immediate problem of the solicitor’s killing, and decided to bring the inquisition back firmly to the here and now.

  “Had Mr Gloss any enemies, doctor?” he asked.

  “He may well have had.”

  “Really?” Mr Chubb was temporarily disconcerted. “Why do you say that?”

  “He was a solicitor. The profession does not attract draughts of the milk of human kindness.”

  “I see. But do you know of anyone specifically who wished him harm?”

  “I can think of no one in particular.”

  The Chief Constable was about to put another question when there was the sound of a vehicle drawing to a stop outside the house. Love hurried to the door and returned to announce the arrival of an ambulance, Dr Hooper, the police surgeon, and a photographer. Soon the room seemed more indecently over-crowded than ever. The Chief Constable managed to draw Purbright aside, asked him somewhat superfluously if he could ‘manage’, and escaped.

  Half an hour later, Dr Hillyard having been dismissed with a polite injunction to be ready for further unavoidable demands upon his patience, Purbright and his sergeant were left in an empty house by the departure of corpse, police surgeon and photographer. Mrs Gloss had been collected much earlier by a shocked but comforting brother-in-law with a car.

  Purbright, deservedly resting in the depths of an armchair, looked at Love and sighed. “The doctor?” he asked.

  Love gave the slight grunt that he used to acknowledge axiomatic situations. “No one’s going to tell me,” he said, “that he wouldn’t know what his own pal’s assailant looked like—if there really was an assailant. There’s a street lamp almost directly outside, and that’s where Gloss was knifed. Incidentally, you’d think that whoever stabbed him must have got his sleeve pretty wet.”

  “As Hillyard did,” Purbright put in.

  “That’s what I mean. The bloke’s a villain; it stands out a mile.” Love was pinkly indignant. “I’d like to bet you anything you like he did Gloss and Gwill.”

  “In that case,” Purbright said thoughtfully, “we might not be very far wrong in wondering if he had a hand in another little matter much earlier on.” He put one leg over the chair arm and lit a cigarette. “You know, Sid, the death that we ought to have looked into before now is one that passed off nicely with a respectable certificate, a quiet funeral and not a single question.”

  “Carobleat’s, you mean?”

  “Of course. Carobleat’s. As you’ll have gathered by now, Carobleat’s activities were almost certainly crooked; some of them, anyway. Behind that brokerage firm of his were several lines of business that we were trying to put a finger on at about the time he was taken ill. The excise people were convinced that smuggling was one. He had all the contacts he could want on the shipping side, and as long as he wasn’t too ambitious he would have had no difficulty in disposing of what was brought in. He had the sense to keep it manageably modest.

  “Inevitably,” continued Purbright, “that sort of game would begin to include the more risky but much more profitable handling of drugs. That sounds a bit far-fetched, perhaps, but I’m told the odd packet finds its way into little ports like this fairly regularly. And there’s the hell of a lot of money to be made out of even one small parcel.”

  “Do you know that he was handling drugs?” Love asked.

  “Not for certain. But it would help to explain Carobleat’s connection with Hillyard. As a doctor, Hillyard would have been exceedingly useful in providing cover.”

  Love sat upright suddenly. “The antiques!” he exclaimed. “I nearly suggested it earlier.”

  Purbright shook his head. “No, the antiques are something else altogether. Another Carobleat legacy, I fancy, but nothing to do with drugs. What is interesting about the antiques, though, is that they are the only obvious link between the late Mr Carobleat and the late Mr Gwill.”

  “Except Mrs Carobleat.”

  “Ah...” Purbright reflected. Then he asked: “Do you happen to know Shropshire at all, Sid?”

  The sergeant frowned. “I once went through that way on a trip to Colwyn Bay or somewhere. When I was a kid, that was.”

  “Never mind. No, as I was saying, the antiques’ do suggest connexions. A councillor’s crusading zeal; the advertising columns of a newspaper; a doctor’s house; and an undertaker who does building jobs with promptitude and tact. What a pity so few good syndicates can hang together for very long.”

  Reluctantly pulling himself out of his chair, Purbright walked to the window and peered between the curtains. “Manning ought to be here before long. I think he might as well come inside for the night. There’s no point in playing sentries in weather like this.” He turned. “By the way, did you see a phone anywhere about?”

  “Just outside this room, on a table.”

  When Purbright returned five minutes later, he announced that he had rung the Chief Constable, that Dr Hillyard would be arrested the next day, and that they both might as well go home to bed as soon as the tardy Constable Manning made an appearance.

  “Incidentally,” he added, “I only hope he lasts the night.”

  Love looked blank. “Who? Manning?”

  “No, Hillyard. He’ll be safe once we can get him into a cell tomorr
ow, of course, but passions seem to be running high.” Purbright examined his knuckles, then looked up at the sergeant. “What do you suggest we charge him with?”

  “What, as well as doing Gloss?”

  Purbright shook his head. “We haven’t enough to charge Hillyard with that. Not at the moment. But we’ll have to get him into custody somehow.” He slowly paced the length of the room and stood looking at a large, slightly fly-blown engraving of a barrister ancestor of Rodney Gloss. He turned. “I know—living on immoral earnings. How’s that?”