Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  A quarter to five was an ideal time, he reflected, to send in his report. He entered the next telephone booth he came to and dialled a local number.

  “Dover?” inquired Mr Hive, guardedly.

  “That’s right.”

  “Hastings here. All right if I...?”

  “Yes.”

  “I commenced observation of Calais at ten-twenty hours when she left the house accompanied by a large dog. She went to a park near the river, apparently in order to let the dog have some exercise, which it did.”

  “Liver and white markings?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The dog. Liver and white.”

  “Ah...yes.” Mr Hive did not really remember.

  “Fine animal, didn’t you think?”

  “Most captivating.”

  “All right. Carry on.”

  “Calais remained in the park until...” Mr Hive consulted an envelope. “Until eleven-thirty hours. It was raining heavily for part of the time and...”

  “She didn’t let the dog get wet, did she?”

  “No, no; she took it into a shelter and sat there until the rain stopped. I was able to observe that no one made contact with the Subject while she was in the park. Afterwards she went into several shops and returned home at twelve-fifteen hours, when I took the opportunity of going back briefly to my lodg...my hotel, and changing into dry clothes.”

  Mr Hive paused and made ready to wave aside his client’s expressions of sympathy, but none was offered.

  He went on: “At fifteen hundred hours, Calais came out of the house and continued on foot into town. She entered a teashop called The Willow Plate and was joined almost immediately by a woman whom I suggest we codename Dieppe.”

  “What did she look like?”

  “Billiard table legs, poor soul. But a vivacious manner. Spectacles of a somewhat bizarre, transatlantic cast. Light, fluffy hair. Loud voice. Thirty-five or so.”

  “I think I know who it was.”

  “A vodka and lime sort of woman. A virgin, for a ducat.” Mr Hive stretched elegantly against the side of the booth and flicked the glass with his yellow washleather gloves. He smiled gently into space, as if recalling some charming childhood fiction.

  “No need to be offensive.”

  “Offensive?” Mr Hive’s bewilderment was genuine.

  “Never mind. Go on. Did you hear what they were talking about?”

  “Some of it, certainly. I succeeded in finding a seat in the next alcove thing to theirs—it is that kind of teashop, you know—and I was able to take notes of parts of the conversation until nearly sixteen hundred hours, when they left, separately. Calais was very difficult to hear. Dieppe was not. I received what you might call the drift. Shall I summarize it for you?”

  “I simply want to know what arrangement they made. I take it that an arrangement was made.”

  “Yes, indeed,” declared Mr Hive, peering again at his envelope and turning it the other way up. “Briefly, it is this. Dieppe is to travel tonight to Nottingham...”

  “What is Nottingham the code for?”

  “Nothing. Nottingham is just Nottingham.”

  “So long as we know.”

  “She is going there tonight by train. She will book a single room at the Trent Towers Hotel, but in Calais’ name, not her own. She will not leave again until tomorrow morning when she will book out, do some shopping and catch the eleven o’clock train back to Flaxborough. At Flaxborough station, Dieppe will be met by Calais, to whom she will give the things she has bought, together with her hotel receipt.”

  There was a pause.

  “You have done rather well, Mr, ah, Hastings.”

  “All part of the job, Mr Dover.” Mr Hive beamed through the glass at an anxious-looking young woman who had been standing outside the booth for the past five minutes. He raised his gloves and pursed his lips in a way that intimated his imminent abandonment of the telephone. Instead of looking grateful, however, she gave a scowl of disgust (at his chest, he thought) and hastened away, muttering.

  Mr Hive, feeling more conscious than ever of having mysteriously and innocently become the object of public odium, delivered the rest of his report.

  “Good man,” said Dover. “That message she left, though...”

  “For Folkestone, presumably,” said Mr Hive.

  “Oh, for Folkestone without doubt. But will you repeat it—I want to get it absolutely right.”

  “It was: ‘All fixed for tonight. Wait at cottage.’ ”

  “ ‘Wait at cottage.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know where the cottage is? You remember my directions?”

  “Clearly,” said Mr Hive.

  Chapter Four

  “There’s a Miss Cadbury would like a word with you. She’s the secretary of the...”—Sergeant Love glanced down dubiously at the card in his hand—“of the Kindly Kennel Klan.”

  “She’s not wearing a white hood, is she?”

  “No,” said Love. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with religion.”

  Miss Cadbury, agitatedly fumbling at the amber beads around her neck, was already through the doorway.

  “It’s our flag day, Inspector. And some perfectly dreadful things have been happening.”

  Purbright soothed her into a chair. He motioned Love to close the door.

  Miss Cadbury was a big, gaunt woman, with a downy chin. The restlessness of her hands emphasized their largeness. She had knees to match. She wore a mauve woollen costume and a peaked felt hat that looked designed to deflect falling masonry.

  “Now, then, Miss Cadbury; what are these dreadful things that have happened?”

  For fully half a minute, she stared at him, tight-lipped. Purbright hoped that this was just for dramatic effect and did not presage some personal accusation.

  “The committee,” she said at last, “is extremely upset. What people are saying I daren’t imagine. I only hope that those responsible...”

  Purbright waited, looking suitably grave. He saw that the woman’s big, strong fingers were straying around the clasp of her handbag. The bag was a massive hide affair; its clasp looked as if it would require a set of spanners.

  Miss Cadbury squared her shoulders. “Let us not beat about the bush, Inspector. My organization’s name has been brought into disrepute by a trick, a very nasty trick. Certain unauthorized persons have been passing themselves off as our flag sellers.”

  “Today, you mean?”

  “Of course. I have lost no time in letting you know. You must do something about it.”

  “Perhaps you could be a little more specific, Miss Cadbury. Can you tell me where any of these people are operating?”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “You haven’t actually seen one yourself, then?”

  “It has been going on. There is no doubt about that. I have been given...well, evidence.”

  “What kind of evidence?”

  “Very upsetting evidence.” Her fingers were firm now upon the handbag fastening. Purbright again marvelled at the robustness of the clasp. What had she got in there—a pet eagle?

  “A number of people have come into the flag day headquarters,” Miss Cadbury went on. “They have complained very bitterly. As well they might, although we ourselves, of course, were in no way to blame. We tried to convince them of that, but these things take an awful lot of undoing.”

  “It might be of some assistance,” Purbright said, “if you were to tell me what they were complaining about. I mean, how did they know that they had made contributions to unauthorized collectors? I can appreciate that this worries you, but why should distinction between official and unofficial soliciting worry ordinary members of the public?”

  “We do not solicit!” Miss Cadbury’s august indignation proclaimed a bosom he would not have given her credit for.

  Sergeant Love helpfully intervened. “It’s some of the flags that have been the trouble, sir. I think they’ve given offence.”


  “Ah,” said Purbright. “Perhaps you would tell us about that, Miss Cadbury.”

  She nodded. “Unauthorized emblems, very like our own but quite, quite unauthorized, have got into circulation. There are...”—she hesitated—”words on them.”

  “Aren’t there words on yours?”

  “Not these words!”

  The inspector’s obtuseness could not have been more eloquently reproved.

  “They were, as you might say, messages,” Miss Cadbury resumed after a while. “Printed very boldly upon a clever imitation of our emblem. Perhaps message is not quite the right description, though.” She frowned.

  “No?”

  “No. Invitations. And of the most embarrassing kind.”

  Love again was ready to elucidate. “Like at fairs, sir. You know, on funny hats.”

  The huge handbag clicked and gaped dramatically. “There is nothing funny”, boomed Miss Cadbury, “about these, Inspector!”

  Down in the town, there was no longer the rattle of a single collecting can—authorized or unauthorized—to be heard. The workers for the Kindly Kennel Klan had abandoned their strategic pitches and converged upon the committee rooms in Catherine Street. While they sat and gratefully sipped tea around a field kitchen urn borrowed for the occasion from the Civil Defence people (Note: in case of atomic attack, emergency urn at 41 Stanstead Gardens), a fresh relay of Miss Cadbury’s workers cascaded coins upon a long trestle table and counted the take.

  Mr Hive had returned with all possible speed to his lodgings after telephoning his report, and, having spent five minutes in puzzled scrutiny of his reflection in the wardrobe mirror, had at last hit upon the cause of his ostracism. The offending emblem—a sort of jaunty Good Housekeeping seal of sexual prowess—he had transferred to the breast of a life-size mezzotint of Prince Albert that hung over the mantlepiece.

  Now, thoughtfully sipping gin from a thick-walled tumbler, Mr Hive surveyed the things set out upon the table. They were a ponderously old-fashioned half-plate camera, some plate-holders, a box of flash bulbs and a battery. He tested the battery with a flash-lamp bulb mounted on callipers, then slipped it into a recess in the camera. He packed all the equipment into a battered hide carrying case with a long leather shoulder strap and set it down near the door. Finally, after consulting the Marquess of Grantham’s appreciative watch, he refilled his tumbler and reclined with a sigh on the bed.

  At Flaxborough station, a train was coming in. It was the third, and last, train of the day for Nottingham. Among the twenty or so people on the platform were a man and a woman who had the constrained air of having just suspended an argument for the sake of public appearance. The woman, who wore a bright green hat and carried a small dressing case, was frowning and silent. Her companion, though equally taciturn while the train rumbled and squealed to a halt, wore an expression of kindly but determined concern. He pointed to an empty compartment and stepped before her to open the door. The woman spoke at last. “I told you there’d be plenty of room. There was no need at all for you to come.”

  She got into the carriage and perched, stiff with resentment, in the corner seat. The man remained on the platform. He was about to shut the door when he caught sight of a woman in the act of boarding the train a few yards lower down. He shouted and waved. The other woman looked very surprised. Again he waved. She hesitated for several seconds, then, forcing a smile, came towards him. He cheerfully ushered her into the compartment and slammed the door. The train began to move. The man on the platform watched until the last carriage glided out past the signal box and the level crossing gates swung back to release the pent stream of cars and bicycles at the station’s west end. Then he turned and walked towards the exit. His smile of persevering solicitude had broadened into one of amusement.

  The streets were full of bicycles, clattering droves of them, bowling homeward from the docks and timber yards and factories. The riders sensed that by sheer weight of numbers they had taken over the town just for that hour. Timber men, packers, engineers, men from the wharves, converged in speeding groups which then split at junctions and crossroads with banter and shouts of farewell. The older men, riding alone or in pairs, let the others pass while they sat in straight-backed dignity on their saddles and showed off their skill at lighting pipes with one hand. They affected not to notice the antics of the boys, who stood on their plunging pedals like rodeo performers or crouched, chin to handlebars, and furiously raced one another, with the squeals of the cannery girls as prizes.

  The shops were closing. Not brusquely, as in a city, but with an accommodating casualness. Time in Flaxborough was like most other things, a matter of compromise. Thus at twenty to six Sergeant Malley was not in the least surprised to find unlocked the door of a butcher whose trading was supposed nominally to cease at five o’clock. He went in and bought some pressed beef for his supper. In natural deference to the Coroner’s Officer’s calling (and perhaps the butcher’s, for that matter) the small talk was of bodies. “Two this week,” the sergeant confirmed. “One natural, as it turned out. The other was young Perce Hallam.” “Oh, aye: the motorbike business.” “Trouble is, they always come in threes. Always. And now I feel I can’t get on with anything. You know—like the bloke in the hotel bedroom waiting for that bugger upstairs to drop his other shoe.” “What bugger upstairs?” “The one with three legs.”

  As the sergeant emerged from the butcher’s shop, a blue town service bus went by on its way to Heston Lane End. He was not to know the destiny of a passenger who sat three seats from the driver on the left-hand side. Otherwise he certainly would have given more than a fleeting, indifferent glance at the woman who was going home to become the subject of the third inquest.

  She was Mrs Henrietta Palgrove, aged forty-three, housewife, of Dunroamin, Brompton Gardens, Flaxborough: charity organizer, voluntary social worker, animal lover. She would, as the Flaxborough Citizen was to affirm the following Friday, be sadly missed.

  The bus drove slowly through the emptying town and stopped to pick up its last passengers at St Lawrence’s Church and Burton Place. Then it entered Burton Lane and began a rambling tour of two council estates. Ten minutes later, its load reduced and, in the opinion of Mrs Palgrove, refined, it turned towards the complex of avenues south of Heston Lane malevolently described by envious occupants of less substantial and secluded residences as ‘Debtor’s Retreat’.

  Mrs Palgrove alighted at the stop nearest the upper end of Brompton Gardens and made her way home. Except for her, the road was empty. It usually was. The people who had settled here had done so expressly in order to avoid sight of one another. They were as apprehensive of being ‘overlooked’ as their mediaeval ancestors had been of coming within scope of the evil eye. Only from an occasional flash of red tile or brick through high foliage could one have guessed that Brompton Gardens was populated at all.

  Dunroamin was the last house but one on the left before the road narrowed abruptly to become a gravelled track through open fields. This track eventually doubled back towards town and joined the main road into Flaxborough from Chalmsbury. The house was screened not only by the thick beech hedge, more than ten feet high, that bordered its surrounding gardens, but by a pair of enormous old chestnut trees in the middle of the front lawn. A drive of new-looking concrete skirted the lawn and ran past the side of the house to open out into a broad, paved area, a sort of courtyard, brightened by geraniums and begonias growing in cast concrete urns. From the courtyard’s opposite side, a path wide enough to give passage to a car led between rosebeds and more lawns to a two-car garage. This was built of concrete blocks roughened to simulate stone and was half hidden by creeper. Just beside it, a gate in the beech hedge opened to a back lane.

  As Mrs Palgrove approached the house, she heard the murmur of a car engine. Suddenly the sound expanded to a roar. It died, rose again, died.

  Frowning, she looked across to the end of the garden. More bursts of noise, like the protests of a teased and tet
hered beast. And with each, a little cloud of azure smoke came rolling out of the open garage.

  Leonard Palgrove, aged forty-four, company director, chamber of commerce member, amorist manqué, sports car enthusiast, was making love to his Aston-Martin.

  Mrs Palgrove smiled, but not fondly, and walked on. In the court of the concrete urns, she paused to set something down. It was a dog, but one so diminutive that it had been invisible in its carrying place between the crook of Mrs Palgrove’s arm and the overhang of her bosom. Released, it pranced like a high-stepping rat to the nearest urn and lifted against it a leg no bigger than a pigeon’s drumstick. She spoke to the dog, calling it Rodney. She crooned it a number of questions. Rodney made no reply.