Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  Purbright assumed his modest-athlete expression. “Into orbit, I fancy.” He pushed open the front door and went into the house.

  Chapter Eight

  “Is that Dover?” asked Mr Hive. There was no immediate reply. He heard the racketty noise transmitted by a telephone when it is laid down on something hard. Then there came other sounds, one of them suggestive of a closing door.

  “Hastings, I suppose?”

  “Correct,” said Mr Hive.

  “Look, I did tell you not to ring at lunch-time. It’s not convenient.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry—but I thought you’d want to be told as soon as possible about something rather disastrous.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well—last night, naturally. I mean, contretemps is scarcely the word. As if it weren’t enough to have my camera stolen and my car sabotaged...”

  “Camera? Car?”

  “My dear sir, you don’t know the half of it. I still don’t know what they did to the car, but it certainly wouldn’t start. I just had to abandon it and set off for that benighted blasted cottage on foot.”

  “You what!”

  “I walked. It was about ten miles and singularly rough going.”

  “It’s four, actually. But, heavens, there was no need, man. I’d never have expected you to walk.”

  “I am not in the habit,” said Mr Hive with dignity, “of quitting a job just when it is becoming difficult.”

  “All right. What happened?”

  “My report follows.” Hive cleared his throat while he spread out before him a somewhat crumpled sheet of paper bearing pencilled notes. When he spoke again, his normally pleasantly modulated voice had become measured and impersonal. The transformation sounded a bit of a strain.

  “At approximately twenty-one thirty hours I proceeded on foot to the premises at Hambourne Dyke where The Subject was understood to have arranged a rendezvous with Folkestone. I arrived at approximately twenty-two thirty hours and commenced observation. A car which I recognized as Folkestone’s was standing in a concealed position at the side of the cottage. Investigation revealed no other vehicle...”

  “Look, old chap, don’t you think you could shorten all this a bit?”

  Mr Hive looked offended. He kept one finger marking the place he had reached while he explained that in matters such as this one could not be too fastidious regarding the accuracy of evidence. He might add, with respect, that if anyone knew how an inquiry agent’s report ought to be framed, it was surely an experienced and conscientious inquiry agent...

  “All right, all right. Get on, then. I’m sorry.”

  “Very well.” Hive looked down again at his piece of paper.”...no other vehicle...ah, yes.” He straightened his shoulders. “I noticed signs that the premises were occupied. Lights were on in two of the rooms, one at the front and one at the rear of the house. The curtains of both rooms were drawn. This made observation difficult but in each case I was successful in obtaining a view of the interior through a gap in the aforementioned curtains.

  “I established by this means that the room at the rear—which I confirmed as being a bedroom—had at that time no occupant. In the front room, however, I observed Folkestone. He was alone and appeared to be drinking. There was no sign of The Subject, Calais. I kept Folkestone under observation until three o’clock. He left the room twice for short periods. The Subject did not appear.

  “At three o’clock I observed that Folkestone was asleep. I therefore took a short rest myself...”

  “Where?”

  There was a pause. Mr Hive was wondering whether a sound sleep in the parked car of a Subject’s lover came under the heading of reasonable expedients.

  “I said, where?”

  “I leaned against a tree. In this profession, one acquires a facility for going into a light doze on one’s feet. I had, of course, set what I call my mental alarm clock to arouse me at a reasonable time.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Half past six, actually. May I finish my report now?” Hive felt that some measure of his dignity was at stake. He would await an invitation to proceed. Several seconds went by. He remained obstinately silent.

  “No,” he heard at last, “there really wouldn’t be any point. To be perfectly frank, the situation is not at all what it was.”

  “I am not sure that I understand.”

  “No, I’m sorry. The thing is...there has been a reconciliation.”

  “I am grieved to hear it,” said Mr Hive.

  “You should not be. The saving of a marriage is matter for rejoicing, surely.”

  “I hope I have not failed to give satisfaction. I have taken a great deal of trouble...if you don’t mind my mentioning it.”

  “Not at all. You have done splendidly.”

  “That is most kind of you. I do hope you understand, though, that in this field of work a single setback must not be regarded too pessimistically. Folkestone is not necessarily a broken reed, you know. If I might presume to advise a little more patience...”

  “No, you might not. I wish nothing further done in the matter.”

  Mr Hive sighed. “Just as you like.” With his foot he eased the door of the booth open a couple of inches to freshen the hot, spent air.

  “You may as well return to London at once. I think, in fact, that it would be advisable. Do you think you could prepare your account before you leave?”

  Hive said he thought he might manage that.

  “Good. Well, leave it in a sealed envelope with my name on it at that little shop near the station, the one I told you about. And whatever you do, don’t post it. Oh, incidentally...”

  “Yes?”

  “This isn’t important in the least, but I just wondered if you happened to learn our friend Folkestone’s real name.”

  “Oh, I...” Papers, a letter or two, an addressed packet, idly glimpsed in pale morning light on the seat of the car at Hambourne Dyke...his nap in said car...better not say. “I never actually heard anybody call him anything.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter at all. I couldn’t care less now. Are you getting the car put right?”

  “A garage is working on it.”

  “That’s fine. Don’t forget to put it on the bill. And thanks a lot for everything.”

  Hive thoughtfully replaced the receiver. So that was that. Odd bird. He came out of the booth and looked up at a blue sky dotted with harmless wisps of white. It was a perfect day for doing nothing in particular. Or—why not?—for paying a surprise call on an old friend. He smiled—and then remembered something and stopped smiling. His camera. He turned and stepped back into the telephone booth.

  “Ah, Mr Hive...I am so glad you thought to get in touch.” What Mr Clay really meant was that he was relieved that Hive was only on the telephone and not physically present in the school. “We have come across something here which I believe belongs to you.”

  “My purloined camera! Oh, joyful tidings!” Mr Hive felt entitled, in the circumstances, to a little skittishness.

  “Purloined, I cannot say,” remarked the headmaster stiffly, “but camera it may well be. A large square leather case. I have recollection of your carrying something of the kind last night...”

  “I shall come at once.”

  “No, no,” Mr Clay said hastily, “I will not hear of it. It is now lunchtime and boys are roaming, replete and unoccupied. Tasks are good for them. Where may you be found, Mr Hive?”

  “I can be at the Three Crowns in a very few minutes.”

  “Ye-e-ess...Perhaps a rendezvous outside the building...”

  “As you wish.”

  “And, ah, if I might request that the boy be not given any opportunity to loiter...”

  “Naturally.”

  By the time Hive reached the Three Crowns, a very small boy with glasses and a rumpled grammar school cap was standing outside the entrance to the public bar. The camera case was on the ground beside him. Mr Hive hooked a penny from one
of his waistcoat pockets and presented it to the boy with the air of conferring a golden guinea.

  “Cut along, then, young shaver! You’ll just have time to catch the tuck-shop before Latin!”

  The boy stared as if at the sudden materialization of a character out of science fiction.

  Mr Hive picked up his case. “By the way, where did this turn up? Do you know?”

  The boy went on staring a little longer. Then Hive’s switch to intelligible English registered. The boy swallowed, sullenly mumbled “Cupboard somewhere”, and departed.

  The next hour or so Mr Hive spent very pleasantly in the devising of his account, inspired jointly by brandy and the now obvious approbation of the barmaid. Greeting him like an old friend, she had said that he might call her Helen and that she would call him Mort. She really was a splendid creature: he had not the heart to tell her that he would have preferred Mortimer (‘Mort’ sounded so unhappily like ‘wart’).

  “What’s all that writing you’re doing, Mort? Do tell me.”

  She was leaning forward across the bar, chin on hand, prettily amused by so much industry. Mr Hive’s table was only three feet away; there was no one else in the room and he had moved it boldly out of line.

  “I am preparing an account of professional fees and outgoings.”

  “You’re not! You’re writing a love letter!” She twisted her head a little, pretending to make out some of the words.

  Hive smiled, not looking up. “Might I hope that you could be free for an hour or so this evening, Helen?”

  “I dare say I could tell you—but only if you let me know what you’re really writing.”

  “I’ve told you. I am making out an account.”

  “Honest?” Without taking her chin from her cupped hand, she delicately inserted into one nostril the tip of her little finger. “You a commercial traveller, then?”

  Mr Hive raised his head. “I am a private detective.”

  He watched the girl’s bantering manner fade. Her eyes widened, but she kept in them enough of disbelief to proclaim that she, Helen Banion, had not been born yesterday.

  “I am not pulling your leg,” added Mr Hive, with a touch of gravity that she allowed herself to find impressive. “The fact is that I undertook a certain commission that brought me to Flaxborough. My inquiries are complete. My client is satisfied.” He spread his hands. “So now the bill.”

  “And a night off, by the sound of it.”

  “Exactly. At what time will you be free?”

  “Well, I can’t, actually. Not tonight.” She looked thoughtfully at the finger end she had withdrawn from her nose, then nibbled it. “It’s my day off tomorrow, though. If you’re still here, I mean.”

  “Nothing,” declared Mr Hive warmly, “will be allowed to take me anywhere else!”

  He drank and composed peacefully until closing time. The account, completed at last, was a copious document that ran to four pages of small writing. He decided it would do very nicely. There were lots of to attending upons and to making provision ofs, with here and there an as per approved scale. Disbursements abounded and each and every charge was presented in multiples of a guinea. Mr Justin Scorpe himself could scarcely have done better.

  The man Purbright saw standing in the doorway of the lounge of Dunroamin was not quite as tall as himself. His hair, though crisp and glossily black still, had receded a good deal. The face was flushed and fleshy, the eyes quick-moving. He wore what the inspector took to be an expensive suit; it was just on the grey side of black and it hung comfortably yet without spareness; the cloth had a soft-hard look, a sort of sleek durability. Under the open jacket, a white shirt—aggressively white—and narrow, tasteful tie—aggressively tasteful. The man’s consciously erect bearing and his mannerism of occasionally thrusting back his shoulders could not quite disguise the build-up of fat that paunched over the trouser band and breastily plumped the shirt.

  “Mr Palgrove...” Purbright rose from the chair in which he had been sitting and moved towards the door but rather aside of it: he did not want to seem to be inviting the man into his own room. Palgrove nodded to him, then to Love, and slowly came further in.

  “I’m afraid this is rather a sad home-coming for you, sir.”

  Again Palgrove nodded, his face blank. He looked about him at the floor, at the chairs, then sat in one, well forward with his hands on his knees. He had not forgotten to give his trousers a high, crease-preserving hitch.

  Purbright resumed his own seat so that Palgrove should not feel that he was being questioned from a perhaps intimidating angle.

  “You’ve heard from the officer what has happened, I suppose, sir?”

  “The gist of it, yes. No details.”

  The voice came to Purbright as something of a surprise. It was not exactly brisk, yet its slightly cockney curtness was in unexpected contrast to Palgrove’s expression of weary abstraction. The inspector reminded himself that the effects of emotional stress were never predictable: a boardroom tone was probably part of a determination not to break down.

  “We are by no means sure yet how the accident happened, Mr Palgrove. It is not so much a question of how your wife came to slip into the water as why she was unable to extricate herself.”

  “Poor old Henny was daft about those damned goldfish.” Again a staccato, matter-of-fact announcement.

  “Was Mrs Palgrove in fairly normal health?”

  “Nothing wrong so far as I know. Nothing serious.”

  “I was thinking of heart trouble, Mr Palgrove. Or of anything that might have made her subject to blackouts.”

  A slow headshake. “You think she could have passed out?”

  “It does seem the only explanation. Who was her doctor?”

  Palgrove thought for a moment. “Used to be old Hillyard. But that was a while back.”

  “Doctor Hillyard has not been in practice for some years,” Purbright said. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Love’s smirk: it was, in fact, exactly ten years since the conviction and imprisonment of that luckless practitioner.

  “No, I’m sorry; can’t tell you.”

  “Never mind, sir. Now, about these goldfish—was it usual for Mrs Palgrove to go out and feed them at night?”

  “Don’t know about feeding. She’d go and look at them at the oddest times. Show them off to anybody who called.”

  “Do you happen to know if she was expecting a visitor last night?”

  “No idea. Wouldn’t be surprised, though. She was on committees and things, you know. Those people are always in and out of each other’s houses.”

  Palgrove had begun to glance around nervously. He stood. “Look, can I get you fellows a drink? Whiskey?”

  Love, who thought that all liquor other than ginger wine tasted rather awful, declined. Purbright accepted.

  He watched Palgrove let down the door of a cocktail cabinet. A light went on inside it, setting glasses and bottles a-glitter and frosting the outlines of birds engraved on the compartment’s mirror backing. At the same time, a mechanical tinkling started to form itself into a tune.

  Palgrove, unscrewing the whiskey bottle, glanced to see Love’s round stare of admiration. “Hundred and eighty quid, this little number,” he said.

  When drinks had been poured, Palgrove handed one to the inspector and carried his own to the fireplace, where he remained standing. He took several sips of the whiskey, licked his mouth carefully—appreciatively, too, Purbright thought—and set the glass on the mantelpiece beside one of a pair of china storks that must have been nearly two feet high. Then he said: “The funeral—I’ve been wondering about the funeral. You know...”

  “You can go ahead with the preliminary arrangements. Sergeant Malley will be in touch with you about the inquest. You’ll find him very helpful.”

  “Inquest—that’s necessary, is it?”

  “I’m afraid so, sir. Unless, of course, it turns out that your wife’s doctor was seeing her regularly and confirms the post-mortem fin
dings. Then he’ll issue his certificate, I’ve no doubt.”

  Palgrove remained silent. During the pause, Purbright did some mental moulding on his next question.

  “There is one possibility that the coroner is always required to examine when anything like this happens: I suppose you realize what that is, sir?—oh, a very remote possibility, certainly, but it has to be disposed of.”

  Palgrove’s incredulous stare wavered after the first few seconds, as if it might turn to laughter. “Good God, man! Who’d want to murder poor old Henny?”