Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  “Twenty cubic feet?” Purbright suggested, helpfully.

  Harper maintained his scowl of pretended calculation. “Mmm...nearer twenty-one.”

  “Good man,” said the inspector. “Oh, and you’d better mention the fish. Budge might want to bring nets or jars or something.”

  He and Love walked towards the house. Fairclough, on his way back from telephoning, paused in the doorway. “Don’t shut it,” Purbright called.

  “It’s all right, sir; Mr Palgrove left us a key.”

  “Very civil of him. Did you get through?”

  “He’s coming at once, sir.”

  In the lounge, Purbright walked directly to the writing cabinet he had noticed earlier. It was open. He sat before it, took a sheet of plain grey correspondence paper from a dozen or so lying beside a stack of the over-printed Four Foot Haven paper, and wound it into the typewriter. He typed: Dear Friend, This is an urgent appeal. I am in great danger. He withdrew the sheet and unfolded one of exactly similar size and colour and texture that he had taken from his pocket.

  “Now, then, Sid; let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Love stood by Purbright’s shoulder as, letter by letter, the inspector compared the typing sample he had made with the opening lines of one of the three posted appeals. The sergeant watched a pencil point hover over identically blocked e’s, then move from one to another of the p’s with slightly deformed stems. Every n was out of alignment to the same degree; every full stop had been rendered oversize by a similar amount of wear.

  “She did write those letters, then,” Love said.

  “I don’t think there can be much doubt of it.”

  “So she must have guessed what was going to happen to her?”

  “It looks rather like it.”

  Love leaned lower and read the whole letter through. He pointed to the sentence: The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been—and to whom even now my life is dedicated—intends to have me done away with.

  “That’s a pretty obvious hint.”

  “Rather more than a hint, Sid. It’s practically straight identification.”

  “Of Palgrove, of course?”

  “Well, who else?”

  “A lover?” suggested Love, hopefully.

  “...whose loyal and faithful companion I have been...no, I don’t feel that’s the sort of phrase one would use in relation to an affair. It’s wife language, I should have thought.”

  Love’s finger moved down the page. “Look at this—perhaps to be held helpless under water by a loved band until I drown...Nasty bit of prophecy that turned out to be.”

  “I wonder,” Purbright said, “whom she meant by ‘they’. You see—They think I do not understand. And here—I have heard the plan discussed...”

  “The husband and a girl friend?”

  “The inference is invited, certainly.”

  “She could have been snooping on them.”

  “It’s more likely that he was careless over some telephone conversation. As you probably noticed, he has a very penetrating voice.”

  “Are you going to tackle him about the letter?”

  “It will have to be put to him sooner or later.”

  “And the girl friend? If there is one.”

  “Ah, now that’s a question that must be pursued straight away. And very diligently.”

  Love seemed to have run out of observations. Humming quietly to himself, he wandered round the room. He paused by the cocktail cabinet, tempted to set it playing its tinkly music again. Better not. He examined the opulently tubed television set, fashioned in mock Jacobean. Over to the window. Nice curtains. Very nice. If he had a house like this he’d not want to spoil everything by murdering somebody. Whatever got into people to...

  “What I cannot for the life of me understand,” said Purbright, “is what good she thought this letter was going to do her. She didn’t even sign it, and she obviously changed her mind about enclosing a photograph.”

  “Yes, but doesn’t it say something about writing again?”

  “True. Soon I shall send you details of how you can help. A coroner. A chief constable. A newspaper editor. Why those three? Why not just the chief constable? He seems the most appropriate, in the circumstances.”

  “We don’t know that she didn’t send letters to other people,” Love said. “Maybe they just threw them away. I should.”

  Purbright turned and regarded him sternly. “A fine confession from a detective sergeant.”

  “Well, you must admit she sounds nutty.”

  “Oh, I do,” said Purbright. He swung round again and began leafing through some letters and copies of letters that he had found. Love settled himself into an armchair and gazed dreamily out of the window. Five minutes went by.

  “Hello,” the inspector said suddenly, “here’s an old friend.” He separated a sheet of paper from the rest and leaned back to study it. “Remember Miss Teatime, Sid?”

  “What, the old girl from London?”

  “Don’t make her sound decrepit; she’s fifty-two, actually, I believe. And very well preserved.”

  Love pouted dubiously but did not argue: the inspector, he happened to know, was fifty-one. “What’s she been up to now?”

  “Sabotaging a dog shelter, if we are to believe Mrs Palgrove. Mrs P seems to have sent her one of those if-the-cap-fits letters.”

  “She’s pretty hot on letter-writing. Was, rather.”

  “How long has Miss Teatime been concerned with Good Works, Sid?”

  “No idea. All I heard was that she’d taken some sort of secretarial job in St Anne’s Gate. They reckon she has private means.”

  “It’s a very sharp letter,” Purbright. said, thoughtfully. “Listen...It may be of interest to know that certain information has reached me privately concerning the disposal of funds raised not a hundred miles from here in the name of so-called ‘charity’. I am reluctant to pass this information to the authorities, but I shall not hesitate to do so if the need arises?”

  “You did mention,” said Love, after a pause, “that Miss Teatime is well preserved...”

  “Oh, come, Sid—you mustn’t jump too far ahead. Anyway”—he looked at the date on the letter—”this was only written yesterday. It wouldn’t have reached the lady until this morning—always assuming that it was posted at all.”

  Love listened, but not very attentively. He pursued his theme. “She was more than a match for that chap over at Benstone, remember.” 1

  They heard the thrum of an approaching sports car.

  “Pally’s back, by the sound of it,” said Love.

  1 related in Lonelyheart 4122

  Chapter Ten

  The news of Henrietta Palgrove’s untimely end had coursed by mid-day to the furthest tendrils of the Flaxborough social grapevine. And within three hours of Dr Fergusson’s laying down his scalpel, and trotting fussily to the telephone, there had followed along those same mysteriously efficient channels the assertion that she had died of a felonious up-ending.

  Not everyone believed it. Such stories had gone the rounds before and had proved to be the sanguine embroideries of a succession of citizens devoted to the dogma of No Smoke Without Fire. Scepticism was greatest in the immediate neighbourhood of Dunroamin. The Palgroves’ fellow residents were not to be deceived by the arrival of the police, an ambulance, nor even a detachment of firemen. They recognized in this latest rumour yet another malicious attempt to depress property values in the area and were ready to combat it.

  It was only to be expected, then, that detectives Pooke and Broadleigh should find not a single householder in Brompton Gardens who could recall anything heard or seen during the past twenty-four hours that might have a bearing on what they all persisted in calling ‘poor Mrs Palgrove’s accident’.

  Nor was anyone unwary enough to admit knowledge of any aspect of the Palgroves’ private life that did not reflect credit on both partners. They were comfortably off. They were quiet. One or both went, it
was thought, to church. Their lawns were kept mown. What more could be desired of neighbours?

  “We’re just wasting our time; you know that, don’t you?” Broadleigh said at last to Pooke as he closed behind them the gate of Red Gables.

  Pooke said he did know, he’d had experience of this lot before.

  “It’s the tradesmen we ought to be talking to,” said Broadleigh. “Especially the ones who haven’t been paid for a bit. They’re the boys for information.”

  “Not half,” Pooke said.

  They crossed the road and sauntered slowly towards their final call, the house next door to Dunroamin.

  A boy with a deep canvas bag of newspapers slung from one shoulder emerged from a drive further back. He hurried after the two men, staring fixedly at their backs. He reached them just as Pooke was stooping to open a gate.

  “You policemen?” the boy asked, not disrespectfully.

  They viewed him carefully, up and down, keeping their distance. Then, having decided apparently that he was neither wired nor fused, they nodded to signify that he might speak again.

  The boy did so. “You asking questions about that lady that got drowned?” He jerked his head. “Next door?”

  “We might be,” said Broadleigh, limbering up his jaw muscles a little.

  From Pooke: “Why? What can you tell us about it, son?” He made his voice friendly.

  The boy swallowed and gave his bag a hitch. “Just that they were having a row last night.”

  “Who?”

  “Her and her old man.”

  “Quarrelling, you mean?”

  “Going on at each other. You know—shouting and that.”

  Broadleigh beckoned the boy into the shelter of the drive. All three stood under the trailing branches of a laburnum. A notebook appeared. “Now, then, son—what’s your name?”

  In the grounds of Dunroamin a pump throbbed. Two firemen wearing shiny black thigh boots stood looking at the rapidly descending surface of the water in the well. One held a stick with a wire mesh hemisphere at its end. Now and again he made a sudden lunge with the stick and brought up glittering in the basket a threshing orange fish which he tipped into a small cistern.

  The other fireman held out his hand. “Let’s have a go.”

  “Only one left. Fly bugger, an’ all.”

  After some ineffectual scooping, the survivor was captured. A minute later the last of the water disappeared with a noise like German political oratory.

  Hearing the sharp rise in the tone of the pump, Harper and Fairclough came out of the house, where they had been having a cup of tea in the kitchen, and joined the firemen.

  Harper peered down at the weedy mud in the well’s bottom.

  “That’ll be a nice job.”

  Rubbing his hands down his trouser seams, as if in anticipation, he looked about him and then wandered across to a small wooden shed. When he came back, he was carrying a rake.

  Inspector Purbright also had heard the pump motor change its note. There hadn’t been much water in that thing after all, he thought. Enough, though. He looked at Palgrove’s hands while he was speaking. They were podgy, but large—the long thumbs, their ends back-curved, seemed especially powerful. From the wrists black hair sprouted.

  “You’ll appreciate what a difference has been made by this report of the doctor’s, Mr Palgrove. I’ve been perfectly frank about it because I want to know if you can suggest an explanation of the bruises on your wife’s legs—an explanation, that is, other than the sinister but obvious one.”

  “Hundreds of things can cause bruising.”

  “Symmetrical bruises? Five each side? And spaced so?” Purbright held his hands in a posture of grasping two upright poles.

  “Yes, but you don’t know. I mean, nobody can say for certain, just looking at marks.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I think you can take it from me that these particular marks can be interpreted in only one way.”

  The sound of Love’s turning over a page of the notebook in which he was clawing down shorthand on the other side of the room drew a glance from Palgrove. He looked not nervous but hurt and perplexed.

  “Does he have to?” Palgrove murmured to the inspector.

  “I’m afraid he does, sir,” Purbright said.

  Palgrove reached to his inside breast pocket, paused, then patted both side pockets. From one he drew a pack of cigarettes. He offered it to Purbright and bleakly noted his shake of the head. He lit a cigarette himself. The pack he laid on his chair arm.

  “I should like you to tell me now,” Purbright said, “everything you did last night. From teatime, say, until you arrived at your office this morning. Take your time, sir; I’d prefer you to be fairly precise.”

  Palgrove stared at the opposite wall, then at his cigarette, which he held in the bottom of the cleft between his second and third fingers.

  “This is going to sound a bit unlikely,” he said. “What I mean to say is if it’s alibis you’re thinking about I suppose I just haven’t got one.”

  “You mustn’t worry about what you suppose I’m wanting you to say, Mr Palgrove. So long as it’s true, what I’m able to make of it is my problem.”

  “Yes, well...” Palgrove took time off to draw on the cigarette, sweep his hand clear, and expel smoke upwards with noisy determination. He picked a shred of tobacco from his upper lip; his tongue tip continued to explore the spot.

  “I had made arrangements to go to Leicester, actually. Seeing about some machinery.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I was hoping to stay over with an old friend of mine. Wilcox, he’s called. On the board of Hardy-Livingstone. Anyway, I left here round about six.”

  “By car?”

  “In the A.M., yes.”

  Purbright frowned. “I thought we were talking about the evening, sir.”

  “That’s right...Oh, I get you. No. A.M.—Aston Martin.”

  “I see.”

  “As I was saying, I left here about six. I’d had a spot to eat with the wife—not much, I’m not a tea man—and told her where I was going, of course, and that I’d be back some time in the morning.”

  “Would you say it was usual or unusual for you to spend a night away from home?”

  “I don’t know—unusual, I suppose, really. But I have to occasionally. Henny didn’t mind. She’d lots of interests of her own.” He took another fierce suck at his cigarette and leaned back to blow at the ceiling. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, there was I halfway to Leicester when I thought I heard one of the tappets knocking. Well, I was a bit put out because the bus had only just been in for a service yesterday and Henderson’s are generally pretty efficient. So what I did was to pull into the next lay-by and have a proper listen under the lid. I couldn’t trace a damn thing wrong. I went on a few more miles and, damn me, if it didn’t start again. Same old pantomime—pull in, listen, fiddle around—nothing. Three times I did that. In the end I just tried to forget about it and bashed on. But naturally I’d lost a lot of time. I didn’t get to Leicester until...oh, must have been nine at least. I was a bit tired—you know, fed up—and there didn’t seem much point in chasing up the fellow I’d come to see. Anyway...”

  “Excuse me, sir, but wouldn’t eight or even seven o’clock in the evening be a rather unconventional time to discuss business in any case?”

  “I suppose you could say that, yes. But I just don’t happen to be conventional. It doesn’t pay, inspector. Not these days.”

  “All right, sir. Go on.”

  “Well, to cut a long story short, I drove round to Tony Wilcox’s place and saw straight away that I’d boobed. Not a light in the place. I thought, should I wait? Then no, I thought, they might not be back for hours, and it would hardly be on for me to be waiting for them on the doorstep, the uninvited guest. Not at that time of night. So I just turned around and started back.”

  “To Flaxborough?”

  “Sure. Now then, I don’t know whether you know a pub ca
lled The Feathers just the other side of Melton Mowbray...”

  There was a knock on the door. Love went over and opened it. Palgrove glimpsed a man in uniform. The man murmured something to Love, who turned and gave Purbright a questioning look. “It’s Fairclough, sir—if you could just spare a minute.”

  The inspector spared three. When he came back into the room, he apologized to Palgrove and invited him to continue.

  “Yes. This pub. It wasn’t The Feathers, actually—I must have been mixing it up with another one. I don’t know its name, but it’s somewhere yon side of Melton. The point is that I stopped there for a drink. It was nice and comfortable, so I had another one. I was tired, and of course I’d had nothing to eat. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’d drunk four or maybe five whiskies by the time I left. And as soon as I started to drive again I knew I was going to feel woosey. So I did the sensible thing and pulled off the road there and then. I went bang off to sleep and didn’t wake up until nine o’clock this morning.”