by Colin Watson
“There is no truth, I take it, in the suggestion that there has been misappropriation of funds.”
“None, of course. It is misapprehension, not misappropriation, that bedevils the work of charities. People do not realize how high is the cost of administration nowadays. Modern conditions demand the employment of all sorts of expensive devices—promotion campaigns, the public relations consultant, accountants, the business efficiency expert—even computers. My goodness, inspector, there is a great deal more to it than waving a collecting box. Which”—she raised a finger and smiled sweetly—“reminds me...”
She put the teddy bear aside and went to the fireplace, on the mantel of which was a box. She brought the box back and set it between them. “Just my little charge for allowing you to interview me!”
Purbright grinned and found some coins to drop in the box.
“Purely as a formality, Miss Teatime—you do understand that—could you just tell me where you were on the night of the twelfth—the night before last, that is? From ten o’clock onward, say.”
Her eyes widened. “In bed, inspector. Where else?”
He smiled. “It clearly would be impertinent of me to ask of whom I might seek corroboration of that.”
“Not in the least; I should take it as a compliment.” Her gaze saddened a little and fell. “But no, I have left things rather late. To tell the truth, it is regarding the physical side of marriage that I have always been apprehensive.”
He nodded, sympathetically.
“There so seldom seems to be enough of it,” said Miss Teatime.
She consulted a small silver dress watch. “Dear me, I fear that committee will be bearing down at any moment. Is there any other matter in which I may try and help you, inspector?”
His offer of a cigarette having met with a maidenly refusal, Purbright lit one himself and asked:
“Do you happen to be acquainted with a man called Hive?”
“Mortimer? Well, fancy your knowing Mortimer Hive. Oh, yes, we are old friends.”
“What does he do, precisely?”
“As a matter of fact, he is in your own line of business, inspector. Mr Hive is a detective. A private detective, of course—not on the panel, so to speak.”
“He doesn’t look much like a detective.”
“No? Well, he was not brought up to it, you know. But he had a very distinguished career in what I suppose is an allied calling. He was until fairly recently a groundsman.”
“Groundsman?”
She smiled at Purbright’s perplexity. “A little joke of his, inspector. Mr Hive was a professional co-respondent. He provided grounds for divorce, you know. Of course, you will not let this go any further?”
“Why, is it a secret?”
“Oh, no—not at all. But Mortimer is at that age when men tend to be a little vain and a little touchy about their physique. His close friends are well aware that he retired from business for reasons of health, but I suspect he would feel hurt if the fact were made generally known.”
“Do you know why he’s here in Flaxborough?”
“That is a question which I think you should address to him in person, Mr Purbright. The most that I can properly say is that his engagement is connected, as you might imagine, with the infidelity of one of our fellow citizens. Incidentally, I believe the client, as Mortimer would call him, has now terminated it. The engagement, I mean—not the infidelity. Although perhaps that has lapsed as well.”
“Can you suggest why Mr Hive has been keeping the husband of Mrs Palgrove under observation?”
Miss Teatime shook her head reprovingly. “Now, inspector!”
“Not even in strict confidence?”
“I really cannot tell you anything more.”
Purbright was looking at the collecting box. He touched it casually, shifting it so that he could read the label.
“Tell me—what are the objects of the New World Pony Rescue Campaign?”
Miss Teatime glanced fondly at the box. “Well, perhaps I might describe them as almost missionary in character. Animal aid work is something that knows no frontiers. And, as you will know, in America the horse is man’s help-mate on a far greater scale than in a little highly mechanized country like England.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. Have you not visited America, Mr Purbright?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Ah, then you will not be familiar with the plight of our equine friends in such cities as San Francisco. The tramcars, you know. And those cruelly steep hills.”
“But surely they are cable cars in San Francisco?”
Miss Teatime regarded him with a mild, patient smile.
“And what, pray, did you suppose was down there under the road pulling the cable, Inspector?” She allowed him time to grasp the obvious, then sighed. “Oh, yes, there is much yet to be put right by the N.W.P.R.C.”
Purbright took another look at the collecting box. “It is a registered charity, I suppose? I wonder if you’d mi...”
“Oh, dear!” Miss Teatime had risen and was staring out of the window. “Here come those tiresome committee people. I shall have to go and meet them.”
Purbright stood. “Just a moment, Miss Teatime. Your friend, Mr Hive...”
“You shall meet him, Inspector. This very day. Can you make it convenient to be at my office at a quarter to five?”
“I think so.”
She held out her hand. The smile she gave him was friendly, almost affectionate.
Chapter Thirteen
When Inspector Purbright walked into police headquarters after lunch, he was told that there had been a call for him two hours previously from Nottingham City Police. They would ring him again at two-thirty.
He found Sergeant Love awaiting him in his office.
“I’ve found that totty for you,” Love announced with transparent casualness.
“You sound like a procurer, Sid. What are you talking about?” He sat, sideways on, behind his desk and picked around among the papers that had landed there since morning.
“The totty Pally Palgrove was running. You said find out her name.”
Purbright, interested, looked up. “Doreen Booker,” Love said. “That’s who it is.” He looked at the open notebook he had been holding on Purbright’s arrival. “Twenty-five Jubilee Park Crescent.”
“Booker...”
Love watched the inspector stroke his lip thoughtfully with one finger. He hastened to elaborate. “One of the Anderson girls from Harlow Place before she got married. Used to go round with Mogs Cooper until he piled up that bike of his. You remember—Three Ponds Corner. They reckon Stan Biggadyke over at Chalmsbury got her in pod at one time, but I doubt if that’s right. Anyway, she ended up with that bloke Booker at the Grammar School. She’s supposed to be still pretty warm in the withers. I wouldn’t know about that, though.”
“But Mr Palgrove would, I presume?”
“So I’m told.”
“Right, Sid. Thanks very much.” Purbright wrote on a jotting pad. “Twenty-five, you said...”
“Jubilee Park Crescent. Yes.”
Purbright leafed through a telephone directory, picked up his receiver. “Flaxborough 4175...
“Mrs Booker?...This is Detective Inspector Purbright, Borough Police. I wonder if you could find a moment this afternoon to come and have a word with me here at the police station. I should be extremely grateful ...No, nothing wrong—I think you can help me with something I’m looking into. I thought you’d rather come here than have me knocking on your door, so to speak—it is rather a delicate matter...Yes, that’s fine. Very nice of you.”
He rang off. “I only hope you’re right, Sid. I’m going to look every kind of a fool if you’re not.”
“Oh, it’s right enough,” said Love, breezily. “Just you ask her how she likes love in a cottage.”
“A cottage at Hambourne Dyke?”
The sergeant stared. “You knew all the time, then?”
&n
bsp; “Things get around in this town, you know, Sid. They get around.” He relented, smiled. “No, actually it was Palgrove himself who told me about having a place at Hambourne when I saw him that second time. He didn’t say anything about your friend Doreen, though.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”
The call from Nottingham came through promptly at half-past two. It was made by a detective sergeant whose name sounded to Purbright as Gallon or Galleon.
“This murder of yours, sir...”
“Which one?” The query succinctly conveyed the impression that Flaxborough was every whit as civilized as any big city.
“A Mrs Henrietta Palgrove.”
Purbright let three or four seconds go by. “Ah, yes—here we are...”
“We have some information that you might find useful, sir. The superintendent said that I was to telephone you in case you’d like it followed up.”
“That’s very good of you.”
“A chap called Jobling came in this morning, you see. He’s a partner in a photographic firm here in the city. They sell cameras and equipment and do printing and developing as well. Mr Jobling said that two weeks ago somebody had come into the shop and ordered some copies of two positive prints—twenty of one and three of the other. That was on Saturday, the second of this month.
“Exactly a week later—last Saturday, the ninth—the chap called back to collect his order. Now it seems there had been some sort of a slip-up in the processing department. The batch of twenty copies had been done all right, but somebody had mislaid the other photograph, the one from which three prints were supposed to have been run off. Jobling said the chap was fearfully annoyed but...”
“What was the customer’s name?” Purbright put in.
“Half a minute...Dover. D-o-v-e-r.”
“Address?”
“Eighteen Station Road, Flaxborough.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, he took what they’d done and told the girl that if the other picture turned up the copies were to be sent to him immediately by post. It did turn up, but not until yesterday afternoon. A small studio portrait that looked as if it had been taken out of a frame. It was handed over straight away to one of the process men and he recognized it as being the same as a picture he’d just seen in an early edition of the Evening Post that carried the Palgrove inquest story.
“They told Mr Jobling and, as I say, he came in today and passed on the facts to us. We’ve got the photograph, too.”
“And what do you think of its resemblance to the newspaper picture?” Purbright asked.
“Oh, there’s no doubt it’s the same woman, sir. We’ve checked already with the original at the Post.”
“Is it too much to hope that somebody knows the identity of the person who was thought worthy of being duplicated twenty times?”
“The superintendent did ask, I believe, sir. Jobling didn’t know anything beyond what he’d come in to tell us. And he said that with these copying jobs they don’t keep records as they do with their studio work.”
Purbright wound up the conversation with thanks and compliments, together with the prophecy that his Sergeant Love would be in Nottingham before nightfall. Sergeant Gallon or Galleon said that that would be very nice.
“You’d better get the next train, Sid. You might just catch these photographic people before they shut up shop.”
“What photographic people? Where?”
“I’ll explain.” And he did. Then he said:
“Two things in particular I want you to do. Try and find out if the counter girl is certain that this Dover person is a man and couldn’t have been Mrs P—as I for one would have assumed. And see if anyone can remember anything at all about the second photograph, the one they made twenty copies of.”
“Am I to stay the night?” asked Love, without noticeable enthusiasm.
“You shouldn’t need to. There’s a train back about ten, I believe.”
Love opened the door. “I’ll have to let my young lady know,” he said as he went out.
“Yes, do that.” Purbright was long past the stage of feeling guilty whenever Love spoke of breaking to his fiancée the news of extended duty. The ‘young lady’ was now thirty-three, the courtship nine years weathered. It was not really difficult to resist inferring from the sergeant’s air of concern that the association would be wrecked on a couple of hours’ overtime.
Mrs Doreen Booker was shown into Purbright’s office shortly after three o’clock. He noticed first that she had well-shaped, if substantial, legs; secondly that she was nervous and inclined to breathe shallowly; thirdly that her small, slightly receding chin merged with a soft, blanched throat in a way characteristic of big-breasted women; and fourthly, as she sat down and loosened her pale grey summer coat, that his deduction from chin and throat was amply justified.
Her face was just on the well fed side of pretty, with a full, rather petulant mouth and eyes that would switch easily from apprehension to boldness, delight to self-pity. She wore beneath the coat a short woollen dress the colour of marigolds. It was tight enough for a faint ridge to indicate a ruck in the underlying girdle. Her left hand strayed to the ridge, tried to smoothe it out, then drew the coat across to hide it.
The inspector offered her a cigarette. She took it hesitantly, as if uncertain of police station proprieties. He came round the desk to light it for her.
“Thank you.” They were the first words she had said since coming into the office. She listened anxiously and with apparent bewilderment to Purbright’s preamble about unfortunate affair, Tuesday night, necessary inquiries, Mr Leonard Palgrove, strict confidence.
She drew hard on the cigarette, frowning as though at a difficult task. Her protracted expulsion of smoke in a sort of soup-cooling exercise was distinctly audible. Purbright was reminded of Palgrove. He wondered if her gestures were unconsciously imitative.
“You know Mr Palgrove pretty well, don’t you, Mrs Booker?”
“Sort of. Yes, I suppose so.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Not all that long, really. About a year.”
“But you are on close terms, intimate terms?” He saw she was trying to get her eyes switched to indignation. “Look, I’m sorry, but we cannot talk usefully until we acknowledge this basic situation. Don’t think that I’m bothered about people’s notions of what’s moral or immoral: I’m not. There isn’t time for that sort of nonsense when one’s trying to get at the facts. Now then, never mind that awful police court word ‘intimate’—you’re fond of each other, you like to make love together when the chance offers—that’s the situation, isn’t it?”
She tip-tongued her lips, staring at the corner of the desk. A nod. Purbright inwardly sighed with relief. Lucky Father Purbright. Not unfrocked yet.
“Had Mr Palgrove told his wife that he was in love with someone else?”
She looked back at him, alarmed. “Oh, no! I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Did you ever meet Mrs Palgrove?”
“Yes, once or twice. She was on some of the same committees as Kingsley.”
“Kingsley?”
“My husband. I met her sometimes at garden fêtes and bazaars and things like that.”
“Was Mr Palgrove present as well?”
“Only once, I think. Len doesn’t like that sort of thing.”
“Did you ever telephone Mr Palgrove at his home?”
She considered while she looked about her, holding her cigarette upright. The inspector pushed an ashtray to the edge of the desk and she toppled into it the column of ash. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally. “Not at his home. We were always very careful.”
“You never discussed anything with Mr Palgrove at any time when his wife might conceivably have overheard? Think very carefully, Mrs Booker.”
She shook her head. “Why are you asking me all this?”
Purbright watched her in silence. The flesh round her mouth made tiny contracting mov
ements.
“Did she...is she supposed...”
“Did she what, Mrs Booker?”
She looked down at her own hand, clenching the edge of her coat. “Kill herself...”
“No, we don’t think so.”
Her face rose again at once, relieved but still uncertain.
“We believe she was murdered.”