by JRL Anderson
James Wilberforce IV was inclined to be pompous, but there was more to him than pomposity, for he was clearly an able businessman, and the bookshelves behind his desk showed a considerable range of academic works on horticulture. ‘I remain wholly at a loss why you wish to see me,’ he said rather stiffly as the commissionaire withdrew.
Pomposity is best punctured sharply. ‘Murder should be a matter of general concern to every law-abiding citizen,’ I observed.
‘Murder? Are you trying to involve me in the late Eustace Quenenden’s death? Who are you, anyway? Your card describes you as “Colonel”, but I have never heard of such a rank in the police.’
He had not invited me to sit down, but there was a big chair in front of his desk and I took it without invitation.
‘Doubtless that is because you know more about the horticultural business than the police.’ I produced my impressive National Security Service warrant. He scarcely looked at it, and handed it back to me, saying, more nervously now, ‘Please do not misunderstand me. I do not doubt your credentials – it is simply that I don’t know why you are concerned with me.’
‘Because of the murder of Mr Quenenden. There are certain aspects of his death that may involve matters of national security. You will not expect me to go into these, except to say that I should not have bothered you without good reason. I do not know if Mr Quenenden was actually employed by your firm at any time, but over a period of some years you made regular payments to him.’
‘There is no mystery about that. Eustace Quenenden was a distinguished horticulturist, with a particular gift for modifying, or naturalising, tropical and subtropical plants for growth in England. For well over 100 years our firm has made a speciality of introducing new garden plants, and we have taken up and marketed several varieties that he propagated. If a new garden flower becomes popular it can be of substantial value. Some of the Quenenden varieties have proved remarkably popular, notably some of his African lilies. Naturally we paid him for his work.’
‘Did you approach him in the first instance, or did he approach you?’
Mr Wilberforce considered for a little time before replying. Then he said, ‘You are asking about events going back a good many years. As far as I recall, I first met Eustace Quenenden at one of the Royal Botanical Society’s shows – he was introduced to me by one of our salesmen. We had a special display of lilies that year. Mr Quenenden was interested in it, and began talking about some of the exhibits. I was on the stand myself, and from his comments I could see that he knew a good deal about lilies. Then the salesman I mentioned came up, said something like “How good to see you, Mr Quenenden!”, turned to me, and introduced him as a considerable expert. The name was familiar to me as the author of a standard work on the flora of Africa. I invited him into our private tent for some refreshment, and over a cup of coffee he told me that he was himself engaged in propagating some then rather rare varieties of lily. I said that if he was interested in marketing we should be happy to talk it over with him. We left it at that, but some months later he wrote to me. I showed his letter to the member of my staff who had introduced us, he went to see Mr Quenenden at his home in Berkshire, and came back with a number of specimens, most of which we have since marketed, two with particular success. Since then we have met on several occasions, and Mr Quenenden has been here. His advice on some technical problems of propagation has been invaluable, and we have employed him professionally as an adviser from time to time.’
‘Can you tell me the name of the salesman who introduced you? Would it be possible for me to meet him?’
‘His name, certainly – Purbeck, Robert Purbeck. But I’m afraid you can’t meet him because he is in America.’
‘Is he still on your staff?’
‘A most valuable member of it. He is my senior salesman now, and one of our most experienced technical representatives.’
‘Has he been away long?’
‘About a month.’
‘On business?’
‘Why are you asking all these questions? I am not compelled to answer them. You make me feel as if I were under suspicion of some sort.’
I had to get him on my side. Sir Edmund Pusey would have managed this infinitely better than I could – I just had to do my best. I hoped he did not know too much about the inner workings of Whitehall. ‘If I take a risk and trust you, will you promise not to let me down?’ I said.
That, at least, surprised him. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, but he spoke a little less indignantly.
‘I mean that I propose to tell you things that I ought not to disclose. I want your help, and it seems to me only fair that you should know why. I told you that although my work is related to that of the police I represent a special department of the Home Office that is concerned with matters of national security. We do not yet know why Mr Quenenden was murdered, but two grave possibilities have come to light. First, it seems possible that under the guise of importing plants for research dangerous drugs are being smuggled into this country on a substantial scale. Secondly, there seems to be some evidence, although it is not yet at all clear, that a Government-sponsored agency in Eastern Europe is attempting to capture the world market in seeds, for food-grains, vegetables and even flowers, by undercutting all competitors. To succeed, the quality of the seed must obviously be good, and we fear that there may be a campaign to obtain seeds from well-established firms like your own in order to propagate them for resale. I must point out that there is no evidence that Mr Quenenden was himself concerned in either possibility – what evidence there is suggests that he was murdered because he began to realise what was going on. I hope you will understand how important it is for us to investigate every detail of Mr Quenenden’s activities, and that you will not resent the questions that I have to ask.’
There is nothing like the disclosure of a secret for winning someone else’s confidence. That my secrets were wildly improbable I hoped did not matter, though I felt as mean in making them as I had felt in deceiving that nice acting-headmistress at the school in Lancashire. Mr Wilberforce, anyway, was impressed. ‘I appreciate your confidence, and I can certainly promise that nothing shall be betrayed,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall do my utmost to help – indeed, if your fears about dumping in the world seed-market have any substance it is in my direct interest to do so. What do you want to know about Robert Purbeck?’
‘He interests me because he was apparently an old acquaintance of Mr Quenenden. Do you know how they met?’
‘Yes. Again there is no secret about it. After taking a degree in geology and later a diploma in forestry, Robert Purbeck joined the old Colonial Service and was posted as an agricultural and forestry officer to what was then a British colony in Central Africa. Quenenden, who was a much older man, was a District Commissioner in the same service, and for a short time Purbeck worked in his district. When independence came to the former colony Quenenden retired, but Purbeck, who was still in his twenties, applied to us for a job. We took him on for a probationary six months, he did well, and we gave him a permanent appointment. ‘Salesman’ is a slightly misleading term, perhaps. Much of our business is done directly with the public by post through our catalogues, but the more important part concerns sales to farmers and market gardeners on the vegetable and food-grains side of the business, and to parks’ authorities and controllers of other big gardens on the flower side. A salesman has, therefore, to know a great deal about horticulture, for he may often have to provide technical advice to professional growers. Robert Purbeck was well qualified for this, and over the years he has brought in much useful new business.’
‘Why has he gone to America?’
‘There were two reasons, partly personal and partly business, and it is typical of Purbeck’s keenness that he should want to combine them. I understand that his parents died when he was still quite young, and he spent his later childhood with his mother’s sister. His aunt was unmarried then, but later she married an American and went
to live near Boston. Recently, she has been ill, and Purbeck wanted to go out to visit her. He also suggested that we should try to extend our business by supplying seed and technical advice to the authorities running parks and public gardens in the United States. We do this already in a small way, but American conditions often differ markedly from English ones, and Purbeck’s idea was that we should try to recruit one or two able graduates from American agricultural colleges, bring them over here for a short period of training in our own commercial methods, and then send them back to act as our own technical representatives in the States. I thought this a good idea, and readily agreed to meet the cost of his American visit.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘Yes, I had a letter last week. It was written from Baltimore. He said that his work had been rather held up by his aunt’s illness, and that he would have to go back to Boston to see her, but that he had managed to get around a bit, visiting a number of municipal parks in various American cities, and discussing the services that he felt we ought to be able to undertake. He apologised for his aunt’s illness – I rather fear that she may be dying. Knowing Robert Purbeck, however. I’m sure that he has managed to do as much work as most men would have got through without an invalid relative to visit.’
‘When do you expect him home?’
‘Some time in the next few weeks. There is no definite date fixed.’
‘I should like to see him, or at least to get in touch with him as soon as possible. Have you an address for him in the United States?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t. He had no pre-arranged itinerary, and he has been staying at hotels. His letter from Baltimore was written from a hotel.’
‘He may have left a forwarding address there. Can you let me know the name of the hotel he stayed at?’
‘Yes, I have the letter.’ He pressed a buzzer on his desk, and a girl came in. ‘Can you get me Robert Purbeck’s last letter – the one from Baltimore?’ he asked. She came back a moment later with the letter. It was not on hotel notepaper, but typed on ordinary typing paper. ‘Robert always travels with his small typewriter,’ Mr Wilberforce said. ‘He types everything – reports, notes, order forms. I’ve often told him that he’s as good as a private office in himself.’ Mr Wilberforce laughed at his own joke. The letter was headed Plaza View Hotel, Emerald Crescent, Baltimore.
We talked a little more about Robert Purbeck, for whom Mr Wilberforce evidently had a high regard. I learned that he was unmarried, seemed to live entirely for his work, and had a house of his own outside Maidstone. I didn’t think that there was much more that Mr Wilberforce could tell me, but I asked a few general questions about the firm and clearly he enjoyed talking of it. He was friendly enough now, and when I got up to go he said, ‘If you can spare the time I’d love to show you round the place. I can make it a quick tour, and it might help you to have an idea of the layout of our job.’
I didn’t want to spend any more time there, but I might need Mr Wilberforce again, and it seemed rude to refuse his offer. So I endured a conducted tour of drying rooms, weighing and packaging plant, mail order office and laboratories. I say ‘endured’ because there was so much else that I wanted to do – in other circumstances the visit would have been most interesting. ‘The glasshouses and most of our growing fields are a few miles away – indeed, we have fields for particular crops in various parts of the country,’ Mr Wilberforce said. ‘But we run our central transport from here. I designed the depot myself, and I’m rather proud of it. We do everything ourselves. We can walk through on our way out.’
He took me past a row of brightly painted Sharpe and Wilberforce vans into a big covered workshop, equipped like a commercial garage. In one corner a plain grey van was standing. ‘We even have our own paintshop,’ he said. ‘We buy our vans with undercoating only and do all our own painting and lettering. If we want to change a design or to paint a van for some special purpose there’s no problem – and it’s cheaper than finding contractors to do everything.’
Learning that I’d come from the station in a taxi he insisted on getting his transport manager to find a car to take me back there.
VIII
The Foreign Office Again
I HAD A LOT of telephoning to do, but rather than struggle with a callbox, I decided to get back to London first. Most of the office staff of the department would have gone home, but the department was on duty twenty-four hours a day, and I could work much more satisfactorily from there. As soon as I got in I phoned the Metropolitan Police at New Scotland Yard to ask them to get in touch with the police at Baltimore to check the date on which Robert Purbeck had stayed at the Plaza View hotel. Next I phoned the police at Bolton to ask them to receive Professor Huntingford from Oxford, and take him to Miss Sutherland’s old house for a bit of digging in the garden. Then I phoned the professor himself, to ask if he could go to Bolton as soon as possible. He was still greatly interested in adamantifera, and wanted to talk about a number of slight differences between the plant from Miss Sutherland’s garden and the plant we had picked at Newton Blaize. I told him that he might find the differences even more significant after taking soil samples from Miss Sutherland’s garden, and he agreed to go down by train to Bolton next day. I told him to take a taxi to the police station, and explained that he would find the police ready with a car to take him out to Miss Sutherland’s former home. I described whereabouts in the garden the plant was, but he didn’t think he would have any difficulty in finding it. Finally, I asked if he could get hold of Ruth. He asked me to hang on while he went across the court for her, and happily she was in her room. ‘I miss you very much, Peter,’ she said. ‘When can you get back to Oxford?’
‘I miss you too – but you know that well enough. As for getting back to Oxford, goodness knows. This job of Pusey’s has developed immense complications, and I’ve just got to see them through.’
‘I understand that, Peter, and I can’t help feeling that I was at least partly responsible for persuading you to take it on. Just try to come back as soon as you can.’
I could promise this readily enough. I had no idea then of all that was to happen before I saw Ruth again.
*
The first thing that happened was not at all dramatic: it was the arrival in the morning’s mail of a copy of the Customs’ analyst’s report on the contents of Mr Quenenden’s box. The more technical parts of the report meant little to me, but I could get the general drift – the soil consisted mostly of a blueish clay, surrounded by a more friable earth apparently derived from lignite. There were granules of typical lignite rock, and a sprinkling of hard gravels that were geologically quite interesting but of no commercial value. The next incident was fairly dramatic: it was a telephone call from New Scotland Yard to say that a reply had come in from the Baltimore police stating ‘No Robert Purbeck has stayed at Plaza View Hotel within past two years’. As I had been half-expecting this it did not wholly surprise me, but it meant that I needed an immediate talk with Sir Edmund Pusey.
It was typical of him – one of his better qualities – that he let me outline my feelings and part-formed theories of the case without once interrupting me. Then he said, ‘Your view is that this man Purbeck regarded both the late Eustace Quenenden and the existing Meredith Boscombe as in some way dangerous to him. That he probably, or at least possibly, eliminated Quenenden, and is blackmailing Meredith Boscombe simply to try to frighten him off doing something or other?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you any idea what?’
‘I have an idea, but it seems so far-fetched that I’d rather not go into it at the moment. A lot depends on Professor Huntingford’s report on his botanical investigations. He has gone up to Bolton today, and I’ve asked the Bolton police to provide a car for him and to try to get him back to his laboratory tonight. The police are going to let me know his estimated time of arrival and I’m going to telephone him at the lab as soon as he gets there.’
‘And where do you t
hink Purbeck is now?’
‘I think he’s in Africa. And I think I ought to leave for Africa as near as possible at once.’
‘You may be right, but, my dear Peter, Mpuga is an independent nation, you have no status in Africa.’
‘I know that, and I’ve thought of a way of getting round it. As soon as you have agreed my plan of action, I’m going to get Meredith Boscombe to ask the High Commissioner for Mpuga to come and see him. I think I can persuade the High Commissioner that it is very much in Mpugan interests to help me. The trouble is that there may be very little time for anything we can do to be effective. We’ve lost an appalling amount of time already.’
‘There’s at least one part of your theory that can’t be right, I think. If this man Purbeck is the blackmailer of Meredith Boscombe, how could he have made the latest telephone call? You think he is in Africa, his firm thinks he is in the United States – at any rate, he is apparently not in England. Are you suggesting that the call was made from abroad? The police would have known if it was an international call.’
‘I think there’s a simpler explanation than that, but there hasn’t been time to go into it yet. And with a great deal at stake it is quite possible that there may be other people involved.’
‘What do you suppose has happened to the woman – Miss Sutherland? Again, your man would have been out of England when she disappeared.’
‘I don’t know what has happened to Miss Sutherland. I do think she was on rather closer terms with old Quenenden than she implied, but that’s no crime, and her relations with him may not really have been all that close. I don’t know how she fits into the case. I could offer one or two guesses, but if I’m to be honest I can only say I don’t know.’