Bump in the Night f-2

by Colin Watson

  Hassledine gave him a magnanimous smile. “You’ve been very thorough, Mr Purbright. I’m only sorry that you found yourself placed in such invidious circumstances. Of course, I had no idea that...” He blinked and left the sentence unfinished.

  “Quite so, sir.”

  Hessledine rose from his desk and walked gracefully to the window. “The proper thing to do now,” he said to his reflection in its panes, “would be to suspend Mr Larch from duty until some sort of an official inquiry could be made. But you see the difficulty, don’t you?” He half turned in Purbright’s direction.

  “I think I do, sir. You mean that if nothing more definite could be established, Mr Larch would appear to have been unjustly treated.”

  “Exactly. Tantamount to wrongful arrest.” The Chief Constable shuddered and faced the window again. “I wonder,” he said very quietly, “if Mrs Larch could be prevailed upon to help.”

  “I really don’t know, sir; I haven’t yet met Mrs Larch.”

  “You don’t fancy trying?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ah.” Hessledine nodded thoughtfully. “It would be rather awkward, wouldn’t it? Snooping on the wife of a colleague. I wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. Not unless some serious crime were involved. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible to have a confidential chat without giving offence or sowing suspicion, you know.”

  Purbright said nothing.

  “Of course,” the Chief Constable went on smoothly, “if you do happen to meet Mrs Larch in propitious circumstances at any time, I’m sure you won’t allow false chivalry to blind you to her possible value as a witness.” He waved his hand elegantly. “After all, she must have been moderately fond of this Biggadyke person. She ought to have some idea of what he was up to, if anyone has. And for all we know she might be eager to tell.”

  “There’s just one thing I should like to know, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “Has it occurred to anyone to ask Chief Inspector Larch about this explosive that is supposed to be missing?”

  Hessledine moved a little from the window and stared at him. “I don’t think you quite understand,” he said. “Discrepancies in Civil Defence stores are a most serious matter. National security is involved.” He paused to make sure Purbright was impressed.

  “Strictly between ourselves,” he went on, “this matter came to light as the result of stocktaking. No one apart from the Civil Defence Officer and the county committee has been told. They asked me to make confidential inquiries. It so happens that you’ve been, well, unlucky so far; but, my goodness, Mr Purbright, I do hope you realize the whole thing is fearfully hush-hush.”

  He leaned forward from the waist to emphasize the import of his final sentence: “It’s quite on the cards that the Home Office will come into it.”

  “I take it, then, that Mr Larch has not been questioned, sir.”

  “Certainly not. The C.D. Officer was most insistent on maximum secrecy. He was in Intelligence during the last war you know. Very well up in this kind of thing.”

  “I still think you should tackle Mr Larch directly, sir.”

  The Chief Constable raised his brows. “Aren’t you being a little direct yourself, Mr Purbright?”

  “You might put it that way, sir.”

  There was a short silence, during which Hessledine seemed to find his left cuff-link a new and intriguing subject of study.

  “You feel you would rather not proceed with this investigation: is that so?”

  “Not in the role of a sort of security policeman. It goes very much against the grain.”

  The faintest flush appeared in Hessledine’s cheek. “Just as you like, Mr Purbright. I should be the last to expect you to undertake anything you felt to be unethical.” He paused. “If I can think how Larch might be approached tactfully I may have a word with him. Meanwhile you’d better stay on in Chalmsbury for a couple more days just to give the impression that you’re clearing up the loose ends. I don’t want coroners to get the idea that they’ve only to say the word for the police to go skipping off like hired ponies.”

  “Then you wish me to return to my own division at the end of the week, sir?”

  “I think so, yes. I shall let your chief know, of course.”

  They parted with cool formality.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Barrington Hoole humed contentedly as he dangled his short, plump legs from the visitor’s chair in the Chronicle office and read the galley proof of Kebble’s account of the inquest.

  “A fitting consummation,” he remarked when he had finished.

  Kebble rolled up the proof and put it like a telescope to his eye.

  “Guess who saw it happen,” he invited, squinting round the room.

  “Saw what happen?”

  “Stanley’s catastrophe, old chap.”

  “I didn’t,” said Hoole. “Worse luck.”

  Kebble grinned and brought the paper tube to bear on Leaper, gloomily occupied with scissors and paste at his desk. “He did.”

  Hoole turned, then looked back at Kebble. “You’re not being funny?”

  The editor shook his head.

  “Good Lord!” said Hoole, then, more softly: “But he didn’t give evidence, did he?”

  “He’s told nobody but me. He was there all right, though. Nearly trod on the corpse.”

  “Shouldn’t he have gone to the police?”

  “What, and be third-degreed by Larch?”

  Hoole wrinkled his nose. “You’ve a point there.”

  “All the same, the lad is going to talk to a policeman. I advised him to.” Kebble had lowered his voice still further.

  “You remember that Flaxborough fellow I mentioned? He’s coming in this morning.”

  “The local force must be far gone in corruption if outsiders need to be imported to look into our fatalities. Anyway, I thought the whole thing had been cleared up at the inquest.”

  Kebble leaned close. “They tell me this Purbright’s an absolute bloodhound. He must be on to something or he’d have left by now.” He added that he had met the inspector and found him an uncommonly decent fellow.

  “Obviously an imposter,” propounded Hoole. “All policemen are repressed rapists. Tell me: Did you look at his neck?”

  “Not specially. Why?”

  “Their necks are characteristic. Bright pink. Hairless. Like columns of luncheon meat straight out of cans.”

  The street door swung open. “Here he is now,” muttered Kebble. He got up and hurried round the counter.

  Purbright allowed himself to be led to a chair at the back of the office, where Kebble presented Leaper to him in the manner of a farmer dubiously confronting a veterinary surgeon with an ailing sheep. The editor then returned to his conversation with Hoole, having first stolen a glance at Purbright’s neck. “Not a bit like meat,” he announced, resuming his seat. “Perfectly nice chap.”

  The inspector had little heart for his interview, which he had undertaken solely out of good nature. Yet as he listened, at first with politely concealed indifference, then with a sharpening sense of this youth’s having unknowingly observed something significant, he realized that he was now more eager to discover the truth than at any time since his arrival in Chalmsbury.

  “You say there was a hole in one of the caravan windows. Do you mean the window was smashed?”

  “No, the rest of the glass was all right. There was just this hole low down. Nearly round. No jagged edges.”

  “Was it light enough for you to see that?”

  “Oh, yes. You’d be surprised how bright it is out in the open, even quite late.” Leaper’s tone indicated pity for the inspector’s lack of experience.

  “Would you say that the window was the kind that opens? You know, like a transome window, hinged at the top, that you can push outwards?”

  “That’s right. It was like that.”

  “So it would have been possible to put your hand through the hole in the glass, unfasten that
little bar thing with holes along it, and pull the window open?”

  Leaper scowled. “I didn’t touch it.”

  “I know you didn’t,” said Purbright patiently. “I just want to know if anybody else could have done so.”

  “No reason why not.”

  “Right. Now you said something about a shelf, or fixed table.”

  “Just under the window, yes. There’d been bottles and things on it the first time. Not when I saw it again, though.”

  “What was on it the second time? Anything?”

  “It looked like a box. I could only make out the shape. Like a shoe box.”

  “A parcel, do you think? In paper and string?”

  The youth considered. “I didn’t notice if it was wrapped up. The light wasn’t all that good.” He looked defensively at Purbright, who smiled and said never mind, he’d been remarkably observant and without doubt would be most successful in his chosen career.

  “Oh, there’s just one other thing, Mr Leaper”—for the second time in his life Leaper was warmed by a respectful form of address and he helpfully perked his head—“Did you happen to meet or see anyone on either of the nights when you went out to Mr Biggadyke’s caravan? Apart from the lady, of course.”

  “I didn’t see anyone the second time. Not as to remember.”

  “And the first time?”

  ‘Kebble’s boy’ hesitated for only a moment before replying: “I did meet someone then. It must have been nearly midnight. I met Mr Hoole.”

  The subject of this confidence, Purbright noticed, was no longer in the office. Kebble, alone, was sharpening a pencil with slow deliberation. As each shaving fell he picked it from his waistcoat and dropped it into an ashtray. Purbright walked across and sat in the chair lately vacated by Hoole. Kebble grinned at him and shut the penknife with his perilous palm-sweeping action.

  “Like some coffee?” The editor squeezed out of his seat and went to a door marked Ladies. “Put an extra cup on, ducky,” he shouted at its handle.

  Nearing his desk once more, he accepted one of Purbright’s cigarettes. As he was lighting it, he made with his free hand a gesture of sudden recollection and smokily announced: “Something to show you, old chap; hang on.” He bobbed down and Purbright heard a drawer open.

  “This,” said Kebble, handing him a sheet of paper on which was pasted a cutting, “went in last week’s issue. What do you make of it?”

  Purbright read the five lines of verse, then shrugged. “What’s it supposed to be?”

  “It’s an ‘In Memoriam’. At least, it was sent in as one. There was no name or address given but the money came with it so we printed it. I thought it was a bit odd; there seemed no harm in it, though.” He paused and added: “Now I’m not so sure.”

  Purbright read the cutting again more slowly. He heard Kebble say: “Look at the date.”

  “July the first.”

  Kebble nodded. “The day Biggadyke blew himself up.”

  “Do you mean you think he sent this in himself? A suicide proclamation, as it were?”

  “What, Stan? Poetry?” The editor’s voice sounded like a skidding car.

  “But you do suggest a connection?”

  Kebble hitched his chair forward in a businesslike way and turned the paper sideways so that they both could read it. “I don’t know if you ever look at these ‘In Memoriam’ things,” he said, “but you can take it from me that this one’s a bit out of the ordinary. For a start, it doesn’t make sense—not that all the others do, for that matter, but at least people know what’s meant by ‘Sleep on, dear father’ provided the bloody printer hasn’t left the comma out, which has happened before now, incidentally. Then the number of lines is odd. Listen...” He intoned, with exaggerated emphasis on metre:

  “The thirst that from the soul doth rise

  Doth ask a drink di-vine.

  There’ll be that dark pa-rade

  Of tassels and of coaches soon:

  It’s easy as a sign...

  “Well—you see what I mean, old chap.”

  Purbright thought he did. “The thing’s curiously disjointed, isn’t it? But modern verse often is.”

  “Modern?” echoed Kebble. “Oh, no; it’s not modern—not with a ’doth’ in it.”

  “It’s familiar, though, somehow.” Purbright closed his eyes and murmured several times: ‘The thirst that from the soul doth rise...’

  “Hoole would know,” said Kebble, watching the inspector’s face. “I should have asked him just now. He’s an expert on poetry.”

  “Something to do with school,” Purbright said, his eyes still closed. “A song, surely...”

  His trance was broken by the arrival of Muriel. She placed on the desk the two brimming cups she had carried carefully and silently from the place of their concoction. Purbright sniffed and opened one eye. Then he sat suddenly upright. “Drink to me only!” he exclaimed.

  Muriel glanced nervously at Kebble and departed.

  Purbright pointed at the cutting. “That’s it. Drink to me only with thine eyes and I’ll not ask for wine—The thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine. The rest doesn’t belong. It’s from something else altogether. The final rhyme is fortuitous.”

  “Then why have the two been stuck together?” Kebble asked.

  “We can come back to that. For the moment I think we might consider them separately. You don’t happen to have any verse anthologies handy, do you?”

  Kebble, suspecting irony, at first made no reply. Then he noticed that Purbright was looking at him expectantly. “I can send Leonard round to the library,” he offered. “It’s only in Fen Street.”

  Leaper, flattered by his being dispatched on so extraordinary an errand, returned within quarter of an hour bearing half a dozen volumes.

  “We’ll probably find the Ben Jonson in Palgrave,” said Purbright in a manner so suggestive of familiarity with such things that Kebble stared quite rudely at him for several seconds.

  “Yes, here we are.” Purbright quickly scanned the whole poem. “There seems nothing significant in the rest of it. Now why were those two particular lines chosen? Thirst—a spiritual thirst. That might be longing, a regret for someone dead. It fits the context of an epitaph, anyway. A drink divine, though...What would that represent, do you think?”

  “Brandy,” responded Kebble, without hesitation.

  “It could be some sort of spiritualist cliche. Contact with the departed, you know.” He shook his head. “No, they would incline more to abstentionist metaphor.”

  There was a pause.

  “What about revenge, old chap?”

  “I doubt if Ben Jonson was after quite that effect. Still, he doesn’t really come into it. Vengeance it might be. That would tie with the second quotation, at any rate.”

  “The ‘dark parade’ bit?”

  “Yes. You notice the future tense. Threatening, isn’t it?”

  Kebble looked again at the cutting, his lips moving. Suddenly he shut his eyes tightly and groaned. “Damn me if I havn’t only just tumbled! A funeral!”

  “Oh, yes,” said Purbright with mild surprise. “ ‘Tassels and coaches’—an evocative phrase.” He was about to close the book when something caught his attention. He looked up at Kebble. “Do you know anyone called Celia?”

  “Celia...no, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “Well, everyone thinks of this poem—or the song, rather—as ‘Drink to me only’. But its actual title is ‘To Celia’.” He picked up the cutting. “These things refer to anniversaries, don’t they, as a rule?”

  “Always. The genuine ones do, anyway,” Kebble added grimly.

  “Do you think that if you worked back through the files you might come across someone called Celia who died on the first of July?”

  “Possibly. Provided a death notice was put in at the time.”

  Kebble went over to a recess packed with tall, broad, leather-bound volumes. As he carried one back, clutching it before him s
o that it entirely concealed his body from neck to knee, Purbright received the grotesque impression of a book walking.

  “Last year’s,” puffed Kebble, setting it with a great slam on the desk.

  As if conjured by the sound. Sergeant Worple appeared at that moment in the doorway. “Good morning, Inspector,” he called across to Purbright. “They said I’d be likely to find you in here, sir.”