by Colin Watson
“Oh, they did, did they?” Purbright was beginning to wonder if the hidden army of his observers would follow him for the rest of his life, cheerfully and loyally camping at a discreet distance from wherever he might choose to visit.
“Yes, sir,” said Warple, unabashed. “Chief Inspector Larch would be much obliged if you could spare him a minute or two as soon as it’s convenient.”
Purbright said he found it convenient there and then. Before he left he suggested to Kebble that Leaper might enjoy the novelty of seeking the source of the second quotation.
At the police station, Purbright found Larch standing before his desk. He looked rather like a prison governor putting a cheerful, fatherly face on the announcement of a refused stay of execution.
“Come in, Mr Purbright. I have a message for you from the Chief Constable.” He pushed back a tray of papers from the front of the desk and perched there, his long fingers drumming his knee. “I don’t quite appreciate its significance myself, but doubtless you will understand. He asked me to tell you that the explosive he was worried about has turned up. Or rather”—Larch looked coldly amused—“somebody has discovered that it was never really missing.”
“I see,” said Purbright.
Larch’s smile broadened. “It seems that the Civil Defence Officer had several cases moved to another store two or three months ago so that he could park his golf clubs there. He’d forgotten all about it.”
“How very remiss of him.”
“Fun and games, eh, Mr Purbright? You didn’t tell me you shared the Chief’s concern over that explosive. Now I suppose you’ll have to—what’s the word?—reorientate your theories.”
“Any theories of mine about Biggadyke’s death—and I suppose that is what you’re talking about—are quite without importance. If you care to think of me as an ineffectual and discredited interloper, by all means do so. Now that this affair has translated itself, as it were, it only remains for me to do likewise.” Purbright held out his hand.
“You’re not leaving us?”
Purbright smiled pleasantly at the author of this somewhat crude acidity. “Oh, yes,” he said, “I’m afraid I must. The traffic’s simply dreadful in Flaxborough at this time of year. But I’m sure you’ll be able to handle a little local murder case without any help from me.”
The expression of sardonic jubilation faded from Larch’s face as if he had been knifed from behind. He slipped slowly from the desk, drew himself erect and gave Purbright an agonized stare. “You know that? You’re...you’re sure that’s what happened?”
“I’m virtually certain that Biggadyke was murdered. If you want to know why, I’ll tell you.”
Larch nodded absently. “Yes...yes, of course you must tell me.” His normally aggressive sibilants were now weak: the whispered evidence of a rather pathetic oral deformity. Purbright described his interview with Leaper. When he had finished, Larch walked round to his chair and sat down. He looked tired, and spoke with obvious effort.
“Mr Purbright: I’ve a favour to ask of you. It’s that you stay on here a little longer.”
“That may be difficult. After this week, impossible. Why do you ask?” Purbright had the curious feeling that he was delivering the lines of a bad play.
“Because I don’t trust myself to be able to find out the truth of this thing. You see, I am personally involved, though not in the way Hessledine seems to have thought.”
Larch’s glance fell slightly as he went on: “You won’t know this, Mr Purbright, but Biggadyke was what I believe they call a close friend of my wife’s. I happen to have learned that they’d arranged to meet that Tuesday night when he was killed. She was to have gone to his caravan. There was nothing to stop her going. I was away from home. And I understand she’s pretty punctillious about that sort of appointment.” The small twisted smile lasted only an instant. “You see, of course, what I’m afraid of. That Hilda knew what was going to happen. That...somehow or other, she’d...had a hand in it.”
Meeting his eyes, Purbright said quietly: “You know, you’re talking absolute nonsense.”
“Am I?” Larch brought his fist crashing down on the desk. “Am I, Mr Purbright? Then why in God’s name wasn’t she there when that thing went off? Why isn’t she dead too?”
Chapter Sixteen
If the sight of Purbright and Larch entering his office together and apparently in amity surprised Mr Kebble he did not show it. But nor did he say anything about the interesting discovery he had just made, which, in the absence of the man he called Old Acid-guts, he would spontaneously have announced.
Purbright, however, went straight to that very point. “The Chief Inspector and I,” he said, “are very interested in Celia, Mr Kebble. One might almost say we have high hopes of her.”
The editor glanced up at each of the policemen in turn, like a plump poodle flanked by a pair of Afghan hounds. “Celia,” he muttered. “Ah, yes...”
“Any luck?” Purbright was looking down at the open newspaper file. He caught sight of a column headed in black Gothic type.
Kebble pursed his lips and began moving a stubby, nicotine-stained finger down the page. Larch and Purbright peered at the point where it came at last to a reluctant stop.
They read: ‘July 1st, suddenly: Celia Grope, aged 20 years’.
Kebble broke the silence. “That’s the only Celia I’ve been able to find. Mind you, I’m not...” His voice tailed off unhappily as he looked up at the graven solemnity of the chief inspector’s face.
“We can’t let personal feelings worry us now, Mr Kebble,” said Larch, sententiously. “You mustn’t get the idea that you’ve let someone down, or anything of that sort.” He turned to Purbright. “I suppose you won’t have heard about that business?” He nodded towards the year-old newspaper.
“She was knocked down by a car, wasn’t she?”
“She was. And you can guess the name of the driver.”
“Biggadyke.” Purbright saw no reason to point out that he was not guessing.
Larch nodded and stared past him as if looking at a now familiar ghost that he had given up trying to exorcise. “We did our best with a manslaughter charge—that was before the new Act, of course—but it didn’t stick. He was very lucky.”
“Luckier than Celia.”
Larch flicked at him his cold, sad glance. “As you say, Mr Purbright: luckier than Celia.”
“And what,” Mr Kebble put in, “are you going to do now?” He was beginning to find oppressive the towering proximity of the two men carrying on their conversation over his head.
“Will Grope still be over at the cinema?” Larch asked him.
“He should be.”
Kebble watched the policemen go. Larch’s purposeful stride took him first to the door. He looked, the editor reflected, like an executioner. Following at a stroll, Purbright turned and smiled. “Thanks for the coffee, Mr Kebble.”
The editor smiled weakly and raised his hand. Then his attention was caught by Leaper holding aloft a book and gesticulating. “Oh, Mr Purbright!” he called. The inspector came back to the counter.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Kebble, handing him the book, “that Leonard’s tracked the other half of that quotation.”
“Has he now.” Purbright beamed at the youth. “Smart work, Mr Leaper; smart work indeed!” He nearly added ’The Commissioner shall hear of this’ but refrained on catching an agonized look from Kebble and the murmured warning: “No praise, old chap. Like firewater to an Indian. Queer lad.”
The foyer of the cinema was empty. Shafts of sunlight, aswarm with dancing dust motes, slanted from the side windows upon the plastic stucco and struck back a chilly, colour-drained gleam. Where they fell across the carpet, the golden patches were scabbed with innumerable lozenges of blackened, trodden-in chewing gum. There was a smell of ashtrays and vitiated deodorant. Above the whine of a distant vacuum cleaner rose occasionally the cackle of ladies making discoveries under seats.
Larch pulled one of the a
uditorium doors slightly open and peered through. “Grope’s there now,” he said to Purbright, “but I’d like to get a few things straight before we have a word with him.”
They sat on the outskirts of an enormous chesterfield.
“I suppose,” Larch began, “that you’re satisfied that whoever sent in that piece of poetry meant it as a hint that Stan Biggadyke had something coming to him?”
Purbright did not answer immediately. He opened the book that Kebble had handed him, found the turned down page, and read a couple of verses to himself.
“Are you familiar,” he then asked Larch, “with the works of Emily Dickinson?”
His companion accepted the question as purely rhetorical and began picking his teeth.
“She wrote, among other things,” Purbright explained, “a poem piquantly entitled ‘There’s Been a Death’. The last line of the penultimate verse, together with the whole final verse, read like this:
“ ’There’ll be that dark parade
Of tassels and of coaches soon;
It’s easy as a sign—
The intuition of the news
In just a country town’ ”
Larch disengaged his matchstick. “Tassels and coaches...a funeral, of course.”
“Obviously.”
“Dark parade...I like that bit. Very neatly put.” He frowned. “But you’ve read out more than there was on the newspaper cutting. Has that crook Kebble been snipping at it, do you think?”
“Of course not.” Purbright felt a little impatient with Larch’s extravagant view of the criminal propensities of his fellow citizens. Apart from the likelihood of its being fatuous and unjust, it kept the field of suspects disconcertingly packed.
“No, the quotation in the paper ended with ‘easy as a sign’ so that there would be a final rhyme with ‘divine’. You remember the first part—‘The thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine’—the object of that was twofold. It hinted strongly at vengeance, as Kebble noticed, and it subtly identified the person whose death was to be avenged. Ben Jonson’s dedication was ‘To Celia’. Our murderer’s dedication was to a girl with the same name. Quite clearly, this Grope female.
“Now, then...”—Purbright tapped the open page—“The lines of Emily Dickinson that have been so oddly welded to those of Mr Jonson complete the story. It’s been most admirably done, you know. Especially, I think, the omission of Miss Dickinson’s last two lines.”
“You said that was just to get a rhyme,” Larch pointed out.
“Primarily, yes. But the force of a quotation is immensely increased when it is partly submerged, so to speak. Lawyers, you’ll notice, never quote their Latin tags in full. Tempora mutantur, m’lud...hrrm, hrrm, careless wave of the hand, judge flattered, case dismissed—you know the sort of thing. But that’s very ordinary stuff. Look at what’s been left unsaid here...‘the intuition of the news in just a country town’. It sums up the whole purpose of this extraordinary notice. Yet the murderer has had the subtlety—and self control—to hide the crux of his message from all but the kind of person who likes to grapple with intellectual literary competitions. He must have an extremely rarefied sense of drama. If this is a symptom of criminal vanity, I’m inclined to think he has something to be vain about.”
Larch gazed at a morticianly tinted portrait of Ramon Navarro on the opposite wall. “It sounds like one of our culture birds to me,” he observed. “I told you they were the ones to watch. Hoole was my bet, as I told you, but I suppose Grope’s odds-on favourite now.”
“Is he cultured?” Purbright asked doubtfully.
Larch snorted. “He’s Chalmsbury’s poet bloody laureate. What more do you want?”
“I didn’t think Mr Grope’s poetry was quite in the same category as the stuff we’ve been talking about. Still, he probably has a fairly catholic taste.”
“You know he writes those ‘In Memoriams’ for the paper, don’t you?”
“So I’ve been told.”
“Don’t you think, then, that when he set out to do a crafty one for poor old Stan he’d deliberately disguise his style? It strikes me that the simplest way of doing that would have been to pick up a few lines written by one or two other people and mix them up.”
“It’s conceivable.”
Larch shrugged. “Well, then; that’s obviously what he did. The rest ties up. He’s the father of the girl Stan killed. The accident probably tipped his nut and he’s been scheming ever since to take revenge. The anniversary of her death would be just the day.”
“The motive’s strong enough,” Purbright agreed. “What about opportunity?”
“Grope had that, all right. He hangs on here until all sorts of odd times. I’ve known him sleep all night in one of the seats. He could easily have slipped out to that caravan, got the window open as you suggested, popped the bomb inside and scarpered without anyone being the wiser. His old woman doesn’t keep tabs on him.”
“And the earlier explosions?”
Larch considered. “Aye, well I suppose he must have worked those too. The same argument applies, though. Grope always had a good excuse for being out at night.”
Cradling his shins in clasped hands, Purbright drew up his knees and pensively rested his chin upon them. When again he began to speak, his voice was flattened by the posture and Larch had to bend forward to catch what he said.
“The idea of setting off a chain of explosions in the form of practical jokes for which Biggadyke might be blamed was clever. It had precisely the intended effect. A good many minds were already made up by the time the last explosion was fixed—the only one that really mattered. Even the coroner, who’s no fool, was prepared to assume what the murderer intended him to assume. It’s important, I think, to grasp that planning of this order indicated an altogether exceptional mind. Unless we do, we might easily fall into whatever second or third line traps that so gifted a gentleman would undoubtedy have devised.”
“I would hardly call Grope gifted,” said Larch, after pausing to wonder what Purbright was getting at.
“You wouldn’t?”
“He’s a bit peculiar, but not in the way that would make him a genius. No, this business has just turned out luckily for him, that’s all. You’re reading too much clever stuff into it.”
The stalls door opened and one of the charwomen waddled through. She glanced blankly at the waiting policemen and went into a closet. They could hear her singing a wordless, wavering dirge.
“Will he be long, do you think?” Purbright asked.
Larch rose immediately. “I’ll root him out.”
“No; don’t let’s ruffle the fellow. If he’s the one you want, it’s going to be difficult enough to lead him into court in a friendly way. Pushing him would be hopeless.”
Larch smiled sourly, but he sat down again. “Grope’s no master mind. I wish you’d get that idea out of your head. I tell you once he sees that we know what’s what, he’ll give us all we want.”
“It’s your case.”
“I know these people.” Larch waved his hand. “They're incapable of elaborate planning and plotting. You said something just now about traps—second and third line traps, wasn’t that it?” He waited for Purbright to nod. “Yes, well it’s all so much fanny. What did you mean.”
Purbright thought that behind the bluster he detected anxiety. He explained quietly.
“It seems to me, d’you know, that whoever removed Mr Biggadyke took good care to build around the killing a number of defences in depth, as it were. Or traps, if you like, in which the inevitable investigation would be caught and either made harmless or turned away against somebody else.
“The first and most intelligently devised trap was very nearly successful in ending the matter. Almost everyone gleefully leaped into it. As I said before, it was the assumption that Biggadyke had killed himself by his own ridiculous prank-playing.
“Certain knowledge was needed for that plan. The murderer must have been aware firstl
y of Biggadyke’s reputation as a practical joker—no difficulty there, of course. Secondly, he must have had a good idea of the sort of targets Biggadyke would choose. You’ll admit the selection was most convincing. The third piece of knowledge could have been acquired only by careful observation—or else”—Purbright regarded Larch steadily—“by receiving or overhearing a confidence. I’m talking now of Biggadyke’s private arrangements for Tuesday nights, his caravan appointments.
“So much for the preparation of trap number one. All very ingenious and thorough. But there was one danger...” He paused.
“Your wife, Mr Larch.”
The Chief Inspector said nothing. He slowly brought up his hand and looked at the open palm as if examining a derisory tip.
“The odds were that she would keep clear, as indeed she has,” Purbright went on. “But there was always the possibility of her telling the truth about those Tuesday nights. Once that was out, the misadventure set-up would collapse. And the fact of murder would be left in broad view.