Bump in the Night f-2

by Colin Watson

  “As it happens, we spotted it from a completely different direction. But that was by the sheer luck of Kebble’s having seized on that queer obituary.

  “The murderer was intelligent enough to realize that by the very act of intervening and thereby destroying his first defence Mrs Larch would prove the perfect decoy into trap number two. Once she allowed her relationship with Biggadyke to be known, suspicion would automatically fall on the man with the best reason in the world for wishing her lover dead—the man who, by curious coincidence, is another of the town’s regular Tuesday night absentees—and, to crown it all, the man who is an expert in the use of explosives, a quantity of which happens to have been missed from the depot where he is a part-time instructor.”

  Larch drew in a long, rustling breath. The grey face had whitened round the mouth. Yet he forced his thin, humourless smile. “We’d better get the bastard pulled in before you make me confess.”

  “Mrs Weaver!”

  Both men looked to see the face of Mr Grope thrust through the auditorium door. Again rose the querulous bleat: “Mrs We-e-e-eaver!”

  There was a clatter of buckets and dustpans and the charwoman emerged from her haven, blinking and hostile.

  “Kindly bring a paper bag, Mrs Weaver. Third one-and-nine from the radiator on the clock side. Seventh seat in.”

  The woman glowered. “That Mr Follicle’s not been taking ’is bandage off again?”

  “Looks like it, Mrs Weaver.”

  Grope spotted Purbright and Larch as they rose. He shook his head. “You mustn’t start the queue inside, sir,” he said reprovingly, adding after further scrutiny, “You are patrons, I suppose?”

  “No, Mr Grope, we are not,” retorted Larch. “I think you know who I am. Would you mind coming over here a minute?”

  Grope lumbered up, looking from one to the other. Mrs Weaver, incurious, padded purposefully away. “Now then,” Larch said, “you’ll kindly do your duty by answering a few questions. You’ve nothing to be nervous about if you tell the truth.”

  “What kind of questions?” asked Grope sullenly.

  “All kinds.” Larch was plunging into the interview with a horrid briskness that prompted Purbright to nudge his arm and frown. Larch misinterpreted this as a request to be introduced. “Oh, yes; this is a colleague of mine. Inspector Purbright. And if you think my questions are rough, just you wait until he starts.”

  Grope gazed mournfully at Purbright and began buttoning up his long, green commissionaire’s coat. He looked like a bewildered old general, captured in a washroom miles behind the lines.

  “How long,” Larch was asking, “have you been working here?”

  “Fourteen years, or very near.” The rhyme flowed out so effortlessly that Larch did not notice it; he merely felt Grope’s reply to be indefinably insolent.

  “And who employed you up to then?”

  “I was at Barlow’s foundry...gentlemen.”

  Larch scowled. He still could not place what it was about this docile, cheese-faced fellow that annoyed him. “What sort of work were you doing there?”

  “Tool-room fitting...it took some care.”

  “Precision engineering, eh?”

  Grope, perplexed by the sudden appearance of a predatory gleam in Larch’s eye, hesitated and then blurted out: “That’s all I am going to say today.”

  Larch looked at him with contemptuous disbelief. “Surely you realise the inadvisability of an obstructive attitude. My colleague and I are investigating a serious matter.”

  Grope sat down on the chesterfield. He looked prepared to withstand a seige.

  Larch spoke softly in Purbright’s ear. “He’s fly, this one. You followed the point about engineering? Those bombs. Could be.” To Grope he said: “Now let’s be sensible, shall we? Can you remember what you were doing on Tuesday, July the first?”

  “No.”

  “Come along. You haven’t even thought about it. It was the night Mr Biggadyke was killed. Remember?”

  Grope probed his ear with his little finger.

  “You were seen out in the town that night,” Larch persisted. “Quite late. How about telling us where you went?”

  “Home.”

  “Before that. Stop being awkward.”

  “Go away,” Grope said.

  Larch looked at Purbright with mock surprise. “He’d like us to go away. I wonder why?” Purbright’s eyes closed in despair as Larch turned back on his victim and rasped: “You had a pretty strong grudge against Biggadyke, didn’t you?”

  The commissionaire remained silent.

  “You hadn’t forgotten what happened to your daughter, had you? That was on July the first. Just a year ago, wasn’t it?”

  Purbright tried desperately to think of some way to block this preposterous inquisition. He saw on Grope’s otherwise expressionless face a twitch of annoyance, or of pain.

  “You don’t have to be ashamed of your feelings, Grope,” Larch went on. “You were bound to feel cut up. Even a bit vengeful, perhaps. Is that it? Understandable, you know. Your own flesh and blood.”

  This embarrassing parody of Hollywood third-degree, Purbright knew, was simply Larch’s way of taking reprisal for the destruction of his own self-confidence. He was like a blinded man still lashing out when his torturers had departed. But he would have to be restrained somehow. Purbright coughed and was about to interpose a firm “It seems to me...” when he was put off his stroke by a totally unexpected reply from Grope.

  “Flesh and blood?” he echoed. “Flesh and blood nothing. If you’re talking about poor Celia, you’ve got it all mixed up.”

  Larch looked up at the ceiling. “Ah. Mixed up. Thank you, Grope.” He glared down again. “I suppose you’re going to tell me she wasn’t your daughter.”

  “No, I’m not. But you were talking about flesh and blood. And Celia wasn’t. Not ours, I mean. We adopted her.”

  Purbright seized his chance. “Now, Mr Grope...”—he sat beside him—“there seems to have been some little misunderstanding. This news of yours is interesting.”

  “Why?” Grope countered, with no sign of finding his new interrogator any less provocative. “We never pretended the baby was ours.”

  “No, but twenty years is a long time. Things can come to be taken for granted. Tell me, Mr Grope; did you know who Celia’s real parents were—her natural parents?”

  Grope said nothing.

  “You don’t know?”

  “Things like that are confidential.”

  Seeing Larch prepared to swoop in once more, Purbright gently waved discouragement. To Grope he said: “They are indeed. You are fully entitled to keep Celia’s origin secret if you wish. On the other hand, you could save us a certain amount of time—in record searching and all that, you know—by telling us now.”

  It was a poor inducement, as Purbright knew. But Grope was of an essentially helpful disposition. In any case, the ponderous process of deduction which had been going on in his head ever since Larch opened his assault had now produced something the effect of which he was anxious to enjoy there and then.

  He looked away from Purbright and stared boldly at Larch.

  “Celia was put out for adoption by Mr and Mrs Pointer,” he announced. “That was straight after she was born, of course. But even so you might say she was really your sister-in-law, Mr Larch. Mightn’t you?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Amelia Pointer received Purbright in the garden. Although the shock of acquiring one as a son-in-law had almost worn off, she still regarded policemen with considerable apprehension. Like open umbrellas, they were unlucky things to have in the house.

  Hilda had answered the door, prepared her mother for the requested interview (“He looks quite human actually”) and made introductions. She now stood protectively beside Mrs Pointer and motioned Purbright to have his say.

  “This isn’t going to be terribly easy,” he began.

  “No, of course not,” said Hilda, looking very much at e
ase. Mrs Pointer shook her head and gave a little smile.

  “You may have heard from Mr Larch,” Purbright went on, “that further inquiries are being made into the death of Mr. Biggadyke.”

  Hilda spotted some seed pods on a spike of lupins and began nipping them off. “No,” she said.

  “Oh. I thought he might have mentioned it. Never mind. The point is, you might be able to help us, Mrs Pointer—in an indirect way.”

  “Mother will be pleased to do what she can.” Hilda stretched in search of further seed pods. Her movements were lithe and confident.

  “We have a notion, you see—there may be absolutely nothing in it, of course, but you know how policemen move round and round a thing—we have this notion that some connection could exist between a girl called Celia Grope and the way Mr Biggadyke...passed on.”

  Mrs Pointer’s lips fluttered like comatose moths suddenly stimulated by a touch.

  “Do you know anyone called Celia Grope, mother?” Hilda asked her cheerfully. “No, Inspector; it seems that she doesn’t.”

  “But you did, didn’t you, Mrs Larch?”

  She eyed him shrewdly. “I vaguely remember the name. Wasn’t she the girl who was killed in a street accident some time last year? Or passed on from one, perhaps you’d say?”

  Purbright ungrudgingly marked Hilda one up.

  “Neither of you ladies knew Miss Grope?”

  “Not personally, no.”

  “Mrs Pointer?” Purbright did not enjoy being rude but he felt that Hilda Larch was more likely to respect tactics than tact. However, the snub to the older woman’s guardian and interpreter was of no avail; Mrs Pointer merely looked helplessly at her daughter.

  “Celia Grope was an adopted child. Her father told us that much and it was a fairly simple matter to trace her natural parentage from the court records. I tell you this,” Purbright explained, “in case you imagine I have come here to fish for information. I haven’t. The facts have been landed, so to speak. All I ask is a little assistance in weighing them up.”

  “You are a very devious policeman,” said Hilda, “and a mysterious one. Won’t you say what this business is all about and what it has to do with us?”

  Purbright sighed. “Obviously that is what I must do. I had hoped that making painful revelations was not going to be required. You, Mrs Pointer, know perfectly well what I am talking about. If your daughter really doesn’t know, don’t you think it would be kinder if you told her now yourself?”

  Before Hilda could provide an answer on her mother’s behalf, Mrs Pointer broke her silence.

  “Twenty years!”

  The inspector was startled by the vehemence packed into the two words by a woman who had seemed to possess no more independent motivation than a ventriloquist’s doll. The cry was a harsh compound of anger, pain and pleading. Hilda stared at her mother. From her slowly unclenching hand lupin pods, bruised and split, dropped to the grass.

  “Did you have to?” Mrs Pointer made as if to clutch Purbright’s sleeve but her arm remained faltering in mid-air like the limb of a crippled beggar.

  A bee droned erratically round their heads. Hilda started, as if from sleep. She pulled out a case and matches from the pockets of her slacks, lit a cigarette, and released a tremulous “Oh, for God’s sake!” with the first drag of smoke.

  Mrs Pointer regarded her appealingly. “There seemed no point in telling you dear. Celia never knew.” She looked down at her own hands, pulling at the stuff of her skirt. “I tried to think of her as having been born dead. But of course I couldn’t. It was...” The lips went on moving for a few seconds longer but no words came. Purbright was reminded of an old film running on when the sound track had failed.

  Hilda had had time to throw a cloak of anger over her bewilderment and wretchedness. “I take it,” she said coldly, “that you and Daddy had some compelling reason for this extraordinary arrangement?”

  “Your father thought...he said it would be better...” Hilda turned abruptly to Purbright. “I’m sorry if you find this embarrassing. Sordid disclosures always read rather better than they sound. You did ask for it, though.”

  The policeman shook his head. He spoke gently. “Embarrassment is a selfish emotion, Mrs Larch. I think we can be of much greater help to one another at the moment if we dispense with it.”

  “Oh, let’s be clinical, then. You take over the questioning and we’ll have a post-mortem on my sister.” She flashed a look at her mother. “Or half-sister, should I say?”

  Purbright watched Mrs Pointer but she showed no reaction. “Is that true, Mrs Pointer?” he asked her. “Was the adoption arranged because your husband knew he was not the child’s father?”

  The woman tightened her mouth and seemed to be marshalling strength for another attempt at the unaccustomed exercise of speech.

  “He had been to France, hadn’t he?” Purbright prompted. “Was that something to do with it?”

  Mrs Pointer moved closer to Hilda and accepted the arm that she slipped, almost absent-mindedly, round her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” the mother said. They were the only words she had been able to summon. Her life, thought Purbright, must have become a single, dreary act of apology, He felt sadness, yet no compassion.

  “Have you anything more to ask. Inspector?” Hilda had resumed her role of manager.

  “Yes,” said Purbright, deliberately. “I should like to be told the name of Celia’s father.”

  “I...I can’t tell you that.”

  “Please believe me: this is not idle and impertinent curiosity. The matter is important and perhaps urgent.”

  Mrs Pointer shook her head. The action was more like a shudder.

  “He’s still alive?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes.”

  “And living here in the town?”

  She made no reply.

  “Tell me, Mrs Pointer: had this man maintained a relationship with Celia over the years? Not necessarily as a father, I mean, but an affectionate relationship.”

  “He used to see her, I believe.”

  “They were fond of each other?”

  “Oh, yes.” The words emerged dreamily, enviously.

  “Won’t you tell me his name?”

  The ghost of an old pride stirred in the faded frightened little woman. She looked directly into Purbright’s face. “Certainly not,” she said.

  Purbright and Hilda left her there in the garden. She was kneeling beside some border plants, fussily easing them apart.

  At the front door, Hilda Larch hesitated. “Why couldn’t they have told me? Now there’s so much...so much I can’t put right in my mind.”

  Purbright said nothing. She passed a hand across her brow. “It’s too late.”

  After a while she looked up at him. “That man who killed Celia...”

  “Biggadyke.”

  “Yes. He...I let him make love to me.” The muscles of her neck were tightly drawn.

  “I see.”

  She stroked the knob of the Yale lock with her palm “You think, don’t you...that Celia’s father...”

  “Murdered...”

  Her eyes blazed. “Executed, you mean!”

  “That probably is a better word.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad mother said no more. Goodbye, Inspector.”

  On the step he turned. “There’s just one thing, Mrs Larch.”

  She waited.

  “That night when Biggadyke was killed—why did you decide to stay away from his caravan?”

  A slow, careful smile passed over her face. “I had a telephone message, Inspector. From the Civil Defence people. They said my husband had finished early and was on his way home.”

  “And was he?”

  “There must have been some mistake. He arrived the following day—as usual.”

  “The voice on the telephone...”

  Her smile broadened. “Absolutely unidentifiable, Inspector, I assure you. But I liked it. I liked it tremendously.”

  Th
e door closed.

  Purbright walked slowly down the path. He was searching his memory for something he knew had matched an impression just received. It was as though he had emerged from a market knowing that on two separate stalls were pictures or ornaments which, though unremarkable each in itself, once had formed a pair. He recalled Mrs Pointer’s pale, bewildered face; its expression of constant readiness to register regret for something. Had he seen it before? He thought not. Years of self-immolation had left it almost devoid of memorable peculiarities.