Coffin Scarcely Used f-1

by Colin Watson

  The editor turned over a couple of pages and looked up quickly. “This is my uncle’s, isn’t it?”

  “It is, yes. You recognize it?”

  “I’ve seen it in his office at the house. Why have you taken it?”

  Purbright gave him a pained look. “Things have turned out rather unpleasantly, sir; not at all as I would have wished myself. You’ll be sorry to learn that we now think Mr Gwill met his death by violence. It will have to be looked into. Probed, you know.”

  “Probe” was a word never employed in the generously explicit headlines of the Citizen. Lintz suspected Purbright of being sardonic. Be careful, he thought. What he said was: “You’re not serious, surely, inspector?”

  Purbright gazed gravely down. “Oh, yes, I am, Mr Lintz. Very!”

  “This is rather dreadful.” There was silence except for the distant clacking of a solitary linotype machine. Lintz turned over the pages of the book of cuttings. “Why do you think this might have any bearing on what you say has happened?” Caution controlled Lintz’s manner like hair oil.

  “It may not. I’m only asking your opinion, sir.”

  Lintz put on his unilateral smile. “It so happens that I’ve been rather puzzled about these myself. I came across them some months ago.”

  “Didn’t you ask your uncle at the time what they meant?”

  “Gracious, no. I knew better than to ask him outright about anything. It’s obvious what they are, of course. They’re small ads from my own paper” (‘my own’ already, thought Purbright), “but why he’d collected them is another matter. By the way, does the list of names and addresses at the back of the book mean anything to you?”

  “At the back? I saw no list.”

  “Yes, here...” Lintz shut the book and turned over the back coverboard. The page beneath was blank. “My mistake. He must have torn it out. That’s where it was.”

  “You can’t remember any of the names, I suppose?”

  “No, I only glanced at them once when I was waiting for the old man. I vaguely remember noticing that several of the addresses were down in the Sharms and Haven area.”

  “And the advertisements themselves: is there anything peculiar about them?”

  Lintz turned back to the clippings. “They’re not exactly common or garden offers. Antiques aren’t in my line, though.”

  “Were they in Mr Gwill’s?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “But they might have been?”

  “Look,” said Lintz. “I think we’d better have House up here. He handles the advertising. Perhaps he knows something about these.”

  He left the room and the others heard him call down the staircase. A few moments later he returned with the thin man from the front office.

  House scrutinized the cuttings.

  “These are all ‘for sales’ that Mr Gwill brought in himself,” he announced. He pointed to the final line of one advertisement. “You see that box number. It has the letters C.S. in front of it. You’ll notice the others have as well. None of the ordinary ads have anything but figures as box references. We used to sort out the replies with C.S. numbers and put them through directly to the boss.”

  “Were those his instructions?” Lintz asked.

  “They were,” affirmed House, with the air of having settled the matter once and for all.

  But Lintz remained inquisitive. “Where did the copy come from?” he asked.

  “From Mr Gwill.”

  “Had he prepared it himself, do you know?”

  “It was in his writing. Lately it was, anyway.”

  “What do you mean by lately?”

  “Oh, the past half year or more.”

  “But before that it wasn’t in his writing?”

  “It used to be typed mostly, as far as I remember.”

  Lintz looked at Purbright, inviting him to take over the questioning.

  “Now then, Mr House,” the inspector began genially, “what do you suppose Mr Gwill was putting these advertisements in the paper for? Did you never wonder what they were all about?”

  “I thought perhaps he had a friend in the second-hand trade, as you might say.”

  “But the friend could have put them in himself, surely. Mr Gwill was a busy man. He wouldn’t be likely to go on acting as somebody else’s messenger week after week.”

  “You’d hardly think so,” House agreed.

  “I presume you never saw any of the replies?”

  “Me? No, I didn’t.”

  “Were there many? Incidentally, how often were the adverts put in?”

  “Four or five went in at a time most weeks. Sometimes there’d be one or two extra. Each ad brought up to half a dozen replies.”

  “The usual number for that kind of advertisement; for antiques, I mean?”

  “Well, I can’t really say. They were the only ones.”

  “You’ve no idea, Mr House, of who might have been associated with Mr Gwill in placing these advertisements?”

  The thin man shook his head.

  “When,” asked Purbright, “was the last batch published?”

  House thought for a moment before replying. “Not last week; we published Tuesday because of Christmas and the ads being light. No, it was the Wednesday before.”

  “And there are no replies still in the office?”

  “Not now. The boss collected them all on the Thursday and Friday. They always came in very promptly and he never let them be left lying.”

  When House had descended to his ledgers once more, Purbright looked thoughtfully at the cuttings. “When’s the latest you can take an advertisement for this week’s paper?”

  “We print tomorrow. Five o’clock today would have been the deadline in the ordinary way, but I could get something in tomorrow morning, if you like.”

  Purbright nodded. “Good. Now what would you recommend? Sideboards...washstands...commodes? No, not commodes; we’d better stick to what seem to have been the rules. Let’s try some that have been in already. These, eh?” He marked little crosses in pencil against three of the cuttings. “Perhaps you wouldn’t mind making copies, though, Mr Lintz; I’d like to hang on to the book just for the time being.”

  Lintz drew over a pad of copy paper and began writing. When he had finished, he placed the three sheets on a clear corner of the desk. “Whom shall I charge them to?” he asked.

  “Oh, the poor old police, I suppose.” Purbright smiled thoughtfully at Lintz. Then he sighed. “You’ll have gathered,” he said, “that detection is very much in the air just now, sir. It’s rather a novelty, but we’ll have to get used to it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning in the first place that everyone at all closely connected with your late uncle is going to have to answer some questions—or have them asked, rather. I can see I’m likely to be unpopular, but there it is.”

  “You’ve more questions for me, I presume?” Lintz seemed almost indifferent.

  “I’m afraid I have, sir. Would you mind?”

  As answer, Lintz opened a drawer of his desk and took out a foolscap sheet. “You don’t need to flannel, inspector. My wife has told me over the phone of your colleague’s—your assistant’s—call this afternoon. I imagine you want to know where I was until this morning?”

  “It would be helpful, sir.”

  Lintz handed him the typescript. “That statement should save time for both of us. You will see from it that after leaving my uncle at his home until getting to bed in my own house beside my own wife, I managed to spend every minute in the company of witnesses.”

  Purbright read rapidly through the paper. “How very thoughtful of you,” he murmured appreciatively. “I must say I like the last touch, sir.”

  Lintz looked at him sharply. “Oh?”

  “Yes, sir. I can’t imagine any more respectable midnight occupation than playing chess. And”—Purbright raised one eyebrow—“with an undertaker, of all people.”

  Chapter Six

  Mr Jo
nas Bradlaw was, when off duty, as amiable a representative of his craft as you could wish to meet. Undertakers, by and large, are brisk, sanguine, workman-like fellows, and not at all the miserable ghouls mistakenly imagined by those unable to dissociate what they believe to be a dreadful conclusion from the agents charged with its expeditious arrangement. Mr Bradlaw gave such slanderers the lie. He was not gloomy, for he conceived his task to be a useful and rewarding one. He was not cadaverous; half a lifetime of knocking oak and elm into elongated hexagons had given him a solid physique that even now, in the comparative idleness of proprietorial supervision, lent nearly as much dignity to a funeral as had any pair of his late father’s black horses. Nor was he a hand-rubbing necrophile; he regretted death in a general way as much as anyone and was sorry when old friends came under his roof in attitudes of stiff formality and desirous no longer of taking a part in the conversation.

  Conversation—of a lightish kind—he valued, for he was a divorced man (on account of overmuch and carelessly directed amiability, it was said), and led a home life practically devoid of the spoken word. This was because his young housekeepers came and went at such frequent intervals that not one had had time to tire of her employer’s television set sufficiently to find anything to say before bed-time. He had once toyed with the idea of getting rid of the set, but had baulked at putting his personal attractions, unaugmented, to the test. Could it be, he had sometimes secretly wondered, that his housekeepers regarded him as a price, not a prize?

  On the morning following that on which an unexpected commission for Mr Bradlaw had been found in the field opposite The Aspens, the undertaker moved busily around his yard and workshop, hiding an inner unease with a more than usually jocose encouragement of his three joiners. “A good board, that, Ben.” “How’s the missus, Charlie?...Aye, take the beading over that knot, lad.” “God, this’n’ll twist right off the bloody rollers if there’s a ha’porth of damp on Thursday!”

  He bustled from bench to trestle in his waistcoat and pin-stripes. A wing collar, ready for rapid attachment, hung on a nail above the glue-pot. At the far end of the shop, safe from sawdust and pitch-splashing, was suspended his morning coat. Bradlaw, like a fireman, could be presentable for duty within seconds of a call. Rather pointless, really, he sometimes reflected, was this constant readiness to dash off somewhere. His were the most patient customers in the world. Yet it paid to give the impression of efficiency, concern, dispatch.

  He had returned a short time previously from the hospital where, in consideration of Mrs Poole’s solitude and nervousness and at the suggestion of Inspector Purbright, the remains of Mr Gwill had been given refrigerated accommodation until the funeral. The coffin was almost ready. It was a nice job. Bradlaw hoped it might be taken into the hospital during visiting hours. One on-the-spot demonstration was worth a whole printing of calendars.

  Yet even this prospect did not much lighten Bradlaw’s thoughts. The police, he had been told on his return from the hospital, had called in his absence and would come back later. And that, he reflected, could mean only one thing. He looked at his watch. The inquest would be nearly over. He listened as he dodged around among the elm shavings for Betty—no, it was Eileen now—to ring the bell summoning him to the office.

  Eventually the bell did sound. Bradlaw hastily harnessed himself in the wing collar, hooked around it the ready-knotted black tie, and wriggled into his coat as he crossed the yard and entered the house.

  Closing the door behind him, he eyed the two waiting men.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” said Bradlaw gravely, tucking his chin well down and doing his best to convey the impression that he, death’s ferryman, had touched shore for five minutes only, but would consider accepting a message for the other side provided it was brief, and addressed to the highest authority.

  “Hello, there!” responded Purbright. Love winked cheerfully and perched himself on a chair arm. Bradlaw, who knew and was known by both men perfectly well, realized that the presumably solemn nature of their inquiries was not going to prevent them from treating him with familiarity. Which was a pity, for his nervousness would have been better concealed if professional gloom could have been assumed on both sides.

  “Well, here’s a fine how-d’ye-do,” began Purbright, offering cigarettes. “What do you know about it, Nab?”

  Hearing his nickname, Bradlaw abandoned hope of being able to remain stuffy and safe. But he wasn’t going to be backslapped into parting with anything compromising. He rolled his head, glanced at the shut door and hoarsely confided: “They tell me he went and got himself knocked off: is that right?”

  Purbright unexpectedly jabbed Bradlaw’s paunch. “Dead right.” he whispered. “Point is...who? Eh?”

  “Poor old Gwill.” Bradlaw relaxed. Purbright seemed inclined to be bar-parlourish about the affair, a good sign. “You’d never have thought he was the sort to end up like that. Here, it wasn’t women, was it?” He pronounced “women” like a medical term.

  “Dunno,” Purbright said. “Might it have been?”

  Bradlaw pretended to consider. Then he shook his head. “I never heard of anything. Mind you, there’s often a woman in these things. They’re queer creatures. Damn me, they are, you know.”

  “There’s the woman next door, of course. Had he anything to do with her, would you say?”

  Bradlaw looked momentarily shaken. “Why, have you seen her?”

  Watching him, Purbright replied: “I happened to run into her yesterday. She said she’d been away.”

  “Ah!” Bradlaw paused, and added: “No, she’s got her head screwed on. Widows are safe enough as a rule. She’d been away, you said?”

  “That’s right. Why?”

  “You mean, she can’t have done it?”

  “We haven’t decided yet who could and who couldn’t. We’re at the damn-fool question stage. Let’s see”—Purbright eyed Bradlaw with faint amusement—“what we can find in that line for you, shall we? What, for instance, were you doing on the night before last? And don’t say laying in business in Heston Lane.”

  “Laying out, sir.”

  “You shut up, Sid; I’m waiting for Nab to incriminate himself.”

  Bradlaw chuckled and smoothed the few remaining parallel lines of hair across his pinkly shining head. “Night before last...” He massaged the putty of his mouth and frowned. “Night before last...” He removed his hand and his mouth returned to its own devices, the first of which was to ejaculate: “Buffs!”

  “Pardon?” said Purbright.

  “Buffs. There was a lodge meeting. Then I popped in at the club. That chap Lintz from the paper—know him?—he was there. I brought him back with me as a matter of fact. Ethel—no, Eileen—made us some supper and he stayed until...Oh, I don’t know, half-past one or two.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Heaven knows. Talking. Having a couple of beers. I really can’t remember.”

  “You wouldn’t be playing chess by any chance?”

  “Chess? I wouldn’t be surprised. Is that what he said?”

  “You seem rather vague about it.”

  “Not a bit of it. We played chess.” Bradlaw turned to Love and explained: “It’s a sort of complicated draughts, you know.”

  “Anyway,” said Purbright, “you were definitely with Lintz all the time from, say, eleven until two?”

  “Oh, yes. Except when he was out in the yard, of course.”

  “In the yard?”

  “He wanted some fresh air, he said. I remember that because he let the door catch and had to wake me up to get in again. Chess,” added Bradlaw feelingly, “can be bloody tiring.”

  “So you don’t know how long he was out?”

  “Not really. Can’t have been long, though. Too cold.”

  “Could he have got out of the yard into the street?”

  “Into the lane, yes; but why should he?”

  “Was his car in the lane?”

  “I think so...No, we’d come b
ack in the Bedford—my van, you know.” Bradlaw frowned. “Here, but you’re not trying to make out that George nipped out for a jimmy riddle, and then took a fancy to slap down Uncle and got back here before I knew he’d gone?”

  Purbright looked at him in silence for several seconds, then smiled. “Now you see what nasty people your policemen pals can be when they want.”

  Bradlaw puffed out his cheeks indignantly.

  “What did you know about Gwill?” Purbright resumed.

  “Not much. Why?”

  “You saw him at his house pretty regularly, didn’t you?”