Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  There was a long pause. Then Palgrove shrugged. “Sounds silly, but there you are.” He looked towards the cocktail cabinet. Love hoped he would let it give another performance, but Palgrove remained seated.

  Purbright spoke. “When you left your wife yesterday evening, she was quite normal, was she? In good health, I mean. Not upset in any way.”

  “Oh, yes. Perfectly.”

  “Was she expecting a visitor, do you know?”

  “I don’t think so. No one in particular. I told you, though, various people did call. People mixed up with this social work of hers.”

  “It would be helpful if you could tell us who these people were, sir.”

  Palgrove looked dubious. “Well, I’ll try, but I didn’t take all that interest, actually. Some of them I know. Mrs Arnold, from up the road. She’s one of the dog ones. Then the woman from that Red Cross place—Miss Ironside. Oh, and a schoolteacher called...no, wait a minute, he’s not—he’s something to do with insurance, I think; can’t remember his name. Then the vicar, of course—Mr Haines. I’ve seen a couple of others occasionally but I’ve no idea who they are.”

  The inspector waited. “No one else you can think of, sir?”

  “No. I mean, they weren’t people I had anything to do with myself.”

  Palgrove stretched restlessly. Again his hand went to the breast pocket inside his jacket. Purbright watched. He smiled, leaned forward.

  “Is this what you are looking for, sir?”

  Surprise lightening his face, Palgrove took the slim, yellow metal case. “Hello, where did that turn up?”

  Purbright looked pleasant, said nothing.

  “Well, thanks, anyway,” Palgrove said. He turned the case about in his hand. “It’s only plated, actually. Eighteen quid, all the same.” Slickly he opened it.

  “What the hell...”

  Purbright looked with polite interest at the five brown, sodden cigarettes. “Hasn’t done them much good, has it?”

  Hostility was in Palgrove’s eye. He stared at the policeman. “I don’t get it.”

  “That is your case, sir?”

  “Of course it is.”

  “The officers found it a short while ago at the bottom of your garden well, Mr Palgrove. Where your wife was drowned.”

  “Hey, now hold on a minute...”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Palgrove’s anger rose. “Now look, I can see what you’re bloody well getting at. But you’re quite wrong. How the hell could I have had anything to do with...with what happened to Henny when I wasn’t anywhere near the place? I know nothing about it at all. Absolutely nothing.”

  “Can you suggest how that case came to be in the water, sir?”

  “Of course I can’t.”

  “When was it last in your possession?”

  “Yesterday, I should think. Yes, I had it at teatime. I must have left it around in this room somewhere.”

  “Did your wife smoke?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s not likely that she had the case with her when she went out to the well?”

  “You don’t know that. She could easily have picked it up. I mean, she was always tidying things up. For that matter, she could have chucked it into the water herself. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  Purbright considered. “That does rather sound as if you and Mrs Palgrove did not always get on very well. I hadn’t realized. I’m sorry.”

  “Good heavens, all married couples disagree occasionally.”

  “True, sir, but they don’t all throw away valuable cigarette cases to spite one another.”

  “Now, look, inspector—if you think you can goad me into...”

  Purbright’s hand went up. “Perish the thought, Mr Palgrove.”

  “Yes, well, don’t be so damned provocative.” He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, but this has been one hell of a shock. I suppose I’m a bit knocked up. No, the fact is that Henny and I got along as well as most. Not around each other’s necks all the time, but so what? I certainly wouldn’t have done her any harm.”

  “Mr Palgrove, was your wife a wildly imaginative woman?”

  “I wouldn’t have said so. She was a bit gone on animals... But, look—we went into all that when you were here before.”

  “That’s right, we did. But if I might say so, you are not in quite the same mood as you were then. That is perfectly natural. First reaction to shock can often take a form that people might mistake for flippancy.”

  “Did you think I was being flippant?”

  “No, sir. I think brittle would be a better word. My impression is that you are now more inclined to consider the seriousness of your own position. For instance, you said at our first interview that your wife got so worked up about some things that she was in danger of going ‘over the top’, as you put it. You spoke of her abnormality of attitude, her excitability, her passion for letter-writing. But now you are taking some pains to present Mrs Palgrove as a fairly ordinary housewife with ordinary enthusiasms and lapses of temper. Is this because you have realized that your earlier picture was certain to be contradicted by other people?”

  “I’ve not thought about what other people might say. Why should I? I’ve not done anything.”

  Purbright leaned forward and picked up the gold-plated case from the chair arm where Palgrove had placed it beside his packet of cigarettes. “I shan’t deprive you of this longer than necessary, sir. The sergeant will give you a receipt.” He nodded to Love.

  Palgrove watched with sullen resignation. He saw the inspector take a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfold it and hold it towards him.

  “I’d like you to look at that letter, if you will, sir. Then perhaps we can talk about it.”

  Slowly and with a deepening scowl, Palgrove read the letter through.

  He shook his head. “What am I supposed to make of this?”

  “We believe that it was written by your wife.”

  “Why should you? It’s not even signed.”

  “Whose typewriter is that over there, sir?”

  “My wife’s.”

  “Well, it was certainly typed on that machine. It seems reasonable to assume that it was she who typed it.”

  “All right. You tell me what it means. It’s a string of rubbish as far as I’m concerned. Just rubbish.” Palgrove slid the letter dismissively into Purbright’s lap and picked up his cigarettes.

  “Oh, come, sir. The implication is plain enough. I’m not saying that I believe it or disbelieve it. But you mustn’t pretend that you can’t understand what she’s getting at.”

  “It’s bloody rubbish, man. I’m not going to waste time discussing it.” Anger, bewilderment, fright, all stood in Palgrove’s blood-boltered face. He hid it behind the hand-cupped lighting of a cigarette.

  “Very well, sir.” Purbright carefully refolded the letter and put it, together with Palgrove’s case, into a large buff envelope. He stood.

  “There’s just one other little matter I’d like to clear up. If you wouldn’t mind coming out with me to your car.”

  Palgrove, hunched with ill grace, stumped doorward. Purbright followed him out, tweaking Love into tow.

  The Aston Martin, splendidly a-gleam, stood on the drive near the side door. For a moment, possessive pride modified Palgrove’s air of exasperation. He stepped to one side and watched the inspector’s face.

  Purbright opened the car door and slewed himself carefully into the driving seat. He glanced about him. Palgrove drew close and leaned on the door pillar.

  “I’m looking,” Purbright said, “for your service record chart. You do keep something of that kind, sir?”

  “Over there. Compartment on the left.”

  Palgrove gazed gloomily at the inspector’s questing hand. He watched him open a folder, put a finger against an entry, peer at the instrument panel.

  “According to the garage,” Purbright said at last, “your registered mileage yesterday afternoon was seven thousand, two hundred and four.�
� He glanced again at the facia. “Today, you have on the clock seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-five.” He shifted aside a little and turned his head. “Would you care to check that, sir?”

  Palgrove said nothing. He did not move.

  “I make it twenty-one miles since the car was serviced yesterday. And Leicester is—what, eighty miles from here? A return trip of a hundred and sixty?”

  Palgrove shrugged and stepped away from the car. The inspector got out.

  “Don’t you think, sir, that it might be as well if you called your solicitor before we do any more talking?”

  Chapter Eleven

  From a barmaid’s bed rose Mr Hive. He went to the window and gently, with one finger, parted the flowered cotton curtains, already bright with sun. Below him in Eastgate the morning citizens passed and met and hailed and gossiped in their twos and threes. Shop boys, smarmy haired to start the day, punted forth blinds with long poles. Crates of vegetables, rows of loaves on wide wooden trays, square anonymous cartons, beef flanks and bacon flitches, were ferried into doorways from parked farm trucks and high-roofed vans. A girl in a white coat too big for her stretched tip-toe from the top of a stool to clean the window of her grocer employer; she scrubbed away with short, vigorous arms while the grocer, a dim image behind the glass, kept supervisory watch upon her legs. A few women with shopping bags moved purposefully from window to window, pricing, judging, rejecting. Two old men in long, shroud-like overcoats inclined together to examine a piece of newspaper. A crying child’s face, wet scarlet disc with a big hole in the middle, appeared and disappeared amongst the legs and baskets.

  Mr Hive let the curtain close. He poured out half a glass of water from the carafe on the marble-topped washstand and stood drinking it in small sips with his eyes closed as if it were acrid medicine. With his free hand he reached round and scratched the small of his back, the hem of his long nightshirt rising and falling.

  He heard behind him the shift and re-settling of a warm-nested body, a sniff and a sigh and a yawn. He glanced over his shoulder. Above a ridge of bedclothes, rumpled hair and one interested eye.

  “Morty...”

  “My love?”

  “Those women with titles you were telling me about...Did they wear nighties or pyjamas?”

  “I think you may take it that nightdresses are favoured by the aristocracy as a rule. The exception I always remember was a Lady Beryl somebody-or-other from Winchester way—we managed to scrape her in at the tail-end of the 1935 season—and she, believe it or not, insisted on going to bed in a polo jersey.”

  “I’ll bet that tickled!”

  Mr Hive shrugged good-naturedly. “Every profession has its little irritations. I’ve been very lucky. There was only one thing I was always particular about: I wouldn’t take a client while she had a cold.”

  “What, like dentists won’t?”

  “It may sound a rather trivial prejudice, but I think I owe my very good health to it.” Hive glanced aside at the dressing-table mirror and straightened his stance. Part of his paunch went somewhere else.

  Another rustle from the bed. “Jewels...Did they wear lots of jewels, Morty?”

  Still looking at the mirror, Mr Hive preened with arched fingers his wavy, silver-grey hair. “I have awakened in the night, dear girl, with enough emeralds up my nose to pay the entire hotel staff double wages for a year!”

  The humped bedclothes reared, subsided and squirmed into another shape. Hair and eye disappeared. As from afar off, a muffled giggle.

  Mr Hive considered for a moment more his own reflection. He pouted, put down the almost empty glass, held a finger tip to his wrist, nodded judiciously, gave his nightshirt a hitch, and marched, like a monk to matins, back to bed.

  In the street below, an ageing, box-like saloon car was being steered by a fat policeman past the parked vans and lorries. Flaxborough’s ancient coroner glared and champed in the seat beside him. The policeman, in consideration for the life of a hypothetical child, rammed two hundred and twenty pounds against the brake pedal. “Sorry, sir, but I did tell you to sit behind.” The car moved forward again. Mr Amblesby, indestructible, clawed himself back on to his seat.

  Already assembled in the little court-room when Malley and the coroner arrived were Inspector Purbright, Sergeant Love, Doctor Fergusson, Mr Justin Scorpe and Mr Scorpe’s client, Mr Palgrove. Also present—but only just, for he seemed to be loitering peripherally and without concern—was the chief constable. Mr Chubb very seldom attended inquests, but Purbright had hinted to him that in the circumstances of this one it would be as well for him to show the flag.

  Last to put in an appearance was the chief reporter of the Flaxborough Citizen. Mr Prile looked as if he had been roused from a twenty years’ sleep especially for the occasion. As he sat down behind the ricketty table reserved for the Press, dust puffed from creases and crevices in his raincoat.

  Sergeant Malley shepherded the proceedings along as smartly as the tetchy obtuseness of Mr Amblesby would allow. The convention was observed of letting the doctor give his evidence first “so that you can get away”, as Malley invariably explained—rather as though he was offering a sporting chance to a fugitive.

  Fergusson read rapidly from his post mortem report an elaboration of what he had told Purbright over the telephone. He was emphatic about the sound state of Mrs Palgrove’s health that the examination had revealed and described in considerable detail the bruises on the legs and abdomen.

  “Would everything you have found, doctor,” Purbright asked, “be consistent with this woman’s having been held forcibly by her ankles—held upside down, that is?”

  “Yes. Rather in the way one tips up a wheelbarrow to empty it.”

  Mr Scorpe looked with heavy scorn over the top of his spectacles at no one in particular. “Is Dr Fergusson here as a medical witness or as a gardening expert?”

  “I see no harm in offering an illustration in language that people can understand,” retorted the doctor. He added, before Purbright could head him off: “But of course I am not a member of the legal profession.”

  The coroner turned upon him his agate eye; dentures clacked menacingly.

  “Thank you, doctor,” said Purbright. Fergusson stacked his papers, rose and started to make his way out. Malley leaned to Mr Amblesby’s long, whiskery ear. “The doctor’s fee, sir...” The old man remained hunched in stubborn immobility. He watched the door close behind Fergusson and craftily smiled to himself. “Eh?” he said.

  Palgrove, looking pale, delivered his brief, formal evidence of identification, then Sergeant Malley quietly laid a typewritten slip on the table before the coroner. Mr Amblesby lowered his gaze.

  “I now adjourn this inquiry sine die...to enable the police to...to make further investigations.”

  All but Mr Amblesby rose. He stared at them suspiciously for several seconds. Malley touched his arm. “You said you wanted some sausage on the way back, sir; I’ll stop at Spain’s if you come along now.” Grudgingly, the old man stood up. Malley ushered him out.

  “I do believe he’s got even worse,” said Mr Chubb. It was five minutes later and the chief constable and Purbright were on their own in the room.

  “You think so, sir?”

  “Well, don’t you, Mr Purbright? You see more of him than I do.”

  “Malley says he’s a wonderful old gentleman for his age.”

  “Does he, indeed? I must say I admire the way Mr Malley seems to manage him.”

  “Oh, like a mother, sir. I don’t know what would happen to poor old Mr Amblesby if it weren’t for the sergeant.”

  The chief constable pondered Malley’s devotion, then dismissed the subject with a satisfied nod. “Now, then, Mr Purbright,” he said briskly, “what have you got to tell me about this unfortunate lady from Brompton Gardens?”

  The inspector, too, became more businesslike in manner.

  “At the moment, everything points to the husband. He’s given a hopelessly unsatisfactory a
ccount of himself—two accounts, in fact; one disproved and the other unlikely. There’s not much material evidence, but that wasn’t to be expected, anyway. What there is, he can’t even begin to explain. His cigarette case in the water under the body, for instance. And those letters she sent to people. There’s no doubt at all that she wrote them.”