Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  “Where does he say he was at the time when his wife was drowned?”

  “At first he said he’d been to Leicester that night and had slept in his car after stopping on the road home. Unluckily for him, the car had just been serviced and the mileage recorded on the service log made nonsense of his story. He didn’t even try and bluster it out. He changed it altogether.”

  “And do you believe the second story?”

  “I accept it because it cannot be disproved, sir. Not on what evidence we have. And if he’s still lying, the odd thing about this second tale is that it does him no good at all.

  “The Palgroves bought themselves a cottage a couple of years ago, you see, sir. It’s a few miles out along the Brocklestone road. At Hambourne Dyke. They used to spend week-ends there, but the novelty eventually wore off and they went more and more rarely. What Palgrove now says is that he stayed in that cottage during the whole of the night of his wife’s death.”

  “What reason did he give for that?”

  “He said he needed to be on his own occasionally. He denied ever quarrelling seriously with his wife but said she had a forceful personality that was liable to get on his nerves. That night just happened to be one when he felt this compulsion to have a spell of solitude.”

  Mr Chubb considered. “It does sound reasonable, you know Mr Purbright.”

  “On the face of it, yes. So why the tale about going to Leicester? Which, incidentally, he’d told in advance to his secretary at the factory.”

  “Oh, I think that’s easily enough explained. It was the excuse he’d prepared for his wife. No woman likes to think that her husband is spending a night away from home simply because he wants a rest from her.”

  Purbright’s brow lifted slighily. “Oh, I see, Sir. I’m aftaid that wouldn’t have occurred to me.”

  Mr Chubb looked uncomfortable.

  “There is something else I ought to mention,” Purbright went on. “The suggestion is strong that Palgrove has for some time been having an afair with a married woman. “This would be a much more cogent reason for his going out to the cottage than a sudden desire for solitude. He doesn’t strike me as the contemplative type.”

  “Do you know who the woman is?”

  “Not yet, sir. But I expect to, shortly. Sergeant Love is very resourceful in these matters.”

  “I suppose you can’t afford to be over-squeamish in a case like...”

  “No, sir; you can’t.”

  Mr Chubb frowned. “It seems such a pity that these people spoil things for themselves—and for others, too, of course.” He paused, looked up. “What do you propose to ask the lady when you find her—or when Mr Love finds her, rather?”

  “The situation will be somewhat delicate...”

  “It will, indeed.”

  “No, sir; I didn’t mean in a moral sense. Delicate in a criminal sense. You see, Palgrove may be denying the existence of a mistress—as he persisted in doing yesterday, by the way—not because he simply wants to protect her reputation, but because she was an accomplice in the murder of his wife.” The inspector watched Mr Chubb’s face. “You remember, of course, what Mrs Palgrove wrote in her letter?”

  “Something about a plot, a plan...?”

  “Precisely, sir. I have heard the plan discussed. If murder was being proposed—as she very plainly stated—who else but the mistress would be the second party to the conversation? It may very well be that Paigrove was, as he says, at the cottage that night. The woman, too. But he needed only to make a ten-minute car trip to kill his wife. He could have been back again in half an hour. And we needn’t expect the mistress to do other than swear that Palgrove never left the cottage at all.”

  The chief constable said he saw how difficult the situation might prove. Had the inspector any other lines of inquiry in mind? Yes, said Purbright, he had, but he entertained no great hopes of them. Mr Chubb was sorry to hear that, but he was sure something would emerge sooner or later that would repay his trouble.

  “There was one thing Palgrove said that I’m inclined to believe,” Plurbright announced, rather as an afterthought. “He claimed that somebody had been following him about a good deal lately. A stranger.”

  “Doesn’t that sound a little fanciful?”

  “That is what I thought at first. But he described the man in some detail, and I think I know who he is.”

  “Not a local man, you say.”

  “No, sir. A Londoner. A man who follows—or followed once—a somewhat odd profession.”

  “You intrigue me, Mr Purbright.”

  “Mr Hive is an intriguing character. I happened to...”

  “Hive—is that his name?”

  “Yes, sir. Mortimer Hive. As I was saying, I happened to see him yesterday morning. He was going into the office of those Charity Alliance people in St Anne’s Gate. And it was to them, by curious coincidence, that Mrs Palgrove had sent the day before a remarkably acrimonious letter.”

  “Good gracious,” said the chief constable, feeling that to sound surprised was better than to confess the absolute bafflement he really felt.

  “So I think I shall try and chase Mr Hive up and see what he can tell us. Don’t you agree, sir?”

  Mr Chubb looked at the ceiling. “On balance, I ah...yes. Oh, yes.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Am I, by happy fortune, spealing to Dover?” Mr Hive inquired sweetly into the telephone at the back of a dowdy little newsagent’s shop in Station Road.

  He heard a snort of exasperation, followed by a click and the deadening of the line.

  Amiably, he inserted more money and dialled again. After a fairly long interval came a curt, impatient “Hello.”

  “Dover?” cooed Mr Hive. “Hastings here.”

  “I thought you were going back to London.”

  “The gentleman here at the shop says that you have not yet collected my account. I know it’s rather...”

  “I said, I thought you were going back to London.” The voice was suppressed but urgent, angry.

  “Ah, but events have conspired—very pleasantly conspired, I may say—to delay my passage. That is what I...”

  “I am not interested in your private odysseys. I employed you to do a specific job and that job is now finished. I did not employ you to pester and embarrass me. Is that clear?”

  Hive’s euphoria was proof against rebuke even as sharp as this. He listened as though to a transmission of birthday greetings, then nodded delightedly.

  “Mais oui, mon capitaine—you are absolutely right. I say—isn’t it rather nice to be talking without all those trade terms? No wonder most detectives are bad conversationists...”

  “Are you leaving today?”

  “I was just going to say that this good fellow at the shop...”

  “I said ARE YOU LEAVING TODAY? Are...you...returning...to London...today?”

  “I rather doubt it, actually. Events have conspired...”

  “When are you going?”

  Hive sighed, “All too soon, I fear.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “...and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” dreamily crooned Mr Hive.

  “Now, look—I want a straight answer. And I don’t advise you to waste any more of my time.”

  “No. Quite. Now how can I best reply to your esteemed inquiry? Perhaps I should say that I have acquired commitments. Non-professional, let it be understood, amigo mio. And in no sense undesirable. But, as I say, this good fellow at the shop tells me that my account (plain wrapped, ça va sans dire) is uncollected, therefore undischarged. I do not complain. Rather do I respectfully petition. You catch, perhaps, my drift?”

  “You want your money at once. On the nail. Like a cats’ meat man or something.”

  “Cats’ meat...no, I’m afraid that allusion defeats me. Sauce for ganders, I would have thought, was the commodity in...”

  “Twelve pounds. On account. I can leave twelve pounds for you at the shop at about quarter past four. Not befor
e.”

  “That would be a most welcome accommodation. It really would.” Hive eased himself from the wall against which he had been leaning and with his free hand adjusted the hang of his jacket.

  “In return, I want a definite undertaking from you.”

  “Yours ever to serve, mon général!”

  “I shall leave you that money on condition that you get out of Flaxborough tomorrow. The rest I’ll post on to you. But you are to be away from the town tomorrow. Is that clearly understood?”

  Hive hesitated.

  “I said, is that understood?”

  “I understand what you want, yes. But I really cannot see why...”

  “Do you want this money, or don’t you?”

  “Oh, certainly I do.”

  “Very well, then. You will be on your way back to London in the morning?”

  “That is my inal...inalienable intention.”

  On his way out of the shop, Hive paused to speak to a vast, pear-shaped man wedged between the counter and a tier of shelves filled with packets of cigarettes and tins of tobacco.

  “A gentleman will be calling later today to leave a letter for me. My name is Mr Hastings. Oh, and you might remind him to be sure and take that envelope I gave you yesterday.”

  The pear-shaped man compressed some of his chins so as to produce a grunt and a nod at the same time.

  On the other side of the town, Inspector Purbright was in search of the Secretary of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance. He had called at the office in St Anne’s Gate to find it in the charge of a lady wearing rimless spectacles and a blue felt hat of the shape, size and, for all he knew, the durability, of an army field helmet. She had smiled terribly upon him and explained that this was Miss Teatime’s day ‘on’ at Old Hall and that he had better hie him thither at once if he wanted to have a word with her before the arrival of the Hobbies and Needlework Sub-committee.

  At the Hall, a big, early Georgian manor house set in parkland on the southern outskirts of Flaxborough, Purbright was directed to the number two recreation room. It was at the end of a long, stone-flagged corridor lined on one side with windows on whose white-painted sills were great quantities of summer flowers in terra-cotta pots and bowls. Mixed with the scent of the flowers were smells of plasticine and paint-boxes and rubber boots and small children’s clothes. Some twenty coats and hats hung on a row of hooks outside the room that had been pointed out to the inspector. Behind its door a lot of noise was being produced. It sounded very happy noise.

  The door opened. Purbright stepped quickly into its lee as a wave of children burst through. The hats and coats were tossed and tugged and waved and trampled, but eventually were sorted and appropriated and trotted off in. The corridor emptied.

  Purbright peeped through the door. He saw Miss Teatime at once. She was sitting, erect but genial, in a large spindle-back chair. Around the chair were scattered the cushions and stools on which, Purbright supposed, the children had been sitting to hear her tell a story.

  There were other people in the room—three plump young women in some kind of nurse’s uniform, two older but jolly-faced women—house-mothers, did they call them?—and a formidable lady in an apron, long skirt and button boots who scratched her bottom a great deal and kept laughing in a bartender’s bass-baritone; it seemed that she was the cook of the establishment.

  “What about one for us, duckie?” the cook called out.

  “Yes, do!”

  “Go on, Miss T!”

  Miss Teatime smiled demurely and gazed out of the window for inspiration. Purbright sidled into the room, closing the door quietly behind him. No one noticed his arrival.

  “Very well,” said Miss Teatime. She folded her hands in her lap. “This is a story of the mysterious Orient. It was told me by my uncle—the missionary one, you remember—and I venture to think that you will find it as strange a tale as any to have come out of those fascinating lands.

  “It concerns a poor Arab by the name of Mahmoud. One day, this Arab was crossing the great Gobi desert. He was too poor to own a camel and so he was making the journey on foot.

  “Now perhaps I should explain that the place in the desert where these extraordinary events occurred was many miles from any human settlement, many miles, indeed, from the nearest oasis.

  “Anyway, there was Mahmoud, patiently making his way over the endless dunes and thinking perhaps of the cup of refreshing sherbet that awaited him at journey’s end in some shady kasbah, when suddenly his big toe struck against an object in the sand. The Arab stopped and bent down, groping about in the sand where he had last put his foot. He drew something out. And do you know what it was?”

  Miss Teatime paused and looked from one to another of her audience. In silence they shook their heads.

  “A cricket ball!

  “Poor Mahmoud stared in wonder. Allah caravamerie baksheesh! And he went on his way.

  “But he had not travelled very much farther when he received in the big toe of his other foot a sensation exactly the same as before. He stopped. He bent down. He groped about. And again he drew something from the sand. Yes...another cricket ball! He stared in even greater wonder. Allah-caravanserie baksheesbbakar! And the Arab continued upon his journey.

  “But he had not taken more than another twenty paces when yet again his foot encountered an object hidden in the sand. He stopped. He bent down. He groped about. He drew something from the sand...”

  Miss Teatime leaned forward a fraction. She raised her brows questioningly at her audience.

  “Another cricket ball?” offered the youngest of the nurses.

  “Oh, no...” Miss Teatime sat back again in her chair. “A castrated cricket.”

  Purbright waited until the cook, the nurses and the house-mothers had gone about their duties. Then he rose and crossed the room to where Miss Teatime was now seated at a table in the window bay, preparing to stitch a rent in a limp and grubby teddy bear. She looked up.

  “Why, inspector! How very nice to see you!”

  Purbright took her extended hand and made a short bow. He drew up another chair to the table and sat facing her.

  “I’m told you are liable to be swooped upon by some committee or other”—he saw her wince resignedly—“so I’ll be very policemanlike and come straight to the point.”

  “By all means.” Miss Teatime drew a length of cotton from a reel, snapped it expertly and at the second attempt piloted its end into her needle.

  “Perhaps you have heard already of the death of Mrs Henrietta Palgrove. She was drowned the night before last in the garden of her home.”

  “I did know, yes. A shocking affair. It has been quite widely discussed, of course.”

  “I imagine so. She would be well known among social workers, committee members—people like that.”

  “Certainly.” Miss Teatime pierced the teddy bear’s threadbare hide with the needle. “She was an exceptionally active lady, was Mrs Palgrove.”

  “It might be argued,” said Purbright, “that active people are more liable to make enemies than the passive ones. Or would it be wildly unreasonable to expect this to apply in the field of good works?”

  Miss Teatime raised a shrewd eye from her work. “I think you know as well as I do, inspector, that there is no more fertile soil for the burgeoning of homicide.”

  “You shock me, Miss Teatime.”

  “Oh no, I do not. You would not be here now if your thoughts had not been following the same line.”

  “You mustn’t make too much of this. The person who killed Mrs. Palgrove is very clearly indicated by the evidence. I’ve no doubt that that person will be arrested and charged quite soon. But every other possibility must be examined thoroughly in the meantime.”

  Miss Teatime drew taut the thread of another stitch. “And am I one of the other possibilities, inspector?” She was smiling.

  “You received a letter yesterday from Mrs Palgrove.”

  “That is correct. Have yo
u read it?—Oh, yes, you must have done. I suppose a copy was in what I believe are called the effects of the deceased.”

  “It was a very threatening letter, Miss Teatime.”

  She shrugged lightly. “I can see that you are not accustomed to handling the correspondence of charitable societies, Mr Purbright. If one took seriously every hint of nefarious goings-on, one would have no time left for the collection of funds. And what would our animals do then, poor things?”