Charity Ends At Home f-5

by Colin Watson

  The clenched hand went to her mouth, almost like a fist delivering a blow. “Oh, God!” Receding blood left patches of make-up standing out against paper-white skin.

  Again, “Oh, God!” From the depths of her throat, almost inaudible.

  Purbright leaned forward. He had picked up a pen and was rolling it slowly between thumb and forefinger. Quietly, he asked: “How do you suppose it happened, Mrs Booker?”

  She seemed not to hear, but continued to stare at an ink stain in the centre of one of the scored and battered panels of the desk.

  “You can have no serious doubt as to who was responsible, can you?” The question was put almost soothingly. The woman found that her head was moving in a slow, despairing negative, and wondered if she had meant it to.

  “Did you know that he might do that? That he intended to?”

  A whispered “No” left her.

  “But he met you that night, didn’t he? He says he came out to the cottage.”

  “I wasn’t there. I couldn’t...couldn’t get there.”

  “You’d arranged to meet, though?”

  “Yes.” She was still bowed, motionless, gazing past the ink stain to some scene in her own mind.

  Suddenly she raised her head. “You don’t know she didn’t kill herself. I mean, it’s not certain. It can’t be. Len would never...”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Booker. We’re absolutely satisfied on that score.”

  “She was queer. You know—wilful, moody. And perhaps she did find out. About me and Len.”

  “Oh, she did.”

  She stared at him.

  “Mrs Palgrove wrote a letter two days before she died. She said she knew of a plan to kill her. She said she had actually heard it discussed.”

  The woman’s face was taut and ugly with horror, her eyes huge. “No...God, no! She couldn’t...” An attempted smile of disbelief looked more like an agonized leer. “She was just loopy, off her head!”

  “We have the letter. It says what I’ve told you.”

  “I don’t know anything about it. It’s not about me. I wasn’t anywhere near on Tuesday night. I was in Nottingham. At a hotel. A friend of mine can tell you. She was with me. Betty Foster. Ask her. Twenty-eight Queen’s Road. She’ll tell you. Ask my husband. He saw me off at the station. And I’ve got the hotel bill. Here, wait a minute...No, that’s right, it’s at home. But I’ll let you see it, I’ll bring it. And I’ll see Betty and...”

  Purbright, pitying her for the pettiness her fear had brought gushing up, waited for her to finish. Silent at last, she looked shabby and very tired.

  He rang the canteen. Two minutes later, one of the cadets entered with a cup of tea. Purbright handed it to Mrs Booker and gave her another cigarette.

  “Have you told your husband?” he asked gently.

  Fright sprang again upon her. “You don’t have to let him know? Please!”

  Purbright shrugged, trying not to regret the question. “You’ll have to be prepared for his finding out. It’s not altogether in my hands now.”

  “I see.” Thoughtfully, she sipped her tea. She thrust her head down and forward to drink, instead of raising the cup to the level of her lips. There was something bovine about her awkwardness. Purbright found himself resisting, for the first time, one of the implications of Mrs Palgrove’s letter. Conspiracy? He seriously doubted if this girl was capable of it. If there had been collusion in the murder, she almost certainly would have had a better story ready. He had been prepared for her to swear out an alibi for her lover. Oh, but be was with me all night, Inspector—in our little love nest. That would have made things difficult: English juries were inclined to think that anyone who would go so far as to sacrifice respectability in the witness box was sure to be telling the truth. But Doreen Booker had come up instead with a story—provable, Purbright did not doubt—of an overnight trip to Nottingham. Leonard Palgrove really was out on a limb now. It remained only for the law methodically to saw it through.

  Mrs Booker set down her empty cup on the desk.

  “Is it all right for me to speak to Len?”

  “I can’t prevent your doing so. You are both free agents at the moment.”

  “But if you’re going to arrest him...”

  “I’ve said nothing about arresting anybody, Mrs Booker.”

  She looked at once confused and ashamed of being so. Purbright tried to think of something to say that would make sense to her without destroying the fiction of his own insulation. He hated this game he had to play by rules that insisted on his pretending to be merely an umpire. The rules gave him not only protection but power as well—the power to use every trick of legal casuistry and intimidation from the safe baulk of official propriety. Oh, to hell...

  “Look,” he said, “keep this to yourself, but the odds are that we’ll charge him tomorrow. There are a couple of things we still have to look into, although I doubt if they’re going to help Palgrove in any way. That’s the position, Mrs Booker. The only advice I can possibly give you is to keep clear. For the time being, anyway.”

  When she had gone, the inspector ordered tea for himself. It came in a pint mug with a promptness that betrayed its origin (“well-urned,” a visiting barrister once had described it.) Purbright set the mug at his elbow and, having spread out Mrs Palgrove’s ‘Dear Friend’ letter, he read through it slowly and carefully:

  My Dear Friend:

  This is an urgent appeal. I am in great danger. The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been—and to whom even now my life is dedicated—intends to have me done away with. I can scarcely believe his change of heart, but I have heard the plan discussed and must believe it, however unwillingly. They think I do not understand. Of course I understand! I can sense when I am in the way. And I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty. A poison pellet in my food...a quick injection...perhaps to be held helpless under water by a loved hand until I drown...one or other of these dreadful fates will overtake me if you, dear friend, do not bring aid. Soon I shall send you details of how you can help. I cannot—for reasons you will understand—sign this letter, but I enclose my photograph in the hope your heart may be touched.

  The tarry astringency of Purbright’s first few mouthfuls of tea was responsible, perhaps, for his sense that there was something about the letter that he had not noticed during his several previous readings. He tried to decide what it was, to define the reason for his new misgiving. Some phrase out of character? He didn’t know enough about the dead woman’s character to say. It certainly was a womanly letter in as much as its tone was emotional. A tinge, surely, of hysteria—romantic hysteria, if there was such a thing. Nothing to suggest that it was not genuine. Anyway, the forensic boys were quite satisfied that it had been typed on the same machine and by the same person as the other correspondence—indubitably Mrs Palgrove—that the house had yielded.

  The letter’s most impressive feature, of course, was the uncanny accuracy of its forecast. To be drowned by a loving hand...Well, the poor bitch had been right there. Had Palgrove actually threatened her in those terms? No, not to her face, apparently...They think I do not understand. Back to the business of complicity. But with whom, if not Doreen Booker? Was the amorous Pally running another lady? Injection...poison pellet...He certainly was being given plenty of credit for enterprise. A fiend in human form, as Sid Love might say (and doubtless would, sooner or later). Imagine living with the fear of...

  Suddenly, Purbright realized what was odd.

  For all its extravagant phrasing, its sensational accusations, the letter somehow failed to carry conviction of real danger. It was too literary, too carefully composed. Even the punctuation was faultless.

  It was not the letter of a frightened woman.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The pear-shaped man around whom the little shop in Station Road appeared to have been built showed not the slightest surprise at being visited by a police inspector. This betokened neither ease o
f conscience nor long practice of dissimulation. He would have remained just as unperturbed if Purbright had been an armed robber, or the Pope, or a lady without any clothes. The truth was that the man was so bulky and his premises so small that the demonstration of any emotion whatsoever on his part would, one felt, have been as rash an act as firing a pistol under an Alpine snow pack.

  “I am interested in certain photographs,” Purbright announced after introducing himself.

  “Photographs?” The word was blown back to him over the counter on the man’s next suspiration, a whisper carried by a steady breeze. Purbright felt the breeze cease: the man was breathing in. “Never handle...” blew across before the wind dropped once more, “...that sort of thing.”

  The next two breaths arrived empty. Then came, “You should know better...” followed by the final instalment, “...than to ask.”

  Purbright frowned indignantly, but before he could frame a suitable retort the trans-counter wind sprang up again.

  “Here...” Something flopped in front of him. “Best I can do.”

  The inspector glanced down at a young woman of highly unlikely mammary development who ogled him from the cover of Saucy Pix Mag.

  “We seem to be at cross purposes,” he said sternly to the pear-shaped man. “The inquiries I am making concern an order for three photographic prints that was placed with a Nottingham firm by somebody who gave this address.”

  “What kind...of prints?”

  “Not this kind, certainly.” Purbright handed back Saucy Pix. He thought the man looked just the slightest fraction relieved. “The name given with the order was Dover. I know that’s not your name, but I’d like to know who Mr Dover is and where I can find him.”

  “Don’t think...Dover’s his real...name, mind... Seen him about...sometimes, but...” The man shook his head gingerly. Purbright felt the tremor of even this small action transmitted through the counter.

  “Why should he have given this address?”

  “Accommodation...address. Pays...so much a week.”

  “He gets letters, then, does he?”

  The man seemed not to consider this question worth sending a special airborne reply, so Purbright followed it with: “Anything in for him at the moment?”

  The man felt, without looking, under the counter and drew up an envelope. He hesitated for the space of three breaths, then passed it to the inspector.

  Purbright opened the envelope. He pulled out two sheets of paper, folded together.

  “Here, do you...”

  Purbright unfolded the sheets, began to read.

  “...think you ought...”

  Purbright moved the paper to catch a better light.

  “...to do that?”

  After a while, the inspector looked up. “Do you know a man called Mortimer Hive?”

  A negative grunt.

  Purbright replaced the sheets of paper in the envelope, which he then put in his pocket.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I shall explain to Mr Dover when I see him that this letter was taken away on my responsibility. If he comes in before I can do so, you’d better refer him to me.”

  He nodded aflably and departed.

  In the secretarial office of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance, Mr Hive was making gloomy pilgrimage from one to another of the pictures on the walls. He held in his hand a teacup, from which he took occasional sips, abstractedly and without zest. For a long while he halted before the representation of the child on the steps of the public house. The child’s face bore some resemblance to that of the barmaid in the Three Crowns. Mr Hive sighed and passed on to contemplation of the starving greyhound.

  The voice of Miss Teatime, fond but firm, came from behind him. “You really must stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mortimer. There is no need for you to go back to London. It is your own decision entirely.”

  “I was made to promise,” said Hive, pettishly.

  “Nonsense. Your commission is over. How can this person now order you out of the town? He sounds like one of those American sheriffs whose ponies are so disgracefully misused.”

  “I promised, just the same.” He squinted closely at the greyhound’s eye. “In return for an accommodation.”

  “You could have asked me to cash a cheque,” said Miss Teatime, reprovingly but not with eagerness. She added, more brightly: “Or perhaps Mr Purbright would have been able to oblige.”

  Mr Hive pulled out his presentation watch. “I am not going to see him,” he declared.

  “Mortimer! We have gone into this already. I have given Mr Purbright an undertaking and I do not care to dishonour it. You must at least see what he wants.”

  “Really, Lucy—a policeman...” He moved on to the belaboured donkey picture, as if to identify himself with the victim of blackboard’s oppression.

  “Mr Purbright is not a policeman in our sense of the word. He is a most charming man and, as I hope and believe, a tactful and realistic one. He has already contributed to my favourite charity.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t know about Uncle Macnamara,” Hive said to the donkey. With his teacup he pledged the beast’s health, or what remained of it.

  “There is no reason why he should interest himself in our good treasurer. He is far too busy trying to find what happened to poor Mrs Palgrove to worry about charity registration formalities. And Mr Purbright, I might add, is not insensible to the attraction of a quid pro quo.”

  Hive turned to face the room. He was frowning. “Mrs Palgrove...Which Mrs Palgrove?”

  “The Mrs Palgrove, naturally.”

  “Is her husband called Leonard? Owns a factory, or something?”

  Miss Teatime nodded. “She was drowned, you know. Did you not read about it in the newspapers?”

  “How very extraordinary,” said Mr Hive. He came and sat down. “Leonard happens to be my co-respondent—or was going to be, rather.”

  “The Case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well,” said Miss Teatime, “what a small world it is!”

  “No wonder he wants to see me. This policeman of yours.”

  “You must be nice to him, mind.”

  “I haven’t said that I would stay.”

  She smiled. “But you will?”

  Mr Hive brushed the velvet collar of his long, narrow-waisted, mushroom-coloured overcoat and wriggled his shoulders a little to square its fit. He paused, then carefully unbuttoned the coat, removed it and hung it meticulously on the back of a chair.

  “Very well. Just to be sociable.”

  He sat down. Miss Teatime fished the whiskey bottle out of the biscuit barrel and beckoned him to hand her his cup.

  In Nottingham, it was raining.

  Sergeant Love had had the sort of fuss made of him at the city’s police headquarters that is usually reserved for a mislaid child. A chair; hot, sweet tea; cheery questions about his home football team; a piece of paper pencilled with directions in big, clear writing. He had been quite sorry to leave. His hosts, had he but known, were still wondering anxiously if they should have let him leave. But Sergeant Love did not know this: he was not consciously aware that he remained favoured at the age of thirty-six with the face of a clean and equable-natured schoolboy of fourteen.

  Despite the rain, for which he had come quite unprepared, Love did not take a taxi to the photographic store. This was partly because he regarded taxi-riding as an extravagance of a slightly sinful sort, like créme de menthe and carpeted water-closets; partly because he enjoyed looking into shop windows. The walk took him a quarter of an hour and soaked his shoulders, shoes and trouser legs, yet he could have wished it twice as long. It was only when he entered the store to be greeted with “Now, son; what can I do for you?” that his euphoria trickled away with the water from his turned-up collar. As sternly as he could, he corrected the man’s underestimate of his age and station and asked to be taken to the manager.

  Mr Jobling was middle-aged and well aware that show
ing surprise at the youthfulness of policemen was a classic symptom of impending senility, so he kept his thoughts to himself and busily co-operated. He caused to be paraded in turn before the sergeant all three members of the staff who could reasonably be hoped to recollect anything at all about the mysterious Mr Dover and his photographic requirements.

  The first, an overseer with serene eyes and a white-fuzzed dome, proved to have an equally abbot-like desire to assist the visiting traveller. It was more than matched, however, by his seraphic blankness of memory. As this man wandered off, apologizing, Love was reminded of a monastic retreat he once had visited in pursuance of some indecent exposure inquiries.

  Next came the man from the process department who had recognized Mrs Palgrove’s portrait. He was small and craggy-faced and looked shrewd and alert. No, he had not handled the other batch on the order, but recalled that about that number of copies—twenty, had the sergeant said?—had been run off the week before. He hadn’t noticed the print they’d been taken from. The job had been one of Morgan’s, he thought.