by Colin Watson
As they re-entered the kitchen, there came from somewhere outside the house a short cooing call, soon afterwards repeated. The inspector went to the window and looked out.
Boggan, one foot on his spade, was turned towards the right-hand fence. A woman, apparently standing on something on her side of it, beckoned him eagerly. Boggan strolled across the lawn and listened to what she had to say. She was, Purbright noticed, an elderly woman, but rosy-faced and alert. For as long as she was talking she tilted back her head and kept her eyes tight shut, while her hand occasionally sought to discipline a stray wisp of her almost white hair.
Boggan sought the inspector.
“It’s Mrs Sayers next door, sir. She’d like a word with you. She says she can tell you about Mr Periam.”
Chapter Three
Mrs Alice Sayers celebrated the installation of a police inspector in her drawing-room by serving a jug of hot milk and water mixture delicately tinctured with coffee essence, switching on an electric fire that produced a cinematic representation of flames and a terrible smell of singeing fluff, and unshrouding the cage of a budgerigar called Trevor.
Also offered was a plate of slightly soft wheatmeal biscuits.
Purbright sat in a massive but unyielding armchair and watched Mrs Sayers administer fragments of biscuit to Trevor. This she did with a pout and a curious chuffling, sucking noise that was apparently intended to whet the bird’s appetite.
At intervals she turned her head and with closed eyes addressed herself to the second most important creature in the room.
“I do hope you’ll not think I’m just being terribly inquisitive, inspector, but I’m really very fond of Gordon and of course I didn’t know what to think when I saw policemen all over the place. Well, people do fear the worst when it comes to digging, don’t they?”
Her eyes opened and stayed watchful while she smiled, waiting to see how much she would be told.
“There’s no need to let that alarm you, Mrs Sayers. All we know at the moment is that the two gentlemen next door appear to be...unaccounted for. There may be a perfectly simple explanation, but so long as there’s the possibility of something being wrong we shall have to cast around a bit.”
Trevor, neglected, emitted a stream of staccato squawking that sounded like enamel being chiselled off a saucepan bottom. Purbright shivered. Mrs Sayers lovingly tapped the bars of the cage with her fingernail and reached for another biscuit.
“What you mean, I suppose, is that Gordon’s missing? But how extraordinary. Couldn’t he be on holiday, or something?”
“That is what we should very much like to know. When I received your message, I was hopeful that you might be able to tell us something definite.”
“Oh, naturally I shall do all I can to help, inspector. Mrs Periam was a very dear friend of mine. And Gordon was a crutch to her; I can’t think of any other word. I wonder...” She paused. “Have you by any chance had a word with Mrs Wilson? She’s next to the Periams on the other side.”
“We did make some enquiries there. She wasn’t able to tell us much.”
Mrs Sayers gave a quick satisfied nod. “No, Mrs Wilson keeps pretty well to herself.” She thought again. “Then there’s Mrs Cork and her Miriam. They overlook at the back, you know. Have you tried them?”
“We shall bear them in mind,” Purbright said, patiently. Trevor hooted and began to peck at its perch in a sudden transport of paranoia. “Choodle scrmsh,” murmured Mrs Sayers.
“Mr Periam has lived in the house next door all his life, I take it.”
“Oh, yes; he was born there. I remember how relieved we all were. She’d had a terrible time with him. Dr Peters wouldn’t let her stir for the last four months. She lived on arrowroot and tonic wine and a woman called Dursnip or something like that used to call every Tuesday and Friday to massage the water up out of her legs. Of course, having babies nowadays is a dreadfully off-hand business, isn’t it?”
“Relatively so,” confirmed Purbright.
“And yet she used to say to me that Gordon had made up for all she’d gone through and more besides. Every time he did some little thing for her she’d say that was another jewel God would put in his crown. She was a bit religious, you know. Well, I think it helped her when she lost her husband. Mastoid. Gordon wore a scarf every time he went out, winter and summer, right up to being nineteen or twenty. She was afraid it might have been passed on, but I think you can make too much of these things don’t you?”
“Mr Periam wa...isn’t married?”
Mrs Sayers pouted and drew in a quick breath of denial.
“Girl friends?”
Mrs Sayers considered. “There is a young lady who calls sometimes. I’d always supposed she belonged to the other one—Mr Hopjoy, you know; I think he’s more that sort. But I wouldn’t swear to it. Gordon’s losing his mother might have made a difference.”
“Was Mr Periam on good terms with Mr Hopjoy? You’ve never heard them fall out with each other?”
“No, I haven’t. Gordon has a sunny nature, though; I’m sure he’d get on with anyone. I’d call him staunch, too. Mind, between ourselves, the lodger’s a bit of a fly-by-night. It says a lot for Gordon that he’s let him stay on. I think it’s because he feels his mother would have expected him to.”
“Mrs Periam thought well of Mr Hopjoy, then?”
Mrs Sayers gave the sort of smile with which one forgives the follies of the dead. “She saw only the good in everyone.”
Trevor, now tramping rhythmically on its perch, cackled derisively. Mrs Sayers held up a finger, inviting Purbright’s attention to the oracle. “Get me serviette, mother; get me serviette, mother,” she translated. “Well, I never,” said the inspector.
After an interval he deemed long enough to signify admiration, Purbright resumed his questioning.
“Do you happen to know who owns the car that’s garaged next door?”
“Oh, yes; that’s Mr Hopjoy’s. Is it there now?”
“Not at the moment. When did you last see it, Mrs Sayers?”
“About a week ago, I should think. I can’t say just...” She frowned. “It’s a biggish car. Beige. And ever so quiet.” She opened her eyes to see if the inspector would accept this information as a substitute for what he had wanted to know.
“But you can’t remember—to a day or so, even—when you saw it last. And who was driving it.”
She shook her head. “I’m not awfully observant of cars. And of course they both drive it a good deal; I suppose Mr Hopjoy lends it when he doesn’t want it for his work.”
“I see. Now, Mrs Sayers, I’m going to ask you to think back very carefully to last Thursday just one week ago today. Does anything happen on Thursdays that might fix one in your mind?”
“Well, there’s the laundry...and the Brains Trust on television...” She paused, seemingly unable to peer past so notable a peak, then suddenly patted her knee. “Thursday—yes, I remember last Thursday; of course I do. It was Thursday that Arnold arrived. My second brother. He called on his way down from Hull.”
“Fine. Now try going over in your mind what happened that day—from one thing to the next, you know—and see if anything links up with next door. Never mind whether it seems important or not. Start right from getting up in the morning.”
Mrs Sayers, benignly co-operative, folded her hands and launched into a meticulous description of a day in the life of a Flaxborough widow. She spoke for nearly twenty minutes. Purbright learned, among many, many other things, three facts of possible relevance to his inquiry. On opening the door to take in the milk, Mrs Sayers had noticed Gordon Periam bolting back his gates. Some sixteen hours later, just before making up her brother’s bed, she had looked down from the spare bedroom window to see Mr Hopjoy’s car draw up. Gordon Periam—she was almost sure it was Gordon—got out and began unlocking the garage door. Finally, Mrs Sayers recalled a little vaguely having been awakened by the shutting of a door—that of the garage, she thought—and hearing a ca
r with a quiet engine drive away. She did not know at what time this happened, but she had the impression that it was two or three o’clock on the Friday morning.
Purbright felt that Mrs Sayers’s mind, such as it was, had been thoroughly worked out. But he made a last few random borings.
“Have you at any time recently seen a big, heavy package being carried into Mr Periam’s?”
She had not.
“Since last Thursday, do you happen to have heard a noise like glass breaking? Next door, I mean.”
“There hasn’t been a sound from there all this past week, inspector. Not a sound.” She stared at him, for the first time looking afraid. “Well, they’ve been away, haven’t they?”
“It seems they have, yes.” Purbright regarded absently a complicated bronze affair on the mantelpiece. It depicted an anxious nude heaving at the reins of a horse that had been maddened apparently by the grafting of a gilt clock to its belly. “That’s nearly ten minutes fast,” explained Mrs Sayers. Purbright, fearful of inviting a history of the bronze, looked quickly away.
He said: “The bathroom next door...it’s on the farther side of the house, I notice. Would any of the neighbours have a view of its window?”
“Well, only from the back, I should say. The houses in Pawson’s Lane; that’s where the ladies I told you about live. Mrs Cork and her daughter.”
“Would you say that they are inclined to be...” he paused, glancing at his palm...“interested in people around here?”
“Miriam’s drattedly nosey, if that’s what you mean.”
“To the extent of writing anonymous letters?” Purbright saw a grin of gratification pouch Mrs Sayers’s pink face. “Ah,” she said, “you’ve had one of those, have you?” She puffed out her lips and accompanied speech with a slight shaking of her head: “Yes, oh well, I knew ages ago that she’d got to the scribbling stage.” She lowered her voice and added mysteriously: “The Change, you know.”
“She isn’t a bit off the beam, is she?”
“Goodness me, no! Perfectly level-headed. And no harm in her, really. I think she just hasn’t enough to do. She never had.” Again the voice plunged confidentially. “Properly speaking and if all were told, inspector, the mother is Miss Cork. Miriam’s illegit.”
Mrs Sayers, satisfied as a blood donor, leaned slowly back in her chair. “I’m dying to know what Miriam wrote to you about. Do tell me.”
The inspector smiled apologetically. “We did receive a letter, Mrs Sayers. I think there’s no harm in your knowing that. It alleged some sort of a disturbance at number fourteen. The bathroom was mentioned. But I don’t know that we can assume who wrote it.”
“We can put two and two together, though, can’t we?”
“Ah, Mrs Sayers, if all the twos put together in this town had proved fertile we should be overrun with fours. I’m afraid I have been keeping you from your lunch.” He moved the ashtray with which Mrs Sayers had supplied him, a china representation of a Dutch clog, from his chair arm to the coffee table, and stood up. “There’s just one thing...”
Mrs Sayers looked round for Trevor’s cage cover. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if you happened to know where we might pick up a photograph of Mr Periam. There are one or two portraits next door, but I don’t suppose he’s a choirboy any longer.”
Mrs Sayers held up a promissory finger, pondered a moment, and trotted out of the room.
Trevor, still untented, immediately became hysterical. It nodded violently, issuing a series of high frequency squawks that produced in Purbright the sensation of piano wires being jerkily reeled in through his ears. He tried to imitate Mrs Sayers’s method of soothing communion but this merely agitated the bird more. He made faces at it, growled, miaowed, muttered words of the kind that are passed to magistrates on slips of paper. Trevor’s slate pencil monody persisted. In a final attempt, Purbright drew desperately on his cigarette and filled the cage with smoke. He was rewarded immediately. The bird swayed a little, raised one claw, then hunched into immobility and utter silence.
Purbright was standing by the window with his back to the fumigated budgerigar when Mrs Sayers bustled in with a photograph.
“Here we are: this was taken at last year’s Operatic. The Student Prince. That’s Gordon—the one holding up the beer mug thing in the second row.”
Purbright examined the picture. It showed upwards of thirty members of the Flaxborough Amateur Operatic Society transfixed in self-conscious attitudes of Ruritanian abandon. There was a wealth of false mustachios, arms akimbo, flourished steins, peasant blouses (“I helped with the costumes,” proclaimed Mrs Sayers) and feet on chairs. A drinking song was clearly in progress. In the foreground was a pair whom Purbright assumed to be the principals of the show. Disguised as a prince disguised as a student, forty-eight-year-old Jack Bottomley, bachelor proprietor of the Freemasons’ Arms, accompanied his singing with a stiff, resolute gesture; he looked like a learner driver about to turn left. His other hand grasped the waist of the Society’s perennial soprano lead, Miss Hilda Cannon, a stick-like female whose desperate grin of simulated coquetry was belied by the angle at which she leaned away from the draught of Mr Bottomley’s romantic protestations...
“No, no; that one’s Gordon.” Mrs Sayers’s plump little finger redirected Purbright’s attention to the face in the second row.
It was an unexceptional face that he could not recall having seen before, although, as Periam was a shopkeeper in a fairly busy part of the town, it was more than likely that he had done so. The features were very smooth, like those of an elderly baby, and their sulky solemnity was emphasized by a big, round, fleshy chin. The posture of gaiety prescribed for the occasion had been adopted by Mr Periam with all the insouciance of a man with suspected rib fractures submitting to X-ray examination.
“He doesn’t look very happy,” Purbright ventured.
“A terribly conscientious boy,” Mrs Sayers explained. “Actually he has a lovely sense of fun, but in a quiet way. He’s not one for roystering about. I think it’s only loyalty, really, that’s kept him in things like this. He’s still a regular Gang Show man too, you know.”
“Does Mr Hopjoy go in for theatricals?”
Mrs Sayers puffed contemptuously. “Not on the stage, he doesn’t. But he’s an actor, all right, take it from me.”
“I’d rather like his picture as well.”
“I don’t know where you’ll get one. By all accounts he flits around too much to be photographed. Of course, some woman might help you there. Or even,” she added darkly, “the police.”
Purbright, pocketing the photograph of the Operatic Society, searched her face for evidence either of amnesia or an unexpected sense of humour.
“No, honestly,” Mrs Sayers soberly persisted, “it wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.”
Chapter Four
Towards conference with the Chief Constable of Flaxborough and one selected senior officer of his force smoothly sped the man known as Ross,
He gazed with languid appreciation through the windscreen of the Bentley—an ordinary Bentley save that its radiator cowl was of gunmetal and of slightly more assertive radius than a standard model’s—at the June countryside. He already had booked rooms for his companion and himself at the Royal Oak, Flaxborough, from a public call box on the road from London, using the names Smith—his own favourite among disarmingly improbable hotel aliases—and Pargetter.
Pargetter-to-be did not seem to be enjoying the drive as much as Ross. As the long car swung up from the last declivity in the wooded, river-watered lowlands below Flaxborough Ridge and gained the straight highway leading to the town, he shifted irritably in his seat and swivelled his head in an effort to read grass-collared milestones.
Ross did not care for the back view of his companion’s head; the gleam of baldness bobbed distractingly in the left corner of his vision and he had begun to receive the curious impression that it emanated from a beard-ringed featureless face.
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“Harry,” he said sharply, “what on earth are you looking for?”
The white patch disappeared and a sallow oval one took its place. “I’ve been trying to see how much farther we have to go. I think there was a three on that last milestone.”
Henry Pumphrey spoke rapidly but with a careful emphasis that involved his facial muscles in a good deal of exercise. At the end of each sentence he lightly flicked his tongue across his upper lip. He had a residual North Country accent.
“Three miles will be about it,” Ross agreed. He had glanced at the dashboard and received from it, apparently, information no less precise than Pumphrey’s. Now, his hands laid delicately upon the wheel as upon an open missal, he watched the gradual recession of trees and hedges from the road ahead and their replacement by houses, a filling station, some shops. Cyclists—Flaxborough cyclists who seem grafted to their machines to form unities as formidable and unpredictable as centaurs—swooped out of side roads. Green double-decked buses which had been ticking over in ambush loomed suddenly at intersections. With the serenity of extreme old age, three inmates of an almshouse crossed and re-crossed the carriageway, gently smiled resignation to survival for another twenty-four hours, and filed back into their refuge. A pair of dogs, panting and oblivious, coupled on the road’s crown and performed a six-legged waltz around a keep-left bollard. Children darted between cars and laid down objects which they then watched excitedly from the pavement.
