by Colin Watson
“Oh, yes. But we still consider them rather infra dig. They look to the working classes like sub-offices of the National Assistance Board. And the middle classes seem to think they’re something to do with the Co-op.”
“You mean street betting still goes on here?”
“I’m sure it does. After all, furtiveness confers a certain cachet; don’t you find that, Major Ross?”
“Anderson was once a sailor, you say.” It was Pumphrey speaking now. Purbright noticed his habit of jerking his long, pointed head forward and from side to side, as if his thoughts had to be continually shaken in their box to prevent them sticking together. “That means he could have established contacts abroad, doesn’t it?”
Malley grinned indulgently. “Abroad? If you call sandbanks two miles off the estuary abroad, I suppose he could. That’s as far as the shrimpers ever go.”
“To the best of your knowledge.” By lightly stressing the ‘your’, Pumphrey conjured the vision of a whole fleet of small boats slipping off to dark continental anchorages while Malley slept.
“What’s this fellow’s style of living?” Ross asked.
Love took his turn. “Squatter, I suppose you’d call him. One of those big Nissen huts on the old ack-ack site down Hunting’s Lane. He keeps a wife at each end of it. I’m told those two have never met. That seems a bit queer, though,” He looked inquiringly at Malley.
“That’s just a tale,” Malley said. “I saw the two of them pass in Woolworth’s the other day. They recognized each other, all right.”
Purbright looked at his watch. There was, he felt, a limit to the time he ought to spare from his own relatively uninspired prosecution of the Hopjoy case. He stubbed out his cigarette. There were no more questions about Crutchey Anderson, apparently. “That,” said Purbright, “brings us to Mr and Mrs Croll, out at Mumblesby. All right, sergeant.”
The others looked at Malley. He stroked the back of his head, seeking suitable words in which Mrs Croll might be sketched without intemperance. He cleared his throat. “I should say young Bernadette’s had more ferret than I’ve had hot dinners.”
Purbright translated. “It seems that she has something of a reputation for promiscuity.” He looked at Ross over his arched fingers. “Do you find that to the point, Major Ross?”
It was Pumphrey who fielded the question. “Security-wise, moral turpitude is always to the point, inspector. The...the person in whom we are interested was following a sound principle when he put Mrs Croll under surveillance.” He spoke aside to his companion, whose expression had stiffened a good deal: “This might be our best lead yet, you know.”
Malley gave a short laugh at the thought which had just occurred to him. “Funny we should have been on about old Tozer a minute ago. The talk is that he used to send young blokes out to keep Bernadette company.”
“Tozer did, you say?” Ross was suddenly attentive.
“Aye. He fancies himself in the matchmaking line, you know. They say he has a list of all the lonely wives in Flax. I don’t know about that, but old George is sharper than he looks; he soon finds from a customer whether he’s happily married or not and how much time he spends away from home. Mind you—“ Malley rubbed his chin—“I reckon George’ll think twice before he sends another stand-in for Ben Croll.”
Malley paused and patted out a crease in the front of his enormous uniform. He waited complacently.
“Why, what happened, Bill?” Purbright supplied, after an interval properly respectful to the coroner’s officer.
“Well, the last one damn nearly became a client of mine. Ben turned up and caught him. He chucked him through the bedroom window like a fork-load of sugar beet. Sykes in the path lab. at the General told me they had to operate the same night. The bloke was lucky to pull through.”
“What was his name?” Ross asked.
“I don’t know. No one could find out. They put Trevelyan on his case sheet but that wasn’t his name. Harton gave orders for the whole business to be kept quiet.”
“Harton?”
“The surgeon, Mr Ross. Sykes heard Harton tell the ward sister that it was a very special case and that no information was to be given to anybody.”
“Yes, but George Tozer would know, wouldn’t he?” Love put in. “Who the chap really was, I mean.”
“No doubt he does. And keeping it to himself. If Ben thought George had had anything to do with it, he’d run a muck-loader through his guts.”
“I might get something out of Mrs Croll,” suggested Love, hopefully.
Purbright levelled a pencil at him. “You stay away from Mumblesby, Sid. Good God, they even go in pairs to read meters in that parish.” He turned to Malley. “By the way, did you gather what the man’s injuries actually were?”
“No, they were hushed up, too. But Harton does abdominals. Practically nothing else.”
Purbright raised his brows at Ross.
“Rassmussen,” Ross said.
“Ah, yes; Rassmussen. Anyone know who Rassmussen is?”
Love volunteered. “He’s a Dane. He used to have a farm of his own at Pollard Bridge until the Government took all that land over. I think he does odd jobs mostly nowadays. Slaughtering, for one. Some of the farmers still like to have a pig killed for their own use now and again, but not one in a hundred knows how to tackle it. So they send for Hicks here in Flaxborough—he keeps a butcher’s shop—or else Rassmussen.”
“There’d be nothing unusual in Croll wanting a pig slaughtered, I suppose?” said Ross.
“What, right now, you mean, sir?”
“Yes, now.”
Love smirked. “It’s funny you should ask that. They did have one killed about a fortnight ago, but someone pinched half the carcass from where it was hanging in the barn during the night. Croll rang us up about it. He was swearing blue murder.”
“Who did that killing?”
“Hicks, I should think. I don’t know, though.”
“So Croll might have sent for Rassmussen since then—having lost a big part of the first animal.”
“He might. If Hicks couldn’t come the second time.”
Ross inclined his head. “Just one other thing, sergeant. You said the Government had taken over Rassmussen’s farm. How did that come about?”
The question seemed to surprise Love a little. “Well, all the land round there was taken. Compulsory purchase, I suppose. It was for that big what d’you call it at Thimble Bay.”
Chapter Thirteen
The next day, assiduous Sergeant Warlock, pert and primed, stuck his head round Purbright’s door and announced: “We’ve done the car.”
He enumerated what suggestive finds there had been. A few fragments of straw lay on the floor of the boot—a capacious boot, Warlock agreed—and four or five bloodstains were in the same place. The straw was of a kind similar to wisps in the garage at Beatrice Avenue and in the wardrobe in the late Mrs Periam’s bedroom. It was safe to assume the trail to be that of the acid carboy.
The blood was less easily explained. The stains were of recent origin but decidedly not human. “And there you are, squire,” concluded Warlock, with the air of an energetic retriever dropping a particularly unimpressive rabbit.
Purbright stared thoughtfully at the pile of Hopjoy’s belongings that still lay in a filing tray at the side of his desk. “Tell me, sergeant: this business of bloodstains... You can tell fairly easily whether they are human or animal, I take it.”
“Oh, rather. And the various human groups are identifiable. But only as groups, mind; we don’t label individual chromosomes yet.”
“Quite. But suppose blood structure is damaged badly—destroyed, in fact. What chance would your analysis have then?”
“None, obviously.” Warlock’s tone implied that he considered the question pretty wet.
“Let me put it another way. Suppose some blood, flesh and bone were reduced right down to basic chemical constituents—carbon, water, calcium salts, and so on—is there any possible w
ay of deciding what sort of an animal they belonged to?”
“You don’t really want an answer to that, do you?”
Purbright rose and walked slowly to the window. He stood looking out, his hands clasped behind him. “You know, this should have occurred to us before.”
Warlock’s usual posture of athletic eagerness had been abandoned. He looked anxious. “If you’re thinking of the drain washings...”
“I am, indeed.”
“Yes, well I’d better say straight away that there’s no way of proving whether that sludge was man, woman, or the Archbishop of Canterbury’s pet kangaroo.” He waited, then waved a hand. “Oh, but surely to God...I mean this bod of yours has vanished—there couldn’t be a more obvious tie-up.”
“That’s just what I’m afraid of.” Purbright turned. “There are several things about this case that look a little too obvious. And you didn’t imagine I’d forgotten that doctored hammer, did you?”
“That was queer, certainly. As,” Warlock added firmly, “I pointed out.”
“You did. And I think you deserve to know something else. The presumed victim was—or is—an exceptionally fly gentleman, very hard pressed by creditors and husbands. His speciality was trading on his employment in a highly secret and I suppose romantic profession.”
“So that explains Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee.”
“Oh, you’ve met Major Ross and his colleague, have you?”
“Met them? I’ve practically been tried in camera by them. That one who looks like a pox-doctor’s clerk—the little bloke with a sharp nose—he was bloody offensive. I told him so.” Warlock’s recollection of the encounter restored his restless elasticity. He danced his weight from one foot to the other and threw a shadow punch at the wall. “Never saw a weasel with ringworm before. Ah, well; press on.” Opening the door, he glanced back quizzically at Purbright. “D’you really think all this was a put up job, then?”
The inspector smiled, but made no reply.
“Oh, by the way, I nearly forgot about this...” Warlock came back into the room, fishing from his breast pocket a glass tube which he tossed down on the desk. “Fibrafon think it’s from a baby’s hairbrush, Portland Plastics say fishing line, and Hoffman’s plump for a retaining thread in a gyro compass. Take your pick.”
Purbright recognized the nylon strand gleaned from the Beatrice Avenue plumbing. “Not terribly helpful, are they?”
“I’ll try a few more if you like. But I must say it seems a matter of asking silly questions and getting silly answers.”
The inspector put the tube aside. “Forget about it for now. There’s no point in putting your people to more trouble while there’s a possibility of our having been led up a garden. Which reminds me...”—he looked up at the clock—“that I ought to be having a word with the Chief Constable.”
Mr Chubb was in his greenhouse, counting out his cuttings. He looked cool and tall and grey behind the glass. Purbright closed the side gate, with its enamelled NO to hawkers, circulars and canvassers, and skirted a small crescent of lawn. The grass was littered with rubber bones, savaged tennis balls, and other no longer identifiable articles associated with the appeasement of Mr Chubb’s Yorkshire terriers, whose excreta, marvellously variegated, was everywhere. The animals themselves, Purbright noted gratefully, were absent; he supposed them to be dragging a triple-leashed, panting Mrs Chubb on their daily expedition against the peace and hygiene of the neighbourhood.
The Chief Constable acknowledged Purbright’s arrival with a small patient smile through the panes. The smile announced his readiness to put the public weal before petunias and duty above all delights. There clung to him as he emerged from the green-house the warm, aromatic redolence of tomato foliage.
Purbright was waved to a seat on a rustic bench screened by laurels from the next-door garden, where the wife of the City Surveyor could be heard scraping a burned saucepan bottom and sustaining with a periodic “oh” or “did she?” the muffled monotone of a kitchen visitor’s narration.
Mr Chubb leaned lightly against a trellised arch and gazed into the middle distance.
“This case from Beatrice Avenue, sir,” Purbright began. “I’d like to give you what we’ve gathered so far and to hear your opinion of it. Our first impressions may have been mistaken.”
“Ah...” Mr Chubb nodded almost approvingly. “That’s always to be expected, Mr Purbright. There’s no discredit in finding one’s calculations at fault. Seeds don’t always produce what’s on the packet, you know.”
“No, sir.”
Mr Chubb relinquished a few inches of his Olympian advantage and put his hand on the back of the bench. “I’ll tell you one thing, my boy. I’m very pleased that you’ve pegged away at this thing instead of leaving it to the heavies. Major Ross and his man are absolutely capable, I’ve no doubt, but outsiders never seem to understand just why people in a place like this behave as they do. It’s important, you know. Very.” The assertive frown cleared and Mr Chubb’s face went back aloft. “Sorry to have interrupted. Carry on.”
“Just before I left the office”—Purbright delved into the briefcase he was holding—“I had an idea about the anonymous letter that started off this affair. You’ll remember it, of course.” He handed a creased, pale blue sheet to the Chief Constable. “And now look at this, sir: it was among the papers we found in Hopjoy’s bedroom.”
Mr Chubb turned back the cover of the writing pad Purbright had taken from his case. He compared the letter with the top sheet of the pad, then smoothed one over the other. They corresponded in size, colour and texture.
“You can follow the ball-point indentations that have come through,” Purbright pointed out. “They persist for two or three pages down.”
“Not very anonymous now,” remarked Mr Chubb drily. He watched Purbright re-fold the letter and slip it into its parent pad. Then he frowned. “What the dickens are we supposed to make of it all? Some sort of a joke, or what?”
“It would have been no joke for Periam if he’d been convicted of murder, sir.”
“No, by jove, it wouldn’t,” murmured Mr Chubb.
“And yet,” said Purbright, “he very well might have been. The evidence that he killed his lodger and then disposed of his body is very impressive at first sight. We get this letter and naturally presume it’s from a neighbour who has heard a quarrel and might even have seen something suggestive of violence. It makes particular mention of the bathroom—a rather convincing touch, somehow. We have no choice but to investigate. And there they all are, the signs of very nasty goings on—bloodstains, wax coating on the bath, acid burns on the floor, a hammer stuck up with blood and hair. And buried in the garden, the smashed carboy, whose iron basket—too big to bury and too tough to be broken up—has been hastily pushed out of sight in a wardrobe.
“We look in the drains—quite predictably, of course—and sure enough they prove that a body has been destroyed by acid. Whose? Obviously, the loser of the midnight fight in the bathroom which was so considerately reported to us by a watchful neighbour. The winner, if and when we trace him, is bound to be the murderer.
“The survivor, Gordon Periam, is duly found. He is not far away, but that fact in itself is consistent with the self-confidence of the sort of man who can commit and conceal an exceptionally horrid crime. Indeed, all the circumstances in which he is found (as you doubtless recognized yourself, sir) are classically in line. The refuge in sex relations, the flashy hotel with its novel comforts and expense, enjoyment of the victim’s car as well as his girl...the pattern’s complete and absolutely damning.”
The inspector paused to light a cigarette. Mr Chubb regarded him very thoughtfully. He was trying to persuade himself that the point about the classic behaviour of murderers had, indeed, already occurred to him.
“And that, sir,” resumed Purbright, “was the situation as it was presented to us. ‘Presented’ is the operative word, of course. It could have gone straight to the Director of Public Prosec
utions there and then, and I dare say that Periam’s indictment would have been automatic. But you were wise not to rush it, sir.”
The Chief Constable modestly turned his gaze to a group of border plants near his foot.
“It was almost inevitable,” Purbright went on, “that some part of so elaborate a set-up would prove faulty. The lab. people spotted it. Those hairs on the hammer were Hopjoy’s all right—or at least they corresponded with some found on his clothing—but they hadn’t arrived there through his having been bashed over the head. According to Warlock, they’d been snipped and stuck on.”
“Yes, but the blood...”
“It doesn’t need too much of a self-inflicted cut, possibly with the corner of a razor blade, to provide enough blood to be smeared on a hammer head. And perhaps a few splashes around the place as well.”
