“Here’s Baz now,” said the patrol-car driver, a much more benevolent character named Fairclough, who treated his colleague as a delinquent younger brother in need of good influence.
Constable Basil Cowdrey paused at the lane end and surveyed the scene of ambush with grim satisfaction. He said something brief to his left shoulder, from which an antenna had lately sprouted, then set forth. Clive noted with some alarm that the radio aerial was not the only fresh feature of PC Cowdrey; he had also acquired an heroic limp.
Fairclough felt he ought to say something to ease the tension. “That officer,” he explained to Clive, “is the complainant, we understand. That means he’s going to accuse you of something. Or your driver, rather. But he’ll ask questions first, of course. We were just sort of asked to make you available, if you see what I mean.”
Brevitt, who had been listening, drew back his upper lip to expose big yellow teeth. Clive was put in mind of an angry horse.
Cowdrey arrived. His antenna had been retracted, but not his limp. Canting heavily upon what appeared to be a permanently shortened leg, he unbuttoned a pocket and drew out a notebook, then—rather pointlessly, everyone else thought—laboriously buttoned the pocket up again.
He freed the notebook from its lashing of black elastic and produced a short pencil which he examined for some moments before deciding which end to put to use.
At last, he looked at Clive. “You the driver of this vehicle, sir?”
Clive blessed him with a smile of forgiveness. “No, no, officer, not I...but perhaps I should make introductions. My name is Clive Grail, as you may or may not know. The lady in the rear seat is Miss Birdie Clemenceaux, my research assistant.” He indicated the driver. “My photographer, Mr Robert Becket. Anyone else?... Ah, yes, Mr Kenneth Lanching, there in the back. Colleague, you know. Same stable.”
Strictly a non-metaphor man, the constable looked sharply and with new suspicion at the travellers. “Oh, it’s horse-racing you’re connected with, is it?”
“Oh, Christikins!” trilled Miss Clemenceaux, her head thrown back. Lanching turned aside and grinned. Only Robert Becket showed no amusement but continued to stare blankly at the knob of the gear lever.
“Journalism,” explained Mr Grail, “actually.” He again smiled kindly, as upon a penitent who was still a bit confused about the distinction between worldly and spiritual. “Investigative journalism. Sunday Herald. Need I say more? Grail is my name.”
“Yes. You said.” The constable limped to the opposite side of the car and stooped. He also winced very obviously. Clive hastened after him and addressed Becket.
“Come on, Bob: the officer’s having to bend down to talk to you.”
Becket gave a start, then clambered from his seat and stood beside Cowdrey.
“May I see your driving licence, sir?” The question was put with that classic casualness which implies that failure to comply with so reasonable a request there and then will be construed by any judge and jury in the realm as admission of intent to deceive.
“I’m afraid it’s at home,” said Becket.
Deep in the interior of the Rolls, Miss Clemenceaux murmured something to Lanching and both laughed. Grail glanced in at them crossly.
“Your certificate of insurance, then, please, sir?”
“Home,” Becket said.
For a long moment, Cowdrey studied the author of this defiance. He saw a stocky figure in a suit with rather a lot of pinstripe in it. One hand, square and thick-fingered, was held loosely at waist level in an attitude suggestive of habitual coin-tossing. The head, disproportionately large, had close-cropped patchily greying hair. Becket’s moustache, too, was closely trimmed—an exact rectangle of stubble across the width of his upper lip. Ears were small and chubby, as was the nose. The restless, slightly inflamed eyes were deeply set above plump cheeks, which they irrigated from time to time with a tear.
None of which features registered upon the consciousness of Constable Cowdrey. His scrutiny was intended not to gather impressions but to make one. When he judged that enough time had elapsed for this purpose, he directed his attention to the open notebook, flexed his pencil hand, and prepared to conduct the catechism proper.
“Your name and your home address, if you please, sir?”
Sergeant Malley, by now bored almost to the point of exasperation, made a low-voiced representation of his own. “You’ll not be wanting the lads any more, will you, Baz? I mean, I’m still stuck there outside Haywards and his fish van can’t get out.”
Without interrupting his chronicle of Mr Becket’s habitat, function and itinerary—a process so slow that Birdie said it was like being in bloody Egypt and waiting for an inscription on your bloody tomb—the constable nodded solemnly and Malley shooed the patrolmen into their car with instructions to back round and get busy with a tow rope.
The small crowd of market-day bystanders, who had congregated in hopes of there having been a bank robbery, gradually dispersed, but only after making the disappointing discovery that a backing police car does not sound its siren with notes in the reverse order.
Clive Grail made one or two further attempts to interpose sweet reasonableness between the coldly persistent policeman and an increasingly resentful Becket, but they seemed only to be making matters worse. He retreated into the Rolls and sat, looking very thoughtful, between his colleagues on the back seat.
“I’ve got a growing feeling,” he said softly, “that this little town is more than commonly afflicted with bloody-mindedness. Take a look in Willing’s, there’s a good girl, and get the address of the local paper.”
Miss Clemenceaux opened a compartment in the bulkhead before her. It proved to be a small reference library and stationery store. She picked out a book and thumbed through pages.
“Ah, very sturdy-sounding, darling,” she said. “The Flaxborough Citizen, no less. In Market Street. It probably organizes lynch mobs.” She giggled. “Poor bloody Robert!”
“Never mind Robert. Who’s the editor?”
The girl again found her place in the guide. Her frown of concentration suddenly gave place to a delighted grin.
“Goddikins! Better and better. Josiah Kebble, would you believe? Josiah!”
Chapter Two
Mr Harcourt Chubb, chief constable of Flaxborough, was as nearly an agitated man as he ever allowed himself to be in any situation other than one concerning his greenhouse or his home-bred Yorkshire terriers.
“What on earth, Mr Purbright,” he exclaimed, “was the wretched man thinking of? Actually to arrest the fellow.”
Detective Inspector Purbright regarded Mr Chubb with an expression of tender concern.
“I really don’t know, sir. I’m only sorry that it isn’t a matter that comes within the province of the CID.”