She shook her head. “I think it was in Brocklestone he stayed during one of the weekends. A friend of mine mentioned afterwards that she’d seen him there. But he never said, and I didn’t ask.”
Purbright considered whether he should take further advantage of Mrs Persimmon’s meekness of mood by sounding out what knowledge or suspicions she might have concerning Edna Hillyard. He decided against. He asked instead if she could give the name of anyone else associated with her husband’s “samaritan” activities—just in case, he said, it proved necessary to widen inquiries into his whereabouts and movements on the night of his disappearance.
Mr Persimmon, she replied, had spoken from time to time of three colleagues in that particular branch of his social work. They were Sir Henry Bird, mentioned already, and also Dr Cropper, the Borough Medical Officer, and the Vicar, Mr Grewyear.
The inspector said he was sure that three such distinguished gentlemen would be not only reliable but discreet informants should the need for their co-operation arise. For the time being, though, he counselled patience and faith in the likelihood of Mr Persimmon’s having taken himself off somewhere simply to think out the perplexities of life. It did happen with people of his age, and, as Mrs Persimmon had herself acknowledged, her husband seemingly was not a man to share his problems.
Not the problem of Miss Hillyard, anyway, Purbright added in a personal aside to himself as he smiled encouragingly at Mrs Persimmon and rose to take his leave. At the door, he put his final question.
“Is your husband interested in folk singing or anything in that line?”
Mrs Persimmon’s immediate “Not that I know of—why?” was distinctly derogatory in tone.
“Oh, no reason,” said Purbright. “I just wondered.”
Sergeant Love was combining with business the pleasure that any healthy, youngish, innocently good-looking policeman is almost bound to feel in the company of totties, Flaxborough’s generic term for all presentable and responsive females. Totties were predominant among the employees in the Town Hall and in no department could there be a more pleasing selection, Love decided, than in the offices of Dr Halcyon Cropper, Medical Officer of Health.
The doctor was absent at a conference in Ipswich, but the chief clerk—whose function seemed to be mainly that of a sort of girl-herd—told the sergeant that he was welcome to interview whom he pleased. Love looked round the room with as nearly blank an expression as he could manage in face of such largesse and said he would “try that one”.
The clerk beckoned his choice, a girl called Sylvia Lintz, who had straight, short, straw-coloured hair, long but plump legs, and what Love’s mother would have called a fine, strong chest.
“The sergeant,” the clerk said to her, “wishes to ask some questions. About Miss Hillyard.”
Sylvia glanced quickly at Love, alarmed.
“Oh, no, nothing, er—well, not as far as we know,” the clerk soothed without conviction. His eye covertly ranged the other girls in the room. What’s he worried about, Love wondered.
“Perhaps,” the clerk said to Sylvia, “you’d better take him into the stock room.” He rubbed his chin dubiously. “Unless you can think of anywhere better.”
The stock room was about eight feet square, windowless and lined on three sides with shelves loaded with packets of forms, stationery, and other kinds of office equipment. It contained a small table and chair. Love fetched another chair. He left the door wide open. They sat, Love stiffly, the girl demurely, the table between them.
“You do know Miss Hillyard’s missing, don’t you?” said Love.
“Well, I know she hasn’t been to work. Not since Wednesday.”
“Has there been any talk about her being away?”
“Not really. Not at first, anyway. She often has a day off.”
“More often than other people?”
“I don’t know that I’d say that.”
“Has she ever told you why she had these days off?”
“I haven’t asked.” The reply was made with slight hesitation.
Love tried to look extra kind. The effort somehow resembled a wind-repressing discipline.
“What you say won’t get her into trouble, you know,” he said. “We just want to be given some idea of where she might have got to.”
The girl was silent a moment. She traced a spiral pattern with a finger tip on the table top. “I think Edna’s a bit...well, you know...”
“Promiscuous?” dared the sergeant, feeling the unfamiliar word bring something of the satisfaction of boldly squeezing Miss Lintz’s thigh.
She considered the question without sign of embarrassment then said simply, “Of course, she’s a lot older than most of us.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
The girl smiled. Ooo, but you’re scrumptious, the sergeant silently told her. Aloud, he asked if Miss Hillyard had ever confided to her the names of such admirers as had seduced her from service in the public health sector.
“Not to me, she didn’t. She was thicker with Mavis and Vi than anybody else. They might tell you. Shall I see if Mr House can spare them?”
“Mr House?”
“He’s the gentleman you’ve seen already. The head clerk.”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“No trouble,” said Miss Lintz sweetly. She got up.
Love rose as well, partly out of politeness but mainly because he felt that otherwise the girl might be left with the regrettable impression that decrepitude rather than authority dictated his remaining seated.
There were times when the sergeant wondered whether his long and loyal courtship of the person still optimistically described by his mother as “your young lady” had not been attenuated by mutual passivity; a probationary period of fourteen years did seem adequate to forestall any charge of fool-hardiness.
As he watched the departure of Miss Lintz’s splendidly untrammelled legs and lively bottom, oscillating within its brief tourniquet of skirt, he recalled with a sense almost of awe that this nineteen-year-old daughter of the one-time editor of the Flaxborough Citizen was a child of six when he, Love, had worked on his first murder case, the slaying of old Marcus Gwill in Heston Lane.1 He would buy his Agnes a dinky nylon nightie that very afternoon. If he could get away, of course. And if the store wasn’t too crowded, as it well might be on a Saturday...
1 Reported in Coffin Scarcely Used
Mavis O’Conlon and Violet Beach arrived together.
Violet was tall, with thin arms and shoulders but paradoxically heavy legs. She looked as if she would be difficult to knock over. Her cool, pale-lashed eyes were steady but mistrustful. She had a habit of caressing her left shoulder with her right hand, the forearm resting protectively across her small bosom. Love thought her pretty in a rather delicate way which he attributed vaguely to her having been sired by the manager of the Field Street branch of the Provinces and Maritime Bank, a notably pussy-footed gentleman.