“Do you have that opinion because both the body and the mask were found in the river within a fairly short time of each other?”
“No, not just because of that. Doctor Fergusson will be assisting at the PM a little later this evening, but I might as well mention one of the more interesting discoveries that he’s made already.
“Now, here”—the inspector pointed delicately with a pencil—“there has been fixed fairly recently to the top of the mask, exactly halfway between the horns, a small electric bulb holder. The bulb is smashed, but its base is still screwed into the holder and there is enough glass left to be compared with fragments of the same bulb that might turn up elsewhere.”
“As they have, presumably,” said Mr Chubb.
“In the neck of the corpse, actually. And the glass is rather distinctive. One would call it ruby, I think. The bulb is of the kind that is hung on Christmas trees. Forensic will be able to say for certain if the glass matches, but I have no reason to doubt that it does—nor that we have here the weapon that killed Persimmon.”
“I quite agree with you,” said the chief constable.
The inspector gave a small bow.
“What I cannot understand,” went on Mr Chubb, “is why the fellow, whoever he is, went to all that trouble. It’s a terrible enough thing to kill somebody, God knows, but to dress up as a cow with all that electric paraphernalia in order to do it... We’re obviously dealing here with a diseased mind, gentlemen.”
The others observed silence of a duration suitable to the profundity of the chief constable’s conclusion. Love was the first to let curiosity off the leash again.
“Where’s the battery?” he inquired, pertly.
“Inside,” said Purbright. He pointed again with his pencil. “Under some padding. The wiring is quite neat. It comes out at the side—just here—and connects with this rheostat switch.”
“Rheostat?”
To the aid of perplexed Malley came Harper. “It’s a dimmer. You know. Like a car’s dashboard light.”
“Ah,” Malley’s own elderly vehicle all but lacked a dashboard, let alone a rheostat, but he thought he understood.
Constable Pook, who was frowning a good deal, asked what the inspector supposed the idea of the switch and so on had been.
Purbright shrugged. “Your guess would be as good as mine. According to Webster, this kind of mask sometimes had a candle set between the horns. It was lighted during the ceremony to add to the general impressiveness of the occasion.”
“But whoever wore that thing,” Love said, “wouldn’t get much dancing done. Not with a lighted candle on his bonce. It would blow out.”
“As I understand it, he wasn’t expected to dance, sergeant. All he had to do was to sit and be worshipped.”
Harper spoke. “I think I get the idea of the rheostat, sir. If there’s been any worshipping or that sort of thing going on, that is. The fellow inside that mask would want the thing to be artistic, wouldn’t he? A gradual fading in and out. I mean, it would look stupid if it just went on and off like a traffic light.”
Mr Chubb, looking a little exasperated by the disquisition on electric circuits, suggested that it was time to consider other lines of investigation and how best they might be followed.
Purbright returned to his place at the table. He straightened two sheets of notes that lay before him.
“Because Persimmon appears to have been killed in so bizarre a fashion,” the inspector began after a pause, “the temptation is to concentrate on that aspect of the crime. To try and trace, for instance, the person who originally stole or later came into possession of that mask. Inquiries will need to be made, certainly, but we shall be lucky if they are productive; it’s amazing how invisible things become once they have been pinched from a museum or an art gallery.
“We also shall need to treat seriously, though not with credulity, the stories of witchcraft that have been going the rounds in the last few days. It would be foolish to ignore the ritual associations of the mask. Again, though, I’m sure the chief constable will wish me to stress the importance of sifting concrete and relevant evidence from all the portentous rumour which so readily froths up during investigations of this kind.
“More in the nature of conventional inquiries will be the effort needed to find out what sort of person the dead man was and how he spent his time—particularly, of course, during Wednesday, when he was last seen alive. Persimmon was well known and there should be no lack of information concerning his open activities...”
“Open?” Mr Chubb had raised one eyebrow.
“Yes, sir. There could have been others, of which direct evidence is unlikely to be forthcoming.”
The chief constable glanced apprehensively in the direction of Policewoman Bellweather.
“Be that as it may,” he murmured.
“Which brings me,” resumed the inspector, relentlessly, “to the matter of Edna Hillyard’s disappearance. When it was first known that Persimmon, too, had vanished, Mr Chubb rightly described as guesswork my connecting the two events. It was, at that time, conjecture—though not, I think, wild conjecture. Less than half an hour ago, however, I received a telephone call from the manager of the Neptune Hotel at Brocklestone. He confirmed, with dates, what he had told me when I rang him earlier in the afternoon. Persimmon and Miss Hillyard stayed together at the hotel on three occasions during March and twice in April.”
“The manager told you that?”
Mr Chubb’s involuntary emphasis on “Manager” suggested that even in murder investigations there existed areas of confidential dealing that were not lightly to be exploited.
“Yes, sir. Barraclough. He’s reasonably co-operative provided he can be convinced that we are not spying on his guests simply for the sake of being officious.”
“I was not thinking in terms of Mr Barraclough’s willingness or unwillingness to impart information,” said the chief constable. “What I find surprising is his ability to furnish you with the correct names. I had always understood that people who stay at hotels for immoral purposes are inclined to use pseudonyms.”
“Is that so, sir? Ah, well, Mr Barraclough has a very wide local acquaintance and a good memory. I suspect he would not need to rely too heavily upon his hotel register for identification.”
Sergeant Malley testified that the manager of the Neptune had not only a memory like a filing system but a particular talent for recognizing averted faces and even, some said, fugitive backsides.
“Does the inspector mean that Miss Hillyard could be at Brocklestone aow?” asked Pook.
“She could be anywhere,” Purbright replied. “But Brocklestone is one of the less likely places. She certainly is not at the Neptune, and has not been there since last month. No, in view of what has happened to her lover, the possibility that most worries me is that she finished up in the same place as he did.”
Mr Chubb stared, frowning, at the inspector. Purbright realized that the man was genuinely grieved by the suggestion. What he had not expected, though, was Mr Chubb’s patent surprise. Purbright felt sorry for him.