“Not a local man, you say.”
“No, sir. A Londoner. A man who follows—or followed once—a somewhat odd profession.”
“You intrigue me, Mr Purbright.”
“Mr Hive is an intriguing character. I happened to...”
“Hive—is that his name?”
“Yes, sir. Mortimer Hive. As I was saying, I happened to see him yesterday morning. He was going into the office of those Charity Alliance people in St Anne’s Gate. And it was to them, by curious coincidence, that Mrs Palgrove had sent the day before a remarkably acrimonious letter.”
“Good gracious,” said the chief constable, feeling that to sound surprised was better than to confess the absolute bafflement he really felt.
“So I think I shall try and chase Mr Hive up and see what he can tell us. Don’t you agree, sir?”
Mr Chubb looked at the ceiling. “On balance, I ah...yes. Oh, yes.”
Chapter Twelve
“Am I, by happy fortune, spealing to Dover?” Mr Hive inquired sweetly into the telephone at the back of a dowdy little newsagent’s shop in Station Road.
He heard a snort of exasperation, followed by a click and the deadening of the line.
Amiably, he inserted more money and dialled again. After a fairly long interval came a curt, impatient “Hello.”
“Dover?” cooed Mr Hive. “Hastings here.”
“I thought you were going back to London.”
“The gentleman here at the shop says that you have not yet collected my account. I know it’s rather...”
“I said, I thought you were going back to London.” The voice was suppressed but urgent, angry.
“Ah, but events have conspired—very pleasantly conspired, I may say—to delay my passage. That is what I...”
“I am not interested in your private odysseys. I employed you to do a specific job and that job is now finished. I did not employ you to pester and embarrass me. Is that clear?”
Hive’s euphoria was proof against rebuke even as sharp as this. He listened as though to a transmission of birthday greetings, then nodded delightedly.
“Mais oui, mon capitaine—you are absolutely right. I say—isn’t it rather nice to be talking without all those trade terms? No wonder most detectives are bad conversationists...”
“Are you leaving today?”
“I was just going to say that this good fellow at the shop...”
“I said ARE YOU LEAVING TODAY? Are...you...returning...to London...today?”
“I rather doubt it, actually. Events have conspired...”
“When are you going?”
Hive sighed, “All too soon, I fear.”
“Tomorrow?”
“...and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” dreamily crooned Mr Hive.
“Now, look—I want a straight answer. And I don’t advise you to waste any more of my time.”
“No. Quite. Now how can I best reply to your esteemed inquiry? Perhaps I should say that I have acquired commitments. Non-professional, let it be understood, amigo mio. And in no sense undesirable. But, as I say, this good fellow at the shop tells me that my account (plain wrapped, ça va sans dire) is uncollected, therefore undischarged. I do not complain. Rather do I respectfully petition. You catch, perhaps, my drift?”
“You want your money at once. On the nail. Like a cats’ meat man or something.”
“Cats’ meat...no, I’m afraid that allusion defeats me. Sauce for ganders, I would have thought, was the commodity in...”
“Twelve pounds. On account. I can leave twelve pounds for you at the shop at about quarter past four. Not before.”
“That would be a most welcome accommodation. It really would.” Hive eased himself from the wall against which he had been leaning and with his free hand adjusted the hang of his jacket.
“In return, I want a definite undertaking from you.”
“Yours ever to serve, mon général!”
“I shall leave you that money on condition that you get out of Flaxborough tomorrow. The rest I’ll post on to you. But you are to be away from the town tomorrow. Is that clearly understood?”
Hive hesitated.
“I said, is that understood?”
“I understand what you want, yes. But I really cannot see why...”
“Do you want this money, or don’t you?”
“Oh, certainly I do.”
“Very well, then. You will be on your way back to London in the morning?”
“That is my inal...inalienable intention.”
On his way out of the shop, Hive paused to speak to a vast, pear-shaped man wedged between the counter and a tier of shelves filled with packets of cigarettes and tins of tobacco.
“A gentleman will be calling later today to leave a letter for me. My name is Mr Hastings. Oh, and you might remind him to be sure and take that envelope I gave you yesterday.”
The pear-shaped man compressed some of his chins so as to produce a grunt and a nod at the same time.
On the other side of the town, Inspector Purbright was in search of the Secretary of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance. He had called at the office in St Anne’s Gate to find it in the charge of a lady wearing rimless spectacles and a blue felt hat of the shape, size and, for all he knew, the durability, of an army field helmet. She had smiled terribly upon him and explained that this was Miss Teatime’s day ‘on’ at Old Hall and that he had better hie him thither at once if he wanted to have a word with her before the arrival of the Hobbies and Needlework Sub-committee.
At the Hall, a big, early Georgian manor house set in parkland on the southern outskirts of Flaxborough, Purbright was directed to the number two recreation room. It was at the end of a long, stone-flagged corridor lined on one side with windows on whose white-painted sills were great quantities of summer flowers in terra-cotta pots and bowls. Mixed with the scent of the flowers were smells of plasticine and paint-boxes and rubber boots and small children’s clothes. Some twenty coats and hats hung on a row of hooks outside the room that had been pointed out to the inspector. Behind its door a lot of noise was being produced. It sounded very happy noise.
The door opened. Purbright stepped quickly into its lee as a wave of children burst through. The hats and coats were tossed and tugged and waved and trampled, but eventually were sorted and appropriated and trotted off in. The corridor emptied.
Purbright peeped through the door. He saw Miss Teatime at once. She was sitting, erect but genial, in a large spindle-back chair. Around the chair were scattered the cushions and stools on which, Purbright supposed, the children had been sitting to hear her tell a story.
There were other people in the room—three plump young women in some kind of nurse’s uniform, two older but jolly-faced women—house-mothers, did they call them?—and a formidable lady in an apron, long skirt and button boots who scratched her bottom a great deal and kept laughing in a bartender’s bass-baritone; it seemed that she was the cook of the establishment.