“We have some information that you might find useful, sir. The superintendent said that I was to telephone you in case you’d like it followed up.”
“That’s very good of you.”
“A chap called Jobling came in this morning, you see. He’s a partner in a photographic firm here in the city. They sell cameras and equipment and do printing and developing as well. Mr Jobling said that two weeks ago somebody had come into the shop and ordered some copies of two positive prints—twenty of one and three of the other. That was on Saturday, the second of this month.
“Exactly a week later—last Saturday, the ninth—the chap called back to collect his order. Now it seems there had been some sort of a slip-up in the processing department. The batch of twenty copies had been done all right, but somebody had mislaid the other photograph, the one from which three prints were supposed to have been run off. Jobling said the chap was fearfully annoyed but...”
“What was the customer’s name?” Purbright put in.
“Half a minute...Dover. D-o-v-e-r.”
“Address?”
“Eighteen Station Road, Flaxborough.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, he took what they’d done and told the girl that if the other picture turned up the copies were to be sent to him immediately by post. It did turn up, but not until yesterday afternoon. A small studio portrait that looked as if it had been taken out of a frame. It was handed over straight away to one of the process men and he recognized it as being the same as a picture he’d just seen in an early edition of the Evening Post that carried the Palgrove inquest story.
“They told Mr Jobling and, as I say, he came in today and passed on the facts to us. We’ve got the photograph, too.”
“And what do you think of its resemblance to the newspaper picture?” Purbright asked.
“Oh, there’s no doubt it’s the same woman, sir. We’ve checked already with the original at the Post.”
“Is it too much to hope that somebody knows the identity of the person who was thought worthy of being duplicated twenty times?”
“The superintendent did ask, I believe, sir. Jobling didn’t know anything beyond what he’d come in to tell us. And he said that with these copying jobs they don’t keep records as they do with their studio work.”
Purbright wound up the conversation with thanks and compliments, together with the prophecy that his Sergeant Love would be in Nottingham before nightfall. Sergeant Gallon or Galleon said that that would be very nice.
“You’d better get the next train, Sid. You might just catch these photographic people before they shut up shop.”
“What photographic people? Where?”
“I’ll explain.” And he did. Then he said:
“Two things in particular I want you to do. Try and find out if the counter girl is certain that this Dover person is a man and couldn’t have been Mrs P—as I for one would have assumed. And see if anyone can remember anything at all about the second photograph, the one they made twenty copies of.”
“Am I to stay the night?” asked Love, without noticeable enthusiasm.
“You shouldn’t need to. There’s a train back about ten, I believe.”
Love opened the door. “I’ll have to let my young lady know,” he said as he went out.
“Yes, do that.” Purbright was long past the stage of feeling guilty whenever Love spoke of breaking to his fiancée the news of extended duty. The ‘young lady’ was now thirty-three, the courtship nine years weathered. It was not really difficult to resist inferring from the sergeant’s air of concern that the association would be wrecked on a couple of hours’ overtime.
Mrs Doreen Booker was shown into Purbright’s office shortly after three o’clock. He noticed first that she had well-shaped, if substantial, legs; secondly that she was nervous and inclined to breathe shallowly; thirdly that her small, slightly receding chin merged with a soft, blanched throat in a way characteristic of big-breasted women; and fourthly, as she sat down and loosened her pale grey summer coat, that his deduction from chin and throat was amply justified.
Her face was just on the well fed side of pretty, with a full, rather petulant mouth and eyes that would switch easily from apprehension to boldness, delight to self-pity. She wore beneath the coat a short woollen dress the colour of marigolds. It was tight enough for a faint ridge to indicate a ruck in the underlying girdle. Her left hand strayed to the ridge, tried to smoothe it out, then drew the coat across to hide it.
The inspector offered her a cigarette. She took it hesitantly, as if uncertain of police station proprieties. He came round the desk to light it for her.
“Thank you.” They were the first words she had said since coming into the office. She listened anxiously and with apparent bewilderment to Purbright’s preamble about unfortunate affair, Tuesday night, necessary inquiries, Mr Leonard Palgrove, strict confidence.
She drew hard on the cigarette, frowning as though at a difficult task. Her protracted expulsion of smoke in a sort of soup-cooling exercise was distinctly audible. Purbright was reminded of Palgrove. He wondered if her gestures were unconsciously imitative.
“You know Mr Palgrove pretty well, don’t you, Mrs Booker?”
“Sort of. Yes, I suppose so.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Not all that long, really. About a year.”
“But you are on close terms, intimate terms?” He saw she was trying to get her eyes switched to indignation. “Look, I’m sorry, but we cannot talk usefully until we acknowledge this basic situation. Don’t think that I’m bothered about people’s notions of what’s moral or immoraclass="underline" I’m not. There isn’t time for that sort of nonsense when one’s trying to get at the facts. Now then, never mind that awful police court word ‘intimate’—you’re fond of each other, you like to make love together when the chance offers—that’s the situation, isn’t it?”
She tip-tongued her lips, staring at the corner of the desk. A nod. Purbright inwardly sighed with relief. Lucky Father Purbright. Not unfrocked yet.
“Had Mr Palgrove told his wife that he was in love with someone else?”
She looked back at him, alarmed. “Oh, no! I’m sure he didn’t.”
“Did you ever meet Mrs Palgrove?”
“Yes, once or twice. She was on some of the same committees as Kingsley.”
“Kingsley?”
“My husband. I met her sometimes at garden fêtes and bazaars and things like that.”
“Was Mr Palgrove present as well?”
“Only once, I think. Len doesn’t like that sort of thing.”
“Did you ever telephone Mr Palgrove at his home?”
She considered while she looked about her, holding her cigarette upright. The inspector pushed an ashtray to the edge of the desk and she toppled into it the column of ash. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally. “Not at his home. We were always very careful.”
“You never discussed anything with Mr Palgrove at any time when his wife might conceivably have overheard? Think very carefully, Mrs Booker.”