Bradlaw puffed out his cheeks indignantly.
“What did you know about Gwill?” Purbright resumed.
“Not much. Why?”
“You saw him at his house pretty regularly, didn’t you?”
“Now and again.”
“He didn’t play chess, I suppose?”
“Gawd, you are in a griping mood. Anyone would think you suspected me.”
“Perish the thought. Why did you go to see him?”
“Just to be sociable. I’m a steady advertiser, too.”
“He didn’t give dinner parties for all his advertisers, surely. Who else went with you?”
“Rodney Gloss was there sometimes—his solicitor. Doc Hillyard, too, occasionally. That’s all, as far as I remember.”
“What about Harold Carobleat?”
“Well, what about him? He’s dead.”
“That’s all right. I just wanted a general picture of social life at the Gwill’s. We have to start with something, you know.”
Bradlaw shrugged and began tracing numeral outlines on the desk calendar with one finger. “I’ll tell you this much,” he said slowly, “you needn’t waste time looking at Gwill’s friends for whoever killed him. I’ve known him, and them, for a good few years. Look, doctors and lawyers in a place like this don’t go round murdering people.”
“Nor undertakers?” murmured Purbright.
“No, not undertakers, either. Why the hell should they?” Bradlaw seemed to feel a sudden surge of resentment. “You flounder about and make all sorts of wild insinuations against people just because they knew somebody who’s been found dead. Damn it, I don’t think you even know yet how the fellow was killed.”
Purbright said patiently: “No, I don’t think we do,” and waited.
“Right; then why go casting around for suspects like...like a quizz-master or something?” (Bradlaw went to television for most of his derogatory similes.)
“He’s the one,” said Purbright to Love, jerking his thumb at Bradlaw. “Got the bracelets, Sid? Bracelets,” he explained to the now peeved undertaker, “are what we call handcuffs. Very slangy.”
Bradlaw grunted, looked at his watch and scowled. “Come on,” he pleaded. “I’ve people coming at twelve. What else do you want to know?”
“Just three more things, Nab, I think. Firstly, what business was Gwill mixed up in apart from his paper?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
“Very well. Secondly, if none of his friends had any reason to kill him, who else did?”
Bradlaw shook his head. “That’s your job to find out. I’d be inclined to ask who got anything out of it. But maybe nobody did. I don’t know.”
“Lastly, what was Gwill’s relationship with Mrs Carobleat?”
“You asked me that before.”
“Not in so many words.”
“I still can’t tell you. I only know what people have said, but that doesn’t signify. You should hear what some of them have hinted about my housekeeper. A lot of damned spiteful old cows. In this town you even need a chaperone when you go to measure a stiff.”
“How trying for you, Nab.” Purbright picked up his hat and motioned Love to leave with him. “You must bear up, my friend. Don’t give way like poor old Gloss.”
Bradlaw froze in the action of opening the door. He turned. “What the hell are you getting at?”
Purbright smiled and pushed past him into the street. “Gloss,” he said, “is scared—something horrid.” The two policemen moved off in what seemed to Bradlaw slow and ominous companionship.
At the end of the street, Purbright turned the corner and drew Love into a shop doorway some yards further on. “I’m going back to the station to see what the fellows have picked up from Heston Lane,” he said. “You hang on here and watch for Nab Bradlaw. I’ve an idea he’ll want to go visiting. If he takes that van of his, it’s too bad. He might feel like exercise, though.”
“How long do you want me to stick to him?”
“Only until he goes home again. It’s just on twelve now. He said he had some callers, so he’ll probably see them first. Don’t catch cold.”
Love remained a few minutes looking into the shop window. Then he walked back to the corner. He glanced down Bride Street towards Bradlaw’s house, saw no one, and crossed over. For the next quarter of an hour he did his best to make hanging around a deserted road junction on a winter morning look a reasonable occupation.
Eventually he saw a small group leave what he judged to be the undertaker’s office and walk away in the opposite direction. Shortly afterwards, a single figure emerged at the same point. As it approached, he recognized Bradlaw and sought another doorway. He gave Bradlaw time to reach the corner. Then carefully he looked out.
Bradlaw, whose walk was distinguished by a slight roll to the left like the motion of a top-laden boat, had turned off into St Anne’s Place and was now going away from Love. The sergeant gave him fifty yards’ lead and followed, keeping close to the shops on his left.
Several people were now between them, but Love had no difficulty in keeping the rhythmically listing figure of the undertaker in sight until, quite suddenly, it peeled off, mounted a short flight of railed steps, and disappeared.
Love slowed his pace and crossed the road. From the other side he could see only two doorways with steps. He strolled slowly until he was opposite the first. The door was closed. The second entrance was not. He concluded that it must have been through there that Bradlaw had passed.
He crossed over again and continued in the same direction, noting the names on the brass plates outside the second door. Then he became interested in shop windows once more and tried to forget how cold his feet were getting.
Nearly half an hour went by.
At last Bradlaw emerged. Love, at that moment twenty yards away, prepared to follow him again. He came nearer and tried to see which direction the undertaker had chosen. But there was no sign of him.
Love crossed the road carefully, craning his neck and rising on tip-toe to see over the intervening citizenry. It was only when a second man appeared at the top of the steps and hurried down to the kerb that Love realized what had happened.
He ran forward in time to see the car draw away and accelerate towards the town centre. The passenger was Bradlaw. The driver, whom Love recognized when he glanced swiftly behind him before letting out the clutch, was Mr Rodney Gloss.
Chapter Seven
Detective Constables Harper and Pook had spent the morning calling from door to door in Heston Lane, an occupation only a little less dispiriting than Love’s patrol of the chilling flagstones of St Anne’s Place. Every now and then, Harper (even numbers) would meet or be met by Pook (odd numbers) and compare notes on the remarkable blindness and defective hearing of the residents.
“Dead stupid, these people,” opined Harper, with dismal regularity.
“God, what a lot!” responded Pook.
It did not strike them as at all reasonable that a murder could have been committed so privately as to have escaped entirely the notice of upwards of sixty householders, most of them patently inquisitive insomniacs with a keen sense of the significance of every passing footstep and every distantly slammed door.