“What led you to realize that?”
“I remembered two things about the telephone call that did not register on my mind at the time but which must have made a subconscious impression.”
“Yes, Mr Gloss?”
“Perhaps a minute before the telephone bell rang, I heard a vehicle draw up in the road outside. It has occurred to me since that a public telephone kiosk stands on Heston Lane some little way nearer the town and on the opposite side of the road. I incline to the belief that the call to Gwill’s house came from that kiosk and was made by the driver of the vehicle I heard.”
“Can you say what sort of a vehicle it sounded to be, sir?”
“I’m afraid I cannot. It made a noticeable noise, so it is likely to have been a moderately large car or a small lorry.”
“Might it have been a van?”
Gloss considered. “Conceivably,” he said.
“And now, sir, perhaps you’ll tell me the second thing about the telephone call that has come back to you since Monday night.”
“Oh, yes; the second thing.” Gloss’s gaze fell; he drummed fingers on his knee and gave, Purbright thought, a fair impersonation of reluctant prosecutor. “I am almost certain,” he said, “that Gwill addressed the maker of the telephone call as George.”
“George?”
“That is my recollection, inspector. But I wish to be perfectly fair. My attention, as I have said, was distracted. It is just possible that the name was something similar.”
“Surely there aren’t many names that sound similar to George, Mr Gloss?”
“No? No, perhaps not. I have not given the matter much thought. I wished only to be frank and to impart impressions as they have come to me, quite undisturbed by conjecture.”
“Ah, very proper, sir.” The inspector’s face was blank. So was the other’s. They remained a while looking at each other in querulous politeness. Purbright broke the silence.
“Why did Mr Bradlaw come to see you this morning?”
“Bradlaw...” Gloss smiled. “You had made him nervous, I think. He came here to seek reassurance.”
“Why should he have been nervous?”
“He is inclined to be more sensitive to questioning than you might imagine, inspector. He has a rough manner, but that is deceptive. The troubles of others upset him to a greater extent than is healthy, perhaps, for one in his profession.”
“I have known Mr Bradlaw for quite a few years, sir.”
“Then you will be acquainted with his, ah, idiosyncracies.”
“Yes, I am.”
Gloss nodded and stared up at the ceiling.
“Tell me,” said Purbright in a brisker tone, “was Bradlaw at Mr Gwill’s house at any time on Monday night?”
Without lowering his eyes, Gloss said gently: “He may have been. But of course he was not present while I was there—as you must have judged from the fact that I made no mention of him in my account of what transpired.”
Purbright gave a little bow of acknowledgement. Then he asked: “Did you notice if Mr Gwill took a bucket or a can of water down the drive that night?”
For the first time in the interview the solicitor looked surprised. “Water? What on earth would he have been doing with buckets of water?”
“What, indeed,” said Purbright, watching him. The bewilderment seemed genuine. Then Gloss’s expression changed. “Wait a moment,” he said, “I still fail to see the significance of your allusion to water-cans, but I do remember now something that struck me as slightly out of the ordinary when I arrived at Gwill’s house. On opening the gate, I noticed the gravel felt sodden underfoot as though heavy rain had fallen. But there had been no rain, of course. And the ground was wet only at that one point.”
“Near the gate?”
“Yes. Just inside, I should say.”
Purbright looked at his watch, stood up, and began buttoning his coat. “I’m most obliged to you, Mr Gloss; you’ve been very patient. I do believe I’ve run out of questions.”
“And I’m not at all sure,” replied Gloss with a court-room smile, “but that I have run out of answers.”
While Gloss was carefully contributing to Purbright’s mounting collection of enigmas, contradictions, deductions and doubts, two other professional men of Flaxborough were discoursing.
Said Mr Bradlaw to Dr Hillyard (with whom he had lately lunched and who now sat regarding him mournfully in his spacious but musty drawing-room): “The whole damned thing will have to be dropped for the time being. We can build it up later when the fuss about poor old Marcus has died down.”
Said Dr Hillyard, self-consciously sober and liverishly emphatic: “It cannot and it needn’t. Get that into your head, man. Marcus asked for what he got, by God he did, but it can’t be left at that. What’s running smoothly now will have to keep on running or else be abandoned altogether. And I’ll not see that happen after what we’ve put into it.”
“But the police...”
“The police! Aye, and what will they do? Run round in ever-decreasing circles until they become their own colonic stoppages.” Hillyard stretched out a lanky leg and kicked at coal at the fire edge. He scowled at the upsurge of flame.
“Listen,” said Bradlaw, “I know the man Purbright. He may not be brilliant but he perseveres. He makes himself a thorough nuisance and rubs it in by constantly apologizing. I had him to put up with this morning. I tell you he’ll be on our backs until kingdom come, with his ‘I hate to trouble you’ and ‘Mightn’t it be so’ and ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell me’.”
“Nonsense. He’s just a provincial copper, dig-digging into what he doesn’t understand and hoping for good luck to save his reputation in the eyes of that timid old goat of a Chief Constable. He knows nothing and he’ll find nothing. Always provided”—Hillyard’s cheek twitched in the firelight—“that you and I and friend Gloss remain helpfully obscure and unproductively cooperative.”
Bradlaw grunted. “Roddy Gloss is just a shade too clever sometimes. Keeping up with him can be dodgy.”
“Never mind that. He’ll not take any risks. And he’ll have the sense not to lead you into any.”
“I don’t know what you mean by risk if you think he’s not asking for trouble by the line he’s given old Chubb. You realize what he’s going to tell Purbright as soon as he’s questioned? Which he will be. Even if it hasn’t happened already.”
“Stop talking in bursts, and stop frightening yourself like an old woman. Damn me if you thrombosis fatties aren’t all the same.”
Bradlaw, peeved, sat up in his chair. Hillyard took no notice of him but glowered at his own outstretched feet and said slowly: “We seem to have got away from the main point again, don’t we?”
“Eh?”
Hillyard felt in his pocket and drew out a battered cigarette. This he lit with a strip of paper that he tore methodically from the margin of one of the medical journals scattered on the floor by his chair. Quietly, almost sadly, he said: “There’s only one way we can find him.”
“You’ll not get it out of her.”