He remained silent for some time.
“Well?” Purbright prompted.
“Well what?” countered Mr Smith.
“The will,” said Purbright. “You were saying how it came to be mislaid.”
“Ah...I can’t say that I remember precisely. It was quite a silly, simple sort of reason—put in the wrong deed box, or something like that. But it came to light eventually. The money hasn’t been turned over yet, by the way. Executing a will takes quite a while. But it was definitely on the turn, if you follow me. How galling it must be to die just too soon to enjoy a legacy that you know is practically in your hand—in your account, rather.” Mr Smith shook his head and closed his eyes in brief mourning for Mr Gwill’s ravished opportunities.
“Gwill’s account was separate, I suppose, from the finances of his newspaper company?”
“Oh, yes, naturally.”
“And would you say that his income as shown by the private account was consistent with the earnings he received from the company?”
Mr Smith looked sharply at the inspector. “No,” he replied simply, “I should not.”
“He was receiving money from another source?”
“Almost certainly he was. Not that it was any concern of mine, of course, but these little impressions register, you know, in spite of ourselves.”
“Yes, don’t they. Incidentally, have you retained any impression of what that source was, sir?”
“None whatever.”
“Because the money was deposited in cash?”
Mr Smith flexed his facial muscles in a smile. “There are, as they say, no flies on you, inspector.”
Purbright acknowledged the compliment with a grunt. He had concluded by now that Mr Smith was not merely fly-proof but probably impervious to attack and courtship alike by all creatures whatsoever.
“You have been most helpful, sir,” he said, rising.
The manager, though not appearing to move, was suddenly transposed to the door of his office, which he flung open while extending his free hand in an ushering gesture of brotherly dismissal. “Not at all, inspector. Delighted.” In the instant before turning back to his desk, he darted a glance at the three counter clerks and gave an inward click of satisfaction on noting that the entire trio was immersed in work.
Chapter Twelve
If Alderman Leadbitter had been less preoccupied with wholesale meat deals, bottles of pale ale, and a certain matter that had filled him with secret excitement since his rising that morning shortly before eight o’clock, he could not have failed to be conscious of a radiant pink orb that had hung in the background all that day. As it was, Sergeant Love’s face had been a mere blurred iridescence amongst the other unnoticed details of his surroundings.
Which was fortunate, for the sergeant was no adept at self-effacing observation. When he wished to see without being seen, he adopted an air of nonchalance so extravagant that people followed him in expectation of his throwing handfuls of pound notes in the air.
He had got up much earlier than his quarry, and by six o’clock was posted, already shaved, washed and hastily fed, behind his sister’s lace curtains, staring at the dark shape opposite, within which still slumbered the alderman and his family. It was not until nearly four hours later that signs of activity prompted him to go out into the cold and pretend to tinker under the bonnet of the police car, which he had left ready to drive out of the gate.
Alderman Leadbitter’s car appeared at half-past ten and was driven slowly by its owner to his office in Pipeclay Lane, near the slaughterhouses. After some twenty minutes, he walked out of the office and passed Love, seated in his car which he had parked very wrongfully opposite a cattle unloading bay.
The sergeant followed him on foot and was led to the Golden Keys Hotel. There, he drank slowly and without much enjoyment two half pints of mild while the alderman swallowed six glasses of bottled beer at the opposite end of the long saloon bar in the company of several other civic luminaries before returning to his counting house at nearly one o’clock.
Leadbitter went home for his lunch, so Love’s sister served her brother with a meal on the bamboo table in the front room. He ate speedily and with a constant eye on the opposite door, so that when he resumed the trail he was suffering the handicap of hic-cups.
The afternoon proved no more eventful than the morning. By the time the alderman’s car drew up at his home for the second time that day, Love was wondering why he had wasted so many hours in dull and fruitless surveillance instead of relying on Leadbitter being a man of regular and proper habits that included taking five-o’clock tea in the bosom of his family.
Later still, when it was quite dark and he sat in the cold car, drawing what comfort he could from a cigarette, he was gradually overtaken by a sense of anticlimax.
Suppose the alderman and the other people who had replied to the advertisements really were buyers of old odds and ends? The things might be genuine and a seemingly eccentric way of disposing of them might be the method of doing business chosen by some exclusive private dealer. Yet surely that standardized eight pounds deposit was too fantastic a condition of sale to be acceptable even to someone mad enough to want a—what was it again?—a Japanese newel post.
A tankard it was for Leadbitter. A pewter antique tankard, he’d said.
Love repeated the phrase to himself several times. Then he realized why it had struck him as odd from the first. The order of words was queer.
Any normal person surely would have written antique pewter tankard. Or, in catalogue and army style, Tankard, antique pewter. But never pewter antique tankard. Why had the words been put in that sequence?”
Again Love allowed his fancy to stray outside the local probabilities. He considered codes. Pewter...Antique...Tankard... It couldn’t be a letter by letter code. That kind did not form actual words. In any case, it would be expecting far too much of people like Flaxborough’s successful business men to grasp anything so complicated.
Could each word have some prearranged significance, then? That was more probably the explanation. If it were, there was no hope of finding the meaning of the advertisements by ordinary systems of de-coding—even if he knew what these were, which he didn’t, except for a vague idea that the most frequently recurring symbol would represent E, and what was the use of a string of E’s, anyway?
Right, then, ruminated Love, each of the three words meant something quite different. Pewter?—cocaine, perhaps. Antique? The quantity, say. And tankard? There was only one factor left for that to represent—the price asked. “Please have ready for me at 8.15 p.m. two pounds of your best cocaine at...at...fifteen and six an ounce.” How cold and cramped he was growing. Damn Purbright and Leadbitter and tankards and codes and...He sat up and peered through the windscreen. At last, the alderman’s door was opening.
Five minutes later, Love drew up at a discreet distance from Leadbitter’s car in the forecourt of the Golden Keys. Leadbitter was not in search of the saloon company this time. He hurried into a small room on the other side of the corridor.