“He would refuse. No question about it.” Back into the drawer went the folders.
“And why are you so sure, sir?” Purbright persisted.
Again the narrow, unamused, secretive smile, but no reply. They waited. Somewhere outside, heavy, quick footsteps pounded on one of the asphalt walks; a woman’s voice, loud but cut into portions by breathlessness: “Not that...way, Mr Pawley...now you know...that very well...” Three or four quavering catcalls answered in the distance.
“If there is anything further I can do for you, inspector...” Mr Wellbeloved had quite suddenly left his chair and was stepping past Purbright to reach the door.
Without haste, Inspector Bradley moved in the same direction until he was inescapably in the forefront of the superintendent’s field of vision.
“Is Anderson dead?” he asked.
There was a short silence, then the prim voice of Mr Wellbeloved. “Certainly not. Why should you think that?”
“His having been forbidden visitors does seem rather drastic,” Purbright suggested.
“Not at all. These old souls are easily excited. When one has suffered a shock, perhaps a violent encounter, something of that sort, he needs to be kept quiet for a bit.”
“What was the nature,” persisted Bradley, “of the violent encounter that Anderson suffered?”
“I said nothing about...” Wellbeloved’s mouth clamped shut. He was looking flustered. He appealed to Purbright: “If you have more questions, I should much prefer that you put them to Dr Gule. I really cannot discuss medical cases with outsiders, even if they have some claim to authority.”
The door stood open. Bradley stepped into the hallway and waited. Following him, Purbright paused and turned. “There is just one point I think you might be able to clear up, sir, without involving the patients.”
“Residents,” murmured the superintendent, automatically.
“Of course. I’m sorry. No, I wanted to ask you simply if there had been a visit here recently by a man calling himself O’Dwyer. A Londoner. He might have used another name. Chubb, possibly; even Scoggins.” Seeing Wellbeloved shake his head dubiously, Purbright added: “All perfectly memorable, you will notice, sir.”
“We have many visitors, inspector. This place is virtually home from home. Isn’t that right, Reuben?” This last question was directed in a raised voice to an old man in a cap who was crossing the hall. The old man looked immediately in their direction and smiled in greeting.
“Home from home. I was telling the gentlemen this is home from home.” The words boomed out like a missionary’s message to a deaf aboriginal.
The old man’s smile broadened. He winked at the two policemen, as if in acknowledgement of a joke, and went his way.
When he was alone once more in his office, Mr Wellbeloved sat far back in his too-big chair and stared at the point of the long pencil that he held still. He brought it closer and closer to the centre of his forehead, altering the angle of the pencil until it lay along the plane of his nose, like a crusader’s sword. Then, suddenly, he flung it to the far side of the room and reached for the telephone.
The two inspectors made their way across the hall towards the main doors that led from this, the administrative block, to the grounds in which lay the residential buildings, a small infirmary, and workshops.
Bradley walked gingerly; the floor of the now deserted hall had been polished to the semblance of a sheet of water. There was a faint smell of disinfectant in the air. The only sound was that of their own footsteps. They passed the half-open doors of empty rooms and saw shrouded typewriters and duplicating machines.
“Growing old seems to require a huge servicing organization,” Bradley remarked.
They emerged into hot, white sunshine. The lawn encompassed by the driveway before the main entrance was partly shaded by a big copper beech. Beneath it, three or four residents had, in defiance of prohibitory notices, set their chairs. One of them, Purbright recognized. He waved and was acknowledged.
He and Bradley walked over.
The man in the chair was big and bowed and dark-eyed and had three protruding front teeth the size and colour of old pub piano keys. He was wearing four woollen waistcoats, two in shades of grey, one blue, one puce. His head, surmounted by short and scrubby hair, still nearly black, jutted forth from his knitted carapace like a turtle’s.
Purbright introduced him to Bradley as Walt Latter, far famed in the best days of Flaxborough’s shrimping fleet. He saw no reason to add that he had last seen Walt in the dock at Lincoln Assizes twelve years ago patiently explaining the circumstances of a recent bereavement.
“I was just wondering,” said Purbright after exchange of greetings, “if you’d seen anything of old Crutchy lately. They tell me he’s been poorly.”
“Ah, they say so,” confirmed Mr Latter, warily, and with a hint of inquiry as to what his fellow mariner was wanted for.
“He’s in the infirmary, is he, Walt?”
“So they reckon.” At the end of each reply the old man carefully drew down his long upper lip over the piano-key teeth. This had the curious effect of making him look secretly amused.
Several of the other trespassers showed signs of wishing to join the conversation.
“Not like old Crutchy to be ill,” Purbright said. “I remember him being out in all weathers.”
An old lady with thick, custard-coloured hair giggled into her knitting and said aye, taking betting slips. The others smiled but watched the two policemen. Purbright and Bradley laughed with the old lady. Everyone looked pleased.
“Mr Anderson had a bit of a set-to. That’s the top and bottom of it. He’s not ill. Not sick ill. They’re just keeping him quiet.”
The author of this contribution was a small, red-complexioned man. He rearranged his chair to face the new arrivals and sat forward in a businesslike way.
“A set-to?” Bradley sounded intrigued yet at the same time deferential. The red-complexioned man hitched his chair a fraction nearer and opened his mouth to say more.
“That he never!”
The interruption came from a fourth member of the group, a very fat old lady who appeared to be worked by steam, of which a considerable excess was discharged with speech.
“Harold never had no set-to,” she insisted. (Purbright blinked; he had never heard the villainous old mariner called Harold before.) “He had a visitor and it was too much for him. I told you that yesterday, Arthur.”
“Visitor?” challenged the small man, scornfully. “What, at supper time?”
Walt Latter unsheathed his piano-key teeth. “Ah, a woman, most like!” His earlier caution had given way to heavy-jowled roguishness.
The two ladies signified, one by a dive into her knitting, the other by a steamy shriek, that the idea appealed vastly. Arthur, though, was unamused.