Acting as commentator and range-finder in this operation was PC Phillips from a point of vantage on the little handrailed bridge that spanned the basin. Already he had mastered, on Gort’s tuition, such appropriate references as up-river and down-river and had even tried out a couple of athwarts, though he lacked the boldness to emulate the keeper’s familiar and frequent use of “Belay”.
The two inspectors found themselves standing on something very similar to the platform of a country railway station, except that below its scrupulously white-washed edge was water instead of rails and sleepers. The words PENNICK LOCK were proclaimed in white letters on a blackboard, much in the manner of the old station names, while at intervals along the stone-flagged quay were polished bollards, curiously suggestive of stout little porters spaced out in expectation of a train. Wallflowers and marigolds grew in white and green painted tubs and troughs, and their rich scents overlay the brackish smell of the water.
Mr Gort was proud of his lock and his present uncharacteristic outlay of energy was inspired less by a sense of public duty than by the wish to see it tidy again.
Purbright watched him make a cast. He set the hooks spinning on a short length of rope. Phillips called out: “About three feet from the far wall. Half a fathom. A point up-river from your opposite bollard.” Gort released his hold. The hooks flew up, then down, trailing the rope. A double plop.
“Bloody good shot!” Phillips had one arm aloft. “Hang on...I’ll tell you when... Right-now!” And the arm flashed down.
Purbright and Bradley peered into the water but could see only dark undulating patterns.
“You’ve got him! You have, you’ve got him. Gently, now. One of them’s caught in his coat, I think.” Phillips was pacing sideways along the bridge, towards them, not taking his eyes from the water beneath.
Very slowly the keeper drew in the dripping line. It was neither taut nor slack. His mouth, half open, framed a pink tongue tip, trembling with concentration. He was sweating.
Bradley squatted dose to the edge, ready to assist. Purbright, half kneeling beside him, put one arm around a bollard and braced himself experimentally.
For the first time they discerned the body in the greenish, clouded depths. The face, very white, flat, curiously idiotic, was distorted by surface corrugations into the semblance of muscular movement like the face of a man making sullen complaint behind a locked glass door.
“It’s Frankie, all right,” Bradley declared.
Purbright nodded. However unhappily transformed those features now appeared, they undoubtedly were those of the late contender for Whippy Arnold’s worldly goods.
Chapter Ten
Edna O’Dwyer arrived next day on the only train running on a Sunday from London to Flaxborough. She was met by Policewoman Sadie Bellweather, taken to the mortuary at the General Hospital, and thence to the little cave-like room at Fen Street in which the coroner’s officer cobbled upon a big, old-fashioned typewriter the statements of those he liked to call his customers.
For ten minutes or so Sergeant Malley set himself to comfort rather than question the witness. She was as much upset as might have been expected after the view of a consort not only waxenly indifferent to her but disfigured by a rash of little mauve pock marks.
It was the marks that seemed chiefly to bother her. They extended over the face and upper chest of the corpse in an even pattern. Who or what had done that to Frank? Had he caught something and died of it? Had the doctors made the marks? Or had somebody else? What were they?
The plump, bucolic Sadie had soothed the questions away with promises of future enlightenment from higher authority. Now Edna besought Malley to tell her what had happened.
The sergeant sent for tea. Then he wound paper into his typewriter, took a few exploratory finger-pecks at the keys, half-turned to face Edna and leaned a little forward. He seemed now to have plenty of time, but he gave at once what answer he could to her central worry.
“We don’t know very much at the moment, Mrs O’Dwyer, but it does look as if there was a gun involved. A shotgun. The marks are almost certainly pellet wounds.”
He watched her for signs of shock or outrage. But the big, tear-streaked face showed no change, save for a deepening of its tiredness. “Not a disease, then,” she said.
“No, no, not a disease, Mrs O’Dwyer.”
She sniffed and nodded. After a little while, she asked: “What’s this about drownding?”
“It’s true that your husband’s body was in the river, but we don’t actually know the cause of death. There’ll have to be what we call a post-mortem. It’s just a sort of medical examination.”
“What, cut him about, you mean?” The eyes were wide, scared. “They want to open him up?”
The sergeant very gently shook his head and glanced down at the massive reassurance of his own unopened-up flesh. “No more than’s absolutely necessary: don’t you go getting upset about that. We have to know what caused your husband’s death.” He regarded her in silence a moment. “You want that, too, don’t you? To know. Not knowing is worse, love.”
Staring past him, she felt with a finger knuckle the edges of her parted teeth, then made an almost unnoticeable movement of assent. Malley heaved himself round and gave his typewriter carriage an affectionate slap.
After Edna had deposed, with Malley’s help, that the body she had been shown that morning was that of a man known to her, Edna Theresa Jupp, as Francis O’Dwyer, aged fifty-seven, of the same address as her own, where she had last seen him alive and in good health three days previously, she drank her tea, combed her yellow ringlets and was escorted by Policewoman Bellweather into the presence of Inspector Purbright.
A few moments later, Bradley joined them.
Edna stared, as at an old friend unaccountably transposed. Then she wept afresh. Bradley put an arm round her shoulder. Purbright fetched a chair.
Between sobs, Edna asked who would want to shoot her Frankie. Bradley noticed with mild interest that several scars about her face and neck gleamed more whitely in contrast with the flush of emotion.
“Can you think of anybody, Mrs O’Dwyer?” Purbright asked.
She shook her head.
Bradley spoke. “What was he doing up here, Edna? Have you no idea?”
She looked up at him as if the displacement of persons were now general and therefore not to be questioned. “Frankie was on business,” she said, simply.
“What kind of business?”
“He had a shop-fitting business. You know that, Mr Bradley. Since the watch-repairing packed in. Anyway, you’ve got the letter I gave you. That says why he was here.”
“To attend an auction sale,” said Bradley.
“That’s right. You got the letter.”