“But Mrs O’Dwyer,” said Purbright, “the letter about the sale was addressed to someone called Charles Chubb.”
“Oh, yes. Yes, it was.” She paused. “That’s his business name. Uses it in business.”
“I see. So the man the letter was about—he’s dead now but he was called Arnold, remember—was a business acquaintance, was he?”
“I suppose he must have been. He’d had letters from him before. Frankie had, I mean.”
“Did you happen to see any of those letters, Mrs O’Dwyer?”
Instead of answering Purbright, she looked nervously at Bradley. “Well, I...”
“It’s all right, Edna. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She turned again to Purbright. “There weren’t many. About three, perhaps, all told. That’s as many as I saw.” Defensively, she added: “He’s a terror for leaving things about.”
They led her over the dim, almost featureless ground of her recollection of O’Dwyer’s correspondence. The letters seemed to have been of an unvarying hope-this-finds-you-as-it-leaves-me-at-present uninformativeness. Just like any other letters, she explained. It was not a field in which Edna had very high hopes, apparently.
Did any money pass? Ah, now, she did get that impression, now that the inspector mentioned it. She’d once glimpsed notes, and after the arrival of other letters Frankie had been flush for a bit. He was very good about housekeeping when he was home.
Purbright forestalled the further tears that this memory threatened to set flowing. “Picture,” he said very firmly, and raised a finger. “That letter you gave Mr Bradley was about some things that included a picture. Your husband knew all about it, according to Mr Anderson. And the owner of the picture—Mr Arnold—is supposed to have wanted your husband to have it. I want you to think very carefully, Mrs O’Dwyer, and see if you can remember anything that you may have heard from your husband, or seen in a letter, about a picture. Take your time and make yourself comfortable. Mr Bradley and I will be back very shortly, then we can talk about your fares and somewhere to stay and that sort of thing.”
In the corridor, Purbright and Bradley encountered Sergeant Love. He was carrying a rectangular parcel and looking pleased.
Love handed the parcel to Purbright. “I think it’s that cottage of mine. Forensic sent it over by car. Just arrived.”
Purbright was about to re-enter his own office, but changed his mind. He led Bradley and Love to an interview room on the ground floor.
In the parcel were the framed plaster-cast, wrapped in polythene; three small, transparent envelopes, in two of which were fragments of plaster and in the third a yellow, metallic clip; and a long, sealed manilla envelope, addressed to Purbright.
This he opened at once and read the single sheet of typescript it contained. The report was short.
“Hardly sensational, but quite intriguing.” He handed the sheet to Bradley.
For Love’s benefit, Purbright summarized the laboratory findings while he examined in detail the parcel’s contents.
“They aren’t very complimentary about the art work, I’m afraid, Sid. They consider it was cast in a rubber mould ‘of the kind obtainable in department stores’ and then ‘crudely coloured’. Never mind, they did X-ray the thing. And this”—he held up the metal object—“is what they found.”
Love looked, rather sulkily.
“Gold,” said Purbright. “Part of a necklace fastening. They can’t date it accurately, but it’s not modern. And these strands still knotted to it are silk, apparently—again, not modern. They say the quality of the fastening suggests quite expensive jewellery.”
Bradley finished reading. He watched as Purbright turned the cast over and indicated a small, square shaped excavation.
“This is where they chiselled down to get the little gold piece out. See envelope ‘A’—‘common plaster, household grade’. But here”—and Purbright pointed to a second hole in the back of the cast—“is a very odd discovery. See envelope ‘B’—‘superfine plaster, dental or surgical grade’.”
Bradley took the cast in his hands and angled it to catch the light from the window. He nodded. “The difference is quite obvious.”
Purbright outlined with his finger a patch of plaster paler and smoother than the rest. It accounted for about a third of the area. He gave Bradley an inquiring glance. “Dug out and refilled.”
“It would seem so.”
Curiosity was beginning to act as balm upon Love’s wounded artistic sensibility. “The odds are,” he said, “that this was a secret cache.”
“Mmmm,” said Purbright, wide-eyed.
“Containing?” Bradley asked the sergeant, in a tone of kindly encouragement.
Love pointed without hesitation at the gold clip. “The rest of that necklace.” A pause, then, not quite so confidently: “Wouldn’t you say?”
Purbright patted his arm. “Easily the best suggestion up to now.”
Whereupon the sergeant was dispatched to organize, as best he might on a Sunday, something systematic in the way of inquiries into how O’Dwyer may have come to be in the river.
“How did you get on with our chief constable?” Purbright asked Bradley, when they were alone.
Bradley seemed at first to avoid answering. “You know, I’m terribly sorry,” he said, earnestly, “that our wretched Frankie chose to end his undistinguished career in this area. You deserved better. And now there’s all this embarrassment. Understandably.”
Purbright smiled faintly. He waited.
Bradley smiled too. “Rather nice fellow, I thought, old Chubb. He has that kind of courtesy that self-confidence allows one to afford but he doesn’t let it seem patronizing.”
“He doesn’t care much for this case, does he?” Purbright said. “Hence the look of pained regret.”
“I thought perhaps he had a hernia.”
“No, no; it is just that he considers crime—which he much deplores, incidentally—to be a defect peculiar to the working class. On this occasion, respectable people appear to be implicated.”
“Unwillingly, surely?”
“Oh, yes. Perhaps innocently. But there is an involvement. That worries Chubb, and he reacts by pretending to be stupid.”
“Does that mean he will be obstructive?”
Purbright shook his head. “Oh, no, just heavily dubious. You will get used to it. And on our part, we spare him the pain of knowing in advance the sensitive areas we mean to incise.” He glanced at his watch. “The Moldham squirearchy, for instance.”
They went back to Purbright’s office. Edna was drinking more tea and talking about Southend-on-Sea to Policewoman Bellweather.
Purbright showed Edna the plaster cast. “That’s pretty,” she said. Her eyes were blank.