The question was not so much ignored as simply not received. Mrs Moldhom-Clegg appeared to be waiting politely for them to leave.
“Do you wish to say nothing about the shotgun wounds?” Purbright asked.
She turned to her nephew. “Bruce, you must not forget about the Askews and that thing on Friday. I think it would be as well to drop them a note today.”
The colonel made vague acknowledgment. He was frowning. His eye met Purbright’s and passed an unhappy appeal.
“I am going to ask you,” Purbright said to Mrs Moldham-Clegg, “to come with us to police headquarters in Flaxborough, where you will be formally charged.”
The old woman put aside her crochet carefully. She stood, rugged straight her heavy woollen dress and again addressed her nephew.
“Mr Loughbury will come with me. I shall be back quite shortly. Do not forget the Askews or that man who is calling about the tree.”
Purbright spoke to the solicitor, who had been alternatively half-rising and sitting again for the past minute. “Perhaps you will be good enough to take Mrs Moldham-Clegg to the car.”
The old woman ignored Rich Dick’s offer of an arm and went before him to the door.
Purbright turned to the colonel.
“We needn’t bother your aunt with such matters now, sir, but I’ll send a policewoman over later to collect her things.”
Moldham nodded grimly. He caught Purbright’s arm.
“You’ll look after her? She’s been through a very bad time, you know.”
“She’ll be given every consideration, sir.”
The colonel stared unseeingly at the door through which Love and Bradley had followed the others. “I suppose,” he said to Purbright, “that you fellows saw through all that nonsense about Arnold’s pension and helping his family and so forth.”
“The account was substantially that of your own solicitor, sir. He is an officer of the court; we could scarcely assume that he was trying to mislead us.”
“Loughbury’s a fool. Probably a knave, too, but that’s by the way. The point is, that so-called pension was nothing but damned extortion. Aunt had him on her back for years, you know. When he died, Purbright, it’s no exaggeration to say the sun came out for her. So just imagine what she felt when this confederate, or side-kick, or whatever, of Arnold’s turned up-this O’Dwyer, as you call him.”
For the generally laconic Moldham, this was quite a long and emotional speech. Purbright decided to delay his departure long enough to see if the seam of frankness was yet exhausted.
“You sound doubtful about O’Dwyer being his real name. Do you know him under any other?”
The colonel shrugged, wide-eyed. “Don’t know him at all. I understand he’s a petty criminal from London. Arnold could have met him in some prison, I suppose. Isn’t that how these associations usually begin?”
If Moldham were dissembling, he was doing it very well. Purbright shifted ground.
“Are you,” he asked, “going to tell me now what it was that Arnold used as the basis of his blackmailing your aunt?”
“I have no idea.” The reply was unhesitating and without the slightest overtone. Purbright might as well have asked the time.
“Oh, come now, colonel; here is a secret or a scandal so potent that knowledge of it can still command blackmail payments even after more than forty years. Do you seriously wish me to believe that your aunt has been able to keep it from other members of her own family all this time?”
“From surviving members, yes. From me, certainly. I’m sorry, but there it is.” Moldham smiled, painfully. “I’ve no wish to sound flippant at such a dreadful time, but the fact is that I’d like to know myself what she got up to all those years ago.”
Purbright walked thoughtfully to the door. He turned on reaching it.
“The shotgun...I’m right, am I not, in presuming that it wasn’t you who fired it?”
The colonel hesitated, then looked down at his hands. “I don’t know why she did that,” he said, quietly.
Purbright, who did know, left without further word.
Detective Inspector Eric Bradley left Flaxborough two days later. Purbright went to the station to see him off. In expectation of the most important train of the day, the refreshment room had been opened and was now in session. Purbright bought two half pints of bottled India Pale Ale and they sat in the corner of one end of the long, narrow room, which once had had tables of white marble and curly cast iron and a mahogany counter and a gilded mirror and a wheezing tea urn big as Stephenson’s Rocket, but now was fitted with plastic cantilever slabs and benches rivetted to the floor as if in fear of their being stolen.
“All right, ducks?” the custodian of the bar inquired of Purbright. She was a large woman, flushed and sweaty with an eruptive cheerfulness that neither her place of work nor her occasional appearance at petty sessions could long repress. She liked policemen—indeed, some said she lusted after them—and Purbright was taking no chances. “Good morning, Mrs Leaper,” he said, with rather more formality than was natural to him.
Bradley said he was sorry to be returning to London. He would miss the ubiquitous friendliness. Even Mr Chubb had been very gracious at the last and had paid a call upon him at the Roebuck Hotel.
“Chubb is a good deal less of a snob than my superintendent,” Bradley remarked. “You can have no idea how my superintendent’s self-esteem will have been enhanced by the elevation of one of his parole customers to the Quality.”
“Posthumously,” Purbright pointed out. Bradley shrugged and took a sip of his beer.
“Anyway, I’m not sure that the Moldhams are quite top rank,” said Purbright. “As I understand it, they stem from a by-blow of one of the minor robber barons.”
“Good enough for my superintendent,” asserted Bradley. He asked a little later: “What are you going to do if the old woman changes her mind about a manslaughter plea?”
“She won’t.”
“Because of her sense of honour?”
“In a way. She is aware that a bargain of sorts is implicit in our leaving the identity issue obscure.”
“You are confident, are you, that bargains are kept by people such as the Moldham family? I can only say that their counterparts in London can be relied upon to put their own convenience first, whatever undertakings may have been given.”
Purbright smiled. “I’m sure that that is generally the case, but we in the country have less romantic expectations of our betters. For example, it would not be found believable in Wimbledon or Muswell Hill that a lady of good address could shoot down her own son, then deliberately disfigure the features that bore so embarrassingly close a family likeness to his late uncle’s, and finally rope the body to her horse and drag it to the river. Here there will be shock, certainly, but not incredulity.”