“O’Dwyer’s resemblance to the colonel’s father must have come as a nasty surprise to the Moldhams.”
“Very nasty,” said Purbright. “Hence the fainting of the old woman at the auction sale—in public, heaven help us—when O’Dwyer got up to slip away.”
“But was that the first she’d seen of him? The bidding must have been going on for quite a while.”
“Bidders never look at one another.”
Bradley accepted this axiom and glanced about him for a clock. He caught the eye of the lady behind the bar. Mrs Leaper was staring at him longingly.
Without removing the cupped hand that supported her face while she leaned on the counter, Mrs Leaper murmured for his benefit: “You’ve got six minutes yet, lovey.”
“Talking of sales,” Bradley said to Purbright, “has anyone suggested why that solicitor’s clerk was putting in bids?”
“Buxton? I should say he was there ‘on behalf of a client’, as lawyers say when they are trying to corner something for themselves. Loughbury is astute enough to have guessed that old Whippy had hidden something among his things that would be worth risking a few pounds. He was not to know that Gule had beaten him to it.”
“Do you think he knew about the 1931 scandal and Miss Veronica’s departure for North Croydon with the family coachman?”
“North Croydon?” Purbright was frowning.
“The registration sub-district on the birth certificate.”
Purbright took from his pocket the paper that had been concealed in the picture frame.
“Yes, you’re quite right. Sixty-five Alderton Road, Croydon. Relatives of Whippy, one assumes. They’ll have got a cash payment to foster young Dean Francis.”
“Until he became old enough to run away and be a burglar,” said Bradley. “Incidentally, how did Whippy describe himself?”
Purbright moved his finger to the seventh column. “Simply as F. Arnold, Moldham Hall, Lincolnshire, informant.”
He passed the document across the table.
Bradley looked at it for a few moments, then smiled as he returned it to Purbright. “I like the entry under ‘Rank or Profession of Father’.”
Purbright grinned. “It is rather hard to accept that Dr Damion Gule was ever anything as ordinary as a medical student.”
There had been growing pulsation within the building and its captive plastic furniture. Now the windows began to tremble and the bottles to dance in their chrome gallery above the bar. Before the approaching train drowned speech altogether, Mrs Leaper roused herself from her amative contemplation of Detective Inspector Bradley and cried: “Christmas is coming! Look lively, gents all!”