Whatever’s Been Going on at Mumblseby?
Book 12 in the Flaxborough series with Inspector Purbright
Colin Watson
Chapter One
One of Flaxborough’s best known and respected senior citizens passed away peacefully this week in the person of Mr Richard Daspard Loughbury. His death took place on Monday at Flaxborough General Hospital after a short illness at Mr Loughbury’s country home, the Manor House, Mumblesby.
“Christ! Guess who’s kicked the bucket.”
Mr Loughbury, for many years a solicitor in regular practice in the town, was a noted bowls votary, a Freemason, and at one time a member of Flaxborough Town Council, to whose deliberations he brought wisdom and legal acumen, not unmixed with that brand of humour for which he will be long remembered by local “cognoscentes” of the “bon mot”. He was predeceased by his wife five years ago.
“I said guess who’s kicked the bucket.”
Thus Mr Brian Lewcock, auctioneer’s clerk and not much respected junior citizen, addressed from behind Flaxborough’s weekly newspaper the wife who, despite his occasional urging of her to that course, showed no inclination to predecease him.
“All right. Who, then?” Sandra Lewcock came to the end of a row of breakfast-time knitting and with the disengaged needle leaned down to scratch her foot.
“Old Loughbury. Rich Dick.”
“Oh, him.” Sandra looked down between her knees to see where her ball of wool had gone. She gave the yarn a tug and the ball came running from under the small sideboard like an errant animal. She halted it with a stockinged foot. As she brought the needles into their duel again, she frowned. “Is that right? Was he rich? Really rich, I mean?” Her tone suggested doubt, not interest. Sandra’s was a thin voice, with a petulant lilt.
“He was bloody loaded,” said Mr Lewcock.
Sandra gazed up at the window, without slackening the pace of the knitting. “How do you know?”
“Well ... he was. He must have been. You should see some of the stuff he bought.”
“Stuff?”
“At the auctions. Very pricey.”
Sandra’s scowl deepened. “Auctions? I never saw Mr Loughbury at an auction.”
“No, well you wouldn’t, would you,” said Mr Lewcock, his clenched teeth making him sound like a not-very-good ventriloquist.
“It was you that said he went to auctions. I don’t know what you’re on about.”
“I never said he went. I said he bought. There is a difference. I’d have thought so, anyway.”
“Difference? What do you mean, difference?”
The Flaxborough Citizen was slowly lowered in order to give Sandra the full benefit of her husband’s long sigh of exasperation. “Mr Loughbury,” he said, with so much ironic emphasis that his voice tripped into falsetto, “never went to a sale. He knew what was coming up. He had bids put in for him. On his behalf. By other people. Right?”
And he looked fixedly at her thighs. This always made her nervous.
“Who by, for instance?”
“The old man, sometimes.” Lewcock meant the head of the firm of auctioneers for which he worked, old Mr “Noddy” Durham. “Mostly, he sent Clapper, though.”
“Clapper?”
“Clapper Buxton. His clerk.”
Sandra seemed to be thinking. “Did you ever do it?”
“Do what?”
“Bid for him. For Mr Loughbury.”
“I might have.”
“You never said.”
“So?” Lewcock put more contempt into his stare. Sandra felt her thighs ballooning with unwanted fat.
He looked away at last. He said “My God!” softly and went back behind the Flaxborough Citizen to suck his teeth.
Mr Loughbury was a life-long member of the Church of England, and a moving spirit in the Liberal persuasion until he transferred allegiance to the Conservative cause in 1957. He was elected to the chairmanship of the Flaxborough and District Unionist Association in 1970, an office which he held with distinction until illness compelled his recent resignation. Rose-growing was his favourite hobby. During the last war, Mr Loughbury achieved the rank of Captain in the Boys’ Training Corps and also served as a Special Constable.
“How delightfully inconsequential are our writers of obituaries,” remarked Miss Lucilla Edith Cavell Teatime, proprietress of The House of Yesteryear, in Northgate. “It would come as no surprise in the midst of so many verbal violets to be told that the late Mr Loughbury was a keen amateur housebreaker.”
Her companion smiled. Rather younger than Miss Teatime, he was a man with a full, well-nourished face, tending to beard-shadow around the chops but otherwise meticulously groomed. His voice, though kindly, possessed that curious timbre conferred by privileged education which puts the less privileged in mind of plums. “I trust you are jesting, Lucy,” he said.
“Of course I am, Edgar.” Miss Teatime sighed, and reached towards a small black packet on a shelf of the Welsh dresser beside her chair. “Unfortunately.”
Edgar—his name was Harrington, and to favoured clients Miss Teatime confided that his mother had been a Lady-in-Waiting at Windsor—left his seat at once and handed down the packet and a booklet of matches that lay beside it. He was a compact, but not small, man, probably in his early forties. His bearing and easy movements suggested fitness of an unaggressive kind, derived more likely (thought Miss Teatime) from a regimen of vicarage tennis and spare-time archaeology than from press-ups and squash.
Mr Harrington was the manager of Miss Teatime’s subsidiary enterprise, Gallery Ganby, in the village of Mumblesby, whither he had been drawn some six months previously, partly in response to the invitation of an old friend, but chiefly by reason of his own immediate desire to leave London.
“It would be pleasant upon this summers day,” said Miss Teatime, taking a small cigar from the packet that Edgar had placed by her coffee cup, “to shut up shop and to pay our respects at the house of mourning.”
“Is there a widow?”
“None is mentioned.”
“Then to whom can we pay our respects?”
Miss Teatime lit her cigar, then blew out the match as if disposing of the question. “There is always someone to receive condolences in the households of the well-heeled. It is part of the tidiness that wealth seems to induce.”
An “old boy” of Flaxborough Grammar School, Mr Loughbury pursued his education in Dublin, to which the family moved upon his father’s taking up a medical appointment in that city, and later attended Oxford University to study law. He was regarded as an expert on antiques, of which he built up a notable collection. A multitude of other interests included study of the history of fireworks and, in the practical field, work for the Distressed Ladies Relief Association.