The chief constable spread his hands. “Well, there you are, then, Mr Purbright. A shrewd and intelligent lady is not going to come to much harm. If she really feels threatened—and I confess I can see no reason why she should—she no doubt will let you know, having once been introduced.”
Purbright’s relations with Mr Chubb, within a framework of extreme formality, were curiously confidential and allowed of a frankness that no one listening to their exchanges could have guessed. The secret lay in a code, acknowledged by neither, but developed over the years into a subtle instrument of mutual understanding.
On this Monday morning, for instance, the chief constable was left in no doubt that his detective inspector, convinced of an attempt having been made on the life of Rich Dick’s concubine, intended to make himself as much of a nuisance as the law and Mr Chubb allowed until the truth of the matter emerged. Purbright, on the other hand, was no less certainly appraised of Mr Chubb’s strong reluctance to see the reputation of a late fellow club-member endangered for the sake of a girl who once had lived in a public house and now laid claim to some very nice property which she probably didn’t appreciate.
Purbright climbed the ancient iron circular staircase to the floor on which was his own office. There, Sergeant Love, looking smug, joined him.
“I picked up the dope from that reporter,” announced Love. He put a sheet of typescript on the desk.
“Dope?” Purbright pretended not to understand. He had tried for years to cure Love’s weakness for what the sergeant fancied to be Fleet Street terminology. But then, as he always did, he felt mean and straight away said: “Ah dope—yes, I see,” and picked up the list of names.
They included most, but not all, of those he had collected already himself.
“There was a bit of a do in the church, from what this chap was telling me,” said Love. He related the story of Zoe’s ejection of the Chalmsbury branch. Love’s accounts were robbed of dramatic point, somehow, by his customary obliging, pleased-with-life expression. He would have described a public execution or a jam-making demonstration with equal cheerfulness.
Purbright told the sergeant about the fire, the locked door, the gas cylinder.
“Seems there’s a rabbit away somewhere,” Love commented, good-naturedly. “Oh, and I was right about propane. It is the one that’s bottled at higher pressure. They probably were using it to work a blowtorch.”
“Why is it, do you suppose, Sid, that the young woman took it all so calmly? It was the mother who got worked up, not Zoe.”
“Mothers do. Mine does.”
Purbright frowned at him. He had never before considered the possibility of the sergeant’s having a mother. It was enough to bear with the chronic youthfulness of his appearance without having to envisage a woman who would not be restrained from combing his hair and making sure he had a handkerchief.
“Do you know anything about Mumblesby?”
The sergeant considered. “They reckon it’s a bit upperten-ish, nowadays.”
“Well off, are they?”
“So they reckon. A lot of them ride horses round there. And it’s supposed to cost eight pounds a head to eat at that café.”
“Does it really?”
“We once had some trouble with a bloke who used to be the personal...” Love faltered. “What do they call somebody who mucks about with feet?”
“Chiropodist?”
“That’s it. He used to be the Duke of Edinburgh’s personal chiropodist.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Oh nothing much. He was creating in the street. Threatening somebody.”
Purbright waited, but Love seemed to have emptied his store of wonders.
“So it’s a village of fairly high tone,” said the inspector, without guile.
“You could say so.”
Purbright nodded. “In which case, we cannot send our coarser-grained ambassadors. It will have to be you, Sid. Go tomorrow. Now, listen. We can’t waste a lot of time on this, but I do seriously believe that that over-confident young woman is in danger. A little well-directed eavesdropping is more likely to produce ideas of why, and from whom, than a month of heavy interrogating.”
Purbright took out his record of names provided by Zoe and her mother, and set it beside the Citizen’s reporters typescript. “Here’s the nearest we have to a check-list, although we can’t be sure that no one else entered the house that morning.”
Love picked up both pieces of paper and carefully folded one inside the other. “Will do,” he said, crisply.
The expression made Purbright suddenly nervous. “Of course, this isn’t a door-to-door job, Sid.”
Away went the papers into Loves hip pocket; on to his face, an oh-very-droll smirk.
“Above all, don’t go marching up to the Manor House as soon as you arrive. Neither she nor anyone else must get the idea that we’re interested specifically in her. You’ll be too near home to pretend you’re not a policeman, but so long as you choose a genuine and convincing errand, you’ll be all right.”
The natural roseate glow of Love’s complexion intensified. “I could talk to the servants, if you like—you know, get their confidence.”
Purbright stared, then swallowed. “Yes, do that, Sid. Talk to the servants by all means.”
The House of Yesteryear in Northgate, Flaxborough, once had been a corn chandler’s. A smell of grain bins lingered still, not unpleasantly, in the two adjoining showrooms where Miss Teatime’s stock-in-trade was set out.
When Inspector Purbright entered, he saw Miss Teatime at the further end, in conversation with a man and woman. They were interested, it seemed, in quite the largest item in the shop: a quarter-acre or so of dried spinach, flecked with fragments of orange peel, massively framed and entitled BEFORE SEBASTOPOL. Hearing the opening of the door, she turned her head and smiled acknowledgment. Purbright hoped the couple would not take too long to realize that the picture was not a portable exhibit but virtually a fourth wall. He started to pass the time by looking at what he presumed was a butter churn.
Miss Teatime did not keep him long.
“My dear inspector, how encouraging to find that the appurtenances of quieter times can lure you from the battle against crime, even for a little while.”
“I thought you might put me in the way of a nice second-hand treadmill, actually.” He gave the hand she offered him a squeeze of genuine affability.
Miss Teatime said she could do him some gyves. She indicated an abstract in rust. Its only identifiable feature was the appended ticket marked £32.
“Do you know,” she said with sudden earnestness, “that it is extremely difficult to come by decent examples of manacles. They are extremely collectable, of course; eighteenth century especially. What people will pay highly for are the attested models.”