“Small” had special meaning in the context of Sergeant Malley, who would have looked cramped in a bull ring. He did not so much occupy his office as wear it. It was like an outer uniform, rather tight round the shoulders and with nothing to spare at the waist, but long and familiar use had enabled him to adjust so happily to its limitations that he now could even entertain a fellow occupant without undue distress.
“Croll, Croll, Croll...” Half-turned in his chair and breathing hard, Malley reviewed his collection on the third shelf. “Ah...” He hooked a finger round the back of a box and brought it down.
Purbright, seated at the opposite side of Malley’s desk, watched him slide off a pair of elastic bands and unlid the box. He put the bands in the lid and placed both in a filing tray. For so large a man, the sergeant had small, neat, capable hands; they always moved slowly and to the purpose.
Malley produced a photograph from the box. He did not, as many a colleague might have done, flip it to Purbright like a playing card, but set it gently before him. Malley’s knowledge of those with whose end he had had to deal was wide, sometimes comical, often squalid, but his manner towards them was unfailingly respectful.
The inspector gazed at the picture of Bernadette Croll (1939-80), housewife, of Home Farm, Mumblesby. It was a police photograph in black and white, taken in the mortuary of Flaxborough General Hospital before the autopsy. Meticulously in focus, the body was lighted as if shadow was against the law. The torso and limbs had the curious appearance of having been modelled not in flesh but in rather dirty lard. Even the smallest blemish, the least significant bruise, looked black and sinister.
“No children, were there?” Purbright asked. He did not look up. Malley said no, no kids.
She was not a fat woman, not plump, even. There was a suggestion of flaccidity about the thighs and belly, but the small breasts and narrow shoulders could have been those of someone much younger.
“Benjamin Croll—what do you know about him, Bill?”
“Not a lot. Farmer. Rich. Middling miserable. In his sixties now.” Malley gave a small snort of amusement. “I doubt if he’s still up to chucking blokes out of the bedroom window.”
Purbright remembered, grinned. “Christ, aye! Of course, that was Ben, wasn’t it. And the phoney MI5 man.”
“Long time ago.” 3 Malley made it sound like a gentle reproof. He began filling his pipe.
3 related in Hopjoy Was Here
The face in the photograph was like that of an old child. The expression might have been described as one of utter indifference, save that the angle of the head (it was slightly, but disconcertingly awry) was somehow suggestive of the anxiety and effort of someone hard of hearing.
“It’s easy to see her neck was broken,” Malley said. He pointed with his pipe stem.
Purbright saw also the patch of almost black bruising over the upper area of the side of the woman’s face, from brow to cheekbone. The eye was within it, dead yet returning the camera flash. The half-open lids had a beaten sulkiness about them.
There were other photographs, taken inside the church. One showed the area beneath the tower where Bernadette Croll’s body had been found. A chalk outline had been drawn on the floor.
Malley noticed the inspector looking at the outline. “That’s more or less a guess,” he said. “The body had been moved by the time Harton got out there.”
Purbright looked at two more pictures. One, taken from the ground, was of the tower interior. A cross had been marked against a narrow balustraded gallery about two-thirds of the way up to the floor of the ringing chamber. The second picture was simply the reverse view: the floor of the tower, seen from the gallery.
“Do X-rays mean anything to you?” Malley asked.
“I’m no radiologist.”
The sergeant held to the light a rectangle of black film. Silvery lines and patches appeared, the pale map of a skull. Purbright wondered at the smallness, the insubstantiality of the image.
Malley pointed to something. Purbright thought he could detect the faintest of irregularities, but wasn’t sure.
“According to Heinemann,” Malley said, “that’s a fracture.” He pointed lower down. “And that’s the neck dislocation.”
“Which one killed her?”
“The skull fracture, Heinemann said. There was a lot of brain haemorrhaging. Anyway, here’s the PM report, if you want to read it.” He drew out of the box a closely typed foolscap sheet.
Purbright glanced at it, put it aside. “Let’s look at some of the statements. I wasn’t here at the time.”
Malley sorted out another sheet of typescript and handed it across the desk. “Best start at the beginning,” he said.
“Discovery of body. And who better to make it than a man with a name like that?”
Robin Hugh Lestrange Bradden Cork-Bradden had testified:
I reside at Church House, Mumblesby. I am a retired army officer and I hold a number of company directorships. For the past eight years I have been Vicar’s Warden at the parish church of St Dennis the Martyr. In that capacity, I have the custody of one of the two church keys and it is my responsibility to lock the church at the end of the day arid to open it again each morning.
At about nine-thirty in the evening of Thursday August the twenty-first, 1980, I locked the south door after making sure the church was empty. This is my customary precaution. All the doors other than the south door are kept locked permanently. I had no need that evening to switch on the church lights, as there was still adequate daylight.
Shortly before ten o’clock the next morning, Friday, I went again to the church, this time in company with Mr Raymond Bishop, whom I had happened to meet on my way. I unlocked the south door and looked inside. I was surprised to see what I took to be a bundle of cassocks lying on the floor. On closer examination, I found it to be the body of Mrs Croll. Mr Bishop went for help. I could see Mrs Croll was dead. (In reply to the Coroner) I had no doubts at all. As a soldier, I know death when I see it.
Questioned by Superintendent Larch, Mr Cork-Bradden said the body was lying near an old iron-bound box known as the church chest. He agreed that the position of the body was consistent with Mrs Croll’s having fallen from the gallery in the tower, access to which was by a staircase in the tower wall. The door to the staircase was never locked. Witness agreed that his evening search of the church, though not perfunctory, would be unlikely to disclose anyone deliberately hiding.
In answer to Mr Richard Loughbury, representing the Croll family, witness said he had conversed on a few occasions with deceased. She had seemed to hold deeply religious views. The subject obsessed her. The conversations, some of which had been at witness’s home, had not been of his seeking. They had not embarrassed him; he had felt sorry for her and had tried to be helpful.