“I? Oh, dear, no.” The vicar grinned roguishly. “That would have been rather like offering someone shares in his own company.”
“Unauthenticated shares, at that.”
“Ha! Ha! Yes, indeed. Very good.”
The inspector asked no more questions. He parted from Mr Tiverton in an atmosphere of almost jovial good will. To what extent this cordiality had been generated by his own reticence he was unable to judge. He could not help wondering, though, as he left the church if the vicar would be quite so cheerful had he been told what closer examination of the broken window had revealed.
Chapter Ten
The chief constable, unlike the vicar, could not be left in ignorance, euphoric or otherwise. The very next morning, Purbright sought out Mr Chubb in his room at the Fen Street headquarters.
As it was Friday, the chief constable was engaged in the self-appointed task, peculiar to that day of the week, of reading the Flaxborough Citizen. This he did most methodically, standing before the table on which the newspaper was spread, and perusing it line by line, column after column, page by page, with the aid of a large, square reading glass. He looked rather like a bomb disposal expert with lots of time.
“Sit down, Mr Purbright.”
The inspector did so, but at a sufficient distance to minimize the chief constable’s moral advantage of remaining standing.
“I am just casting an eye over poor Loughbury’s funeral,” said Mr Chubb. He put aside his ocular mine detector and frowned. “I see that you attended as the representative of a Mr Crumb.”
Purbright, whom custom had led to accept as unremarkable the fitfulness of the Citizen’s presentation of names and places, offered no remark. The chief constable put down his lens as a marker of the place he had reached and crossed to the fireplace, against which he leaned in a posture of austere but courteous attention.
“I fear,” Purbright began, “that my doubts over all being as it should be at Mumblesby are beginning to be justified.”
“Mumblesby?” Mr Chubb’s brows rose. “Whatever has been going on at Mumblesby?”
Without abandoning any of his customary solemnity, Mr Chubb made the most of the name’s comic overtones. He was capable of conferring an almost fictional quality upon any place or person he did not wish to talk about.
Purbright nodded, as if with deep satisfaction.
“I felt sure you would be anxious to know that, sir. The answer cannot be as full at this stage as you would wish, unfortunately, but several significant facts have come to light, and I think they ought to be made known to you straight away.”
“Of course, Mr Purbright. Please go on.”
The inspector did so. First, he recapitulated his own misgivings concerning the fire at the Manor House. Then he gave an edited version of Love’s gleanings from village conversation. The more pertinent of Malley’s addenda to the Croll inquest record were quoted. Finally, Mr Chubb heard what the vicar of Mumblesby had not yet been told about the hole in his church window.
It was the last item which seemed to put the severest strain on the chief constables comprehension.
“I’m sorry, but I do not quite see the significance of this glass business. You say the pane had been cut out. Not broken—cut.”
“Yes, sir. When you get close enough, you can see the clean edge of the glass left behind in the lead setting. It forms a sort of border. There’s a scratch in one place where the cutter must have slipped, but no cracks, no sign of shattering.”
“And you think that whoever did this was inside the church?”
“The fragments of broken glass were on the ground outside. That does suggest that the cut-away portion was pushed outward, not inward. In any case, the scratch I mentioned was on the inner surface.”
The chief constable was already resigned to the unlikelihood of his being able to deflect Purbright from his collision course with the sleeping dogs of Mumblesby. He was still unsure, however, as to what crime or crimes the inspector intended to postulate.
“Odd business,” said Mr Chubb, looking for dust on his jacket sleeve.
“Odd, sir?”
“This cutting holes in church windows. It doesn’t seem to have any logical connection with anything.”
“Not immediately, perhaps, sir. But any act which is difficult in itself and which entails trouble and some degree of risk can fairly safely be assumed to have been undertaken for a purpose.”
The chief constable acknowledged the lecture with a wintry smile. “You know, Mr Purbright, I have the feeling that your researches at Mumblesby are not going to content you until you find a rifle with telescopic sights to go with that peep-hole of yours.”
Purbright affected serious consideration.
“No, sir. Your theory has certain attractions, but I don’t think the pathologist could have misinterpreted a bullet wound. In any case, if Mrs Croll stood where I believe she did, practically the whole mass of the font and its cover would have stood between her and the prepared hole in the lancet window.”
Mr Chubb essayed nothing further in the irony line.
“Perhaps it would be as well,” he said, “if you were to set out—in a general sort of way—your reasons for wanting to re-open this affair. One has to be terribly careful in matters that have been officially cleared up, you understand. Coroners don’t like inquests to be called into question and they can be very awkward.”
Purbright said he did understand. The fact remained that the circumstances of Mrs Croll’s death were far more suspicious than witnesses at the inquest had suggested. If, as he now had reason to think, the woman had neither committed suicide nor died accidentally, it was urgent—if only for the protection of others—that the true facts be established.
“I take it that you believe the woman was attacked,” said the chief constable.
“I am convinced that she was.”
“But for what reason, Mr Purbright? A perfectly harmless married woman—a farmer’s wife—with strong religious convictions... Why should anyone wish to kill Mrs Croll?”
“Why should she have wished to kill herself, sir?”
Mr Chubb waved his hand vaguely. “Who can say? Nervous trouble? Change of life?”
The menopause loomed as large in the chief constables catalogue of mischief-makers as central heating and socialism.
“She was forty-one,” the inspector said simply. He added: “So far as records in such things can be established, she had not entered a church—for other than libidinous purposes—since the age of thirteen.”
Mr Chubb frowned. He looked annoyed.
“I suppose I have to take your word for all this, Mr Purbright. Even so, we are a long way from being able to assume that an attack was made on the woman. She was alone in the place, according to the only evidence I can recall.”