“That’s enough, boy. Vay-hycles is what we’re on about. Vay-hycles. Just you stick to bloody vay-hycles and how they get hijacked.”
Purbright regarded each in turn. To the son, he said: “So we’ve established, have we, that you are Lawrence Edward Pritty, and that you manage the contracting side of your family business?”
Lawrence gave a grunt of assent. His father nudged him. Lawrence said: “That one that you’re on about—it went missing last night.”
“You mean someone stole it?” Purbright asked.
Lawrence glowered mistrustfully. “Moved it,” he amended. “Took it.”
“Hijacked it,” supplied Mr Pritty again, rather as if he had bought the word somewhere and wanted his moneys worth.
“Tell me, Mr Pritty, are the controls of this type of machine easy to master?”
The notion amused Lawrence so much that he failed to be warned by his father’s scowl. He smiled pityingly at the inspector and said he’d like to see how he got on with one.
Not well at all, the inspector feared. Certainly not with the expert knowledge displayed by the hijacker—quite an old hand, it would seem, at demolition work.
“But why the Manor House?”
Purbright was looking fixedly at Lawrence now.
“And why that particular area of the gable wall? On whose instructions did you do the job, Mr Pritty?”
Lawrence’s anger deepened the terracotta of his complexion almost to black. The thin, straw-coloured brows and lashes stood out like scars. Before he could speak, his father caught hold of his arm.
“That’s enough, boy. Don’t let your bloody lard out. Just tell him to piss off. That’s all. Just tell him. There’s nothing he can do to you.”
Purbright regarded Lawrence sombrely. “With all due respect to your father, sir, that advice is not to be recommended. We are not concerned now with such boyish pranks as attempted rape (ah, I knew I’d get it right eventually) but with a very serious matter indeed. As serious, perhaps, as conspiracy to murder.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Whose idea was it, sir? A joke—is that what it was supposed to be? Knocking a hole in a lady’s bedroom?”
God, this was awful, Purbright reflected. Like a television script. The trouble was that interrogation of someone like Lawrence Pritty was liable to turn into a sort of extension of the person himself.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he found himself saying, and worse: “If you’re frank and helpful now, you could avoid the main charge.”
Lawrence’s indolence of gaze had changed to shifty bewilderment. He avoided his father’s eye.
“Boy!” commanded the old man. “Get off and see to that combine.”
The son remained where he was, staring sulkily down at the counter and picking at a spot near the corner of his mouth. Suddenly he looked at Purbright, his head a little on one side.
“Suppose it was, then? A bit of a laugh. What am I supposed to say?”
From Pretty Senior burst, “Christ Almighty! You wet, mitherin’ shit-house!” and he bisoned out of the office.
“It may well be,” the inspector said to Lawrence, “that your father is about to warn others. They probably will confer in order to put all the blame on you.”
“What others?” Wiliness had survived fear.
Recklessly, Purbright tossed in another line of script. “People in a position to shop you—people who would pretend they’re too fine and mighty to know you, if it suited them.”
Lawrence smouldered silently for a while. Clearly, the inspector had evoked for him a whole Mumblesby Debrett.
He shook his head. “It was supposed to be a joke on the cow at the Manor. It’s not her bloody house, anyway.”
“You said ‘supposed to be’—do you mean that is what you were told?”
“I only know my uncle Spence was going to take her out for some nosh so as she’d be out of the way.” A thin smile came and went. “It was to be a surprise for her when she went to bed.”
“Mr Gash is your uncle?”
“Sort of. Relation, anyway.”
“Does he have a grudge against Mrs Loughbury?”
Lawrence shook his head, irritably. “I told you. It was for a laugh, that’s all.”
Purbright appeared to find this reply reasonable enough.
“Must have been difficult,” he said, conversationally, “to hit the right spot in that light. There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre.”
Lawrence glanced down at his hands. In the instant before his face set in sulky indifference, there gleamed a smirk of pride.
Purbright left it at that. He told Lawrence lightly about such matters as signing a statement at police headquarters, and holding himself in readiness for further questioning. Lawrence reciprocated with equally light reference to the probable willingness of his family to pay for the damage if the poor cow—by which the inspector would understand he meant Mrs Loughbury—sent a bill and didn’t get any ideas about making a court case of it.
Then, suddenly, he remembered something.
“Here, what was that you said before, though? Something about murdering. Was that supposed to frighten me, or what?”
“I trust not, Mr Pritty,” said Purbright, earnestly.
“What were you on about, then?”
Purbright turned on his way to the door. “You really don’t know?”
Lawrence stared and swallowed. “Course not.”
“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Purbright, cheerfully. He stepped out and shut the door behind him.
The inspector found Love in his enclosure, seated before a kitchen table which his servitors had carried from the house on Zee’s invitation. Selected pieces of debris lay on the ground around him. Purbright told him he looked like an archaeologist.
“We’ve found a bit of the cage thing,” said Love.
He led Purbright to where a chunk of masonry had been set aside on a sheet of newspaper. Pieces of twisted steel gleamed in the dust.
“There’s not a lot of wood,” said the sergeant. “That ought to make it easier.”
Purbright stared blankly at the twenty or thirty bits of timber that were arranged in order of size on the table. He tried to recall what the Fragment of the True Cross had looked like.
“Has Mrs Loughbury seen these?”
Love shook his head. “Didn’t seem interested.” He added, more brightly: “She brought us out some coffee.”
The inspector picked up the largest specimen. It was spongy with woodworm and full of dust. He threw it away. Most of the other pieces bore signs of having belonged to the framework of the house. There also were some broken lengths of lath.