“No, sir; he was not lying. The post-mortem report bears out what he said.”
“Then Loughbury must have been.”
The chief constable’s tone was uncharacteristically crisp, almost snappy. This straight-to-the-pointness had been coming on all day. It signified that Mr Chubb no longer expected to escape involvement in the case of what he rather unfairly persisted in calling “that village of yours, Mr Purbright”. His only hope now was that the more masterful he managed to appear, the sooner would it all be over.
The inspector sensed the new dynamism, and prepared to get the best out of it while it lasted.
“You are right, of course, sir. He was lying. In that particular respect, and in many others. Loughbury’s entire statement is punctuated with lies.”
Mr Chubb tutted.
“You will have noticed, though,” Purbright went on, “that they are not lies of convenience—lies along the way, as it were. They are introduced constructively into the narrative, side by side with established facts, and they seem to build up to a genuine set of circumstances.”
He indicated places in the solicitors statement.
“By the time one has read all these apparently ingenuous references to Mrs Croll’s pregnancy and to her husband’s wish to divorce her, one tends to regard both as facts that were never in dispute. But both were myths, myths invented by Loughbury in order to frighten clients from whom he and Bernadette hoped to extort money.”
“He and Bernadette...”
The words were repeated absolutely flatly by Mr Chubb. He wanted an explanation, but not at the cost of betraying his own failure to grasp what Purbright was driving at.
The inspector glanced at him admiringly. “The two of them, you say, sir? Oh, yes, I agree. There had to be collusion there for Loughbury’s scheme to work. I expect he promised her a share.”
The chief constable nodded wisely.
“I wonder,” said Purbright, “if ever it crossed Loughbury’s mind that he could be pushing his clients too far. I don’t suppose he can have envisaged the possibility that the poor woman might get murdered.”
The chief constable said he was sure that, whatever faults Dick Loughbury might have had, he would not have condoned violence.
“No, sir, not condoned. Exploited, though, would you allow? Once the murder had taken place, Mr Loughbury seems very promptly to have seen how he might thrive by it.”
“You mean these so-called gifts he is supposed to have solicited. He was spreading his net rather wide, was he not?”
“Oddly enough,” said Purbright, “I don’t think that Loughbury, for all his shrewdness, ever did find out who it was that actually killed Mrs Croll. But all he needed for purposes of extortion was the short-list of suspects represented by those who attended that extraordinary supper party. All felt compromised, and none dare shop another for fear of general exposure. To what extent they had actively conspired to do away with the woman, I doubt if we shall ever know. The person we propose to charge is most unlikely to help us there.”
Mr Chubb pursed his lips and contemplated the cuff of the white linen jacket he had donned in token of hot weather devotion to duty.
“Bad business, Mr Purbright, whichever way you look at it.”
The inspector, who was perfectly well aware that Mr Chubb’s and his own “way of looking at it” sprang from very different considerations, chose to be perverse.
“Oh, a beastly business, sir, I agree. I don’t remember a more impressive mixture of hypocrisy and brutishness.”
There was a distinct pause.
“Nor,” added the inspector, “a victim for whom I felt more sympathy.”
When the chief constable spoke again, it was after he had taken a seat at his desk and spread before him a number of photographs.
“You’ll have to help interpret these for me, Mr Purbright, if you wouldn’t mind.”
The sitting down was abdication, after a fashion. Purbright resolved not to be too hard on him. He indicated two of the prints.
“This shows the font cover in its normal position; in this one, it has been hauled up on its cable until the rim is at head level, more or less. Once the free end of the cable is secured there, at the pillar—you see, sir?—you have in effect a long pendulum, with the font cover as its extremely heavy bob.”
“Weighing what, would you say?”
“Between two and three hundredweight, I understand, sir.”
The chief constable turned his attention to a photograph showing much enlarged areas of the cover.
Purbright pointed out some slight irregularities of grain at the rim.
“That is where impact split away the piece that Loughbury found on the body. You can see where the place has been repaired afterwards, but with a very soft, light wood— probably modelling wood. It would pass notice in the ordinary way.”
The fourth print had been marked with an arrow in white paint. It pointed to a little black circle.
“That is a hole drilled in the opposite side of the font cover,” Purbright explained. “A hook would have been screwed in there and a line attached, something relatively fine but strong enough to take the strain of holding that cover twenty or thirty feet out of perpendicular.
“The line would first have been passed through the hole made for it in the lancet window, and its other end made fast in some room on the first floor of Church House. All one had to do then was to wind the line in—by an improvised winch of some kind—and the cover would be drawn over, close to the wall.”
“Ready to swing back.” The chief constable demonstrated with a pencil held loosely at its end.
“Yes, sir.”
Mr Chubb nodded. “Almost like a pendulum, in fact.”
Purbright said nothing.
The chief constable turned his attention to a marked plan of the church floor.
“I doubt if we need puzzle very long over this chap.” He pointed to a sketch of the wrought-iron stand with its lighted candle and notice. “It quite obviously was intended to lure the victim into the exact, er...”
“Trajectory?”
“As you say—trajectory. There is no chance, I suppose, of finding any trace of that notice so late in the day?”
“No, sir. I think we may assume that it was removed and destroyed before morning during the general arrangements to suggest suicide. The font cover would have been replaced, of course, and perhaps the position of the body adjusted. At the same time, the handbag would have to be taken up to the tower gallery.”