Mr Chubb silently contemplated the assorted fruits of his officers’ labours. With his pencil point, he lifted and let fall one of the transparent envelopes assembled neatly on the desk. It contained the earring that had fallen into the font basin. In another envelope was the piece of wood found by Sergeant Love’s recovery team, now itemized as “fragment of font cover (ref. print C)”. A third packet was labelled “glass fragments from site below lancet window 2, south aisle” and into a fourth had been coiled a few inches of top-weight Piskalon fishing line discovered after long and painstaking search in some undergrowth between St Dennis’s and Church House.
“I suppose,” said Mr Chubb, at last, “that hopes of our having been mistaken are by now extremely thin.”
The inspector raised his brows in quizzical helpfulness.
“Hopes entertained by whom, sir?”
The chief constable sighed. “I should be the last—as you well know, Mr Purbright—to discourage tenacious pursuit and prosecution of a criminal, whatever his social standing.”
Purbright said he had never doubted it.
“That said,” went on Mr Chubb, “there are features of this present case which I find unfortunate, even if they do not necessarily come under the head of extenuating circumstances. For one thing, it has to be said that the people concerned were terribly badly served by their solicitor. I really cannot imagine what the Law Society were doing to allow him to practise. And then there is the question of the poor woman’s own moral culpability. Wouldn’t you say so?”
“I’m sorry, sir; I don’t quite understand.”
Mr Chubb consulted his finger ends. “Not exactly provocation, perhaps, but what about contributory negligence?” He looked up. “In quite high degree, I should have thought.”
The inspector sat on, impassively.
“That scream,” said the chief constable, giving no sign of having changed the subject, “was something Loughbury did not explain.”
“No, sir, but by saying he thought it came from inside the house he implied that it was part of the deception—he suggested, if you remember, that someone was impersonating Mrs Croll at the time.”
“Do you believe that there was deception?”
Purbright shook his head. “There was no need. I think the reason for requiring Loughbury to be there was twofold: to compromise him, and to make him witness to a sort of joint alibi—as he himself guessed. What no one could foresee was his taking a notion to go into the church. From that moment, he held an even better instrument of blackmail than the pretended divorce threat.”
The chief constable rose from his desk and walked slowly to his habitual position beside the fireplace. He looked thoughtful.
“That scream...”
“Yes, sir?”
“You think it was genuine, do you, and not some kind of ruse?”
“I am convinced that it was a real noise.”
Mr Chubb looked pleased to hear it.
“In that case, Mr Purbright, I hate to have to tell you that your theory concerning the woman’s death cannot be sustained. Defence counsel would make very short work of it, I’m afraid.”
Purbright appeared concerned. He asked the chief constable to elaborate.
Mr Chubb regarded first the ceiling, then the view through the window.
“You surprise me, Mr Purbright,” he said. “I am no detective, but I should have thought the objection was obvious straight away. The woman was struck on the back of the head. So she must have been facing in the opposite direction when this font cover thing swung down. She could not have seen it. People do not scream when there is nothing to scream at.”
“People don’t, sir, no.” Purbright began to sort into order the papers and exhibits on the desk. “But I did not ascribe the noise Loughbury heard to a person—certainly not to Mrs Croll.”
“All right. Who did scream, then?”
“That word”—the inspector checked that the series of photographs was complete—“was used by Loughbury. He had just opened the window. Sounds carry well on the night air, particularly high-pitched sounds. Soon afterwards, he came across a corpse. He associated one with the other—the body and the noise. Had Loughbury been a detective and not a lawyer, perhaps he would not have made the elementary error of asking who screamed, instead of what.”
Mr Chubb was paying heavily for a moment of delusively relished triumph. He shook his head, crossly.
“You are not making yourself very clear,” he said. “And it is rather late. Very well, then: what screamed, if that is how you prefer the question to be framed.”
Purbright smiled gently.
“The reel, sir. The improvised winch. I do not myself have any enthusiasm for fishing, but even I have heard talk of a reel ‘screaming’ when the line runs out unchecked.”
There was a long pause.
“Yes,” said the chief constable. A moment later, rather quietly: “Yes—yes it does.”
Purbright continued to collect together the documents and prints and to check them against a list on the cover of their folder. He spoke without taking his eyes from the task.
“The noise Loughbury heard came very shortly after his host had slipped from one room to another. I have no doubt that he went to watch for the opportune moment for releasing the catch on the reel. It would not necessarily be fixed to a rod; it could have been clamped or screwed to anything stable—the window sill, for instance.”
“At what time,” asked the chief constable, gloomily, “do you propose making the arrest?”
“That rather depends on what I hope to learn shortly from Sergeant Love. He’s gone over to Mumblesby to make tactful reconnaissance.”
“Reconnaissance?”
“They do entertain quite a lot, I understand, sir. One would wish to avoid a clash of engagements, so to speak.”
The inspector closed his folder. “I have arranged for either Mrs Framlington or Mr Snell to hear the remand application at whatever time the special court can be convened tomorrow.”
“The earlier the better,” said Mr Chubb, with what remained of his day’s store of decisiveness. “Remand centres are as difficult as hotels these days.”
“The prisoner,” suggested Purbright, “could stay here in our cells overnight, sir.”
For a moment, the chief constable seemed to be having difficulty with his hearing. Then, quite snappily, he said: “Out of the question.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but we might have no choice in the matter.”
There was a knock on the door.
The chief constable glanced with indifference at the door and again addressed Purbright. “It would be neither seemly nor...”