The Vicar of Mumblesby—or so Purbright assumed him to be, for he was a recent incumbent—looked surprisingly athletic as he made his slow stride in skirt and cassock. He intoned the words of the service loudly and musically, and looked directly upward every now and again as if to make sure that God was paying attention.
Purbright let the coffin slide past his line of sight and awaited, not without a degree of vulgar curiosity, a first view of Richard Loughbury’s widow.
He was disappointed.
The coffin was followed by three mourners only, all men.
They wore short, firm-shouldered black overcoats and from the right hand of each hung a black, new-looking hat. The hats looked disproportionately big.
One man, older than the others, walked slightly in the lead. His face wore a sternness that Purbright fancied expressive of annoyance rather than grief. A brother of the dead man? Purbright believed he had heard mention of one. The others, perhaps, were his sons, nephews of “Rich Dick”. The inspector looked for family resemblance. The younger men, though, kept their gaze resolutely on their own slow-pacing feet.
Where, then, was the late solicitor’s consort: the wife, common-law or otherwise, of his bosom?
Purbright was not alone in being exercised by this question. Outside the church, a worried undertaker was interrogating the driver of the hearse.
“But, Christ, you must have seen her. She was at the house.”
“Not when I came away, she wasn’t.”
Mr Bradlaw, pop-eyed with agitation, thrust stubby fingers through imaginary hair. “I’ve known some cockups in my time, but we’ve never mislaid a bloody widow before.”
“P’raps she went a different way round. P’raps she’s in the church now.”
Bradlaw regarded the driver with a mixture of pity and ferocity and scuttled back into the porch, where he sat and attempted to compose himself with the aid of a slug of gin, conjured from the tail of his coat. He was still hunched disconsolately on the stone bench when he heard footsteps hastening across gravel and some distressful deep breathing. In the doorway appeared a short, plump woman, bespectacled and red-faced, grey hair straggling from beneath a Sunday-best hat. She seized Bradlaw’s arm and brought her face close. Bradlaw tried to conceal his recent indulgence by breathing sideways out of the corner of his mouth, then saw that she was too upset to notice.
“You’ll never,” she gasped, “guess what they’ve done, Mr Bradlaw. Never.” She straightened up and made sure her hat was still on. Then she glared at the door beyond which the intoning of the vicar could be heard. “You’ll have to tell them to stop. If you don’t, I shall.”
Bradlaw, getting to his feet, saw her reach for the latch. He hastened to her side.
“You can’t just burst in there, Mrs Claypole. The service has started.”
“It’s disgraceful!” she said. “Him not in the ground yet, and them doing that to her in her own house.”
Bradlaw put his hands on her shoulders and tried to calm and reroute her at the same time. “If only you’ll tell me what’s happened,” he pleaded.
“Happened!” repeated Mrs Claypole, explosive with indignation. “You’d better ask them in there what’s happened!”
The woman was immovable. Worse, Bradlaw realized that she had managed to unlatch the door and wedge it partly open with her hip. He got one eye to the aperture and peered towards the congregation. There were pale blurs in the gloom. Turned, what’s-going-on faces. Oh, God, and here was one of them coming out...
Inspector Purbright, whose unwise election to sit further from the front than anyone else made him the clearest possible candidate for dealing with trouble at the back, shut the door quietly but firmly behind him and besought the lady to tell him her troubles.
“It’s my Zoe,” declared Mrs Claypole. “They’ve locked her up, those devils have. In her own house.”
Mr Bradlaw remarked tetchily that she might have said so before. “Mrs Claypole,” he explained to Purbright, “is the mother of the lady who looked after Mr Loughbury.” His tone lowered a fraction. “I was rather expecting her—this lady’s daughter, I mean—to be in the church. That was the arrangement.”
Mrs Claypole took a great gulp of air. “Expecting her to be in church!” She turned to Purbright and regarded him narrowly. “You’re a policeman, aren’t you?”
“I am, yes.”
She pointed at the door. “That ought to be stopped at once.”
For a moment, Purbright appeared to be giving the proposal serious consideration. Bradlaw gaped and lost some colour; the vision of a squad of constables commandeering one of his “occasions” (as he called them) had been a recurrent waking nightmare ever since the Carobleat cremation scandal in the fifties. 2
2 related in Coffin Scarcely Used
But the inspector counselled instead that the most sensible, and doubtless the kindest, course would be to secure the release of the detainee.
After a token show of further truculence, Mrs Claypole allowed him to lead her to the churchyard gate and along the path to the Manor House.
Mr Bradlaw glanced aloft in pious commiseration, and took another quick swig of gin.
Purbright and Mrs Claypole made entry to the Manor House through a conservatory at the side, where Mrs Claypole disinterred a key from a pot of compost. They passed through a big double kitchen and along a cork-tiled corridor hung with framed illustrations from ancient cookery books.
On reaching the hall, Mrs Claypole made at once for the stairs. Purbright glanced about him as he followed. He saw lots of white doors with sharply defined panelling. The ceiling was set about with mouldings meticulously restored. Everywhere, whites and ivories: they invested the central well with a cool pearl-like glow.
“All right, love!” bellowed Mrs Claypole, halfway up the staircase. “We’re coming!”
At the top, she led Purbright to a passageway off the main corridor and on a slightly lower level. She indicated a door, then called out again at undiminished volume, “Are you there, love?”
The cry produced an echoing resonance. Bathroom, thought Purbright. A woman’s voice within said something he didn’t catch.
“Right then!” Mrs Claypole straightened up and stepped to the left of the door. She looked at Purbright with an expression of confidence and encouragement. He realized that he stood to be favoured with the role of shoulder-charging rescuer.
“I think,” he suggested, “that a key would be best, if we can find one.”
Mrs Claypole bent to the door and yelled: “Is there a key, duckie?”
This time the reply was audible. “Oh, mum, of course there’s a bloody key. How would I be locked in if there wasn’t?”
“I shall look around, if I may,” Purbright said. “Keys often are interchangeable.”