Mrs Sayers pouted and drew in a quick breath of denial.
"Girl friends?"
Mrs Sayers considered. "There is a young lady who calls sometimes. I"d always supposed she belonged to the other one-Mr Hopjoy, you know; I think he"s more that sort. But I wouldn"t swear to it. Gordon"s losing his mother might have made a difference."
"Was Mr Periam on good terms with Mr Hopjoy? You"ve never heard them fall out with each other?"
"No, I haven"t. Gordon has a sunny nature, though; I"m sure he"d get on with anyone. I"d call him staunch, too. Mind, between ourselves, the lodger"s a bit of a fly-by-night. It says a lot for Gordon that he"s let him stay on. I think it"s because he feels his mother would have expected him to."
"Mrs Periam thought well of Mr Hopjoy, then?"
Mrs Sayers gave the sort of smile with which one forgives the follies of the dead. "She saw only the good in everyone."
Trevor, now tramping rhythmically on its perch, cackled derisively. Mrs Sayers held up a finger, inviting Purbright"s attention to the oracle. "Get me serviette, mother; get me serviette, mother," she translated. "Well, I never," said the inspector.
After an interval he deemed long enough to signify admiration, Purbright resumed his questioning.
"Do you happen to know who owns the car that"s garaged next door?"
"Oh, yes; that"s Mr Hopjoy"s. Is it there now?"
"Not at the moment. When did you last see it, Mrs Sayers?"
"About a week ago, I should think. I can"t say just..." She frowned. "It"s a biggish car. Beige. And ever so quiet." She opened her eyes to see if the inspector would accept this information as a subst.i.tute for what he had wanted to know.
"But you can"t remember-to a day or so, even-when you saw it last. And who was driving it."
She shook her head. "I"m not awfully observant of cars. And of course they both drive it a good deal; I suppose Mr Hopjoy lends it when he doesn"t want it for his work."
"I see. Now, Mrs Sayers, I"m going to ask you to think back very carefully to last Thursday just one week ago today. Does anything happen on Thursdays that might fix one in your mind?"
"Well, there"s the laundry...and the Brains Trust on television..." She paused, seemingly unable to peer past so notable a peak, then suddenly patted her knee. "Thursday-yes, I remember last Thursday; of course I do. It was Thursday that Arnold arrived. My second brother. He called on his way down from Hull."
"Fine. Now try going over in your mind what happened that day-from one thing to the next, you know-and see if anything links up with next door. Never mind whether it seems important or not. Start right from getting up in the morning."
Mrs Sayers, benignly co-operative, folded her hands and launched into a meticulous description of a day in the life of a Flaxborough widow. She spoke for nearly twenty minutes. Purbright learned, among many, many other things, three facts of possible relevance to his inquiry. On opening the door to take in the milk, Mrs Sayers had noticed Gordon Periam bolting back his gates. Some sixteen hours later, just before making up her brother"s bed, she had looked down from the spare bedroom window to see Mr Hopjoy"s car draw up. Gordon Periam-she was almost sure it was Gordon-got out and began unlocking the garage door. Finally, Mrs Sayers recalled a little vaguely having been awakened by the shutting of a door-that of the garage, she thought-and hearing a car with a quiet engine drive away. She did not know at what time this happened, but she had the impression that it was two or three o"clock on the Friday morning.
Purbright felt that Mrs Sayers"s mind, such as it was, had been thoroughly worked out. But he made a last few random borings.
"Have you at any time recently seen a big, heavy package being carried into Mr Periam"s?"
She had not.
"Since last Thursday, do you happen to have heard a noise like gla.s.s breaking? Next door, I mean."
"There hasn"t been a sound from there all this past week, inspector. Not a sound." She stared at him, for the first time looking afraid. "Well, they"ve been away, haven"t they?"
"It seems they have, yes." Purbright regarded absently a complicated bronze affair on the mantelpiece. It depicted an anxious nude heaving at the reins of a horse that had been maddened apparently by the grafting of a gilt clock to its belly. "That"s nearly ten minutes fast," explained Mrs Sayers. Purbright, fearful of inviting a history of the bronze, looked quickly away.
He said: "The bathroom next door...it"s on the farther side of the house, I notice. Would any of the neighbours have a view of its window?"
"Well, only from the back, I should say. The houses in Pawson"s Lane; that"s where the ladies I told you about live. Mrs Cork and her daughter."
"Would you say that they are inclined to be..." he paused, glancing at his palm..."interested in people around here?"
"Miriam"s drattedly nosey, if that"s what you mean."
"To the extent of writing anonymous letters?" Purbright saw a grin of gratification pouch Mrs Sayers"s pink face. "Ah," she said, "you"ve had one of those, have you?" She puffed out her lips and accompanied speech with a slight shaking of her head: "Yes, oh well, I knew ages ago that she"d got to the scribbling stage." She lowered her voice and added mysteriously: "The Change, you know."
"She isn"t a bit off the beam, is she?"
"Goodness me, no! Perfectly level-headed. And no harm in her, really. I think she just hasn"t enough to do. She never had." Again the voice plunged confidentially. "Properly speaking and if all were told, inspector, the mother is Miss Cork. Miriam"s illegit."
Mrs Sayers, satisfied as a blood donor, leaned slowly back in her chair. "I"m dying to know what Miriam wrote to you about. Do tell me."
The inspector smiled apologetically. "We did receive a letter, Mrs Sayers. I think there"s no harm in your knowing that. It alleged some sort of a disturbance at number fourteen. The bathroom was mentioned. But I don"t know that we can a.s.sume who wrote it."
"We can put two and two together, though, can"t we?"
"Ah, Mrs Sayers, if all the twos put together in this town had proved fertile we should be overrun with fours. I"m afraid I have been keeping you from your lunch." He moved the ashtray with which Mrs Sayers had supplied him, a china representation of a Dutch clog, from his chair arm to the coffee table, and stood up. "There"s just one thing..."
Mrs Sayers looked round for Trevor"s cage cover. "Yes?"
"I was wondering if you happened to know where we might pick up a photograph of Mr Periam. There are one or two portraits next door, but I don"t suppose he"s a choirboy any longer."
Mrs Sayers held up a promissory finger, pondered a moment, and trotted out of the room.
Trevor, still untented, immediately became hysterical. It nodded violently, issuing a series of high frequency squawks that produced in Purbright the sensation of piano wires being jerkily reeled in through his ears. He tried to imitate Mrs Sayers"s method of soothing communion but this merely agitated the bird more. He made faces at it, growled, miaowed, muttered words of the kind that are pa.s.sed to magistrates on slips of paper. Trevor"s slate pencil monody persisted. In a final attempt, Purbright drew desperately on his cigarette and filled the cage with smoke. He was rewarded immediately. The bird swayed a little, raised one claw, then hunched into immobility and utter silence.
Purbright was standing by the window with his back to the fumigated budgerigar when Mrs Sayers bustled in with a photograph.
"Here we are: this was taken at last year"s Operatic. The Student Prince. That"s Gordon-the one holding up the beer mug thing in the second row."
Purbright examined the picture. It showed upwards of thirty members of the Flaxborough Amateur Operatic Society transfixed in self-conscious att.i.tudes of Ruritanian abandon. There was a wealth of false mustachios, arms akimbo, flourished steins, peasant blouses ("I helped with the costumes," proclaimed Mrs Sayers) and feet on chairs. A drinking song was clearly in progress. In the foreground was a pair whom Purbright a.s.sumed to be the princ.i.p.als of the show. Disguised as a prince disguised as a student, forty-eight-year-old Jack Bottomley, bachelor proprietor of the Freemasons" Arms, accompanied his singing with a stiff, resolute gesture; he looked like a learner driver about to turn left. His other hand grasped the waist of the Society"s perennial soprano lead, Miss Hilda Cannon, a stick-like female whose desperate grin of simulated coquetry was belied by the angle at which she leaned away from the draught of Mr Bottomley"s romantic protestations...
"No, no; that one"s Gordon." Mrs Sayers"s plump little finger redirected Purbright"s attention to the face in the second row.
It was an unexceptional face that he could not recall having seen before, although, as Periam was a shopkeeper in a fairly busy part of the town, it was more than likely that he had done so. The features were very smooth, like those of an elderly baby, and their sulky solemnity was emphasized by a big, round, fleshy chin. The posture of gaiety prescribed for the occasion had been adopted by Mr Periam with all the insouciance of a man with suspected rib fractures submitting to X-ray examination.
"He doesn"t look very happy," Purbright ventured.
"A terribly conscientious boy," Mrs Sayers explained. "Actually he has a lovely sense of fun, but in a quiet way. He"s not one for roystering about. I think it"s only loyalty, really, that"s kept him in things like this. He"s still a regular Gang Show man too, you know."
"Does Mr Hopjoy go in for theatricals?"
Mrs Sayers puffed contemptuously. "Not on the stage, he doesn"t. But he"s an actor, all right, take it from me."
"I"d rather like his picture as well."
"I don"t know where you"ll get one. By all accounts he flits around too much to be photographed. Of course, some woman might help you there. Or even," she added darkly, "the police."
Purbright, pocketing the photograph of the Operatic Society, searched her face for evidence either of amnesia or an unexpected sense of humour.
"No, honestly," Mrs Sayers soberly persisted, "it wouldn"t surprise me one little bit."
Chapter Four.
Towards conference with the Chief Constable of Flaxborough and one selected senior officer of his force smoothly sped the man known as Ross, He gazed with languid appreciation through the windscreen of the Bentley-an ordinary Bentley save that its radiator cowl was of gunmetal and of slightly more a.s.sertive radius than a standard model"s-at the June countryside. He already had booked rooms for his companion and himself at the Royal Oak, Flaxborough, from a public call box on the road from London, using the names Smith-his own favourite among disarmingly improbable hotel aliases-and Pargetter.
Pargetter-to-be did not seem to be enjoying the drive as much as Ross. As the long car swung up from the last declivity in the wooded, river-watered lowlands below Flaxborough Ridge and gained the straight highway leading to the town, he shifted irritably in his seat and swivelled his head in an effort to read gra.s.s-collared milestones.
Ross did not care for the back view of his companion"s head; the gleam of baldness bobbed distractingly in the left corner of his vision and he had begun to receive the curious impression that it emanated from a beard-ringed featureless face.
"Harry," he said sharply, "what on earth are you looking for?"
The white patch disappeared and a sallow oval one took its place. "I"ve been trying to see how much farther we have to go. I think there was a three on that last milestone."
Henry Pumphrey spoke rapidly but with a careful emphasis that involved his facial muscles in a good deal of exercise. At the end of each sentence he lightly flicked his tongue across his upper lip. He had a residual North Country accent.
"Three miles will be about it," Ross agreed. He had glanced at the dashboard and received from it, apparently, information no less precise than Pumphrey"s. Now, his hands laid delicately upon the wheel as upon an open missal, he watched the gradual recession of trees and hedges from the road ahead and their replacement by houses, a filling station, some shops. Cyclists-Flaxborough cyclists who seem grafted to their machines to form unities as formidable and unpredictable as centaurs-swooped out of side roads. Green double-decked buses which had been ticking over in ambush loomed suddenly at intersections. With the serenity of extreme old age, three inmates of an almshouse crossed and re-crossed the carriageway, gently smiled resignation to survival for another twenty-four hours, and filed back into their refuge. A pair of dogs, panting and oblivious, coupled on the road"s crown and performed a six-legged waltz around a keep-left bollard. Children darted between cars and laid down objects which they then watched excitedly from the pavement.
All these hazards were negotiated with smooth synchronization by the Bentley, presided over by Ross. He remained calm, indulgent, interested.
Just short of a large, pale blue sign mounted on posts, Ross drew the car to a halt. At his request Pumphrey wound down the window on his side and Ross leaned across him, calling to the squat, sceptical looking man who lounged against one of the sign"s supports.
"I say, I wonder if you could tell me in which part of the town I can find the police headquarters."
The man silently regarded the casual balance of the traveller"s forward-thrust shoulder, its suiting of hand-blended Newbiggin wool and linen dyed to the colour of Chartres Cathedral, the musicianly hands that sprang so surprisingly from wrists as powerful as a road driller"s. He shifted his glance to Ross"s face; a patient face, not very handsome, the face of a questioner and connoisseur, a trader-in the last resort-of pain.
When the man"s slow scrutiny reached Ross"s eyes he saw they were lifted to absorb the message of the tall, clean lettering above them. FLAXBOROUGH WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS.
The man politely awaited the descent of Ross"s gaze before he carefully cleared his throat and spoke.
"p.i.s.s off," he said.
The Chief Constable of Flaxborough, Mr Harcourt Chubb, received his London visitors with a degree of affability that he calculated would fall just short of making them feel ent.i.tled to put him to any trouble. He introduced Purbright, who found Ross"s handshake a shade prolonged and somewhat exploratory, and Pumphrey"s over-firm, like that of a man for ever determined to make his first friend.
All but Mr Chubb sat down. He stepped back and relaxed his tall, lean body against the mantelpiece, with one arm extended along it.
Ross glanced at him, then at Purbright.
"I a.s.sume, inspector, that Mr Chubb has explained the nature of our interest in this little affair of yours at...Flaxborough." The small hesitation was eloquent of the orientation difficulties of the much travelled. Perhaps the day before it had been Istambul or Adelaide that needed to be slotted into some similar interview.
Purbright inclined his head. "I do understand that one of these missing people, a man called Hopjoy, happens to be..."
"...One of our fellows, yes." Ross completed the identification with brisk despatch, then looked intently at Purbright. "Of course, you see how we might be placed?"
"Not precisely, sir."
Pumphrey"s cheek twitched with disapproval of the provincial policeman"s obtuseness. "It simply means that, security-wise..." He stopped and turned his eyes, like those of an El Greco Christ, upon Ross.
Ross smiled patiently. "Thimble Bay. Let"s start from there, shall we? I don"t have to tell you about the Thimble Bay Establishment. Couldn"t, anyway-not above Sensitivity Three, and you wouldn"t be much wiser if I did. But you"ll understand the place is very much our pigeon. Hence Hopjoy. Among others, naturally."
"That much I had gathered," Purbright said. "Of course, Thimble Bay is not usually considered to be in this locality, sir."
"Really?" Ross sounded surprised. He glanced across at the Chief Constable, as a misled traveller might appeal direct to the king of the country whose inhabitants have proved wayward. "How far, Mr Chubb, would you say Thimble Bay is from here?"
The Chief Constable diffidently waved one of his fine flexible, hands. "I really can"t tell you. Mr Purbright will know."
"Twenty-seven miles, sir."
A little puff of disparagement issued from Pumphrey"s black, up-tilted nostrils. "Well, that may seem a long way to you, inspector, but, good heavens, globe-wise..."
"My colleague," Ross broke in, "doesn"t mean to sound like an astronomer. We do appreciate that you have quite enough on your plate without worrying about what goes on a couple of counties away. It"s just that we have to take rather long views in our job." He gave a sudden placatory grin and drew a cigarette case from an inner pocket. "Tell me, do you find time to play cricket, inspector?"
"No, sir," replied Purbright, no less pleasantly.
For a fraction of a second the pressure of Ross"s thumb on the catch of the cigarette case was arrested. Then he completed the movement and offered a cigarette first to Mr Chubb, who pursed his lips in refusal, and then to Purbright. Pumphrey seemed not to qualify.
"The reason I ask," Ross went on, "is this. Picture Thimble Bay as the wicket. Security is simply a matter of placing fielders. You know, slips, cover-point, silly mid-off, square check..."
"I don"t play lacrosse either, sir," murmured Purbright.
"Square check," repeated Ross. "Wrong game. Yes, you"re perfectly right. Full marks." He leaned back in his chair, crossing his legs. "But you"ve caught on, haven"t you, to what I mean about fielding. Hopjoy-we"ll call him that-was our Flaxborough long-stop, so to speak."
Purbright digested the metaphor, with which Ross was looking very satisfied. "His job, then, was to intercept such information as happened to leak in this direction." He turned to the Chief Constable. "I had no idea we were on a spying route; had you, sir?"
"Certainly not," said Mr Chubb. "This isn"t..."-he sought a sufficiently preposterous location-"Algiers or...or Dublin."
Ross carefully tapped the ash from his cigarette. "You know Dublin, Mr Chubb?" he inquired of the ashtray.
"I can"t say that I do. Why?"
"The name seemed to occur to you."
"Oh, that. Well. Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt and everything...a.s.sociation of ideas, I suppose." To his bewilderment Mr Chubb found himself thinking defensively. He closed his mouth firmly and glanced up at the office clock.
Pumphrey seemed about to slip in a supplementary question but Ross, suddenly benign, reached over and took from his lap the briefcase he had been nursing. "This," he explained to Purbright, "is pretty sensitive stuff. You"ll appreciate that I can"t let you right into the picture, but these reports from Hopjoy do suggest that he might have been on to something."
He took from his pocket a number of coins and selected what appeared to be an ordinary florin. "Special knurling," he observed, indicating the coin"s rim. Then he slipped it into a slot in the otherwise featureless lock of the case and turned it carefully. Purbright guessed that the fine-toothed rim was engaging a tiny gear within the lock. After a second or two there was a click and the flap of the case hung open.