"Well..." Mr Blossom spread his hands. "Oh, by the way..." He unlocked and opened the top drawer of his desk and handed Purbright a heavy cigarette lighter. "Found it on the scene of the crime. None of my chaps had lost it."
Purbright turned the lighter over in his hand. It looked expensively durable and efficient but bore neither decoration nor brand name. "Might be helpful. Thanks." He slipped the lighter into his pocket and pencilled a note of receipt.
"By the way, I notice you"ve done work on a car belonging to a man called Hopjoy, of Beatrice Avenue. Does he always bring it in himself?"
"The Armstrong, you mean. No, not always. A friend of his drives as well. The servicing"s not done in his name, though."
"What"s the friend called?"
Mr Blossom wrinkled his helpful nose. "Perry, I think...no, Periam. He keeps a cigarette shop."
But doesn"t smoke, Purbright added to himself. "All right, Mr Blossom. We"ll let you know if your magnum turns up."
Not to be outdone in jocularity, Mr Blossom sang out in rasping baritone: "And if one green bottle should accidentally fall..." and wrung Purbright"s hand like an old friend.
Back at police headquarters, the inspector found Ross and Pumphrey awaiting him. The Chief Constable, faced with a bewildering variety of requests for information about a one-legged snooker player, a barber, a farmer, and a Scandinavian pig slaughterer, had gravely a.s.sured his questioners that "Mr Purbright handles all that sort of thing" and gone home to do some, gardening.
Purbright listened attentively until his visitors, judging him to have been put squarely in the picture, invited him to deliver reciprocal revelation.
He rose. "I think, gentlemen, that the best thing will be to call in a couple of our local experts."
Pumphrey looked startled. "I don"t know about that, inspector. You realize all this is top secret..." He glanced at Ross.
Purbright leaned against the door frame. He sighed. "I don"t pretend to be an encyclopaedia, you know. Some of my men have a much wider range; they might save you a lot of time."
"That"s all right, Purbright," Ross said. "I"m sure you can question your chaps in a way that won"t set any rabbits away."
When the inspector re-entered the room five minutes later, he was accompanied by Sergeant Love, looking as pink and innocent as if Purbright had just recruited him from a Dresden pastoral, and by a genial mountain whom he introduced as Sergeant Malley, the coroner"s officer. The inspector arranged chairs so that while the two sergeants and the men from London faced each other, symmetry suggestive of opposing quiz teams was avoided. Then he sat down behind his desk, lit a cigarette, and leaned back.
"George Tozer... Now, then, let"s hear what you know about Mr Tozer." He blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling.
Love and Malley glanced uncertainly at each other in mutual suspicion of having been drawn into some absurd game.
"But...but you know old George, inspector. The barber. Down in..." Malley scowled and snapped his fingers.
"Spindle Lane," supplied Love.
"That"s it-Spindle Lane. The Rubber King."
"You know George, sir," insisted Love, looking at Purbright with concern.
"Of course I know him. But these gentlemen don"t. And it"s for their benefit I"m asking these things, not mine."
"Oh, I see." Malley turned his big friendly face to Pumphrey. "He"s a rum old sod, is George. Ugly as vomit. But he"d help anyone, wouldn"t he, Sid?"
Love grunted confirmation.
"They reckon it was George who fixed up Lady Beryl with that third husband of hers..."
"Fourth," corrected Love.
"Fourth, was it? Never mind. That book salesman with one ear, I mean. Everyone reckoned Lady Beryl had had it for good when her third chucked in. She"d started drinking hair restorer by then. That"s how she came to know George, I suppose..."
Pumphrey, who had been nodding and making impatient noises in his throat, thrust in a question. "What are Tozer"s political affiliations?"
Malley"s eyes widened. He looked round at Love, who did his best to be helpful at such short notice. "Lady Beryl"s Conservative," he said.
Malley regarded Pumphrey once more. "That"s right, she is. Although they don"t risk letting her open fetes any more, of course. Mind you, I"m not saying George Tozer"s a sn.o.b-you"re Labour, perhaps, are you, sir?-well, the Labour people have done some good in their way. That"s neither here nor there, though; I"m sure George wouldn"t let your politics stop him doing you a good turn if he can..."
"He"s a bit of a flanneller, mind," Love saw fit to warn Ross.
"Oh, aye," agreed the coroner"s officer. "Reminds you of the barber"s cat, doesn"t he, Sid? All wind and .,." He checked himself at the sight of Pumphrey"s frown of exasperation. "Still, I"ll say this for him-there"s many a family in this town would be too big to be fed if it hadn"t been for George"s eightpenny reliables."
Ross shifted a little in his chair. "Perhaps we"re not quite on the right tack, sergeant. Can you tell us anything about this man"s a.s.sociates?"
There was a short silence while Malley and Love looked at each other and then at Purbright. The inspector, however, was unhelpfully preoccupied with the tip of his cigarette.
Love scratched his head. "I"ve an idea that he"s in a team of bellringers..."
"They reckon he"s quite religious," added Malley, cautiously. "On the side, like..."
"But I don"t think he"s what you might call a.s.sociated with anybody specially," wound up Love. "I mean, why should he be?"
The hint of defiance in his voice earned a sharp stare from Pumphrey. "The man who seems to have no a.s.sociations, sergeant, is generally one who has taken good care to conceal them."
Ross beamed a take-no-notice smile at Love. "So much for Mr Tozer, I think. Now then, what about...what"s his name. Purbright?-the hopalong character..."
"Crutchey Anderson."
Malley chuckled. He winked at Pumphrey. "You want to keep clear of that old villain; by G.o.d, you do. Don"t tell me he"s been asking you to teach him how to play snooker. Oh, Christ!"
Ross quickly intervened. "It was I who came across Anderson, sergeant, not Mr Pumphrey. I"d like to know who he is, that"s all."
"Bookie"s runner, that"s what he is. Used to be on the shrimping boats at Chalmsbury until he put one leg into the shrimp copper when he was drunk. It was cooked to the bone before they could pull him clear. But if he thinks he can touch you for a pint, he"ll give you a tale about sharks. It is sharks, isn"t it, Sid?"
"Mostly. Except when it"s frostbite at Archangel."
"Archangel," Ross repeated, half to himself. He looked across at the inspector. "But tell me, Purbright, surely bookmakers don"t employ runners any more. I presume Flaxborough has betting shops like everywhere else."
"Oh, yes. But we still consider them rather infra dig. They look to the working cla.s.ses like sub-offices of the National a.s.sistance Board. And the middle cla.s.ses seem to think they"re something to do with the Co-op."
"You mean street betting still goes on here?"
"I"m sure it does. After all, furtiveness confers a certain cachet; don"t you find that, Major Ross?"
"Anderson was once a sailor, you say." It was Pumphrey speaking now. Purbright noticed his habit of jerking his long, pointed head forward and from side to side, as if his thoughts had to be continually shaken in their box to prevent them sticking together. "That means he could have established contacts abroad, doesn"t it?"
Malley grinned indulgently. "Abroad? If you call sandbanks two miles off the estuary abroad, I suppose he could. That"s as far as the shrimpers ever go."
"To the best of your knowledge." By lightly stressing the "your", Pumphrey conjured the vision of a whole fleet of small boats slipping off to dark continental anchorages while Malley slept.
"What"s this fellow"s style of living?" Ross asked.
Love took his turn. "Squatter, I suppose you"d call him. One of those big Nissen huts on the old ack-ack site down Hunting"s Lane. He keeps a wife at each end of it. I"m told those two have never met. That seems a bit queer, though," He looked inquiringly at Malley.
"That"s just a tale," Malley said. "I saw the two of them pa.s.s in Woolworth"s the other day. They recognized each other, all right."
Purbright looked at his watch. There was, he felt, a limit to the time he ought to spare from his own relatively uninspired prosecution of the Hopjoy case. He stubbed out his cigarette. There were no more questions about Crutchey Anderson, apparently. "That," said Purbright, "brings us to Mr and Mrs Croll, out at Mumblesby. All right, sergeant."
The others looked at Malley. He stroked the back of his head, seeking suitable words in which Mrs Croll might be sketched without intemperance. He cleared his throat. "I should say young Bernadette"s had more ferret than I"ve had hot dinners."
Purbright translated. "It seems that she has something of a reputation for promiscuity." He looked at Ross over his arched fingers. "Do you find that to the point, Major Ross?"
It was Pumphrey who fielded the question. "Security-wise, moral turpitude is always to the point, inspector. The...the person in whom we are interested was following a sound principle when he put Mrs Croll under surveillance." He spoke aside to his companion, whose expression had stiffened a good deal: "This might be our best lead yet, you know."
Malley gave a short laugh at the thought which had just occurred to him. "Funny we should have been on about old Tozer a minute ago. The talk is that he used to send young blokes out to keep Bernadette company."
"Tozer did, you say?" Ross was suddenly attentive.
"Aye. He fancies himself in the matchmaking line, you know. They say he has a list of all the lonely wives in Flax. I don"t know about that, but old George is sharper than he looks; he soon finds from a customer whether he"s happily married or not and how much time he spends away from home. Mind you-" Malley rubbed his chin-"I reckon George"ll think twice before he sends another stand-in for Ben Croll."
Malley paused and patted out a crease in the front of his enormous uniform. He waited complacently.
"Why, what happened, Bill?" Purbright supplied, after an interval properly respectful to the coroner"s officer.
"Well, the last one d.a.m.n nearly became a client of mine. Ben turned up and caught him. He chucked him through the bedroom window like a fork-load of sugar beet. Sykes in the path lab. at the General told me they had to operate the same night. The bloke was lucky to pull through."
"What was his name?" Ross asked.
"I don"t know. No one could find out. They put Trevelyan on his case sheet but that wasn"t his name. Harton gave orders for the whole business to be kept quiet."
"Harton?"
"The surgeon, Mr Ross. Sykes heard Harton tell the ward sister that it was a very special case and that no information was to be given to anybody."
"Yes, but George Tozer would know, wouldn"t he?" Love put in. "Who the chap really was, I mean."
"No doubt he does. And keeping it to himself. If Ben thought George had had anything to do with it, he"d run a muck-loader through his guts."
"I might get something out of Mrs Croll," suggested Love, hopefully.
Purbright levelled a pencil at him. "You stay away from Mumblesby, Sid. Good G.o.d, they even go in pairs to read meters in that parish." He turned to Malley. "By the way, did you gather what the man"s injuries actually were?"
"No, they were hushed up, too. But Harton does abdominals. Practically nothing else."
Purbright raised his brows at Ross.
"Ra.s.smussen," Ross said.
"Ah, yes; Ra.s.smussen. Anyone know who Ra.s.smussen is?"
Love volunteered. "He"s a Dane. He used to have a farm of his own at Pollard Bridge until the Government took all that land over. I think he does odd jobs mostly nowadays. Slaughtering, for one. Some of the farmers still like to have a pig killed for their own use now and again, but not one in a hundred knows how to tackle it. So they send for Hicks here in Flaxborough-he keeps a butcher"s shop-or else Ra.s.smussen."
"There"d be nothing unusual in Croll wanting a pig slaughtered, I suppose?" said Ross.
"What, right now, you mean, sir?"
"Yes, now."
Love smirked. "It"s funny you should ask that. They did have one killed about a fortnight ago, but someone pinched half the carca.s.s from where it was hanging in the barn during the night. Croll rang us up about it. He was swearing blue murder."
"Who did that killing?"
"Hicks, I should think. I don"t know, though."
"So Croll might have sent for Ra.s.smussen since then-having lost a big part of the first animal."
"He might. If Hicks couldn"t come the second time."
Ross inclined his head. "Just one other thing, sergeant. You said the Government had taken over Ra.s.smussen"s farm. How did that come about?"
The question seemed to surprise Love a little. "Well, all the land round there was taken. Compulsory purchase, I suppose. It was for that big what d"you call it at Thimble Bay."
Chapter Thirteen.
The next day, a.s.siduous Sergeant Warlock, pert and primed, stuck his head round Purbright"s door and announced: "We"ve done the car."
He enumerated what suggestive finds there had been. A few fragments of straw lay on the floor of the boot-a capacious boot, Warlock agreed-and four or five bloodstains were in the same place. The straw was of a kind similar to wisps in the garage at Beatrice Avenue and in the wardrobe in the late Mrs Periam"s bedroom. It was safe to a.s.sume the trail to be that of the acid carboy.
The blood was less easily explained. The stains were of recent origin but decidedly not human. "And there you are, squire," concluded Warlock, with the air of an energetic retriever dropping a particularly unimpressive rabbit.
Purbright stared thoughtfully at the pile of Hopjoy"s belongings that still lay in a filing tray at the side of his desk. "Tell me, sergeant: this business of bloodstains... You can tell fairly easily whether they are human or animal, I take it."
"Oh, rather. And the various human groups are identifiable. But only as groups, mind; we don"t label individual chromosomes yet."
"Quite. But suppose blood structure is damaged badly-destroyed, in fact. What chance would your a.n.a.lysis have then?"
"None, obviously." Warlock"s tone implied that he considered the question pretty wet.
"Let me put it another way. Suppose some blood, flesh and bone were reduced right down to basic chemical const.i.tuents-carbon, water, calcium salts, and so on-is there any possible way of deciding what sort of an animal they belonged to?"