Broomsticks Over Flaxborough

“Solicitor from the D.P.P.” Brain’s tone was airy; he liked an opportunity of scattering initials about.

“Come to tie it all up, has he?” Harper asked.

“Suppose so.”

Love wandered off, but not out of the building. He hoped that he would be sent for, and perhaps consulted, by the man in that super Old Bailey get-up: the representative, no less, of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

After all, Love reflected, if it hadn’t been for his tapes, they’d probably be as far up the creek as ever in trying to decide between Bird and Cropper.

The summons came after only quarter of an hour.

Purbright introduced the man from the Director’s office as Mr Spratt-Cornforth.

Love’s hand was taken in a quick, cold grip and immediately released. Less brief was the stare of appraisal from grey eyes in a long, rather wooden face.

“We’ve heard about you, sergeant,” said the solicitor as he turned to resume his seat, “and that keen ear of yours. Splendid.”

Love blushed. He fingered his keen ear. Purbright motioned him to a chair.

Spratt-Cornforth picked up the topmost clip of typescript from the pile before him.

“The forensic stuff is pretty straightforward. We rather approve of the forensic stuff. Can you see them shaking us on that, Purbright?”

“I don’t think so, sir. The chain is clearly established. Hairs and varnish from the bull mask—found in car boot, hat box and altar mattress...”

“Strong belief in comfort in these parts,” interjected Spratt-Cornforth.

“It’s a fairly high-class neighbourhood, sir.”

“Ye-e-e-s...” (It sounded like “years”, long drawn out.) The solicitor was glancing rapidly through one of the statements. He slapped it down on the table.

“This Pentatuke woman,” he said. “She sounds to us a bit non compos. What do you think, inspector?”

“Odd, certainly. But only in this one particular.”

“The weird sister stuff.”

“Yes, sir. As with most of them, it’s a sort of hobby.”

“We are thinking of her in the box, Purbright. We are not altogether happy. The defence would make short work of a witness who persisted in calling the accused Master of Darkness.”

“I do see what you mean. Actually, I have concluded a bargain with Mrs Pentatuke, who is more shrewd than might appear from the preliminary statement. In return for our dropping the sacrilege charge and promising not to mention her sexual relationship with the defendant, she has undertaken to make a lucid deposition about that phone call of hers that brought Persimmon to the Sabbath. That, after all, is the nub of her evidence so far as you are concerned.”

Three emphatic nods from Spratt-Cornforth.

“Precisely. And may we say how refreshing it is to find a police officer with a sense of economy in this matter of presenting a case. More prosecutions are weakened by too much evidence than by too little.”

Purbright modestly inclined his head.

“Incidentally,” added Spratt-Cornforth, “we must hope that it will not occur to the defence to try and depict this woman as too jealous, and subsequently too vengeful, for her testimony to carry weight. It would not be difficult, you know.”

The inspector agreed.

“She certainly spared no effort to attract the maximum unwelcome publicity to the Coven and its Masters. We found a little notebook at her house. It had in it the telephone numbers of half the national newspapers. In addition, I suspect that she pestered the defendant himself a good deal by phone.”

“Yes, well, we shall keep clear of all that,” said the solicitor, selecting another sheaf of typescript. “It would not do for a crown witness to appear to have known the murderer’s identity all along.”

For a while he read in silence. Then, “Ah.” He flicked the corner of the statement with long, white fingers.

“Our old friend. The blank memory. But well enough to go into court for us? Has she recovered that far?”

“She will have done by the time the case comes on at the Crown Court, I think, sir.”

“Lucky girl, Miss Hillyard, wouldn’t you say?”

“To be still alive? Extremely.”

“The treatment of her shows ruthlessness. The jury won’t like that. Good point for us. Provided, of course, the defence don’t make a song and dance about her promiscuity. That always works the other way. Or is your society permissive in this county?”

“That is a question the press appeared to consider of enormous importance. Certainly, Harry Bird used to talk about it a good deal on the Bench when he was sentencing people.”

“Really?”

Purbright glanced to see if Love was showing signs of boredom, but he appeared to be lost in admiration of the London solicitor’s rapid digestion and arrangement of their paperwork.

Spratt-Cornforth leaned back in his chair, tapped a thumbnail ruminatively against his lower teeth, and closed his eyes.

“Let us see,” he said, “if we have a general picture of the case. Stop us at once if we go wrong.

“For some time past, a group of people living in Flaxborough and its surrounding area had indulged in what may loosely be termed Pagan religious practices under cover of a pretended interest in folklore. The central ceremony was a so-called Revel, held in the grounds of one of the members, witness Gertrude Gloss, four times a year on dates associated with the witches’ Sabbaths of the Middle Ages.

“The climax of the Revel, or Sabbath, which involved dancing, drinking and probably a deal of licentiousness, was the appearance of the President, or Master. He was a sort of Minotaur figure, believed by some at least of the members to be the devil, and his prerogative was to summon the female of his choice from among the company and to possess her in an altar ritual.

“Whereas it was important for the ordinary members of the Coven, as we must call it, to shield their respectability behind the spurious title of Folklore Society; it was of double—indeed, of three-fold—importance to preserve the anonymity of the Master.”

Spratt-Cornforth opened one eye with which to regard Purbright.

“All right so far?”

“Absolutely.”

The eye closed again.

“We now know the clever and extremely confusing device whereby this was achieved. The Master of the Coven was not one person at all, but a triumvirate of lecherous worthies masquerading as—of all things—an anti-witchcraft action group that enjoyed the innocent patronage of the Vicar of Flaxborough. An Unholy Trinity, eh, sergeant?”

This quite unexpected acknowledgement of his continued presence left Love gratified but wordless.

The solicitor continued at once with his summary.

“There would appear, nevertheless, to have been some rudimentary sense of honour among these three. They observed a rota system, for example, as we may infer from the evidence of the witness Bollinger. It was she, was it not, who heard Persimmon say on the telephone that ‘he could not make it that night’ and that someone ‘would get an extra turn’.

“But that ‘someone’—and we may take it that Mrs Pentatuke was the woman referred to—did not get her turn, after all. The female Pearce will testify that it was Edna Hillyard’s good fortune to be chosen.

“There followed the call to Persimmon, his furious drive—witnessed by...”

Purbright waited a moment, then supplied the name. Spratt-Cornforth snapped his fingers.

“...Doris Periam. Of course. As we said, the furious drive, confrontation, attack. And murderous counter-attack by the man in that fearfully-armed mask. Then the loading of Persimmon’s body into his own car and its disposal in the river less than quarter of a mile away. All conjecture, but supported by a certain amount of circumstantial evidence. We have known success in cases much more perforated than this one.”

The solicitor opened his eyes and hitched himself forward.

“One wonders,” he said, “whether one might have some coffee. Nothing fancy. Lubrication is all.”

Purbright addressed Love immediately. “Sergeant, would one fetch some, please?”

“Is there any hope,” Spratt-Cornforth asked, when Love had gone, “of a voluntary statement from the defendant? It would make things easier for us, a lot easier.”

“Oh, I’m sure there is. His counsel is certain to advise him to rely on a plea of self-defence. For this to be convincing, he will have to explain what made Persimmon so violently jealous. A statement well in advance of the trial would help forestall suspicion of the story having been cooked up at the last minute.”

“Good. Encourage him, Purbright. We are not altogether happy that the authorship of this crime has been established beyond doubt. The only person we know to be able actually to identify the murderer is the Hillyard woman and she obviously will stick to her loss of memory, genuine or not, in her own interests.”

“In justice to the girl, I think she co-operated after the killing only because she was terrified. The fact that she was heavily doped with barbiturate and locked up proves that they didn’t trust her.”

“They?”

“Certainly. The two surviving members would collaborate for the sake of their mutual safety just as the original trio always had done to protect their respectability.”

“So the availability to Cropper, as a council health official, of both the keys and—we assume—the drugs, does not much help to incriminate him on the capital charge as such.”

“No, sir. Not specifically.”

“In that case...”—Spratt-Cornforth examined a typed list—“...I shall be interested to listen to these famous tapes of your Sergeant Love—numbers, what?—four and six—are we right?”

The door opened and Love entered with a tray. To commemorate the visitor’s eminence he had brought cups instead of mugs and provided not only saucers in addition but the private sugar basin of the chief constable himself.

For the next ten minutes the case was set aside in favour of what Love considered a brilliant and daringly irreverent disquisition by Spratt-Cornforth on such matters as the state of Old Dicky Padstowe’s chambers, Young Somebody Else’s scrape with the Queen’s Proctor, and the rumoured sitting stone dead for three hours of the learned judge in Number Two Court at the Bailey.

Then Purbright signalled the replacement of the tray with the Sergeant’s recording machine.

They listened.

...

fact, but the situation’s so delicate. Quite frankly, I didn’t think he’d understand

. Why, sir?

Well, good heav

...

Love raced the tape forward a little.

“Bird,” murmured Purbright for Spratt-Cornforth’s benefit. The solicitor nodded.

...enough to tell me about the call that Mr Persimmon did take, sir.

I can’t tell you anything about it. I don’t know anything

. Look, sir, I’m sorry, but this time I must insist.

Insist all you like. I just cannot help you. And this time it is not a case of respecting confidences. The phone rang—at about midnight, as I told you—and Persimmon answered it. He listened, not saying a word himself, and then slammed the phone down and rushed out straight away. We both heard his car start off and that was that. He didn’t

...

Love switched off the machine and removed the cassette. He slipped another one in.

“This one’s Cropper,” said Purbright.

...get up to, sir?

I know perfectly well, Mr Purbright, that Miss Hillyard associated—that is the word, I believe—with Bertie Persimmon

. Do you know who made the call last Wednesday night that resulted in Persimmon going out?

I have no idea

. What is your recollection of that call, doctor?

None, naturally

.

I didn’t take it

. Persimmon did?

Yes. We’d had one or two earlier but they were—well, relatively trivial. Then this one came through about midnight

. Did he not say anything that might suggest who the caller was?

Not a single word. He scarcely looked at me. Just slammed the receiver down and went straight out. Then I heard his car start up

. That was the...

Love pressed the “off” key. He waited.

Spratt-Cornforth remained a while in thought. He shrugged.

“We seem to have missed it. Perhaps we are not at our brightest this morning.”

“In the first recording,” began Purbright, “he...”

“No, no.” The solicitor had raised his hand. “Let the sergeant enlighten us. It was his discovery.”

Pink as a raspberry soda, Love looked at Purbright.

“Go on, then, Sid.”

“Well, sir...” Love shuffled ecstatically in his seat. “It’s fairly simple, really. Just a couple of words. ‘We’ in one recording. ‘I’ in the other one. Bird said ‘We both heard his car start off’. Cropper said ‘Then I heard his car start up’. But once this bloke Persimmon had gone, there could have been only one left in the room, sir. So I reckoned that when Bird talked about ‘we’ it was because he was being careful not to break that old alibi of theirs—the three-pals-together one.”

“Very succinctly put, sergeant,” said Spratt-Cornforth. “We congratulate you. And of course we take your point. Bird was imagining the scene and so was fastidious about detail. Cropper, on the other hand, although equally concerned to thwart inquiry, was being prompted all the time by actual memory. Oh, yes, even a jury ought to be able to see the logic of that. What do you think, Purbright?”

“We must hope that you are right, sir,” the inspector said.

“Has one a date in mind for the committal proceedings?”

“I thought perhaps a week on Thursday, sir. If that is convenient to you.”

Spratt-Cornforth consulted a pocket diary and nodded. He looked at his watch.

“An adjournment, gentleman, would now be appropriate. We have a luncheon appointment with your chief constable.”

For the briefest of moments, Love’s mood of buoyancy tricked him into the dizzy supposition that he, too, was embraced within the solicitor’s royal plural.

When the delusion had passed, and as soon as Spratt-Cornforth had briskly departed, running his rapier-like umbrella up and down in his gloved fist as if to wipe blood off it, the sergeant began to collect the cups.

“Thanks for the coffee, Sid,” Purbright said.

“Oh, and don’t forget to put Mr Chubb’s sugar basin back, will you?”