Charity Ends At Home

The sound of Love’s turning over a page of the notebook in which he was clawing down shorthand on the other side of the room drew a glance from Palgrove. He looked not nervous but hurt and perplexed.

“Does he have to?” Palgrove murmured to the inspector.

“I’m afraid he does, sir,” Purbright said.

Palgrove reached to his inside breast pocket, paused, then patted both side pockets. From one he drew a pack of cigarettes. He offered it to Purbright and bleakly noted his shake of the head. He lit a cigarette himself. The pack he laid on his chair arm.

“I should like you to tell me now,” Purbright said, “everything you did last night. From teatime, say, until you arrived at your office this morning. Take your time, sir; I’d prefer you to be fairly precise.”

Palgrove stared at the opposite wall, then at his cigarette, which he held in the bottom of the cleft between his second and third fingers.

“This is going to sound a bit unlikely,” he said. “What I mean to say is if it’s alibis you’re thinking about I suppose I just haven’t got one.”

“You mustn’t worry about what you suppose I’m wanting you to say, Mr Palgrove. So long as it’s true, what I’m able to make of it is my problem.”

“Yes, well...” Palgrove took time off to draw on the cigarette, sweep his hand clear, and expel smoke upwards with noisy determination. He picked a shred of tobacco from his upper lip; his tongue tip continued to explore the spot.

“I had made arrangements to go to Leicester, actually. Seeing about some machinery.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I was hoping to stay over with an old friend of mine. Wilcox, he’s called. On the board of Hardy-Livingstone. Anyway, I left here round about six.”

“By car?”

“In the A.M., yes.”

Purbright frowned. “I thought we were talking about the evening, sir.”

“That’s right...Oh, I get you. No. A.M.—Aston Martin.”

“I see.”

“As I was saying, I left here about six. I’d had a spot to eat with the wife—not much, I’m not a tea man—and told her where I was going, of course, and that I’d be back some time in the morning.”

“Would you say it was usual or unusual for you to spend a night away from home?”

“I don’t know—unusual, I suppose, really. But I have to occasionally. Henny didn’t mind. She’d lots of interests of her own.” He took another fierce suck at his cigarette and leaned back to blow at the ceiling. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, there was I halfway to Leicester when I thought I heard one of the tappets knocking. Well, I was a bit put out because the bus had only just been in for a service yesterday and Henderson’s are generally pretty efficient. So what I did was to pull into the next lay-by and have a proper listen under the lid. I couldn’t trace a damn thing wrong. I went on a few more miles and, damn me, if it didn’t start again. Same old pantomime—pull in, listen, fiddle around—nothing. Three times I did that. In the end I just tried to forget about it and bashed on. But naturally I’d lost a lot of time. I didn’t get to Leicester until...oh, must have been nine at least. I was a bit tired—you know, fed up—and there didn’t seem much point in chasing up the fellow I’d come to see. Anyway...”

“Excuse me, sir, but wouldn’t eight or even seven o’clock in the evening be a rather unconventional time to discuss business in any case?”

“I suppose you could say that, yes. But I just don’t happen to be conventional. It doesn’t pay, inspector. Not these days.”

“All right, sir. Go on.”

“Well, to cut a long story short, I drove round to Tony Wilcox’s place and saw straight away that I’d boobed. Not a light in the place. I thought, should I wait? Then no, I thought, they might not be back for hours, and it would hardly be on for me to be waiting for them on the doorstep, the uninvited guest. Not at that time of night. So I just turned around and started back.”

“To Flaxborough?”

“Sure. Now then, I don’t know whether you know a pub called The Feathers just the other side of Melton Mowbray...”

There was a knock on the door. Love went over and opened it. Palgrove glimpsed a man in uniform. The man murmured something to Love, who turned and gave Purbright a questioning look. “It’s Fairclough, sir—if you could just spare a minute.”

The inspector spared three. When he came back into the room, he apologized to Palgrove and invited him to continue.

“Yes. This pub. It wasn’t The Feathers, actually—I must have been mixing it up with another one. I don’t know its name, but it’s somewhere yon side of Melton. The point is that I stopped there for a drink. It was nice and comfortable, so I had another one. I was tired, and of course I’d had nothing to eat. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I’d drunk four or maybe five whiskies by the time I left. And as soon as I started to drive again I knew I was going to feel woosey. So I did the sensible thing and pulled off the road there and then. I went bang off to sleep and didn’t wake up until nine o’clock this morning.”

There was a long pause. Then Palgrove shrugged. “Sounds silly, but there you are.” He looked towards the cocktail cabinet. Love hoped he would let it give another performance, but Palgrove remained seated.

Purbright spoke. “When you left your wife yesterday evening, she was quite normal, was she? In good health, I mean. Not upset in any way.”

“Oh, yes. Perfectly.”

“Was she expecting a visitor, do you know?”

“I don’t think so. No one in particular. I told you, though, various people did call. People mixed up with this social work of hers.”

“It would be helpful if you could tell us who these people were, sir.”

Palgrove looked dubious. “Well, I’ll try, but I didn’t take all that interest, actually. Some of them I know. Mrs Arnold, from up the road. She’s one of the dog ones. Then the woman from that Red Cross place—Miss Ironside. Oh, and a schoolteacher called...no, wait a minute, he’s not—he’s something to do with insurance, I think; can’t remember his name. Then the vicar, of course—Mr Haines. I’ve seen a couple of others occasionally but I’ve no idea who they are.”

The inspector waited. “No one else you can think of, sir?”

“No. I mean, they weren’t people I had anything to do with myself.”

Palgrove stretched restlessly. Again his hand went to the breast pocket inside his jacket. Purbright watched. He smiled, leaned forward.

“Is this what you are looking for, sir?”

Surprise lightening his face, Palgrove took the slim, yellow metal case. “Hello, where did that turn up?”

Purbright looked pleasant, said nothing.

“Well, thanks, anyway,” Palgrove said. He turned the case about in his hand. “It’s only plated, actually. Eighteen quid, all the same.” Slickly he opened it.

“What the hell...”

Purbright looked with polite interest at the five brown, sodden cigarettes. “Hasn’t done them much good, has it?”

Hostility was in Palgrove’s eye. He stared at the policeman. “I don’t get it.”

“That is your case, sir?”

“Of course it is.”

“The officers found it a short while ago at the bottom of your garden well, Mr Palgrove. Where your wife was drowned.”

“Hey, now hold on a minute...”

“Yes, sir?”

Palgrove’s anger rose. “Now look, I can see what you’re bloody well getting at. But you’re quite wrong. How the hell could I have had anything to do with...with what happened to Henny when I wasn’t anywhere near the place? I know nothing about it at all. Absolutely nothing.”

“Can you suggest how that case came to be in the water, sir?”

“Of course I can’t.”

“When was it last in your possession?”

“Yesterday, I should think. Yes, I had it at teatime. I must have left it around in this room somewhere.”

“Did your wife smoke?”

“No.”

“So it’s not likely that she had the case with her when she went out to the well?”

“You don’t know that. She could easily have picked it up. I mean, she was always tidying things up. For that matter, she could have chucked it into the water herself. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

Purbright considered. “That does rather sound as if you and Mrs Palgrove did not always get on very well. I hadn’t realized. I’m sorry.”

“Good heavens, all married couples disagree occasionally.”

“True, sir, but they don’t all throw away valuable cigarette cases to spite one another.”

“Now, look, inspector—if you think you can goad me into...”

Purbright’s hand went up. “Perish the thought, Mr Palgrove.”

“Yes, well, don’t be so damned provocative.” He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry, but this has been one hell of a shock. I suppose I’m a bit knocked up. No, the fact is that Henny and I got along as well as most. Not around each other’s necks all the time, but so what? I certainly wouldn’t have done her any harm.”

“Mr Palgrove, was your wife a wildly imaginative woman?”

“I wouldn’t have said so. She was a bit gone on animals... But, look—we went into all that when you were here before.”

“That’s right, we did. But if I might say so, you are not in quite the same mood as you were then. That is perfectly natural. First reaction to shock can often take a form that people might mistake for flippancy.”

“Did you think I was being flippant?”

“No, sir. I think brittle would be a better word. My impression is that you are now more inclined to consider the seriousness of your own position. For instance, you said at our first interview that your wife got so worked up about some things that she was in danger of going ‘over the top’, as you put it. You spoke of her abnormality of attitude, her excitability, her passion for letter-writing. But now you are taking some pains to present Mrs Palgrove as a fairly ordinary housewife with ordinary enthusiasms and lapses of temper. Is this because you have realized that your earlier picture was certain to be contradicted by other people?”

“I’ve not thought about what other people might say. Why should I? I’ve not done anything.”

Purbright leaned forward and picked up the gold-plated case from the chair arm where Palgrove had placed it beside his packet of cigarettes. “I shan’t deprive you of this longer than necessary, sir. The sergeant will give you a receipt.” He nodded to Love.

Palgrove watched with sullen resignation. He saw the inspector take a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfold it and hold it towards him.

“I’d like you to look at that letter, if you will, sir. Then perhaps we can talk about it.”

Slowly and with a deepening scowl, Palgrove read the letter through.

He shook his head. “What am I supposed to make of this?”

“We believe that it was written by your wife.”

“Why should you? It’s not even signed.”

“Whose typewriter is that over there, sir?”

“My wife’s.”

“Well, it was certainly typed on that machine. It seems reasonable to assume that it was she who typed it.”

“All right. You tell me what it means. It’s a string of rubbish as far as I’m concerned. Just rubbish.” Palgrove slid the letter dismissively into Purbright’s lap and picked up his cigarettes.

“Oh, come, sir. The implication is plain enough. I’m not saying that I believe it or disbelieve it. But you mustn’t pretend that you can’t understand what she’s getting at.”

“It’s bloody rubbish, man. I’m not going to waste time discussing it.” Anger, bewilderment, fright, all stood in Palgrove’s blood-boltered face. He hid it behind the hand-cupped lighting of a cigarette.

“Very well, sir.” Purbright carefully refolded the letter and put it, together with Palgrove’s case, into a large buff envelope. He stood.

“There’s just one other little matter I’d like to clear up. If you wouldn’t mind coming out with me to your car.”

Palgrove, hunched with ill grace, stumped doorward. Purbright followed him out, tweaking Love into tow.

The Aston Martin, splendidly a-gleam, stood on the drive near the side door. For a moment, possessive pride modified Palgrove’s air of exasperation. He stepped to one side and watched the inspector’s face.

Purbright opened the car door and slewed himself carefully into the driving seat. He glanced about him. Palgrove drew close and leaned on the door pillar.

“I’m looking,” Purbright said, “for your service record chart. You do keep something of that kind, sir?”

“Over there. Compartment on the left.”

Palgrove gazed gloomily at the inspector’s questing hand. He watched him open a folder, put a finger against an entry, peer at the instrument panel.

“According to the garage,” Purbright said at last, “your registered mileage yesterday afternoon was seven thousand, two hundred and four.” He glanced again at the facia. “Today, you have on the clock seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-five.” He shifted aside a little and turned his head. “Would you care to check that, sir?”

Palgrove said nothing. He did not move.

“I make it twenty-one miles since the car was serviced yesterday. And Leicester is—what, eighty miles from here? A return trip of a hundred and sixty?”

Palgrove shrugged and stepped away from the car. The inspector got out.

“Don’t you think, sir, that it might be as well if you called your solicitor before we do any more talking?”

Chapter Eleven

From a barmaid’s bed rose Mr Hive. He went to the window and gently, with one finger, parted the flowered cotton curtains, already bright with sun. Below him in Eastgate the morning citizens passed and met and hailed and gossiped in their twos and threes. Shop boys, smarmy haired to start the day, punted forth blinds with long poles. Crates of vegetables, rows of loaves on wide wooden trays, square anonymous cartons, beef flanks and bacon flitches, were ferried into doorways from parked farm trucks and high-roofed vans. A girl in a white coat too big for her stretched tip-toe from the top of a stool to clean the window of her grocer employer; she scrubbed away with short, vigorous arms while the grocer, a dim image behind the glass, kept supervisory watch upon her legs. A few women with shopping bags moved purposefully from window to window, pricing, judging, rejecting. Two old men in long, shroud-like overcoats inclined together to examine a piece of newspaper. A crying child’s face, wet scarlet disc with a big hole in the middle, appeared and disappeared amongst the legs and baskets.

Mr Hive let the curtain close. He poured out half a glass of water from the carafe on the marble-topped washstand and stood drinking it in small sips with his eyes closed as if it were acrid medicine. With his free hand he reached round and scratched the small of his back, the hem of his long nightshirt rising and falling.

He heard behind him the shift and re-settling of a warm-nested body, a sniff and a sigh and a yawn. He glanced over his shoulder. Above a ridge of bedclothes, rumpled hair and one interested eye.

“Morty...”

“My love?”

“Those women with titles you were telling me about...Did they wear nighties or pyjamas?”

“I think you may take it that nightdresses are favoured by the aristocracy as a rule. The exception I always remember was a Lady Beryl somebody-or-other from Winchester way—we managed to scrape her in at the tail-end of the 1935 season—and she, believe it or not, insisted on going to bed in a polo jersey.”

“I’ll bet that tickled!”

Mr Hive shrugged good-naturedly. “Every profession has its little irritations. I’ve been very lucky. There was only one thing I was always particular about: I wouldn’t take a client while she had a cold.”

“What, like dentists won’t?”

“It may sound a rather trivial prejudice, but I think I owe my very good health to it.” Hive glanced aside at the dressing-table mirror and straightened his stance. Part of his paunch went somewhere else.

Another rustle from the bed. “Jewels...Did they wear lots of jewels, Morty?”

Still looking at the mirror, Mr Hive preened with arched fingers his wavy, silver-grey hair. “I have awakened in the night, dear girl, with enough emeralds up my nose to pay the entire hotel staff double wages for a year!”

The humped bedclothes reared, subsided and squirmed into another shape. Hair and eye disappeared. As from afar off, a muffled giggle.

Mr Hive considered for a moment more his own reflection. He pouted, put down the almost empty glass, held a finger tip to his wrist, nodded judiciously, gave his nightshirt a hitch, and marched, like a monk to matins, back to bed.

In the street below, an ageing, box-like saloon car was being steered by a fat policeman past the parked vans and lorries. Flaxborough’s ancient coroner glared and champed in the seat beside him. The policeman, in consideration for the life of a hypothetical child, rammed two hundred and twenty pounds against the brake pedal. “Sorry, sir, but I did tell you to sit behind.” The car moved forward again. Mr Amblesby, indestructible, clawed himself back on to his seat.

Already assembled in the little court-room when Malley and the coroner arrived were Inspector Purbright, Sergeant Love, Doctor Fergusson, Mr Justin Scorpe and Mr Scorpe’s client, Mr Palgrove. Also present—but only just, for he seemed to be loitering peripherally and without concern—was the chief constable. Mr Chubb very seldom attended inquests, but Purbright had hinted to him that in the circumstances of this one it would be as well for him to show the flag.

Last to put in an appearance was the chief reporter of the Flaxborough Citizen. Mr Prile looked as if he had been roused from a twenty years’ sleep especially for the occasion. As he sat down behind the ricketty table reserved for the Press, dust puffed from creases and crevices in his raincoat.

Sergeant Malley shepherded the proceedings along as smartly as the tetchy obtuseness of Mr Amblesby would allow. The convention was observed of letting the doctor give his evidence first “so that you can get away”, as Malley invariably explained—rather as though he was offering a sporting chance to a fugitive.

Fergusson read rapidly from his post mortem report an elaboration of what he had told Purbright over the telephone. He was emphatic about the sound state of Mrs Palgrove’s health that the examination had revealed and described in considerable detail the bruises on the legs and abdomen.

“Would everything you have found, doctor,” Purbright asked, “be consistent with this woman’s having been held forcibly by her ankles—held upside down, that is?”

“Yes. Rather in the way one tips up a wheelbarrow to empty it.”

Mr Scorpe looked with heavy scorn over the top of his spectacles at no one in particular. “Is Dr Fergusson here as a medical witness or as a gardening expert?”

“I see no harm in offering an illustration in language that people can understand,” retorted the doctor. He added, before Purbright could head him off: “But of course I am not a member of the legal profession.”

The coroner turned upon him his agate eye; dentures clacked menacingly.

“Thank you, doctor,” said Purbright. Fergusson stacked his papers, rose and started to make his way out. Malley leaned to Mr Amblesby’s long, whiskery ear. “The doctor’s fee, sir...” The old man remained hunched in stubborn immobility. He watched the door close behind Fergusson and craftily smiled to himself. “Eh?” he said.

Palgrove, looking pale, delivered his brief, formal evidence of identification, then Sergeant Malley quietly laid a typewritten slip on the table before the coroner. Mr Amblesby lowered his gaze.

“I now adjourn this inquiry sine die...to enable the police to...to make further investigations.”

All but Mr Amblesby rose. He stared at them suspiciously for several seconds. Malley touched his arm. “You said you wanted some sausage on the way back, sir; I’ll stop at Spain’s if you come along now.” Grudgingly, the old man stood up. Malley ushered him out.

“I do believe he’s got even worse,” said Mr Chubb. It was five minutes later and the chief constable and Purbright were on their own in the room.

“You think so, sir?”

“Well, don’t you, Mr Purbright? You see more of him than I do.”

“Malley says he’s a wonderful old gentleman for his age.”

“Does he, indeed? I must say I admire the way Mr Malley seems to manage him.”

“Oh, like a mother, sir. I don’t know what would happen to poor old Mr Amblesby if it weren’t for the sergeant.”

The chief constable pondered Malley’s devotion, then dismissed the subject with a satisfied nod. “Now, then, Mr Purbright,” he said briskly, “what have you got to tell me about this unfortunate lady from Brompton Gardens?”

The inspector, too, became more businesslike in manner.

“At the moment, everything points to the husband. He’s given a hopelessly unsatisfactory account of himself—two accounts, in fact; one disproved and the other unlikely. There’s not much material evidence, but that wasn’t to be expected, anyway. What there is, he can’t even begin to explain. His cigarette case in the water under the body, for instance. And those letters she sent to people. There’s no doubt at all that she wrote them.”

“Where does he say he was at the time when his wife was drowned?”

“At first he said he’d been to Leicester that night and had slept in his car after stopping on the road home. Unluckily for him, the car had just been serviced and the mileage recorded on the service log made nonsense of his story. He didn’t even try and bluster it out. He changed it altogether.”

“And do you believe the second story?”

“I accept it because it cannot be disproved, sir. Not on what evidence we have. And if he’s still lying, the odd thing about this second tale is that it does him no good at all.

“The Palgroves bought themselves a cottage a couple of years ago, you see, sir. It’s a few miles out along the Brocklestone road. At Hambourne Dyke. They used to spend week-ends there, but the novelty eventually wore off and they went more and more rarely. What Palgrove now says is that he stayed in that cottage during the whole of the night of his wife’s death.”

“What reason did he give for that?”

“He said he needed to be on his own occasionally. He denied ever quarrelling seriously with his wife but said she had a forceful personality that was liable to get on his nerves. That night just happened to be one when he felt this compulsion to have a spell of solitude.”

Mr Chubb considered. “It does sound reasonable, you know Mr Purbright.”

“On the face of it, yes. So why the tale about going to Leicester? Which, incidentally, he’d told in advance to his secretary at the factory.”

“Oh, I think that’s easily enough explained. It was the excuse he’d prepared for his wife. No woman likes to think that her husband is spending a night away from home simply because he wants a rest from her.”

Purbright’s brow lifted slighily. “Oh, I see, Sir. I’m aftaid that wouldn’t have occurred to me.”

Mr Chubb looked uncomfortable.

“There is something else I ought to mention,” Purbright went on. “The suggestion is strong that Palgrove has for some time been having an afair with a married woman. “This would be a much more cogent reason for his going out to the cottage than a sudden desire for solitude. He doesn’t strike me as the contemplative type.”

“Do you know who the woman is?”

“Not yet, sir. But I expect to, shortly. Sergeant Love is very resourceful in these matters.”

“I suppose you can’t afford to be over-squeamish in a case like...”

“No, sir; you can’t.”

Mr Chubb frowned. “It seems such a pity that these people spoil things for themselves—and for others, too, of course.” He paused, looked up. “What do you propose to ask the lady when you find her—or when Mr Love finds her, rather?”

“The situation will be somewhat delicate...”

“It will, indeed.”

“No, sir; I didn’t mean in a moral sense. Delicate in a criminal sense. You see, Palgrove may be denying the existence of a mistress—as he persisted in doing yesterday, by the way—not because he simply wants to protect her reputation, but because she was an accomplice in the murder of his wife.” The inspector watched Mr Chubb’s face. “You remember, of course, what Mrs Palgrove wrote in her letter?”

“Something about a plot, a plan...?”

“Precisely, sir. I have heard the plan discussed. If murder was being proposed—as she very plainly stated—who else but the mistress would be the second party to the conversation? It may very well be that Paigrove was, as he says, at the cottage that night. The woman, too. But he needed only to make a ten-minute car trip to kill his wife. He could have been back again in half an hour. And we needn’t expect the mistress to do other than swear that Palgrove never left the cottage at all.”

The chief constable said he saw how difficult the situation might prove. Had the inspector any other lines of inquiry in mind? Yes, said Purbright, he had, but he entertained no great hopes of them. Mr Chubb was sorry to hear that, but he was sure something would emerge sooner or later that would repay his trouble.

“There was one thing Palgrove said that I’m inclined to believe,” Plurbright announced, rather as an afterthought. “He claimed that somebody had been following him about a good deal lately. A stranger.”

“Doesn’t that sound a little fanciful?”

“That is what I thought at first. But he described the man in some detail, and I think I know who he is.”

“Not a local man, you say.”

“No, sir. A Londoner. A man who follows—or followed once—a somewhat odd profession.”

“You intrigue me, Mr Purbright.”

“Mr Hive is an intriguing character. I happened to...”

“Hive—is that his name?”

“Yes, sir. Mortimer Hive. As I was saying, I happened to see him yesterday morning. He was going into the office of those Charity Alliance people in St Anne’s Gate. And it was to them, by curious coincidence, that Mrs Palgrove had sent the day before a remarkably acrimonious letter.”

“Good gracious,” said the chief constable, feeling that to sound surprised was better than to confess the absolute bafflement he really felt.

“So I think I shall try and chase Mr Hive up and see what he can tell us. Don’t you agree, sir?”

Mr Chubb looked at the ceiling. “On balance, I ah...yes. Oh, yes.”

Chapter Twelve

“Am I, by happy fortune, spealing to Dover?” Mr Hive inquired sweetly into the telephone at the back of a dowdy little newsagent’s shop in Station Road.

He heard a snort of exasperation, followed by a click and the deadening of the line.

Amiably, he inserted more money and dialled again. After a fairly long interval came a curt, impatient “Hello.”

“Dover?” cooed Mr Hive. “Hastings here.”

“I thought you were going back to London.”

“The gentleman here at the shop says that you have not yet collected my account. I know it’s rather...”

“I said, I thought you were going back to London.” The voice was suppressed but urgent, angry.

“Ah, but events have conspired—very pleasantly conspired, I may say—to delay my passage. That is what I...”

“I am not interested in your private odysseys. I employed you to do a specific job and that job is now finished. I did not employ you to pester and embarrass me. Is that clear?”

Hive’s euphoria was proof against rebuke even as sharp as this. He listened as though to a transmission of birthday greetings, then nodded delightedly.

“Mais oui, mon capitaine—you are absolutely right. I say—isn’t it rather nice to be talking without all those trade terms? No wonder most detectives are bad conversationists...”

“Are you leaving today?”

“I was just going to say that this good fellow at the shop...”

“I said ARE YOU LEAVING TODAY? Are...you...returning...to London...today?”

“I rather doubt it, actually. Events have conspired...”

“When are you going?”

Hive sighed, “All too soon, I fear.”

“Tomorrow?”

“...and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” dreamily crooned Mr Hive.

“Now, look—I want a straight answer. And I don’t advise you to waste any more of my time.”

“No. Quite. Now how can I best reply to your esteemed inquiry? Perhaps I should say that I have acquired commitments. Non-professional, let it be understood, amigo mio. And in no sense undesirable. But, as I say, this good fellow at the shop tells me that my account (plain wrapped, ça va sans dire) is uncollected, therefore undischarged. I do not complain. Rather do I respectfully petition. You catch, perhaps, my drift?”

“You want your money at once. On the nail. Like a cats’ meat man or something.”

“Cats’ meat...no, I’m afraid that allusion defeats me. Sauce for ganders, I would have thought, was the commodity in...”

“Twelve pounds. On account. I can leave twelve pounds for you at the shop at about quarter past four. Not before.”

“That would be a most welcome accommodation. It really would.” Hive eased himself from the wall against which he had been leaning and with his free hand adjusted the hang of his jacket.

“In return, I want a definite undertaking from you.”

“Yours ever to serve, mon général!”

“I shall leave you that money on condition that you get out of Flaxborough tomorrow. The rest I’ll post on to you. But you are to be away from the town tomorrow. Is that clearly understood?”

Hive hesitated.

“I said, is that understood?”

“I understand what you want, yes. But I really cannot see why...”

“Do you want this money, or don’t you?”

“Oh, certainly I do.”

“Very well, then. You will be on your way back to London in the morning?”

“That is my inal...inalienable intention.”

On his way out of the shop, Hive paused to speak to a vast, pear-shaped man wedged between the counter and a tier of shelves filled with packets of cigarettes and tins of tobacco.

“A gentleman will be calling later today to leave a letter for me. My name is Mr Hastings. Oh, and you might remind him to be sure and take that envelope I gave you yesterday.”

The pear-shaped man compressed some of his chins so as to produce a grunt and a nod at the same time.

On the other side of the town, Inspector Purbright was in search of the Secretary of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance. He had called at the office in St Anne’s Gate to find it in the charge of a lady wearing rimless spectacles and a blue felt hat of the shape, size and, for all he knew, the durability, of an army field helmet. She had smiled terribly upon him and explained that this was Miss Teatime’s day ‘on’ at Old Hall and that he had better hie him thither at once if he wanted to have a word with her before the arrival of the Hobbies and Needlework Sub-committee.

At the Hall, a big, early Georgian manor house set in parkland on the southern outskirts of Flaxborough, Purbright was directed to the number two recreation room. It was at the end of a long, stone-flagged corridor lined on one side with windows on whose white-painted sills were great quantities of summer flowers in terra-cotta pots and bowls. Mixed with the scent of the flowers were smells of plasticine and paint-boxes and rubber boots and small children’s clothes. Some twenty coats and hats hung on a row of hooks outside the room that had been pointed out to the inspector. Behind its door a lot of noise was being produced. It sounded very happy noise.

The door opened. Purbright stepped quickly into its lee as a wave of children burst through. The hats and coats were tossed and tugged and waved and trampled, but eventually were sorted and appropriated and trotted off in. The corridor emptied.

Purbright peeped through the door. He saw Miss Teatime at once. She was sitting, erect but genial, in a large spindle-back chair. Around the chair were scattered the cushions and stools on which, Purbright supposed, the children had been sitting to hear her tell a story.

There were other people in the room—three plump young women in some kind of nurse’s uniform, two older but jolly-faced women—house-mothers, did they call them?—and a formidable lady in an apron, long skirt and button boots who scratched her bottom a great deal and kept laughing in a bartender’s bass-baritone; it seemed that she was the cook of the establishment.

“What about one for us, duckie?” the cook called out.

“Yes, do!”

“Go on, Miss T!”

Miss Teatime smiled demurely and gazed out of the window for inspiration. Purbright sidled into the room, closing the door quietly behind him. No one noticed his arrival.

“Very well,” said Miss Teatime. She folded her hands in her lap. “This is a story of the mysterious Orient. It was told me by my uncle—the missionary one, you remember—and I venture to think that you will find it as strange a tale as any to have come out of those fascinating lands.

“It concerns a poor Arab by the name of Mahmoud. One day, this Arab was crossing the great Gobi desert. He was too poor to own a camel and so he was making the journey on foot.

“Now perhaps I should explain that the place in the desert where these extraordinary events occurred was many miles from any human settlement, many miles, indeed, from the nearest oasis.

“Anyway, there was Mahmoud, patiently making his way over the endless dunes and thinking perhaps of the cup of refreshing sherbet that awaited him at journey’s end in some shady kasbah, when suddenly his big toe struck against an object in the sand. The Arab stopped and bent down, groping about in the sand where he had last put his foot. He drew something out. And do you know what it was?”

Miss Teatime paused and looked from one to another of her audience. In silence they shook their heads.

“A cricket ball!

“Poor Mahmoud stared in wonder. Allah caravamerie baksheesh! And he went on his way.

“But he had not travelled very much farther when he received in the big toe of his other foot a sensation exactly the same as before. He stopped. He bent down. He groped about. And again he drew something from the sand. Yes...another cricket ball! He stared in even greater wonder. Allah-caravanserie baksheesbbakar! And the Arab continued upon his journey.

“But he had not taken more than another twenty paces when yet again his foot encountered an object hidden in the sand. He stopped. He bent down. He groped about. He drew something from the sand...”

Miss Teatime leaned forward a fraction. She raised her brows questioningly at her audience.

“Another cricket ball?” offered the youngest of the nurses.

“Oh, no...” Miss Teatime sat back again in her chair. “A castrated cricket.”

Purbright waited until the cook, the nurses and the house-mothers had gone about their duties. Then he rose and crossed the room to where Miss Teatime was now seated at a table in the window bay, preparing to stitch a rent in a limp and grubby teddy bear. She looked up.

“Why, inspector! How very nice to see you!”

Purbright took her extended hand and made a short bow. He drew up another chair to the table and sat facing her.

“I’m told you are liable to be swooped upon by some committee or other”—he saw her wince resignedly—“so I’ll be very policemanlike and come straight to the point.”

“By all means.” Miss Teatime drew a length of cotton from a reel, snapped it expertly and at the second attempt piloted its end into her needle.

“Perhaps you have heard already of the death of Mrs Henrietta Palgrove. She was drowned the night before last in the garden of her home.”

“I did know, yes. A shocking affair. It has been quite widely discussed, of course.”

“I imagine so. She would be well known among social workers, committee members—people like that.”

“Certainly.” Miss Teatime pierced the teddy bear’s threadbare hide with the needle. “She was an exceptionally active lady, was Mrs Palgrove.”

“It might be argued,” said Purbright, “that active people are more liable to make enemies than the passive ones. Or would it be wildly unreasonable to expect this to apply in the field of good works?”

Miss Teatime raised a shrewd eye from her work. “I think you know as well as I do, inspector, that there is no more fertile soil for the burgeoning of homicide.”

“You shock me, Miss Teatime.”

“Oh no, I do not. You would not be here now if your thoughts had not been following the same line.”

“You mustn’t make too much of this. The person who killed Mrs. Palgrove is very clearly indicated by the evidence. I’ve no doubt that that person will be arrested and charged quite soon. But every other possibility must be examined thoroughly in the meantime.”

Miss Teatime drew taut the thread of another stitch. “And am I one of the other possibilities, inspector?” She was smiling.

“You received a letter yesterday from Mrs Palgrove.”

“That is correct. Have you read it?—Oh, yes, you must have done. I suppose a copy was in what I believe are called the effects of the deceased.”

“It was a very threatening letter, Miss Teatime.”

She shrugged lightly. “I can see that you are not accustomed to handling the correspondence of charitable societies, Mr Purbright. If one took seriously every hint of nefarious goings-on, one would have no time left for the collection of funds. And what would our animals do then, poor things?”

“There is no truth, I take it, in the suggestion that there has been misappropriation of funds.”

“None, of course. It is misapprehension, not misappropriation, that bedevils the work of charities. People do not realize how high is the cost of administration nowadays. Modern conditions demand the employment of all sorts of expensive devices—promotion campaigns, the public relations consultant, accountants, the business efficiency expert—even computers. My goodness, inspector, there is a great deal more to it than waving a collecting box. Which”—she raised a finger and smiled sweetly—“reminds me...”

She put the teddy bear aside and went to the fireplace, on the mantel of which was a box. She brought the box back and set it between them. “Just my little charge for allowing you to interview me!”

Purbright grinned and found some coins to drop in the box.

“Purely as a formality, Miss Teatime—you do understand that—could you just tell me where you were on the night of the twelfth—the night before last, that is? From ten o’clock onward, say.”

Her eyes widened. “In bed, inspector. Where else?”

He smiled. “It clearly would be impertinent of me to ask of whom I might seek corroboration of that.”

“Not in the least; I should take it as a compliment.” Her gaze saddened a little and fell. “But no, I have left things rather late. To tell the truth, it is regarding the physical side of marriage that I have always been apprehensive.”

He nodded, sympathetically.

“There so seldom seems to be enough of it,” said Miss Teatime.

She consulted a small silver dress watch. “Dear me, I fear that committee will be bearing down at any moment. Is there any other matter in which I may try and help you, inspector?”

His offer of a cigarette having met with a maidenly refusal, Purbright lit one himself and asked:

“Do you happen to be acquainted with a man called Hive?”

“Mortimer? Well, fancy your knowing Mortimer Hive. Oh, yes, we are old friends.”

“What does he do, precisely?”

“As a matter of fact, he is in your own line of business, inspector. Mr Hive is a detective. A private detective, of course—not on the panel, so to speak.”

“He doesn’t look much like a detective.”

“No? Well, he was not brought up to it, you know. But he had a very distinguished career in what I suppose is an allied calling. He was until fairly recently a groundsman.”

“Groundsman?”

She smiled at Purbright’s perplexity. “A little joke of his, inspector. Mr Hive was a professional co-respondent. He provided grounds for divorce, you know. Of course, you will not let this go any further?”

“Why, is it a secret?”

“Oh, no—not at all. But Mortimer is at that age when men tend to be a little vain and a little touchy about their physique. His close friends are well aware that he retired from business for reasons of health, but I suspect he would feel hurt if the fact were made generally known.”

“Do you know why he’s here in Flaxborough?”

“That is a question which I think you should address to him in person, Mr Purbright. The most that I can properly say is that his engagement is connected, as you might imagine, with the infidelity of one of our fellow citizens. Incidentally, I believe the client, as Mortimer would call him, has now terminated it. The engagement, I mean—not the infidelity. Although perhaps that has lapsed as well.”

“Can you suggest why Mr Hive has been keeping the husband of Mrs Palgrove under observation?”

Miss Teatime shook her head reprovingly. “Now, inspector!”

“Not even in strict confidence?”

“I really cannot tell you anything more.”

Purbright was looking at the collecting box. He touched it casually, shifting it so that he could read the label.

“Tell me—what are the objects of the New World Pony Rescue Campaign?”

Miss Teatime glanced fondly at the box. “Well, perhaps I might describe them as almost missionary in character. Animal aid work is something that knows no frontiers. And, as you will know, in America the horse is man’s help-mate on a far greater scale than in a little highly mechanized country like England.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes. Have you not visited America, Mr Purbright?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Ah, then you will not be familiar with the plight of our equine friends in such cities as San Francisco. The tramcars, you know. And those cruelly steep hills.”

“But surely they are cable cars in San Francisco?”

Miss Teatime regarded him with a mild, patient smile.

“And what, pray, did you suppose was down there under the road pulling the cable, Inspector?” She allowed him time to grasp the obvious, then sighed. “Oh, yes, there is much yet to be put right by the N.W.P.R.C.”

Purbright took another look at the collecting box. “It is a registered charity, I suppose? I wonder if you’d mi...”

“Oh, dear!” Miss Teatime had risen and was staring out of the window. “Here come those tiresome committee people. I shall have to go and meet them.”

Purbright stood. “Just a moment, Miss Teatime. Your friend, Mr Hive...”

“You shall meet him, Inspector. This very day. Can you make it convenient to be at my office at a quarter to five?”

“I think so.”

She held out her hand. The smile she gave him was friendly, almost affectionate.

Chapter Thirteen

When Inspector Purbright walked into police headquarters after lunch, he was told that there had been a call for him two hours previously from Nottingham City Police. They would ring him again at two-thirty.

He found Sergeant Love awaiting him in his office.

“I’ve found that totty for you,” Love announced with transparent casualness.

“You sound like a procurer, Sid. What are you talking about?” He sat, sideways on, behind his desk and picked around among the papers that had landed there since morning.

“The totty Pally Palgrove was running. You said find out her name.”

Purbright, interested, looked up. “Doreen Booker,” Love said. “That’s who it is.” He looked at the open notebook he had been holding on Purbright’s arrival. “Twenty-five Jubilee Park Crescent.”

“Booker...”

Love watched the inspector stroke his lip thoughtfully with one finger. He hastened to elaborate. “One of the Anderson girls from Harlow Place before she got married. Used to go round with Mogs Cooper until he piled up that bike of his. You remember—Three Ponds Corner. They reckon Stan Biggadyke over at Chalmsbury got her in pod at one time, but I doubt if that’s right. Anyway, she ended up with that bloke Booker at the Grammar School. She’s supposed to be still pretty warm in the withers. I wouldn’t know about that, though.”

“But Mr Palgrove would, I presume?”

“So I’m told.”

“Right, Sid. Thanks very much.” Purbright wrote on a jotting pad. “Twenty-five, you said...”

“Jubilee Park Crescent. Yes.”

Purbright leafed through a telephone directory, picked up his receiver. “Flaxborough 4175...

“Mrs Booker?...This is Detective Inspector Purbright, Borough Police. I wonder if you could find a moment this afternoon to come and have a word with me here at the police station. I should be extremely grateful ...No, nothing wrong—I think you can help me with something I’m looking into. I thought you’d rather come here than have me knocking on your door, so to speak—it is rather a delicate matter...Yes, that’s fine. Very nice of you.”

He rang off. “I only hope you’re right, Sid. I’m going to look every kind of a fool if you’re not.”

“Oh, it’s right enough,” said Love, breezily. “Just you ask her how she likes love in a cottage.”

“A cottage at Hambourne Dyke?”

The sergeant stared. “You knew all the time, then?”

“Things get around in this town, you know, Sid. They get around.” He relented, smiled. “No, actually it was Palgrove himself who told me about having a place at Hambourne when I saw him that second time. He didn’t say anything about your friend Doreen, though.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he?”

The call from Nottingham came through promptly at half-past two. It was made by a detective sergeant whose name sounded to Purbright as Gallon or Galleon.

“This murder of yours, sir...”

“Which one?” The query succinctly conveyed the impression that Flaxborough was every whit as civilized as any big city.

“A Mrs Henrietta Palgrove.”

Purbright let three or four seconds go by. “Ah, yes—here we are...”

“We have some information that you might find useful, sir. The superintendent said that I was to telephone you in case you’d like it followed up.”

“That’s very good of you.”

“A chap called Jobling came in this morning, you see. He’s a partner in a photographic firm here in the city. They sell cameras and equipment and do printing and developing as well. Mr Jobling said that two weeks ago somebody had come into the shop and ordered some copies of two positive prints—twenty of one and three of the other. That was on Saturday, the second of this month.

“Exactly a week later—last Saturday, the ninth—the chap called back to collect his order. Now it seems there had been some sort of a slip-up in the processing department. The batch of twenty copies had been done all right, but somebody had mislaid the other photograph, the one from which three prints were supposed to have been run off. Jobling said the chap was fearfully annoyed but...”

“What was the customer’s name?” Purbright put in.

“Half a minute...Dover. D-o-v-e-r.”

“Address?”

“Eighteen Station Road, Flaxborough.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, he took what they’d done and told the girl that if the other picture turned up the copies were to be sent to him immediately by post. It did turn up, but not until yesterday afternoon. A small studio portrait that looked as if it had been taken out of a frame. It was handed over straight away to one of the process men and he recognized it as being the same as a picture he’d just seen in an early edition of the Evening Post that carried the Palgrove inquest story.

“They told Mr Jobling and, as I say, he came in today and passed on the facts to us. We’ve got the photograph, too.”

“And what do you think of its resemblance to the newspaper picture?” Purbright asked.

“Oh, there’s no doubt it’s the same woman, sir. We’ve checked already with the original at the Post.”

“Is it too much to hope that somebody knows the identity of the person who was thought worthy of being duplicated twenty times?”

“The superintendent did ask, I believe, sir. Jobling didn’t know anything beyond what he’d come in to tell us. And he said that with these copying jobs they don’t keep records as they do with their studio work.”

Purbright wound up the conversation with thanks and compliments, together with the prophecy that his Sergeant Love would be in Nottingham before nightfall. Sergeant Gallon or Galleon said that that would be very nice.

“You’d better get the next train, Sid. You might just catch these photographic people before they shut up shop.”

“What photographic people? Where?”

“I’ll explain.” And he did. Then he said:

“Two things in particular I want you to do. Try and find out if the counter girl is certain that this Dover person is a man and couldn’t have been Mrs P—as I for one would have assumed. And see if anyone can remember anything at all about the second photograph, the one they made twenty copies of.”

“Am I to stay the night?” asked Love, without noticeable enthusiasm.

“You shouldn’t need to. There’s a train back about ten, I believe.”

Love opened the door. “I’ll have to let my young lady know,” he said as he went out.

“Yes, do that.” Purbright was long past the stage of feeling guilty whenever Love spoke of breaking to his fiancée the news of extended duty. The ‘young lady’ was now thirty-three, the courtship nine years weathered. It was not really difficult to resist inferring from the sergeant’s air of concern that the association would be wrecked on a couple of hours’ overtime.

Mrs Doreen Booker was shown into Purbright’s office shortly after three o’clock. He noticed first that she had well-shaped, if substantial, legs; secondly that she was nervous and inclined to breathe shallowly; thirdly that her small, slightly receding chin merged with a soft, blanched throat in a way characteristic of big-breasted women; and fourthly, as she sat down and loosened her pale grey summer coat, that his deduction from chin and throat was amply justified.

Her face was just on the well fed side of pretty, with a full, rather petulant mouth and eyes that would switch easily from apprehension to boldness, delight to self-pity. She wore beneath the coat a short woollen dress the colour of marigolds. It was tight enough for a faint ridge to indicate a ruck in the underlying girdle. Her left hand strayed to the ridge, tried to smoothe it out, then drew the coat across to hide it.

The inspector offered her a cigarette. She took it hesitantly, as if uncertain of police station proprieties. He came round the desk to light it for her.

“Thank you.” They were the first words she had said since coming into the office. She listened anxiously and with apparent bewilderment to Purbright’s preamble about unfortunate affair, Tuesday night, necessary inquiries, Mr Leonard Palgrove, strict confidence.

She drew hard on the cigarette, frowning as though at a difficult task. Her protracted expulsion of smoke in a sort of soup-cooling exercise was distinctly audible. Purbright was reminded of Palgrove. He wondered if her gestures were unconsciously imitative.

“You know Mr Palgrove pretty well, don’t you, Mrs Booker?”

“Sort of. Yes, I suppose so.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Not all that long, really. About a year.”

“But you are on close terms, intimate terms?” He saw she was trying to get her eyes switched to indignation. “Look, I’m sorry, but we cannot talk usefully until we acknowledge this basic situation. Don’t think that I’m bothered about people’s notions of what’s moral or immoral: I’m not. There isn’t time for that sort of nonsense when one’s trying to get at the facts. Now then, never mind that awful police court word ‘intimate’—you’re fond of each other, you like to make love together when the chance offers—that’s the situation, isn’t it?”

She tip-tongued her lips, staring at the corner of the desk. A nod. Purbright inwardly sighed with relief. Lucky Father Purbright. Not unfrocked yet.

“Had Mr Palgrove told his wife that he was in love with someone else?”

She looked back at him, alarmed. “Oh, no! I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Did you ever meet Mrs Palgrove?”

“Yes, once or twice. She was on some of the same committees as Kingsley.”

“Kingsley?”

“My husband. I met her sometimes at garden fêtes and bazaars and things like that.”

“Was Mr Palgrove present as well?”

“Only once, I think. Len doesn’t like that sort of thing.”

“Did you ever telephone Mr Palgrove at his home?”

She considered while she looked about her, holding her cigarette upright. The inspector pushed an ashtray to the edge of the desk and she toppled into it the column of ash. “No, I don’t think so,” she said finally. “Not at his home. We were always very careful.”

“You never discussed anything with Mr Palgrove at any time when his wife might conceivably have overheard? Think very carefully, Mrs Booker.”

She shook her head. “Why are you asking me all this?”

Purbright watched her in silence. The flesh round her mouth made tiny contracting movements.

“Did she...is she supposed...”

“Did she what, Mrs Booker?”

She looked down at her own hand, clenching the edge of her coat. “Kill herself...”

“No, we don’t think so.”

Her face rose again at once, relieved but still uncertain.

“We believe she was murdered.”

The clenched hand went to her mouth, almost like a fist delivering a blow. “Oh, God!” Receding blood left patches of make-up standing out against paper-white skin.

Again, “Oh, God!” From the depths of her throat, almost inaudible.

Purbright leaned forward. He had picked up a pen and was rolling it slowly between thumb and forefinger. Quietly, he asked: “How do you suppose it happened, Mrs Booker?”

She seemed not to hear, but continued to stare at an ink stain in the centre of one of the scored and battered panels of the desk.

“You can have no serious doubt as to who was responsible, can you?” The question was put almost soothingly. The woman found that her head was moving in a slow, despairing negative, and wondered if she had meant it to.

“Did you know that he might do that? That he intended to?”

A whispered “No” left her.

“But he met you that night, didn’t he? He says he came out to the cottage.”

“I wasn’t there. I couldn’t...couldn’t get there.”

“You’d arranged to meet, though?”

“Yes.” She was still bowed, motionless, gazing past the ink stain to some scene in her own mind.

Suddenly she raised her head. “You don’t know she didn’t kill herself. I mean, it’s not certain. It can’t be. Len would never...”

“I’m sorry, Mrs Booker. We’re absolutely satisfied on that score.”

“She was queer. You know—wilful, moody. And perhaps she did find out. About me and Len.”

“Oh, she did.”

She stared at him.

“Mrs Palgrove wrote a letter two days before she died. She said she knew of a plan to kill her. She said she had actually heard it discussed.”

The woman’s face was taut and ugly with horror, her eyes huge. “No...God, no! She couldn’t...” An attempted smile of disbelief looked more like an agonized leer. “She was just loopy, off her head!”

“We have the letter. It says what I’ve told you.”

“I don’t know anything about it. It’s not about me. I wasn’t anywhere near on Tuesday night. I was in Nottingham. At a hotel. A friend of mine can tell you. She was with me. Betty Foster. Ask her. Twenty-eight Queen’s Road. She’ll tell you. Ask my husband. He saw me off at the station. And I’ve got the hotel bill. Here, wait a minute...No, that’s right, it’s at home. But I’ll let you see it, I’ll bring it. And I’ll see Betty and...”

Purbright, pitying her for the pettiness her fear had brought gushing up, waited for her to finish. Silent at last, she looked shabby and very tired.

He rang the canteen. Two minutes later, one of the cadets entered with a cup of tea. Purbright handed it to Mrs Booker and gave her another cigarette.

“Have you told your husband?” he asked gently.

Fright sprang again upon her. “You don’t have to let him know? Please!”

Purbright shrugged, trying not to regret the question. “You’ll have to be prepared for his finding out. It’s not altogether in my hands now.”

“I see.” Thoughtfully, she sipped her tea. She thrust her head down and forward to drink, instead of raising the cup to the level of her lips. There was something bovine about her awkwardness. Purbright found himself resisting, for the first time, one of the implications of Mrs Palgrove’s letter. Conspiracy? He seriously doubted if this girl was capable of it. If there had been collusion in the murder, she almost certainly would have had a better story ready. He had been prepared for her to swear out an alibi for her lover. Oh, but be was with me all night, Inspector—in our little love nest. That would have made things difficult: English juries were inclined to think that anyone who would go so far as to sacrifice respectability in the witness box was sure to be telling the truth. But Doreen Booker had come up instead with a story—provable, Purbright did not doubt—of an overnight trip to Nottingham. Leonard Palgrove really was out on a limb now. It remained only for the law methodically to saw it through.

Mrs Booker set down her empty cup on the desk.

“Is it all right for me to speak to Len?”

“I can’t prevent your doing so. You are both free agents at the moment.”

“But if you’re going to arrest him...”

“I’ve said nothing about arresting anybody, Mrs Booker.”

She looked at once confused and ashamed of being so. Purbright tried to think of something to say that would make sense to her without destroying the fiction of his own insulation. He hated this game he had to play by rules that insisted on his pretending to be merely an umpire. The rules gave him not only protection but power as well—the power to use every trick of legal casuistry and intimidation from the safe baulk of official propriety. Oh, to hell...

“Look,” he said, “keep this to yourself, but the odds are that we’ll charge him tomorrow. There are a couple of things we still have to look into, although I doubt if they’re going to help Palgrove in any way. That’s the position, Mrs Booker. The only advice I can possibly give you is to keep clear. For the time being, anyway.”

When she had gone, the inspector ordered tea for himself. It came in a pint mug with a promptness that betrayed its origin (“well-urned,” a visiting barrister once had described it.) Purbright set the mug at his elbow and, having spread out Mrs Palgrove’s ‘Dear Friend’ letter, he read through it slowly and carefully:

My Dear Friend:

This is an urgent appeal. I am in great danger. The person whose loyal and faithful companion I have been—and to whom even now my life is dedicated—intends to have me done away with. I can scarcely believe his change of heart, but I have heard the plan discussed and must believe it, however unwillingly. They think I do not understand. Of course I understand! I can sense when I am in the way. And I know that murder is going to be the reward for my uncomplaining loyalty. A poison pellet in my food...a quick injection...perhaps to be held helpless under water by a loved hand until I drown...one or other of these dreadful fates will overtake me if you, dear friend, do not bring aid. Soon I shall send you details of how you can help. I cannot—for reasons you will understand—sign this letter, but I enclose my photograph in the hope your heart may be touched.

The tarry astringency of Purbright’s first few mouthfuls of tea was responsible, perhaps, for his sense that there was something about the letter that he had not noticed during his several previous readings. He tried to decide what it was, to define the reason for his new misgiving. Some phrase out of character? He didn’t know enough about the dead woman’s character to say. It certainly was a womanly letter in as much as its tone was emotional. A tinge, surely, of hysteria—romantic hysteria, if there was such a thing. Nothing to suggest that it was not genuine. Anyway, the forensic boys were quite satisfied that it had been typed on the same machine and by the same person as the other correspondence—indubitably Mrs Palgrove—that the house had yielded.

The letter’s most impressive feature, of course, was the uncanny accuracy of its forecast. To be drowned by a loving hand...Well, the poor bitch had been right there. Had Palgrove actually threatened her in those terms? No, not to her face, apparently...They think I do not understand. Back to the business of complicity. But with whom, if not Doreen Booker? Was the amorous Pally running another lady? Injection...poison pellet...He certainly was being given plenty of credit for enterprise. A fiend in human form, as Sid Love might say (and doubtless would, sooner or later). Imagine living with the fear of...

Suddenly, Purbright realized what was odd.

For all its extravagant phrasing, its sensational accusations, the letter somehow failed to carry conviction of real danger. It was too literary, too carefully composed. Even the punctuation was faultless.

It was not the letter of a frightened woman.

Chapter Fourteen

The pear-shaped man around whom the little shop in Station Road appeared to have been built showed not the slightest surprise at being visited by a police inspector. This betokened neither ease of conscience nor long practice of dissimulation. He would have remained just as unperturbed if Purbright had been an armed robber, or the Pope, or a lady without any clothes. The truth was that the man was so bulky and his premises so small that the demonstration of any emotion whatsoever on his part would, one felt, have been as rash an act as firing a pistol under an Alpine snow pack.

“I am interested in certain photographs,” Purbright announced after introducing himself.

“Photographs?” The word was blown back to him over the counter on the man’s next suspiration, a whisper carried by a steady breeze. Purbright felt the breeze cease: the man was breathing in. “Never handle...” blew across before the wind dropped once more, “...that sort of thing.”

The next two breaths arrived empty. Then came, “You should know better...” followed by the final instalment, “...than to ask.”

Purbright frowned indignantly, but before he could frame a suitable retort the trans-counter wind sprang up again.

“Here...” Something flopped in front of him. “Best I can do.”

The inspector glanced down at a young woman of highly unlikely mammary development who ogled him from the cover of Saucy Pix Mag.

“We seem to be at cross purposes,” he said sternly to the pear-shaped man. “The inquiries I am making concern an order for three photographic prints that was placed with a Nottingham firm by somebody who gave this address.”

“What kind...of prints?”

“Not this kind, certainly.” Purbright handed back Saucy Pix. He thought the man looked just the slightest fraction relieved. “The name given with the order was Dover. I know that’s not your name, but I’d like to know who Mr Dover is and where I can find him.”

“Don’t think...Dover’s his real...name, mind... Seen him about...sometimes, but...” The man shook his head gingerly. Purbright felt the tremor of even this small action transmitted through the counter.

“Why should he have given this address?”

“Accommodation...address. Pays...so much a week.”

“He gets letters, then, does he?”

The man seemed not to consider this question worth sending a special airborne reply, so Purbright followed it with: “Anything in for him at the moment?”

The man felt, without looking, under the counter and drew up an envelope. He hesitated for the space of three breaths, then passed it to the inspector.

Purbright opened the envelope. He pulled out two sheets of paper, folded together.

“Here, do you...”

Purbright unfolded the sheets, began to read.

“...think you ought...”

Purbright moved the paper to catch a better light.

“...to do that?”

After a while, the inspector looked up. “Do you know a man called Mortimer Hive?”

A negative grunt.

Purbright replaced the sheets of paper in the envelope, which he then put in his pocket.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I shall explain to Mr Dover when I see him that this letter was taken away on my responsibility. If he comes in before I can do so, you’d better refer him to me.”

He nodded aflably and departed.

In the secretarial office of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance, Mr Hive was making gloomy pilgrimage from one to another of the pictures on the walls. He held in his hand a teacup, from which he took occasional sips, abstractedly and without zest. For a long while he halted before the representation of the child on the steps of the public house. The child’s face bore some resemblance to that of the barmaid in the Three Crowns. Mr Hive sighed and passed on to contemplation of the starving greyhound.

The voice of Miss Teatime, fond but firm, came from behind him. “You really must stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mortimer. There is no need for you to go back to London. It is your own decision entirely.”

“I was made to promise,” said Hive, pettishly.

“Nonsense. Your commission is over. How can this person now order you out of the town? He sounds like one of those American sheriffs whose ponies are so disgracefully misused.”

“I promised, just the same.” He squinted closely at the greyhound’s eye. “In return for an accommodation.”

“You could have asked me to cash a cheque,” said Miss Teatime, reprovingly but not with eagerness. She added, more brightly: “Or perhaps Mr Purbright would have been able to oblige.”

Mr Hive pulled out his presentation watch. “I am not going to see him,” he declared.

“Mortimer! We have gone into this already. I have given Mr Purbright an undertaking and I do not care to dishonour it. You must at least see what he wants.”

“Really, Lucy—a policeman...” He moved on to the belaboured donkey picture, as if to identify himself with the victim of blackboard’s oppression.

“Mr Purbright is not a policeman in our sense of the word. He is a most charming man and, as I hope and believe, a tactful and realistic one. He has already contributed to my favourite charity.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t know about Uncle Macnamara,” Hive said to the donkey. With his teacup he pledged the beast’s health, or what remained of it.

“There is no reason why he should interest himself in our good treasurer. He is far too busy trying to find what happened to poor Mrs Palgrove to worry about charity registration formalities. And Mr Purbright, I might add, is not insensible to the attraction of a quid pro quo.”

Hive turned to face the room. He was frowning. “Mrs Palgrove...Which Mrs Palgrove?”

“The Mrs Palgrove, naturally.”

“Is her husband called Leonard? Owns a factory, or something?”

Miss Teatime nodded. “She was drowned, you know. Did you not read about it in the newspapers?”

“How very extraordinary,” said Mr Hive. He came and sat down. “Leonard happens to be my co-respondent—or was going to be, rather.”

“The Case?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Teatime, “what a small world it is!”

“No wonder he wants to see me. This policeman of yours.”

“You must be nice to him, mind.”

“I haven’t said that I would stay.”

She smiled. “But you will?”

Mr Hive brushed the velvet collar of his long, narrow-waisted, mushroom-coloured overcoat and wriggled his shoulders a little to square its fit. He paused, then carefully unbuttoned the coat, removed it and hung it meticulously on the back of a chair.

“Very well. Just to be sociable.”

He sat down. Miss Teatime fished the whiskey bottle out of the biscuit barrel and beckoned him to hand her his cup.

In Nottingham, it was raining.

Sergeant Love had had the sort of fuss made of him at the city’s police headquarters that is usually reserved for a mislaid child. A chair; hot, sweet tea; cheery questions about his home football team; a piece of paper pencilled with directions in big, clear writing. He had been quite sorry to leave. His hosts, had he but known, were still wondering anxiously if they should have let him leave. But Sergeant Love did not know this: he was not consciously aware that he remained favoured at the age of thirty-six with the face of a clean and equable-natured schoolboy of fourteen.

Despite the rain, for which he had come quite unprepared, Love did not take a taxi to the photographic store. This was partly because he regarded taxi-riding as an extravagance of a slightly sinful sort, like créme de menthe and carpeted water-closets; partly because he enjoyed looking into shop windows. The walk took him a quarter of an hour and soaked his shoulders, shoes and trouser legs, yet he could have wished it twice as long. It was only when he entered the store to be greeted with “Now, son; what can I do for you?” that his euphoria trickled away with the water from his turned-up collar. As sternly as he could, he corrected the man’s underestimate of his age and station and asked to be taken to the manager.

Mr Jobling was middle-aged and well aware that showing surprise at the youthfulness of policemen was a classic symptom of impending senility, so he kept his thoughts to himself and busily co-operated. He caused to be paraded in turn before the sergeant all three members of the staff who could reasonably be hoped to recollect anything at all about the mysterious Mr Dover and his photographic requirements.

The first, an overseer with serene eyes and a white-fuzzed dome, proved to have an equally abbot-like desire to assist the visiting traveller. It was more than matched, however, by his seraphic blankness of memory. As this man wandered off, apologizing, Love was reminded of a monastic retreat he once had visited in pursuance of some indecent exposure inquiries.

Next came the man from the process department who had recognized Mrs Palgrove’s portrait. He was small and craggy-faced and looked shrewd and alert. No, he had not handled the other batch on the order, but recalled that about that number of copies—twenty, had the sergeant said?—had been run off the week before. He hadn’t noticed the print they’d been taken from. The job had been one of Morgan’s, he thought.

Morgan, Mr Jobling explained to Love, was an employee who had just started a two weeks’ holiday in Italy. “Lucky chap,” said Love, and all agreed.

That left Miss Jacinda Evanson, counter assistant.

Love smiled at Miss Evanson as soon as she came into Mr Jobling’s little office. Nice, he said to himself. Dinky. She smiled back before lowering her eyes. Love didn’t know which he liked better—the smile or the intimation of modesty. In respect for the latter, he postponed indefinitely a certain piece of self-indulgence that the sight of a pretty girl usually induced: he did not mentally ping Miss Evanson’s suspender. He did, however, continue to watch with pleasure the delicately featured oval of her face, her little-sister shoulders, and hair like a bouquet of gleaming black dahlias.

“Oh, rather,” said Miss Evanson. “I remember him all right. I didn’t like him. He was very bossy.”

Swine, murmured an interior, pugilistic, Love. “And that’s why you remember him, is it?”

“Well, not only that. I remember him because of the picture, partly.”

“The picture of the lady?”

“No, the other one. It wasn’t a proper photograph, you see. Just a picture cut out of a magazine or something. And I said, well that one won’t copy very well, and he said why, and I said, well it’s not a proper photograph, look, you can see it’s what we call a half-tone reproduction and it won’t copy, not really clear. And then he said, well I want it done just the same and thanks for the lecture but will you kindly get on with it Miss. So I said, just as you like then but don’t blame me if they look muzzy.”

Socko! applauded Love’s inner self. “Do you think you could describe the fellow, Miss Evanson?” ‘Fellow’—that ought to please her.

“Well, like I said—bossy. And sarcastic. He was dreadfully rude the second time he came in. You know, when one of the pictures had got lost.”

“Yes, but what did he look like?”

The girl considered, frowning. “Well...” She gave a shrug. “Nothing much to look at, really. Sort of young middle-aged, not tall, a bit pasty looking...oh, and pop-eyed—I noticed that. His suit could have done with a press, too.”

“Colour of eyes?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t all that bothered.”

Secretly gladdened, Love wrote down ‘eyes, mud-coloured’.

He looked up. “Hair?”

“Didn’t notice that, either. I’m not sure that he had much.” A tiny breeze of amusement was in her voice.

‘Hair, thin, mousey,’ wrote the sergeant. He raised the pencil and casually scratched at his own fertile hair line. “Anything else you can remember?”

She said there wasn’t and half rose from her chair.

“Just a minute, Miss Evanson...” (hirsute Love, not bossy but masterful) “...there’s just this question of the picture, the one he wanted the twenty copies of. Now do you think you could describe the person it showed?”

“Oh, but”—she leaned forward in eagerness to stop him writing down something wrong—“it wasn’t a person. It was a dog.”

The sergeant blinked. “A what?”

“A dog. A little woolly dog. Begging.”

Chapter Fifteen

Inspector Purbright sipped tea from a cup of the frailest china, patterned with forget-me-nots. At first taste, he had fancied there was a curious, faintly spirituous smell about it, but this seemed to have worn off.

“What you have told me,” he said to Mr Hive, sitting opposite, “interests me very much indeed. You are absolutely sure, are you, that the man you now know to be Palgrove did not move from that cottage during the whole time you were watching, from ten-thirty onwards?”

“Absolutely.”

After a somewhat edgy start, Hive’s response to Purbright’s questions had grown increasingly confident. He was now openly enjoying himself.

Miss Teatime, seated like a referee at the third side of the table, found that no intervention was needed beyond the handing of fresh cups of tea. She was so pleased that her two good friends had taken to each other.

“Didn’t he leave the room at all?” asked Purbright.

“Only twice. Presumably to see a man about St Paul’s.”

“To...?”

“To have a slash, Inspector,” said Miss Teatime, in a kindly aside.

“You are quite happy, then, Mr Hive, that between half past ten that night and three o’clock the following morning Palgrove could not possibly have paid a visit to his home in Flaxborough.”

“Not the slightest chance of it.”

Purbright sighed. “There is something to be said for being put under observation by a conscientious inquiry agent, it seems. Mr Palgrove is a singularly lucky man.”

“Do you mean he was going to be arrested for poor Mrs Palgrove’s murder?” Miss Teatime looked shocked.

“That was a possibility.”

Miss Teatime reached and patted Hive’s arm. “You see, Mortimer? Are you not glad that I dissuaded you from rushing back to London?”

Mr Hive smiled a little sheepishly. The inspector noticed. “Had you made arrangements to return before today?”

“I was going yesterday, as a matter of fact. But there have been so many counter-attractions.”

“I trust they will not diminish. I’m going to need you.”

“No, no—I must leave tomorrow. I shall be desolate, but I really must.”

“Surely a few more hours will not make all that difference, Mr Hive. You’ve said yourself that your assignment here came to an end before you expected.”

Mr Hive looked uncomfortable. “I don’t wish to appear obstructive, but my first duty is to my client.”

“The man who hired you to keep an eye on Palgrove?”

“His wife and Palgrove. Yes.”

“But he isn’t your client any longer.”

“Until he pays up, he is.”

“Mortimer very foolishly made this man a promise,” interposed Miss Teatime. “He undertook to leave Flaxborough not later than tomorrow.”

“Do you know why he was anxious for you to go?”

Not liking to admit that he had been so culpably undetectivelike as to have spared the point no thought, Mr Hive remained silent. Miss Teatime, however, turned a glinting eye to Purbright and said: “But you know, Inspector, do you not?”

“I think so,” said Purbright, quietly.

Miss Teatime looked at Mr Hive again. “It clearly is your duty, Mortimer, to tell the inspector this man’s name.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Purbright said. “I know his name. It’s Booker. Kingsley Booker. He is a master at the Grammar School. Indeed, both you and I, Mr Hive, met him there the other night.” He paused. “If you remember.”

“I remember very well,” said Mr Hive, a trifle huffily. “It was Tuesday—the night I was telling you about...” Suddenly he frowned. “Here—but how do you know about Booker?”

“I have spoken with his wife.”

“More than I’ve done.” Hive’s tone had something about it of the regret of a gamekeeper restricted to a diet of boiled fish.

“Did you ever get your camera back?” Purbright asked.

“I did. Some idiot had hidden it in a cupboard.”

“And the car—did you find out who did that?”

Mr Hive shrugged. “I suppose it’s just a high-spirited sort of town.” He added: “Like Gomorrah.”

“No, no, Mr Hive. As a good detective, you have already decided that these things were not fortuitous. You have seen them as part of a systematic attempt to keep you away from that cottage at Hambourne Dyke.”

“Yes, well...”

“You have also recognized as belonging to the same scheme the way you were manoeuvred that evening—of all evenings—into taking part in that brains trust thing.”

By a gesture of good-natured resignation, Mr Hive conveyed that his cleverness had, indeed, been found out.

“And then, when you had persisted despite all obstacles in carrying your assignment through, you must have seen your brusque dismissal as a sign of your client’s dismay at the frustration of his plans.”

“True,” said Mr Hive.

The inspector paused to take another drink of tea and to consider where the flood of hindsight, released by Palgrove’s elimination, was leading him.

He looked up at Miss Teatime. “What do you know about Mr Booker?”

“My impression,” she said after some reflection, “is that he is a pedagogue of the rather more obnoxious kind. Even among professional committee sitters, he is noticeably arrogant, prudish, sententious, intolerant and ambitious. His uncharitableness is of the order that ensures rapid preferment in the sphere of social welfare.”

“He is an animal lover?”

“That, too.”

“But not,” Purbright added, “one inclined to sympathize with the objects of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance?”

Miss Teatime gave no sign of finding the question mischievous. “He has been very difficult,” she said, simply.

“With what organizations is he officially connected?”

“The doggy ones, mostly.”

“The Four Foot Haven, for instance?”

“He is the vice-chairman.”

“So he would be a collaborator of Mrs Palgrove?”

“That is so, Inspector.”

There slotted into place in Purbright’s mind something that Leonard Palgrove had said—or half-said—on being asked to enumerate his wife’s regular visitors. Oh, and a school teacher called...Hastily he had altered the description to ‘something to do with insurance’. Can’t remember his name. Naturally not. Mistress’s husband. Booker.

He turned to Mr Hive. “Were you surprised when Mrs Booker failed to arrive at the cottage on Tuesday night?”

“Very surprised. It was a most elaborately arranged assignation. Really beautifully done. The idea was that she was supposed to be spending the night at Nottingham...but perhaps I told you?”

“That’s exactly where she did spend the night.”

“Good lord!”

“Her husband saw to it that she was on the train with that friend of hers. He took her to the station.”

Hive looked angrily incredulous. Booker’s offence against professional ethics plainly was something new in his experience.

“Ah,” said Purbright, “I see you’ve reached the correct inference already. You were employed by Booker for no other purpose than to learn in advance of a specific arrangement by Palgrove and Doreen Booker to spend a night together. Booker knew that he had only to prevent his wife at the last minute from keeping the appointment for Palgrove to be stranded for the night, or for the relevant part of it, with no means of proving that he had not been at home murdering his wife. Better still, from Booker’s point of view, was the strong likelihood that Palgrove would actually try and provide himself with an alibi for the sake of his respectability—an alibi that was bound to be disproved once a murder investigation got under way.

“Now we can see, Mr Hive, why your perseverance beyond the point at which Booker wanted you to quit was so embarrassing to him.”

Hive had been listening with a look of judicious agreement. At the last, however, it was succeeded by a frown.

“You know, what’s rather puzzled me right from the beginning,” he said, “is why Booker picked on Mrs P. I’ve thought a lot about this, but I can’t quite see the logic.”

“Now, Mortimer,” said Miss Teatime, “you must stop hiding your light under a bushel. False modesty does not deceive a shrewd young police inspector as it might me. Admit that you know perfectly well why Mr Booker behaved as he did. Or am I to guess and will you say if I am right?”

Mr Hive accepted one of Purbright’s cigarettes. “All right, Lucy. You guess.”

“I have mentioned already,” began Miss Teatime, “that Mr Booker impresses me as an uncharitable man. That means that he is insensitive and therefore likely to lack consideration for others. I have also said that he is arrogant. With arrogance goes jealousy and a tendency to be vengeful. Someone has stolen his wife—very well, that man must lose his. But as he obviously does not much value her, the account must be balanced by extra payment. What more fitting than conviction for murder—and what more convenient to arrange? The life of some perfectly innocent, if not particularly endearing woman is an irrelevancy in the reckoning of a gentleman such as Mr Booker.”

Hive glanced at the inspector, who nodded thoughtfully (he was thinking of a certain confiscated radio set).

“Full marks, Lucy,” said Hive.

The inspector added his congratulations, which Miss Teatime hastened to say were undeserved as she had merely tried to echo what was in the mind of her good friend Mortimer.

“I wonder,” said Purbright, “if you’d care to try another piece of mental divination—you do seem rather good at it—and tell me what you suppose was in Mrs Palgrove’s mind when she wrote this.”

He passed to her one of the ‘Dear Friend’ letters.

“Before you read it, I should mention that we are quite satisfied as to its authenticity in spite of its not being signed. So long as it was Palgrove who was assumed to have killed his wife, the letter made perfect sense, even if some of the phrasing is a bit queer. But what now? How on earth was she induced to write such a thing?”

Miss Teatime put on a pair of spectacles. They made her look more benign than ever, until one noticed behind the lenses a certain gleam of eager alertness. Purbright was reminded of a village librarian scanning a passage of Henry Miller.

When she had finished, Miss Teatime removed her glasses and looked straight at Purbright. She was smiling.

“Why, Inspector, this is a standard piece of modern public relations technique. In the charity field, of course. I remember that the Canine Rescue League used an almost identical device not very long ago.

“It is a whimsical method of soliciting donations, you see.” She tapped the paper with her spectacles. “The letter purports to have been penned by a dog—representative, as it were, of all dogs everywhere that are in danger of being put to sleep to satisfy human convenience. A picture of the beast is appended, as a rule, in order to sharpen the appeal to the emotions. Sometimes there is a paw-print at the bottom—very heart-tugging, you must agree.”

Purbright tried not to look deflated. “Then that letter had nothing to do with Mrs Palgrove’s death? It was just coincidence that a number of people received it on the same day as she was killed?”

“It is for you to decide that, inspector. For my own part, I should be inclined to be wary of coincidences.”

Purbright thought a while. Then he said: “We shall probably never know for certain, but it is quite conceivable that it was Booker who devised the letter and prevailed upon Mrs Palgrove to type out copies. These he undertook to post for her. He could have kept them until the right moment arrived, removed the attached photographs—you’ll notice the pin holes, by the way—and then sent them, or some of them, to the people he thought would best serve his purpose. I think it was originally his intention to substitute for the animal photograph a print of a picture of Mrs Palgrove herself. We know that he ordered three such copies from a Nottingham firm, but something went wrong and they were not delivered in time.”

Miss Teatime was looking at him wonderingly.

“You are being remarkably frank with us, Inspector.” The observation was really a question.

“What you mean,” said Purbright, “is that I am being remarkably indiscreet. You may be right, but in saying these things to Mr Hive I prefer to think of myself as confiding in a professional colleague.”

Hive smiled at his finger ends and forthwith gave them the treat of a wander over his moustache.

“The point is,” the inspector went on, “that I am faced with a considerable difficulty. It is from Mr Booker that an indiscretion is required, not from me. But how is he going to be persuaded to commit one? What evidence we have against him is in solution, so to speak: it needs one admission from him round which to crystallize.”

For several moments, nobody said anything.

Then Mr Hive cleared his throat. “Suppose...”

The others looked at him. His mouth shut again. He shook his head, frowned regretfully.

A little later, a fresh thought animated Hive’s face. He sat straighter in his chair. “You know, the last time I was talking to that fellow, he practically threatened me. No, damn it, he did threaten me. I didn’t like it.”

Miss Teatime looked anxious. Purbright asked: “What kind of threat did he make?”

“Well, perhaps not a threat in so many words. But his attitude was extremely unpleasant. Guilty conscience, obviously. I wonder if I were to upset him a bit more...”

“Now, do be careful, Mortimer.”

Hive waved away Miss Teatime’s caution. He reached for the telephone that stood in the middle of the tea things.

“Just a minute.” Half rising, Purbright laid a hand on his arm. “Is there an extension?”

“That is the extension,” said Miss Teatime. “The switchboard is in the next room but one as you go away from the staircase. There will be no one there at the moment.”

Purbright spoke to Hive. “Give me a few seconds, though I don’t expect he’ll give anything away over the phone. Try and make an appointment. That will give us time to arrange things.” He hurried to the door.

In the other office, he lifted the receiver of the little one-line switchboard and heard Hive’s call ringing out. It was answered by a woman. Purbright recognized the voice of Doreen Booker.

“May I speak to Mr Booker, please?”

“Who is that?”

“Hastings is my name.”

“I’m afraid Mr Booker isn’t back yet.”

“Are you expecting him shortly?”

“Well, not really. He’ll be busy at the school until about seven.”

“He’s there now, is he?”

“That’s right. But I could get him to...”

“I’m in a bit of a hurry, actually, Mrs Booker. If you could just give me the school number...”

Purbright replaced the receiver and waited until he judged the second call to have been put through. On listening again, he heard only the breathing of Mr Hive and a succession of small, distant noises suggestive of a telephone left off its rest. Nothing else happened for quite a long time. Then he heard hasty footsteps, the closing of a door, the rumble of the picked-up phone.

“Booker here...” The voice was guarded, but laden with annoyance.

“Don’t ring off. This is extremely important.”

A pause.

“Who is that?”

“Hastings—but don’t ring off. I’ve something urgent to tell you.”

There was another interval. Purbright could hear faint shouts. They sounded like those of boys. A car engine was being started somewhere. The echoing slam of a distant door.

“Are you listening?”

No reply.

“Dover—I said, are you listening?”

“All right. What is it?” Booker sounded very close to the telephone mouthpiece; he spoke in a kind of curt, lipless murmur.

“Don’t you know?” Purbright recognized that Hive was trying to put the right degree of casual menace into his tone, but all too obviously he was no expert.

“The money? It’s there. I sent a boy.”

“I don’t mean the money. I’m talking about Folkestone.”

“I...don’t think I follow you.”

“Folkestone—I know who he is.”

“Well.”

“He’s a man called Palgrove. His wife...”

“Now look here, Hive; I’m not concerned with this business any more. It’s all forgiven and forgotten. You’ll have the rest of your money just as soon as I pick up your account. Or tell me what it is now, if you like, and I’ll put a cheque in the post tonight.”

Purbright waited. Hive seemed to be undecided what to say.

“Will that suit you?” Booker asked.

“Well, it’s eighty-five guineas, actually. There’s been quite a lot of...”

“It will be waiting for you when you get back to London tomorrow.”

Again Hive hesitated. Purbright swore to himself. The man was hopeless, absolutely hope...

“No.”

It was Mr Hive’s voice, suddenly firm and challenging.

“No, I am not going to be paid off like a taxi-driver. I consider that you owe me an explanation.”

“Of what?”

“Of, of...yes, all right, then—of this wretched woman’s murder!”

Purbright gripped the phone close to his ear while he delved urgently with his free hand for paper and pencil. For what seemed a long time after he had found them, there came to him nothing but background sounds from the echoing corridors of the school.

Then the cold, restrained voice of Booker.

“This conversation is becoming a little too foolish to be continued over the telephone. I think you’d better come over here. Straight away, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Hello...” said Mr Hive, several times. There was no answer.

Chapter Sixteen

Om his return to Miss Teatime’s office, Purbright found Mr Hive in a mood approaching elation.

“Ah, my dear Inspector! Did you hear that?” A sweeping gesture indicated the phone. “We are to beard him in his den!”

“I don’t wish to discourage you, Mr Hive, but you must not expect too much from this interview. Booker strikes me as a very circumspect gentleman.”

“That is exactly what I have been trying to tell him, Mr Purbright,” said Miss Teatime, who was gathering together the cups and saucers. “He is also very resourceful.” She caught the inspector’s eye and gave him a private little head-shake. Purbright saw that it was meant as an appeal for Mr Hive’s protection.

“One thing must be understood,” Purbright said to Mr Hive. “In your own interests, you must avoid provoking this man too rashly. I shall keep as close to you as I can without arousing his suspicion. If he incriminates himself in my hearing, well and good. But for heaven’s sake don’t drive him into making an attack on you or anything like that.”

Hive smiled. “My dear chap, this is no time for boasting, but if you think I have never before faced danger you are sadly mistaken. I have collected my fair share of honourable scars, as Lucy here will tell you.”

“I will tell the inspector nothing of the sort, Mortimer. Neither bedroom nor bar-room wounds qualify for medals in this country, and even those have long since healed in your case. It is only your juvenile exuberance that is undiminished, and I am afraid that it will get you into trouble.”

“Heavens above, woman! Would you have me grow old?” Hive threw back his shoulders. “I am a soldier of fortune, and justice”—he glanced winningly at Purbright—“is my new captain! Have I not just given up eighty-five guineas for him?”

Suddenly he looked serious. “Do you suppose the court will recompense me for that? I mean, it is a legitimate fee, you know.”

“There’s nothing to stop you suing the estate of a convicted felon, so far as I know,” said Purbright.

Mr Hive looked dubious. “It would be rather like kicking a man when he was down, wouldn’t it? Those unspeakable bloody lawyers would get it, anyway.” He shrugged and took up his coat from the back of the chair.

As the two men were leaving, Miss Teatime touched Hive’s sleeve. She looked at him earnestly.

“Now, Mortimer—none of this Rupert of Hentzau nonsense. You promise?”

Hive closed his eyes and for a moment of self-dedication held his hat against his breast. Then he twirled about and in three long, springing strides reached the door, which Purbright was holding open for him.

They evolved their plan on the way to the school. Hive was to enter first, on his own. From a shop doorway opposite the school gates, Purbright would be able to keep him under observation while he walked up a short carriageway and through glass doors into the entrance hall. There he was to wait for Booker. In the hall were the doors of two, perhaps three, small interview rooms, and the inspector thought that one or other of these rooms would almost certainly be Booker’s choice for a private talk. The staff room he obviously would avoid, as he would the headmaster’s study; and the various offices and storerooms were likely to be locked. Once Purbright had noted through which door Booker had taken his visitor, he would follow and do what he could to hear what was said.

Hive’s final eager embellishment of these arrangements was his suggestion that he should pretend to be slightly deaf. “That will make him speak up, you see.”

Purbright stood well back in his refuge, a space between the two display windows of a greengrocer and florist, and watched Hive step jauntily through the school’s gateway and up to the main entrance. One of the big plate-glass doors swung inwards and turned for an instant into a sheet of orange flame as it sent back the reflection of the evening sun.

Remaining all the time within sight, Hive first made a tour of inspection. He looked at some pictures on the walls, glanced at all the doors in turn, and spent some time inspecting a display of pottery, docketed with pupils’ names, on a low table. He sat on a chair, nursed his knee, scratched his head, got up again, stretched. He walked slowly in a circle, head down, hands clasped behind; then took a turn in the opposite direction, head up, hands in pockets.

Where the hell was Booker? Purbright gazed across at as many windows as were within range. The school appeared to have been voided completely. He concentrated on the entrance hall once more.

Five minutes went by. Mr Hive had settled into a sort of sentry-go in the centre of the floor. Purbright guessed that he was clashing his foot at the turn in an effort to advertise his presence.

Suddenly he saw him stop and face half-left. Someone had come into the hall from the farther end.

The inspector watched intently. Hive was being approached, but by whom it was not yet possible to make out. It certainly did not look like Booker...No, it was a boy. Hive leaned and listened. The boy pointed the way he had come. Hive nodded. The boy went away again, swinging one arm round and round and giving a skip every now and then. As soon as the boy disappeared, Hive turned to face in Purbright’s direction and delivered himself of a great pantomimic shrug. Then he began to walk backwards, jerking his thumb like a hitch-hiker.

Purbright judged from this performance that his guess about one of the interview rooms had been proved awry. Booker had had a different idea.

The inspector broke cover, crossed the road, and cautiously approached the glass doors. He shouldered one open and slipped inside the hall. Of Hive there now was no sign.

Keeping close to the wall on his left, he made his way towards the double doors near which he had last seen the gesticulating Hive. From somewhere beyond them came shouting, faint but unmistakeably boisterous, punctuated by sounds of human collision. Boys, thought Purbright. There were still boys in the building.

Carefully he pushed one of the doors far enough back to enable him to peer up and down the corridor on to which it opened. To his left, the corridor was lined with long glass windows of classrooms. Their partitions, too, were of glass, giving an uninterrupted view to the end of the block. Every room was empty save one in which two aproned women were sweeping the floor.

The right-hand section of corridor was shorter. It went past another empty classroom and then opened into a lobby. Purbright saw beams set with numbered pegs. The noises were louder now. They came from the other side of the lobby. Purbright walked towards it. He could smell the sweat of young males.

As he entered the lobby, there tumbled into it through a doorway on the left three boys locked in a puppy-like tussle. They saw him, stopped yelling at one another, and disentangled.

“I wonder,” the inspector said, “if you could tell me where I am likely to find Mr Booker.”

The nearest boy tugged at his ravaged clothing and recovered his breath. He looked eager to help. “He might be still in the gym, sir.”

“Shall I go and see, sir?”

“Sir—I’ll go, sir!”

Purbright raised a dissuading hand. “No, I only want to know where he is. I can find him if you’ll tell me which way to go.”

There began a competitive babel of instruction. It was quelled partly by Purbright himself, partly by the arrival of an older boy whom he assumed to be a prefect. To him, the inspector put his question again.

“He’s been taking an after-school coaching session, sir, but I think another gentleman is with him at the moment.”

“That’s all right. It’s a friend of mine. They’re expecting me.”

“Well, you just go through here, sir, and along that passage. The gym’s at the end of it.”

Purbright thanked his helpers and crossed the lobby, hoping that helpfulness would not send any of them in pursuit; eavesdropping was distasteful enough without its being witnessed by small boys.

Fortunately, the passage curved sufficiently for its further half to be out of sight from the lobby. Another feature that Purbright noted with satisfaction was the small observation window in the door of the gymnasium ahead.

He reached the door and listened. He could hear nothing but the noise from the changing-room behind him. Warily, he peeped through the window. Bringing his eye close to the glass, he angled his head to command a view of one half of the room, then of the other.

The gymnasium was empty.

Purbright went in.

It would not be quite true to say that he felt alarmed. By now, his was the sort of apprehension that is temporarily relieved by each postponement of discovery. But he knew that even in this many-doored building he would reach in the end some place whose entrance and exit were one. That was when mere unease might be turned on the instant to dismay.

He glanced about him. Wall bars, hanging beams, a vaulting horse docile in one corner, a stack of long benches varnished to the colour of maple syrup, rolled up mats, looped ropes and captive rings, windows high out of harm’s way...

And—of course—a door.

This one was in the centre of the opposite wall, recessed between two sets of wall bars. It was painted battleship grey.

Very gently, Purbright turned its bright brass handle and leaned a little of his weight against it. The door was locked.

Still leaning, he pressed his ear to the wood.

Nothing. No voices, certainly.

He kept listening, puzzled by a silence that had something curiously vibrant about it, as if it had only just succeeded an explosion or a collapse. It was more like a long extended echo, sinister yet of unidentifiable origin. And surely there was a sound there, too..liqueous, lapping...

Water.

Purbright seized and twisted the handle and shook the door violently. He shouted, banged with foot and fist, then turned and raced back to the changing-room lobby.

Five boys, dressed but still lingering, gazed incredulously at the spectacle of a mature adult at full gallop. Purbright halted in the passage entrance only long enough to take two gasps of breath and to wave the boys into close attendance before launching himself upon the return run.

“Police officer...Want your help...” he called over his shoulder to the bunch of marvelling but game harriers.

They burst in a body into the gymnasium.

Purbright pointed up at one of the suspended beams.

“Any of you know how to get that thing down?”

“I do, sir!”

“Let me, sir!”

The volunteers rushed to unwind ropes from cleats and to pay them out. The beam began to descend. As soon as it was low enough, the inspector shouldered one end from its channel and swung the beam free.

“Down a bit.”

When the beam was level with the handle of the grey door, Purbright put up his hand.

“Right—three of you one side, two with me on the other.”

Gleefully, the boys took up their positions. Divination of what was about to happen swirled in their heads like the fumes of wine. A battering ram! And to smash down a door—a school door!

They drew back the beam until it touched the wall bars behind, then braced themselves, half crouching, for the assault.

“Right!” the inspector shouted.

The beam met the door just to the right of its handle with the most satisfying crash the boys had ever heard in their lives. The door went back on its hinges like a flail. A spinning fragment of timber soared over their heads and clattered musically down the wall bars.

Purbright let momentum help him rush forward through the breached doorway. He saw the blue shimmer of submerged tiles and sniffed chlorine.

Ten yards away, close to the right-hand wall of the swimming pool, was what looked like a floating bundle of clothes.

Nearby stood Booker, in shorts and white sweater, leaning forward from his feet and indifferently contemplating Purbright’s arrival.

The inspector ran round the pool’s edge and lay full length to face the water. He grabbed the sodden bundle and heaved part of it up and forward. Boys were kneeling, each side of him, reaching out. Together they pulled and rolled the inert Mr Hive from the pool.

Purbright spoke to the nearest boy. “Do you think you could make a nine-nine-nine call?”

The boy nodded emphatically and got to his feet.

“Ambulance and police. Quick as you can.”

The boy sped off.

One of his companions pulled the inspector’s sleeve.

“Sir, Mr Booker knows how to give the kiss of life, sir.”

Mr Hive stirred and gave a weak, strangled cough.

“Hush,” Purbright said to the boy. “I think he heard that.”