IP12 - Whatever's Been Going on at Mumblseby?

Chapter Nine

Purbright had not expected much success in the matter of the candlewax traces. A parish church, even in an era of declining religious observance, is trodden by many visitors in a year. But there they were—dark discs on the stone. They had survived the passage of feet by virtue of having fallen in the shelter of the font plinth.

The inspector, squatting to take a close look at them, heard the raising of the latch, then the cushioned close of the south door. He did not get up. Footsteps approached, firm, businesslike, proprietorial.

“Good afternoon.” The Reverend Alan Tiverton gazed upon the half-kneeling Purbright with a mixture of inquiry and high benevolence. “There is no objection to you people taking rubbings, you know. We do rather prefer you to ask permission, of course, but, as I say, there’s no objection. Carry on.”

The inspector got up. “In point of fact...” he began.

At once, Mr Tiverton’s smile contracted to an O of recognition and he held forth his hand like a wrestler.

“My dear Mr Purfleet, forgive me. I did not recognize our knight-errant of the other day.”

Purbright took both the compliment and the misnomer in good part and inquired after the rescued lady’s health.

“In the pink,” declared the vicar. “Or so I understand.”

“An unfortunate time for such a misadventure,” the inspector suggested.

“Indeed, yes. Mmm. Rather.” Mr Tiverton had an interesting talent for sounding keen to prolong a conversation while in the very act of abandoning it. Already he was moving away from the inspector.

“Brass rubbings...” Purbright produced the words quickly, as a sort of holding device.

“Mmm?” The vicar halted and turned upon him an eyes-closed smile of solicitude.

“...are not at all my line, I’m afraid.”

The vicar’s eyes opened. He glanced down to where the inspector had been kneeling.

“Oh, dear. Not detection, I trust?” Behind the mildly fatuous good humour was something of anxiety.

“Hardly that, Mr Tiverton. I was simply wondering how candlegrease had come to be dropped so far from the altar. A Corpus Christi procession, perhaps?”

“God forbid,” exclaimed Mr Tiverton, piously. He peered at the spot. “Do you know, I’d never noticed it before. No, no, a procession couldn’t have been responsible. There’d have been a trail, not a group. You see? All together. These are drips from a candle held still and over a period.”

He straightened, boyishly pleased with himself. “There, now—what do you want solving next?”

Purbright smiled at the pleasantry, then immediately looked aloft.

“Hell of a way to commit suicide.”

Mr Tiverton looked startled, then grave.

“Any method of suicide is the hell of a way.” He said it slowly and with careful enunciation. Purbright gave the line full marks.

“She was a parishioner of yours, was she, Mrs Croll?”

“A parishioner, yes; a communicant, no.” The vicar waited a moment. “Of course, I cannot speak of the years before my arrival here.” A further pause. “Incidentally, the verdict at the inquest was an open one. I do not feel it would be right to ascribe suicidal intention to the poor woman, whatever her past transgressions.”

“Her reputation,” said Purbright, “was that of a very devout person.”

Mr Tiverton clasped his hands and nodded. “That is most gratifying,” he said. “It costs us nothing to think well of the dead.”

Suddenly, he was in striding motion along the nave. As he drew away, he raised his hand in farewell.

Purbright waited for the vicar to pass through a curtained door at the east end, then unhurriedly looked about him.

The fifteenth-century chest, with its three locks and its strappings and corners of iron, occupied a position between the tower and the big ornamental font. It was a formidable piece of furniture, built to thwart robbers and time. Purbright stroked the black, ice-cold edge of its iron. Deadly enough, certainly, to wreak execution at the end of a fall.

He looked up at the distant gallery, pictured the woman’s descent, a parabola, the body upright at first but turning in the plunge. Her head must have been struck by that edge with force enough to cleave it. Must? Well, no, not necessarily. Or there would have been more mess. Bone thickness was an unpredictable factor.

He remembered the boy. The retraction of his story, queer though it was, did not ring true. Oggy, weak-witted or no, had almost certainly been watching when the woman jumped. Through which window, though, had he peeped?

There were four possibilities, all lancet windows, plainly glazed; two in the south wall, two in the north, directly opposite.

Purbright left the church and began to walk round it, keeping close to the wall. Beneath the lancet windows on the south side was a monumental family tomb, about three feet high. An energetic ten-year-old would have had no difficulty in scrambling to its flat top.

Standing with the tomb at his back, the inspector looked through the left-hand window. Even in the relative darkness of the church, he could easily discern the chest, the font, with its massive elaborately carved cover, and the nearest two pillars of the nave.

He walked round the west end of the church to where the wall was pierced by the opposite, matching pair of lancet windows.

The ground was lower here, the windows harder to reach. The Howell boy would not have found this place much use as a vantage point. In any case, he would have needed to risk observation from the back windows of a house only a few yards away.

Purbright stepped back to take a fuller view of the window. Something crunched beneath his heel. He glanced down and saw the glitter of glass; a few fragments lay widespread about the narrow path. Again he looked up at the window.

At its very apex, scarcely noticeable from ground level, one of the little panes was missing.

Purbright returned to the south porch and re-entered the church. The vicar was leaning over a baize-topped table near the door, arranging pamphlets and postcards. There was a box on the table, slotted for coins. Purbright dropped in a fifty-pence piece and took possession of “The Story of Saint Dennis and His Church” by the Reverend E. Cherry-Morgan.

Mr Tiverton beamed approval. “One of my predecessors,” he explained. “Not that he’ll get fat on the royalties, I fear.” And he replaced the inspector’s copy with one he took from a cardboard box that once had held a dozen of Pale Fino sherry.

“Did you know you have a broken window?” Purbright asked.

The vicar’s face clouded at once. “Oh, dear—at the vicarage, you mean?”

“No, here.”

Mr Tiverton looked relieved. He followed Purbrights glance to the top of the lancet.

“That,” the vicar said, “was done quite a while ago—oh, last year some time. The diocesan architect...” He paused, vaguely sensible of the inspector’s having inserted a small question somewhere. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, how? How did it come to be broken?”

“Boys, I suppose.” Mr Tiverton, who had fathered four daughters, brushed back a lock of his light brown, healthy-looking hair. “Boys are always throwing things.”

“But not inside churches, surely?”

“One would hope not.”

“That window,” said Purbright, “was not broken by a stone thrown from outside. The pieces of glass are still out there on the path.”

“Really? Do you know, I’d never given the matter much thought. That is rather odd, though, now that you mention it.”

“If he was actually trying for the top pane, he must have been a singularly good shot,” the inspector remarked.

“Shot?” A note almost of alarm had entered the vicar’s voice.

“I mean with a stone. An accurate throw, in other words.”

“Ah. I had begun to visualize rifle practice or something of that sort.”

For several seconds, Purbright said no more. He continued to stare upward, but now with a frown of concentration. The vicar, who noted the frown, remained silent also.

“Do you happen to have a ladder handy, Mr Tiverton?”

The vicar, now pleasurably curious, fetched an eight-foot aluminium ladder from a storage recess in the base of the tower. Purbright set the ladder against the wall close by the lancet window, shifted it to and fro once or twice, shook it dubiously and, with the vicar pledged to hold it steady, climbed with extreme caution as far as the fifth rung.

When he descended, he insisted on helping the vicar to carry the ladder back to its store.

There were other things in the recess, which was concealed behind a long, wine-coloured curtain. Purbright saw an ancient vacuum cleaner, four tarnished vases, some brooms and a bucket, and several structures in light-weight wrought iron, painted black.

One of these engaged his particular attention. It supported at head height a small wooden notice board, in which a few rusty drawing pins survived. The simple sconce attached to the edge of the board still held in its socket a remnant of candle, two or three inches long and ribbed with the wax that had run from it.

Purbright said nothing about these things. He spoke instead of his examination of the window.

“I just wanted to be quite sure,” he said, “that there was no question of a firearm having been used. One doesn’t like to think there might be someone around who’d take pot shots in a church.”

“Ah, the celebrated forensic tests. And up a ladder, too. This is quite my day.”

Purbright smiled modestly.

“You can tell, can you,” asked blithe Mr Tiverton, “whether it was a bullet that passed through, or just a stone? How extraordinary.”

The inspector shrugged and murmured something that sounded like “peripheral vitreous deposits”. Then he changed the subject.

“Tell me, vicar, who lives in that rather attractive old house over the way?”

“Church House, you mean? Tudor, mostly. As you say, rather attractive. Would that it were still the vicarage, alas. Who lives there, did you say? The Cork-Braddens.”

“Handy for him.”

“Handy?”

“He’s your churchwarden, isn’t he? Mr Cork-Bradden.”

“Ah, I see what your mean. Handy. Yes, of course.”

Mr Tiverton was beginning to display once more that anxiety to be about his Fathers business which Purbright found strongly suggestive of a car at traffic lights—an impression enhanced by his frequent “Hmm-hmm’s”, as if some impatient foot were tapping his accelerator.

Before giving him the green light, so to speak, the inspector introduced one final subject of inquiry. Was the vicar acquainted, by any chance, with a curiosity that had come into the collection of the late Mr Loughbury—a piece of timber that purported to be a sacred relic of some kind?

There was no mistaking Mr Tiverton’s healthily Anglican disdain of Romish superstition. He threw back his head and laughed aloud.

“Oh, dear, that ridiculous bit of wood! You saw it, did you? In that sort of cage thing? Gracious, yes, hmm. Oh, I’m afraid he had his odd side, did our neighbour Loughbury. Or a bizarre sense of humour. Hmm.”

“But not every collector’s item, surely, is necessarily genuine in an intrinsic sense. Even a bogus article can be valuable if its associations are sufficiently interesting.”

Mr Tiverton smiled into the middle distance. “I still incline to the hope that the late Mr Loughbury was having a joke.” The smile faded. “I would rather think that, than impugn the man’s honesty.”

“Is that the alternative?”

The vicar regarded Purbright thoughtfully for a moment. “I take it that you don’t know much about the history of this thing?”

The inspector said he knew nothing.

“Very well, let me ‘fill you in’, as they say. You are aware, are you not, that Loughbury was a fairly diligent collector of objets d’art—within his means, of course.”

Purbright said he had seen and admired a number of articles at the Manor House.

Tiverton nodded. “And very nice they are. But now let me tell you about the ‘lump of firewood’, as my wife rather unkindly described Loughbury’s celebrated relic.

“It turned up last year—oh, about the end of the summer, I think it was. Where he got it from, I’ve no idea. Nor do I know what he was persuaded to pay for it. His own estimate of its value was so ridiculous that I cannot now call it to mind. Some thousands of pounds, anyway. A London firm of so-called security experts caged it for him. And there it was, on the wall in that upstairs room, as if it was Magna Carta or something.” The vicar, who was leaning against the font, shifted his elbow to a more comfortable position amidst the carvings on the cover.

“It is what Loughbury did next that rather disturbs me. He invited a number of people in Mumblesby—not many, but several of the more well-to-do, I should say—to a private view of this marvel of his. Moreover—and this is the whole point—these people were asked to make donations towards what he called ‘keeping a priceless relic within our village’.”

“To give him money, you mean?”

“Oh, no. The letter of invitation—it was a duplicated thing, but nicely done, I remember—suggested that what it called tax complications could be avoided by making contributions ‘in kind’.”

Purbright raised his brows. “Did you not think this a somewhat questionable approach, Mr Tiverton?”

The vicar looked pained. “Well, I do now, naturally, but I don’t think I took an awful lot of notice at the time. We were very busy with one thing and another, and of course there’d been that dreadful accident, and then the inquest, and so on.”

“I take it that you, yourself, were not asked by Mr Loughbury to make a contribution?”

“I? Oh, dear, no.” The vicar grinned roguishly. “That would have been rather like offering someone shares in his own company.”

“Unauthenticated shares, at that.”

“Ha! Ha! Yes, indeed. Very good.”

The inspector asked no more questions. He parted from Mr Tiverton in an atmosphere of almost jovial good will. To what extent this cordiality had been generated by his own reticence he was unable to judge. He could not help wondering, though, as he left the church if the vicar would be quite so cheerful had he been told what closer examination of the broken window had revealed.

Chapter Ten

The chief constable, unlike the vicar, could not be left in ignorance, euphoric or otherwise. The very next morning, Purbright sought out Mr Chubb in his room at the Fen Street headquarters.

As it was Friday, the chief constable was engaged in the self-appointed task, peculiar to that day of the week, of reading the Flaxborough Citizen. This he did most methodically, standing before the table on which the newspaper was spread, and perusing it line by line, column after column, page by page, with the aid of a large, square reading glass. He looked rather like a bomb disposal expert with lots of time.

“Sit down, Mr Purbright.”

The inspector did so, but at a sufficient distance to minimize the chief constable’s moral advantage of remaining standing.

“I am just casting an eye over poor Loughbury’s funeral,” said Mr Chubb. He put aside his ocular mine detector and frowned. “I see that you attended as the representative of a Mr Crumb.”

Purbright, whom custom had led to accept as unremarkable the fitfulness of the Citizen’s presentation of names and places, offered no remark. The chief constable put down his lens as a marker of the place he had reached and crossed to the fireplace, against which he leaned in a posture of austere but courteous attention.

“I fear,” Purbright began, “that my doubts over all being as it should be at Mumblesby are beginning to be justified.”

“Mumblesby?” Mr Chubb’s brows rose. “Whatever has been going on at Mumblesby?”

Without abandoning any of his customary solemnity, Mr Chubb made the most of the name’s comic overtones. He was capable of conferring an almost fictional quality upon any place or person he did not wish to talk about.

Purbright nodded, as if with deep satisfaction.

“I felt sure you would be anxious to know that, sir. The answer cannot be as full at this stage as you would wish, unfortunately, but several significant facts have come to light, and I think they ought to be made known to you straight away.”

“Of course, Mr Purbright. Please go on.”

The inspector did so. First, he recapitulated his own misgivings concerning the fire at the Manor House. Then he gave an edited version of Love’s gleanings from village conversation. The more pertinent of Malley’s addenda to the Croll inquest record were quoted. Finally, Mr Chubb heard what the vicar of Mumblesby had not yet been told about the hole in his church window.

It was the last item which seemed to put the severest strain on the chief constables comprehension.

“I’m sorry, but I do not quite see the significance of this glass business. You say the pane had been cut out. Not broken—cut.”

“Yes, sir. When you get close enough, you can see the clean edge of the glass left behind in the lead setting. It forms a sort of border. There’s a scratch in one place where the cutter must have slipped, but no cracks, no sign of shattering.”

“And you think that whoever did this was inside the church?”

“The fragments of broken glass were on the ground outside. That does suggest that the cut-away portion was pushed outward, not inward. In any case, the scratch I mentioned was on the inner surface.”

The chief constable was already resigned to the unlikelihood of his being able to deflect Purbright from his collision course with the sleeping dogs of Mumblesby. He was still unsure, however, as to what crime or crimes the inspector intended to postulate.

“Odd business,” said Mr Chubb, looking for dust on his jacket sleeve.

“Odd, sir?”

“This cutting holes in church windows. It doesn’t seem to have any logical connection with anything.”

“Not immediately, perhaps, sir. But any act which is difficult in itself and which entails trouble and some degree of risk can fairly safely be assumed to have been undertaken for a purpose.”

The chief constable acknowledged the lecture with a wintry smile. “You know, Mr Purbright, I have the feeling that your researches at Mumblesby are not going to content you until you find a rifle with telescopic sights to go with that peep-hole of yours.”

Purbright affected serious consideration.

“No, sir. Your theory has certain attractions, but I don’t think the pathologist could have misinterpreted a bullet wound. In any case, if Mrs Croll stood where I believe she did, practically the whole mass of the font and its cover would have stood between her and the prepared hole in the lancet window.”

Mr Chubb essayed nothing further in the irony line.

“Perhaps it would be as well,” he said, “if you were to set out—in a general sort of way—your reasons for wanting to re-open this affair. One has to be terribly careful in matters that have been officially cleared up, you understand. Coroners don’t like inquests to be called into question and they can be very awkward.”

Purbright said he did understand. The fact remained that the circumstances of Mrs Croll’s death were far more suspicious than witnesses at the inquest had suggested. If, as he now had reason to think, the woman had neither committed suicide nor died accidentally, it was urgent—if only for the protection of others—that the true facts be established.

“I take it that you believe the woman was attacked,” said the chief constable.

“I am convinced that she was.”

“But for what reason, Mr Purbright? A perfectly harmless married woman—a farmer’s wife—with strong religious convictions... Why should anyone wish to kill Mrs Croll?”

“Why should she have wished to kill herself, sir?”

Mr Chubb waved his hand vaguely. “Who can say? Nervous trouble? Change of life?”

The menopause loomed as large in the chief constables catalogue of mischief-makers as central heating and socialism.

“She was forty-one,” the inspector said simply. He added: “So far as records in such things can be established, she had not entered a church—for other than libidinous purposes—since the age of thirteen.”

Mr Chubb frowned. He looked annoyed.

“I suppose I have to take your word for all this, Mr Purbright. Even so, we are a long way from being able to assume that an attack was made on the woman. She was alone in the place, according to the only evidence I can recall.”

“Yes, sir, but it was conceded that she could have been hiding when the church was locked for the night. So could somebody else.”

“That is pure supposition.”

“With respect, sir, no—it is a possibility, of which account must be taken in conjunction with certain other circumstances that seem to have been overlooked at the time.”

“Those being?” Mr Chubb’s tone had cooled perceptibly.

Purbright prepared to enumerate on his fingers. “One, the regrettable but widely acknowledged fact that Bernadette Croll was ardently promiscuous. Two, that analysis at post mortem showed that she had consumed something of the order of two or three double brandies that evening. Three, that a candle on a stand, seen burning inside the church at about midnight, close to where Mrs Croll’s body was later found, had been removed by the time the police were called and photographs taken. Four...”

“Oh, come now, Mr Purbright. I think I know the source of that one. Someone has been telling you what the little village boy was supposed to have seen. Am I right?” Mr Chubbs was the magnanimous smile of the about-to-score.

“Sir?”

“Boy with an odd name,” said Mr Chubb. “The illegitimate son of the lady who works in the village pub. Mentally defective, poor little chap. I don’t think you need worry overmuch about lights at midnight if it was young master whatsisname who saw them.”

“Howell,” Purbright said.

The chief constable looked blank.

“Howell—the boy’s name is Howell, sir.”

“I see. Yes. Anyway, his mother wrote quite a nice little letter apologizing for the trouble he’d caused, and that was that as far as we were concerned, although I believe there was some talk of an application to the magistrates for a care and protection order.”

“That would be up to the county welfare committee,” said Purbright.

“Of course.”

“The chairman of which is Councillor Robin Cork-Bradden.”

After a pause, the chief constable said pleasantly, “I’m sure that the relevance of that information is clear to you, Mr Purbright, but I’m afraid it eludes me.”

“I’m sorry, sir; I thought you would know that Mr Cork-Bradden lives at Mumblesby. At Church House, in fact. So the case of Miss Howell and her child is perhaps familiar to him.”

“Possibly.” Mr Chubb glanced at his watch, then towards his half-read Flaxborough Citizen. The inspector rose, whereupon Mr Chubb unmoored himself from the mantelpiece and returned to the table.

He spoke quietly, apparently to the newspaper.

“I realize that Superintendent Larch was not always quite as painstaking as we try to be, but it would be rather a pity now that he has retired if that little bit of assistance he gave us last year should prove to have been misdirected. Very upsetting for a chap after so many years in the Force.”

“Very,” Purbright agreed, before leaving the office.

Half an hour or so later, Mr Chubb reached the back page of the Citizen, in the first column of which it was customary to print the Thanks and Acknowledgments relating to the week’s bereavements.

Under “Loughbury” appeared a sizeable recital of gratitude. Its objects included the doctors and nurses of Flaxborough General Hospital, Steven Winge Ward; the Rev. Alan Tiverton; Messrs R. Bradlaw and Son, for tasteful funeral arrangements; the senders of all the beautiful floral tributes, too numerous to be listed; the Grand Master and Officers of the Tom Walker Lodge, Chalmsbury; several army and professional organizations; the chief constable of Flaxborough (Mr Chubb eyed this item with distinct nervousness); the firm of brewers that owned the Saracens Head, Flaxborough.

There followed an item that disconcerted Mr Chubb even more than had the appearance of his own name.

“Special thanks from the Mumblesby Relic Committee to Det. Inspector Purbright for kind services in protecting my late husband’s Memorial Presentation to Our Village.”

There was no telephone in Mr Chubb’s room, or he might have used it in token of his disquiet. He went instead to the duty sergeants office and asked him to summon the inspector. Purbright, though, had gone out. Mr Chubb returned to his room, where he solaced himself until lunchtime with back numbers of Horse and Hound.

The chief constable was not the only reader of the Citizen that morning to take particular notice of Zoe Loughbury’s announcement.

Mrs Priscilla Cork-Bradden, of Church House, Mumblesby, who had been looking through the paper while seated in a garden chair, was so intrigued that she came indoors at once to her husband.

“What in heaven’s name is the Mumblesby Relic Committee?”

Mr Cork-Bradden put down the fishing fly he had been contriving from pieces of feather and cane. He stared at her dully.

“There’s no such thing.”

“Darling, it’s here in the local rag.” She gave the newspaper, already disarranged, a shake. Two sheets fell to the floor. She waited to see if her husband would pick them up but he was looking at his fly-tying again.

The part of the paper containing the thanks notice was still in Priscilla’s grasp. She folded it and flipped it with her fingertips.

“There you are—Mumblesby Relic Committee. I’m not stupid, darling.”

She read a few more words, then looked up angrily. “My God! ‘My late husband...’ Her late husband! The paper should vet these things before accepting them from people like that dreadful Zoe or whatever they call her. You’re a director, darling: you’ll have to have a word with the editor.”

“It doesn’t have an editor now,” said Mr Cork-Bradden. He sounded a little weary. “If you remember, the board took the opportunity when old Kebble retired to merge editorial direction with advertising.”

Priscilla quoted further, more bitterly. “ ‘My late husband’s memorial presentation...’ What is that supposed to mean?”

Her husband took the paper from her, gently, and read it for himself. He had a long face, with slightly protuberant blue eyes and high cheek bones. His hair, pale and thin, was brushed straight back from the high, narrow forehead.

His movements were few, but in this comparative immobility there was nothing relaxed: he had the posture and air of an invigilator. The mouth was level, the lips thin but well-shaped and sensitive. When he spoke, they scarcely moved; yet very rarely was he ever asked to repeat anything he had said.

He returned the paper to his wife.

“Purbright is a police inspector at Flaxborough,” he said. “Of what he has to do with Miss Claypole, I have no idea.”

Priscilla watched him pick up a pair of tweezers and capture a fragment of bright yellow feather that her brusque arrival had sent looping and gliding to the floor.

She straightened and demanded coldly: “And our things? Are policemen protecting them?”

He glanced at her, then went on with what he was doing. “It will serve no purpose,” he murmured, “to be hysterical about them.”

A drawstring of anger tightened the woman’s mouth. She spoke slowly and quietly.

“Robin...when are we going to get them back?”

He delayed his answer as if to mark his contempt for the question.

“When?” she prompted, curtly.

Again a pause. Cork-Bradden finished squeezing a tiny bead of glue to the pared spine of the yellow feather. He applied the feather with loving delicacy to the twine-bound shank of a fish hook. To his wife he said:

“As I have tried to make clear more than once, everything the man extorted will be brought back here in due course. But there are certain precautions to be taken first. I do not wish to sound critical”—and here, the note of weariness became more pronounced—“but to continue harping upon an already perfectly well understood situation could begin to sound a little vulgar.”

“Vulgar?” Mrs Cork-Bradden repeated, icily.

“Just the tiniest bit, yes.” He twice looped twine to secure the yellow wing of the fly, then peered about the desk top. “You haven’t seen my razor blade, have you?”

“I should never have supposed,” said his wife, “that a little vulgarity would offend anyone so richly endowed with the common touch as to enjoy screwing the village scrubber.”

Mr Cork-Bradden sorted among the objects near at hand until the blade came to light. He began planing wisps of cane from the fly’s body. “It wounds me, my dear, to learn after all this time that it was not sexual displacement but simple snobbery that lay behind your disapproval of poor Bernadette.”

Chapter Eleven

Leonard Palgrove scuttled from table to table in the Old Mill Restaurant and satisfied himself that Mrs Gordon, the help, had set all eighteen places right-handedly and remembered to put plastic protection beneath the table linen on table four, reserved for Mr Winston Gash’s party. He checked the provisioning of the bar, made sure that the front door was unbolted, and hastened to the kitchen.

Mrs Gordon, a solid, big-boned woman, whose short-sightedness compelled her to squint at the task in hand with an expression of deep anxiety and mistrust, was thawing out frozen scallops in a saucepan: scallops were to be what the menu termed “Off-we-Goes” that evening.

“Make sure they’re done enough,” commanded Mr Palgrove, in passing. Mrs Gordon scowled at his back and turned up the gas to blow-torch ferocity. It was turned down again by Cynthia Palgrove, who had just come from the pantry with a tray of frozen steaks.

“Mester says that...” Mrs Gordon began.

“Sod the mester,” Mrs Palgrove advised. She put the tray on the table, made a quick count of the pieces of meat, and departed. Mrs Gordon smiled to herself and burrowed beneath her pinafore to scratch her armpit.

Mrs Palgrove made her own table tour. She replaced five forks, two spoons and a knife, and re-polished three of the wine glasses.

“Now what’s wrong? I’ve been round once.”

Leonard had donned his Jolly Miller kit. He now was wearing breeches, white stockings, buckled shoes and a kind of night cap in red wool.

Instead of a waiters napkin, there was draped on his arm a sack with FLOUR in big black letters.

“Everything’s fine,” Cynthia said to him, sweetly. She bent to re-arrange some of the stuffed sacks on the two millstones that served as seating in the space before the bar.

Mrs Palgrove was not dressed as the Jolly Millers wife. She made no personal concessions to the element of uninhibited make-believe that she considered important to a restaurant’s profitability. “Fun” in Cynthia’s vocabulary was an adjective, never a noun.

“Who’s the unlucky girl that Spence is bringing?” Palgrove inquired.

His wife lifted one shoulder a fraction to indicate indifference. The shoulder had an end-of-summer tan; it was lean but elegant. She wore a dress of such deep cleavage that it resembled a long pair of partly drawn curtains, with a glimpse of navel at the bottom of the V, like the eye of an inquisitive neighbour, peeping out.

“They reckon,” said Leonard, “that it’s that bint who used to shack up with Rich Dick. She’s supposed to be after his place on the Hunt Committee.”

“A night with Spence would be a high price.”

“One with Winnie would be a bloody sight worse.”

Mrs Palgrove winced. She checked from where she stood that there was on every table a salt hopper and its companion model of a mill that dispensed pepper when its wheel was rotated.

Quietly, she said: “Talking of Rich Dick and his lady friend...” and paused, meaningfully, while still eyeing the tables.

“Yes, love?” The Jolly Miller was attentive, obliging, not knowing quite how he might serve.

His wife continued to look away from him, across the room.

“The little painting of Mummy’s?”

“Ah, the little milkmaid thing. Sure. Yes, I hadn’t forgotten, sweetheart.”

“The little Corot,” Mrs Palgrove said, with quiet emphasis. “And you’d better not have forgotten.”

The Miller wanted to say “Christ!” but managed not to. He put out one hand, sighed, tugged at his fun hat. “It was only a loan. I told you. And she knows it was a loan. Look, I could hardly barge in and snatch it straight after the buggers funeral, could I? Don’t worry. I’ll not forget.”

“I was talking to Edgar today.”

“Edgar?”

“Harrington. He called to make the booking for tonight. And he mentioned that he’s been making an inventory for the Zoe woman.”

Palgrove looked suddenly anxious. “You didn’t...”

“I didn’t pump the man, if that’s what you’re worried about. But you can see what will happen next, can’t you?”

He shrugged, sulkily.

“She is going to lose no time in collecting her winnings,” said Cynthia. “And in cash.”

“Cash?”

A ripple of impatience crossed the woman’s face. “She’ll put the lot up for sale before anyone gets around to challenging her right to it. God, you’re—“

“I’ll try and have a word with her tonight,” Palgrove promised. “But it won’t be easy.”

“No, it won’t,” said his wife, without sympathy. She peered into the imitation cottage loaf on the bar counter, then glanced at Leonard’s hurt-boy face. “More ice.”

His look of wounded resentment deepened. She remained looking at him, speculatively at first, then teasingly, almost fondly.

“Shit,” said Mr Palgrove and hauled her into a rough, greedy embrace.

She let him slide a hand to her bare breast and palpate it for a while before she murmured over his shoulder: “You know, darling, if you weren’t such a randy old sod, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in now.”

The hand stilled at once. Slowly, he drew back from her.

“Mess? What mess?” His flushed face almost matched his fan hat.

Lightly, she restored the hang of her dress. She smiled.

“Surely you can’t imagine that I never guessed the real reason why you half-inched Mummy’s picture?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Lawyer Loughbury is what I’m talking about, and well you know it. He frightened poor little Len into giving him a sweetener, having found out that he’d been ‘having it off’, as they say, with that woman from the farm.”

Palgrove’s flush was taking on a blue tinge. “That’s a disgusting thing to say!”

“What—that you were having it off, or that you let yourself be conned afterwards?” She smiled again and patted his hand. He snatched it away as if she had burned it.

Cynthia sighed and began looking through the menu lying on the bar top. “Grist for the Mill,” it was headed. “I could wish sometimes,” she said, “that we’d chosen a gimmick with wider scope. ‘Lobster Nellie Dean’ does seem to be pushing things a bit.”

The first customers to arrive were Mrs Whybrow and her lodger, accompanied by a man of about sixty with a big, bull-like head, covered with matted off-white curls like ill-kept astrakhan. This was Peter Pritty, farmer and demolition contractor, who lived with his three sons at Long Camberley Grange, somewhere in which was also to be found his wife.

The party was attended by Mr Palgrove in person. He was very jocular in manner, calling Mrs Whybrow “dearest lady” and farmer Pritty “squire”. He was careful not to call Mr Bishop anything, but as that person spared him neither look nor remark and made his wishes known only through Mrs Whybrow, it did not much matter.

Farmer Pritty said he’d start off with oysters and Palgrove said there weren’t any oysters, squire, but would he like scallops which were much the same, really, and Pritty said he’d have a try if they did the same for him as oysters did, and he made a noise like a snorting horse and rubbed his groin.

Mrs Whybrow ordered “some of those absolutely delicious sort of frilly—no, not frilly, crunchy—things I had last time—those things with raisins or whatever...what?—oh God, you know...”

“Tell him I want tomato soup, Booboo,” commanded Mr Bishop.

Two cars drew up in the Market Place. A Ford Granada discharged a pair of married couples from Flaxborough, bent on celebrating their double wedding anniversary. From the smaller and shabbier car descended a detective inspector from the same town, celebrating nothing, unless it was having just given a lift to Miss Teatime, for whom he hurried round to open the door.

“We are a little early,” Miss Teatime observed, “so I suggest we go along to the Gallery. I told Edgar to wait for us there.” As they set off towards Church Lane, she cast a side glance at the inspector. “Nice suit,” she murmured.

Purbright took her offered arm. “My sergeant told me it costs all of eight pounds to eat at the Mill,” he explained.

“You will reclaim it on your expense account, surely?”

“The last sybarite on the Flaxborough force was reduced to the ranks for charging a take-away chop suey.”

Mr Harrington let them in by the side door. He welcomed Miss Teatime with well-bred affability. To his introduction to Purbright he responded politely, if cautiously.

They sat in the little Georgian styled parlour at the back of the shop. Harrington produced a decanter of Amontillado and, for Miss Teatime, some cheroots in a silver box.

“The table,” he announced, “is booked for a quarter past eight, so we have nearly half an hour.” He used the pouring of the sherry to disguise his appraisal of Purbright, who pretended not to notice.

“As I told you earlier, Edgar,” Miss Teatime began, “my good friend Mr Purbright is interested in the collection of old Mr Loughbury.”

Without taking his eye from the level of wine in the glass he was filling, Harrington drew a soft intake of breath through the protruding lips and murmured, “Clean, Lucy, absolutely clean.”

“Yes, well, that is nice to know, of course.” She turned to the inspector. “Mr Harrington has a very wide, Bond Street-based experience.”

Purbright said “Ah” and Miss Teatime added: “However, as I understand matters, the inspector is not concerned with anything so straightforward as theft per se.”

Almost imperceptibly, Mr Harrington relaxed. He handed them their glasses.

“No, I had not supposed that any of the articles at the Manor House had been stolen”—this, from Purbright—“but the manner of their acquisition does strike me as having been curious in some cases.”

Harrington nodded, carefully. “There seems to be a dearth of record, certainly. The transactions must have been rather off-hand.”

“Gifts?” suggested Miss Teatime.

“They may have been,” Harrington said. “There are no receipts, no insurance documentation.”

“But why?” Purbright was looking at his glass.

“That, you will have to ask the donors.”

“I can hardly ask the beneficiary,” Purbright observed.

“What about his widow?” Miss Teatime said.

“She is most unlikely to say anything that might cast the genuineness of the gifts into doubt. In any case, I really don’t think she knows. Mr Loughbury was not a gentleman much given to sharing confidences.”

“Not even in bed?”

Miss Teatime regarded her manager sharply. “Edgar, you are in Mumblesby, not Knightsbridge.” To Purbright she said: “I have never, to the best of my recollection, been in bed with a solicitor, but I should not expect much in the sharing line even there. My guess is that you are right about Zoe. If so, you can only hope that the original owners will tell you.”

To Harrington, Miss Teatime said: “The inspector is here tonight in expectation of seeing one or two of those generous people in the flesh. We are to act as his guides.”

Harrington sipped his sherry ruminatively, set it down, and drew a folded paper from his inner breast pocket. All his movements were calm yet precise.

Miss Teatime accepted the paper and unfolded it.

“A copy of the inventory of Mr Loughbury’s objets d’art,” she explained to Purbright. “Mr Harrington has very kindly ticked those items which he believes to have been acquired by Mr Loughbury during the past year or so. He has pencilled against each the initials of the person who owned it previously.”

“To the best of my understanding,” qualified Harrington.

Purbright glanced down the list. “You’ve been extremely helpful,” he declared.

“Of course,” added Miss Teatime, “you have the inspectors assurance, Edgar, that the information will be treated in the strictest confidence. This,” and she gave Purbright a Joan of Arc-ish look, “is a private professional document.”

“And will be so regarded,” said the inspector, “by me.”

“There, now,” said Miss Teatime, and she leaned forward to allow Mr Harrington to light her cheroot. His face, as he watched the flame, was as impassive as a butler’s.

At the Old Mill Restaurant, more customers were arriving. By the time that Purbright and his couriers took their seats at a corner table under the effusive direction of Jolly Miller Palgrove, there were more than a dozen people in the room. Zoe Loughbury, née Claypole, recognized Miss Teatime at once, and waved. Miss Teatime waved back. Purbright bowed, a little shyly. Zoe’s frown of uncertainty blossomed suddenly into a smile. She called across. “Hi! Sorry—you look different away from the bathroom.”

They saw Zoe’s companion, Spencer Gash, give them a long, mistrustful stare before turning to her with a question.

Harrington identified Gash for Purbright’s benefit.

“By all appearances,” mused Miss Teatime, “not a patron of the arts.”

Harrington corrected her. “I have him down as Loughbury’s source of a rather nice 1735 salver, seventeen and a half ounces. One of a pair bought at auction by his father in the thirties. Winston doubtless has the other.”

“His brother,” explained Miss Teatime to Purbright.

Mrs Palgrove was above them, sinuously solicitous. They hurriedly burrowed into menus. After consultation, Edgar Harrington ordered for all. Cynthia beamed approval and glided away.

A good deal of noise was coming from the direction of the bar.

Through the communicating arch, Purbright caught sight of a very large man with what appeared to be a tattered fan grasped in one hand. He was holding the fan aloft while his companions, two women and a short, jocose man in glasses, bayed encouragement.

Suddenly, the women began to squeal and jump aside as the big man brought the fan down and mock-threatened them with it in quick, short thrusts.

Some of the diners stared with chilly censure. To others the turn, or whatever it was, seemed familiar. They joined in the laughter when the little man in glasses, his scarlet face sweat-spangled and contorted with hilarity, staggered through the arch and announced:

“Look out! Winnies brought his dinner! He has! He’s brought his bloody dinner!”

“Who is that one?” inquired Miss Teatime, awed.

Mr Harrington shook his head. It was Purbright who spoke. “Car dealer from Flax. Blossom. Alfred. A noted bon vivant.”

The Jolly Miller emerged from the bar, overtook Mr Blossom stalled by his own merriment, and positioned himself by an empty table, where he proceeded to make the sort of gestures that are supposed to help reversing lorry drivers.

The two ladies of the party made a dash across the room and sat down, giggling and patting their chests. Mr Blossom collapsed into his chair, then slewed it round to command a view of the finale of Winston Gash’s performance.

As the farmer lumbered forward into brighter light, it could be seen that the “fan” was a bundle of dirty white feathers. Within it was a scrap of red, and a diamond point of terrified eye. It was a live chicken.

Gash spotted Miss Teatime and halted, staring at her. From within the great cave of the farmer’s hand, the chicken also regarded her.

One of the women called out: “Come on, Win, we’re hungry.”

Gash winked. Without taking his eyes from Miss Teatime, he hooked the middle finger of his left hand about the chickens neck and slowly, deftly, knowledgeably, pulled the spinal cord apart. A feather floated languidly to the floor. At the point of the beak, there grew a tiny bead of red.

For several seconds, Winston Gash remained standing, his smile fixed upon Miss Teatime and her companions. It was the smile of a man deliberating whether to order trespassers off his land.

Miss Teatime regarded him steadily and without expression. Edgar found a distant bowl of gladioli of absorbing interest. Purbright stared placidly at the fast-glazing eye of the hen.

Cynthia Palgrove appeared at Gash’s side. She smiled cheerfully, squeezed his arm, and at the same time relieved him of the hen’s pendent corpse. Mr Gash tried to kiss her. She slipped out of range. He consoled himself with a parting grab at her buttock, then sat down.

“What’s she going to give you for the chicken, Win?”

This from Mr Pritty, who thereupon looked around for anyone whose eye he could catch and treat to a wink of scabrous confidentiality.

“He’s a lad, is Arthur,” Mr Spencer Gash informed Zoe. He topped up her glass with Sauternes from a litre bottle, already nearly empty.

She thanked him briskly, swigged some of the wine, and resumed her assault on a plate of vulcanized scallops.

“You must get lonely in a bloody great barn like the Manor,” observed Mr Gash. “And cold at night, I should reckon.”

Zoe took time off chewing in order to clear a tooth with her tongue. Then a quick shake of the head. “Electric blanket.” Knife and fork went back into action.

Purbright tried to make something of such snatches of conversation as came his way. At first, he found difficulty in isolating other voices from that of Mrs Whybrow, but his perseverance eventually demoted it to a sort of carrier wave, omnipresent yet permeable.

“Who,” he asked Harrington, “is the gentleman sitting two tables away on my left? Next to the one who called out a little while ago.”

“That is Mr Raymond Bishop. The big man is a farmer called Pritty. Mrs Whybrow is the name of the lady. She is a widow and rumoured to be well off.”

“Mrs Whybrow is well off,” asserted Miss Teatime. “She is the former concubine of the wealthy Mr Bishop, and she amuses herself by pretending to be his landlady.”

“ ‘Former’, you said. Do you mean she’s lost the job?”

Miss Teatime considered. “Should we not say, perhaps, that the job has changed its nature. Mrs Whybrow is now better described as Mr Bishop’s business manager.”

“I notice from your list,” said Purbright, “that Mr Bishop made several contributions to the art collection at the Manor House. One, if I remember, was that quite splendid punch bowl in the sitting room on the first floor.”

Miss Teatimes soup spoon paused in its ascent. “You seem to have enjoyed a more extensive tour of the house than we have, inspector.”

“Purely fortuitously. Fire was rumoured. I happened to be near at hand.”

The well-bred Mr Harrington concealed his scepticism behind his napkin.

Reaction from Miss Teatime was more direct. “Ah, hence the intriguing announcement in this week’s local newspaper.”

The inspector looked blank.

“On behalf,” said Miss Teatime, “of the Mumblesby Relic Committee.”

She waited a moment. The inspector said nothing.

“It seems you saved something or other that had been presented to the village by the late Mr Loughbury. A relic? I should love to know what it was—or is.”

Purbright gave in.

“So should I.”

Chapter Twelve

Had Inspector Purbright been paying less attention to what was happening inside the Old Mill Restaurant, he might have noticed the passing of a very unusual vehicle outside.

It was monstrously large. Each of its four wheels was the height of a man and bore a tyre the girth of a beer barrel. The sound as of an ore crusher came from the engine in its long rectangular box, gashed with cooling vents and surmounted by a great mushroom-shaped exhaust.

The cab was set high above the front pair of wheels. It was a steel-ribbed glass tank that in daylight exhibited the driver, arms, legs and all, with a sort of brash candour. Now, at dusk, he could be seen only in silhouette, a high-perched figure lurching and wrestling with levers.

The machine ground ponderously past a row of parked cars, then swung abruptly through ninety degrees and began to cross the empty square towards the Manor House.

There was a broad paved alley on the south side of the Manor House, leading to what once had been stables.

Very slowly, as if the bearing strength of the ground beneath were being assayed, the vehicle moved into the alley like a huge hermit crab annexing a shell.

It was brought to a halt at a point opposite the centre of the gable wall. To the grinding throb of the engine was added a high whine as four stabilizing rams descended from the underbelly.

The darkness was thicker in the shelter of the house, and the only witness of what was happening there was a child who saw the machine arrive in the village and had furtively followed it. Now he made the extraordinary discovery that it had a neck.

He watched this neck stretch aloft, retract a little, descend, and bear its head forward almost to the wall of the house. It moved next in slow, exploratory arcs, as if in search of concealed prey.

The neck, in fact, was an articulated boom; the head, a heavy, cuspidal grab.

After a while, the lateral movements of the boom ceased and a gear change drew from the engine a deeper, more powerful surge of sound. The boom swung back all of a piece, joints locked, head rigid.

It was poised in the sky like a great hammer.

The child had ventured, bit by bit, into the alley, but his back and hands were pressed to the wall behind him, spring-loaded for flight.

The note of the engine changed once again. It spoke to him of immediate menace. He crouched low and scuttled back to the corner, where he clung to the wall as to a mothers skirt.

Suddenly, there ran through the stone beneath his hands a heavy shudder, like that of an old horse, pained by a kick.

Moments later, a second shock reached the child. He heard a rumble of falling masonry.

When he peeped again into the alley, the neck was drawing back for another strike. The child sniffed the acrid smell of ancient plaster. A cloud of dust was rolling slowly from the alley into the light of a street lamp.

He darted through the dust and sheltered against the house on the further side.

From there, the view was better.

A small, but excitingly dangerous looking hole had appeared in the gable wall about mid-way between ground and roof apex. A thin, black fissure had been opened, and some stone facing had peeled off.

The machine launched its third strike.

The boy shut his eyes but heard a sound so unexpectedly dull (it reminded him of when he had knocked a melon off the top shelf of his mothers pantry and heard it burst on the stone floor) that he felt cheated and opened them again.

Disappointment changed instantly to horrified admiration.

A section of wall ten feet across was bulging outward. Here and there, a piece broke off and crashed to the ground. Then, quite slowly, the whole great bleb split and sloughed away and sank, growling, into a cauldron of dust.

For a long time, Oggy Howell stared up at the gaping rooms that were slung so precariously, it seemed to him, in the sky. The shapes within were too shadowy to identify, but he sensed them to be intimate and secret things, which the light of morning would outrageously display.

He waited until the machine had retracted its rams, backed out of the alley, and rumbled off across the market place. Then he ran to the side door of the Barleybird, confident that news so momentous justified breach of his mother’s often repeated injunction to stay home when she was doing the evening bar.

Sadie’s face darkened with exasperation when she heard Oggy’s “Hsst!” at the off-sales hatch. She hurried out into the corridor, snatched at the child’s arm and shook him.

Oggy was not to be quelled.

“Mam, there was this great big machine, like from Mars, and it had a neck and a great big head, and there was a man in it, and it’s knocked a house down in the square there, next to Roger Hinley’s house, and this great big machine just went Gthwurrhh...and Crumph! and just bashed this whopping great hole in the wall and you can see the bed and a sort of wardrobe thing and...”

She shook him into momentary silence.

“Austin, if you don’t go straight home this minute and get into bed...”

“But Mam, it’s right what I’m telling you. It did, it knocked the wall down and there was a lot of smoke and that, and there’s this great big hole—you can SEE it, Mam—you go and look...”

Again she shook him, but with care not to hurt.

“Get off home,” she commanded.

“But Mam...”

This time, she clipped the back of his head. He winced, covered the spot with his hand. She spoke fiercely, pulling him close and bending to him. “If you don’t stop playing me up like this, do you know what’ll happen? Do you? Mr Cork-Bradden’ll have them take you away.”

“Don’t care.”

She stared at him, near to tears. Someone came into the corridor from the bar. “Hey, girl, we’re dying of thirst!”

The man noticed the child. He became solicitous.

“Oh, he’s got some cock and bull story about a house getting knocked down,” Sadie told him.

“It did, it did, it did!” Oggy was tense and resentful now. “A machine knocked it down. A great big machine.” Daringly, “And it was from Mars.”

“He wants me to go and look.” Sadie sighed at the ceiling, then gave the man, whom she rather liked, a smile.

The man regarded Oggy with an indulgence tailored to please the mother. “P’raps he’ll show me, will he?” Oggy ran to his side. The man winked at Sadie and allowed himself to be towed away through the door.

A quarter of an hour later, the partial demolition of the Manor House’s gable end was being described, discussed and speculated upon by every customer in the Barleybird. Someone had called the fire brigade, from whose base a report went automatically to Flaxborough police. The duty sergeant entered it in the book under the heading “Insecure Premises”.

In the Old Mill Restaurant, Mrs Whybrow was lack-lustredly contemplating her Pêche Arctique (a tinned fruit slice on a slab of ice cream) and telling Mr Pritty about her girlhood devotion to something called a Knickerbocker Glory. “That high and absolutely packed with the most fantastic whatevers...” Mr Pritty leered and said he knew what she meant.

At Mr Winston Gash’s table, Pêche Flambées were proving difficult; Palgrove had left on them too much liquor from the tin, and the brandy topping would not ignite, despite Mr Blossom’s repeated application of matches.

The two anniversary couples also were in trouble; their attempts to consume remarkably recalcitrant Crèmes Caramels looked like a game of skill involving forks and wet falsies.

Miss Teatime and Purbright had chosen nothing more challenging than coffee. Mr Harrington was risking cheese. Zoe, eyed admiringly by Spencer Gash, was still busy with her second portion of the main course, infra-red-electrocuted duck.

“Excuse me, but is the lady from the Manor House here, please?”

All stopped eating. There was something about the sudden materialization of a fireman in full accoutrement, including thigh boots, axe, and helmet the size of a hip bath, that ravished attention even from the cuisine of the Old Mill.

Fire Officer Budge repeated his question. He was joined by Patrolman Brevitt, who had just arrived in his Panda car. Brevitt spotted Purbright. He saluted in an embarrassed way and looked away. A draught of cold night air had entered through the open door.

Zoe rose to her feet, still holding a forkful of duck. She acknowledged that she was the lady from the Manor House. “Christ! It’s not on fire again?”

“No, ma’am,” said Fire Officer Budge, “but a bit of it seems to have collapsed.”

Miss Teatime frowned and leaned towards Purbright. “What does she mean by ‘again’? Has she got poltergeists?”

Leonard and Cynthia Palgrove had arrived in tandem to see what was going on.

Patrolman Brevitt stared at the Jolly Miller as if upon a particularly unsavoury case of transvestism. Cynthia made equally cold appraisal of Patrolman Brevitt. “What seems to be the matter, officer?” Brevitt pretended not to hear.

Zoe fetched her own coat from the lobby, leaving Spencer Gash staring into his glass and scratching an ear.

Purbright stepped past him and helped Zoe on with her coat. “I’ll come across with you.” He turned to Brevitt. “Keep with us; I may want you to use your radio.”

The departure of Zoe with her triple escort was watched by Mrs Whybrow with an expression of wry amusement.

“Gone, have they, Booboo?” inquired Mr Bishop, who was busy arranging on the table some cigarette cards he had taken from his pocket.

Mr Blossom made a joke about not paying bills and his lady companion laughed so much that she spilled some wine.

Winston Gash called to his brother: “You’ll not git yer leg ovver now, Spen—not tonight, you’ll not!” This so amused both lady companions that they had to grope their way, red-faced and whooping, to the door marked YE OLDE MILLSTREAM (LADIES).

Farmer Pritty added his mite of consolation. “I reckons that other bugger’ll be seeing to ’er tonight, me old mate.”

Mr Raymond Bishop smiled knowingly at one of his “Cries of London” and said: “They sound quite happy tonight, Booboo, don’t they?”

Mrs Whybrow was not listening. She beckoned the Jolly Miller to the table and asked him, in gravel-voiced confidentiality, who the gentleman was who had just gone out with that whatsername woman.

A policeman, whispered Mr Palgrove. An inspector from Flaxborough. Quite a decent fellow, actually.

“Good God,” Mrs Whybrow growled softly, half to herself, “not another one.”

At her side, seemingly preoccupied with his cigarette card collection, Mr Bishop stroked his long nose. Farmer Pritty slumped lower in his chair and flicked fragments of cheese at an empty bottle.

Purbright re-entered the restaurant half an hour later. He saw that Spencer had left, as had Mrs Whybrow, Mr Bishop and Peter Pritty. Winston and his party were still there. Mr Blossom, who wished to enliven the evening with what he called his “squirty joke”, was trying vociferously but without success to order champagne. Winston sat drinking whiskies with a steadfast and manifestly lustful regard of Miss Teatime. The lady companions were much wound down and were talking between themselves about electric cookers.

The inspector apologized to Miss Teatime for his absence. He described briefly what had happened.

“No one seems actually to have seen anything. A couple of people living nearby heard a machine go by—a bulldozer, perhaps, something of that kind.”

Miss Teatime looked puzzled. “You mean the vibration could have caused the wall to collapse?” Harrington said he would have supposed the house to be a notably solid one.

“We shall know more tomorrow,” Purbright said. He added, more quietly: “I’m having a man keep an eye on things over there until morning.”

“That is very wise,” said Miss Teatime, soberly. “Tell me, though, is she all right?”

“Mrs Loughbury? Oh, yes, I think so.”

“Upset, though.”

“Naturally. There’s a fearful mess.”

“I shall call to see if there is anything I may do before returning to Flaxborough.”

Purbright nodded. “I think she’d appreciate that. Incidentally,”—he half-turned to include Harrington—“I do hope you’ll have no need to amend that inventory of yours.”

Miss Teatime smiled. “Oh, come now, Mr Purbright—a burglar with a bulldozer?”

He shrugged. “Funny village, Mumblesby.”

“A singularly venereal one,” Miss Teatime murmured tightly, having sent an inadvertent glance into the furnace of Mr Gash’s stare.

“Do you suspect theft, inspector?” Harrington inquired.

Purbright had taken note of Winston’s interest; he moved his chair to block it. “Walls,” he said to Harrington, “do not as a rule fall down by accident when there are valuable things on the other side of them. There is one consolation—a bulldozer is less easy to get rid of than a jemmy.”

Mr Harrington murmured, rather mysteriously: “Low loaders?”

The inspector conceded that there were, indeed, such things, oh, yes. He did not mention his already having ordered the interception of any heavy machine carrier seen on the road within a twenty mile radius of Mumblesby.

Nor did he share the information passed to him by Patrol Officer Brevitt a few minutes before his return to the restaurant. This was to the effect that Mr Brevitt had just encountered, almost fatally, a general purpose mobile digging and demolition machine known as a Super Delve 48, abandoned without lights on the highway north of the village, and believed to be the property of P. Pritty & Sons, Farmers and Contractors, of Mumblesby.

Chapter Thirteen

The Reverend Tiverton was in a mood of higher elation than usual. A christening...heavens, they had not had a christening in the village since his very first month, and that had been a poor, half-hearted affair from the council houses. Now, though (and Mr Tiverton acquitted himself of snobbery because the district council had since put its eight houses on the market and had even succeeded in selling one to the sitting tenant), the ceremony was for the first-born of young Mr and Mrs Donald Pagetter, who had pots of money and a nice sense of style, and were related to the Lord Lieutenant of the county.

“There’ll be flowers,” Mr Tiverton told his wife, “and silver tokens, and the Moldhams have lent a christening robe that was used for the Duchess of Argyle.”

His wife’s eyes shone. “Oh, lovely! And are we to have a proper font baptism?”

“Rather. Won’t it be a nice change from those awful utility hip-flask affairs?”

And so, on this Saturday morning, instead of joining the small crowd of spectators roped off from the hole in the Manor House wall, the Vicar of Mumblesby set off for the home of his churchwarden, Mr Cork-Bradden, full of ideas on how best to promote a baptism of quality.

Sightseers at the Manor House were thwarted of a view of interior intimacies by a large tarpaulin draped over the gable end. They had to be content with the spectacle of Sergeant Love in command of the sorting and sifting of rubble.

The work was being done by two constables. They were tunicless and with blue shirtsleeves turned up, but retained their helmets, on Purbrights instructions, in case of further falls of debris. They looked as merry as new arrivals in a penal colony.

“What I want you to look for, Sid,” the inspector had said, “is a piece of wood about so big”—he made a span with finger and thumb—“which may, or may not, still be inside a small steel cage. The cage was set in that wall when last I saw it.”

Then he had gone off to ask questions of Mr Pritty, owner of a rogue SuperDelve.

The farm run by the Pritty family consisted essentially of one field (a featureless stretch of soil, three-quarters of a mile square) and a concrete runway. The purpose of the runway was to accommodate not aeroplanes but agricultural machinery and the plant used in the contracting side of the business.

There were big, hangar-like sheds along one side of the runway. Some were filled with sacks of nitrate, for fertilizing the field; in another were stacked drums of herbicides and pesticides. Perched on metal stilts set in the concrete were fuel and lubricant tanks.

Several lorries and pick-up trucks stood about. They were dwarfed by a new, bright orange combine harvester and something that looked to Purbright like an armoured car with a huge scoop at the front. Called a “Hedge-Grouter”, it was capable of riving out all unprofitable vegetation, including small trees.

The inspector walked past the machines and the sheds to the square, grey farmhouse at the end of the concrete. An annexe in raw red brick had been added to the house. Purbright knocked at a door marked “Office” and entered.

A counter divided the room. Leaning against its far side, their backs to Purbright, were two men. Purbright recognized the massive, off-white head of Farmer Pritty. The younger man, who turned his head only long enough to note the fact of Purbrights presence, had sleepy, wet-looking eyes with pale yellow lashes, and a slightly open mouth. His face was the same colour as the brickwork. This, presumably, was one of the three sons.

Purbright waited for more than a minute, but received no further acknowledgment. He said “Good morning” firmly.

The younger man again looked over his shoulder. He gave a small, interrogatory jerk of the head and opened his mouth a little more.

“I should like to speak to Mr Pritty,” Purbright said.

The young man smiled slowly at the elder and indicated the inspector with a nod.

“Oh, ar?” The farmer did not move.

Purbright was becoming accustomed to Mumblesby’s highly developed economy of motion. He waited. After a while, the old man again addressed no one in particular.

“What is it you want, then?”

“I am a police officer, and I should like to know how a machine belonging to you came to be abandoned on the public highway yesterday evening.”

There was a long silence. Very laboriously, Farmer Pritty launched himself from the counter and faced about.

“Belonging to me?”

“Yes, sir; it is registered in your name.”

“Abandoned? What do you mean, abandoned?”

“No one was in charge of the vehicle. It had no lights. There were no illuminated markers on the road to give warning. Abandoned doesn’t seem to me to be an unreasonable description.”

Pritty considered at some length. Then, by a tilt of the head and one sleepily raised eyebrow, he conveyed the message: You’ll have to ask him.

The inspector addressed Pritty Junior. “You are this gentleman’s son, are you, sir?”

The younger man looked with faintly contemptuous amusement at his sire, then at Purbright. “You reckon?”

The old man sniggered.

A small, folded paper had appeared in Purbrights hand. He consulted it, looked up and gave the younger man a bland smile.

“Ah, you must be Lawrence. Is that right, sir?” He glanced again at the paper. “Lawrence Edward...committing nuisance by maliciously urinating over seats of open sports car, the property...”

A sudden gift of speech, very angry. “That was Harry. What the hell have you got there?”

Bewildered, the inspector checked. “I’m terribly sorry, sir. That was, as you say, Henry. Henry Peter, in fact, June 1976... No, here’s yours sir. Unlawful carnal knowledge of a girl of twelve—“

“Bernard! It was bloody Bernard! Why don’t you get the sodding facts right before you—“

The substantial right arm of farmer Pritty swept in an arc to his son’s chest, silencing the rest of his complaint.

“That’s enough, boy. Vay-hycles is what we’re on about. Vay-hycles. Just you stick to bloody vay-hycles and how they get hijacked.”

Purbright regarded each in turn. To the son, he said: “So we’ve established, have we, that you are Lawrence Edward Pritty, and that you manage the contracting side of your family business?”

Lawrence gave a grunt of assent. His father nudged him. Lawrence said: “That one that you’re on about—it went missing last night.”

“You mean someone stole it?” Purbright asked.

Lawrence glowered mistrustfully. “Moved it,” he amended. “Took it.”

“Hijacked it,” supplied Mr Pritty again, rather as if he had bought the word somewhere and wanted his moneys worth.

“Tell me, Mr Pritty, are the controls of this type of machine easy to master?”

The notion amused Lawrence so much that he failed to be warned by his father’s scowl. He smiled pityingly at the inspector and said he’d like to see how he got on with one.

Not well at all, the inspector feared. Certainly not with the expert knowledge displayed by the hijacker—quite an old hand, it would seem, at demolition work.

“But why the Manor House?”

Purbright was looking fixedly at Lawrence now.

“And why that particular area of the gable wall? On whose instructions did you do the job, Mr Pritty?”

Lawrence’s anger deepened the terracotta of his complexion almost to black. The thin, straw-coloured brows and lashes stood out like scars. Before he could speak, his father caught hold of his arm.

“That’s enough, boy. Don’t let your bloody lard out. Just tell him to piss off. That’s all. Just tell him. There’s nothing he can do to you.”

Purbright regarded Lawrence sombrely. “With all due respect to your father, sir, that advice is not to be recommended. We are not concerned now with such boyish pranks as attempted rape (ah, I knew I’d get it right eventually) but with a very serious matter indeed. As serious, perhaps, as conspiracy to murder.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Whose idea was it, sir? A joke—is that what it was supposed to be? Knocking a hole in a lady’s bedroom?”

God, this was awful, Purbright reflected. Like a television script. The trouble was that interrogation of someone like Lawrence Pritty was liable to turn into a sort of extension of the person himself.

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” he found himself saying, and worse: “If you’re frank and helpful now, you could avoid the main charge.”

Lawrence’s indolence of gaze had changed to shifty bewilderment. He avoided his father’s eye.

“Boy!” commanded the old man. “Get off and see to that combine.”

The son remained where he was, staring sulkily down at the counter and picking at a spot near the corner of his mouth. Suddenly he looked at Purbright, his head a little on one side.

“Suppose it was, then? A bit of a laugh. What am I supposed to say?”

From Pretty Senior burst, “Christ Almighty! You wet, mitherin’ shit-house!” and he bisoned out of the office.

“It may well be,” the inspector said to Lawrence, “that your father is about to warn others. They probably will confer in order to put all the blame on you.”

“What others?” Wiliness had survived fear.

Recklessly, Purbright tossed in another line of script. “People in a position to shop you—people who would pretend they’re too fine and mighty to know you, if it suited them.”

Lawrence smouldered silently for a while. Clearly, the inspector had evoked for him a whole Mumblesby Debrett.

He shook his head. “It was supposed to be a joke on the cow at the Manor. It’s not her bloody house, anyway.”

“You said ‘supposed to be’—do you mean that is what you were told?”

“I only know my uncle Spence was going to take her out for some nosh so as she’d be out of the way.” A thin smile came and went. “It was to be a surprise for her when she went to bed.”

“Mr Gash is your uncle?”

“Sort of. Relation, anyway.”

“Does he have a grudge against Mrs Loughbury?”

Lawrence shook his head, irritably. “I told you. It was for a laugh, that’s all.”

Purbright appeared to find this reply reasonable enough.

“Must have been difficult,” he said, conversationally, “to hit the right spot in that light. There wasn’t much room to manoeuvre.”

Lawrence glanced down at his hands. In the instant before his face set in sulky indifference, there gleamed a smirk of pride.

Purbright left it at that. He told Lawrence lightly about such matters as signing a statement at police headquarters, and holding himself in readiness for further questioning. Lawrence reciprocated with equally light reference to the probable willingness of his family to pay for the damage if the poor cow—by which the inspector would understand he meant Mrs Loughbury—sent a bill and didn’t get any ideas about making a court case of it.

Then, suddenly, he remembered something.

“Here, what was that you said before, though? Something about murdering. Was that supposed to frighten me, or what?”

“I trust not, Mr Pritty,” said Purbright, earnestly.

“What were you on about, then?”

Purbright turned on his way to the door. “You really don’t know?”

Lawrence stared and swallowed. “Course not.”

“Well, that’s all right, then,” said Purbright, cheerfully. He stepped out and shut the door behind him.

The inspector found Love in his enclosure, seated before a kitchen table which his servitors had carried from the house on Zee’s invitation. Selected pieces of debris lay on the ground around him. Purbright told him he looked like an archaeologist.

“We’ve found a bit of the cage thing,” said Love.

He led Purbright to where a chunk of masonry had been set aside on a sheet of newspaper. Pieces of twisted steel gleamed in the dust.

“There’s not a lot of wood,” said the sergeant. “That ought to make it easier.”

Purbright stared blankly at the twenty or thirty bits of timber that were arranged in order of size on the table. He tried to recall what the Fragment of the True Cross had looked like.

“Has Mrs Loughbury seen these?”

Love shook his head. “Didn’t seem interested.” He added, more brightly: “She brought us out some coffee.”

The inspector picked up the largest specimen. It was spongy with woodworm and full of dust. He threw it away. Most of the other pieces bore signs of having belonged to the framework of the house. There also were some broken lengths of lath.

“Nothing here, Sid. Keep trying.”

He went round to the front of the house and rang the bell.

The door was opened by Mrs Claypole, fluttery and pale, but armed with the protective indignation of the newly-arrived mother.

“I should think so!” she declared, rather as if Purbright were an errant son-in-law who had been sleeping it off in the garden.

Decorously, he stepped inside.

Mrs Claypole’s face came close. “Have you seen what they’ve done to my Zoe’s lovely home?”

“I have, ma’am. And I can understand her being very upset.”

“Her being upset? We’re all upset, inspector. It’s a terrible thing.”

Mrs Claypole was one of those people who detect disparagement in even the sincerest and most eloquently expressed condolences.

Sternly, she shepherded Purbright into the sitting room.

Zoe was telephoning. She smiled at the inspector and waved two fingers. He sat down to wait.

When she had finished the call, she greeted him again, then asked: “Is your house insured against being knocked down?”

“Zoe!” exclaimed her mother.

“Not specifically,” said Purbright. “Why, was yours?”

Zoe shrugged. “The insurance company doesn’t want to think so. But they wouldn’t, would they? They just blab on about riots and acts of God.”

“She’ll not take things seriously,” complained Mrs Claypole.

Zoe drew up her legs into the cushioned recesses of her chair and wrinkled her nose at the inspector.

He sighed. “I think you should, Mrs Loughbury. I think also that you should try and realize that there are people in this village who seem to regard you as some kind of a danger to them.”

They’re terrified they might find themselves riding next to me on one of their bloody hunts, you mean.”

“Language,” muttered Mrs Claypole.

“No, I don’t mean that,” Purbright replied. “Nor that they fear you might be the next president of the Conservative Association.”

“Of course it’s that,” retorted Zoe. “Do you think I don’t know? They’ve looked down their long horsey noses at me from the moment I carried a nightie case up the front steps. If I’d used the tradesmen’s entrance, it might have been different.”

“But you do want to take a place in the social life of the village, don’t you, Mrs Loughbury? I saw you having dinner last night with Mr Gash. Doesn’t he pull weight with the Foxhounds Association?”

“The only weight he pulls is his own pudding.”

Mrs Claypole stared, tight-lipped.

“My mother,” said Zoe to the inspector, “is, as they say, aghast.” She turned. “Mum, why don’t you go and make a nice pot of tea, there’s a love.”

Mrs Claypole, looking hurt, walked to the door.

As soon as she had gone, Zoe swung her feet to the floor and sat erect. The carefree expression had changed.

She said very quietly to Purbright: “I don’t particularly enjoy what is going on, you know.”

“No, I didn’t think you did.”

“Of course, she’s worried silly, poor old bat, so I can’t let on, not in front of her.”

“Naturally. But, really, Mrs Loughbury, we mustn’t waste any more time. It’s too dangerous.”

She shrugged, eyes lowered.

“So you’d better throw some questions, then. The nasty ones first. Before she comes back.”

“Very well. One. Are you blackmailing somebody?”

Surprise, indignation, but an immediate reply. “No, I’m bloody not!”

“Right. Two. Do you think your husband was a black-mailer? I’m sorry about the melodramatic term, but there simply isn’t a better one.”

This time, Zoe’s negative was a fraction delayed. Purbright asked if she would like to qualify it.

“I suppose I would, in a way. Not that I think he went about being a secret criminal. Nothing like that. But people did give him presents. Is that usual with solicitors?”

Purbright said he thought that benevolence in that direction was pretty rare. “What,” he asked, “do you think about those gifts to Mr Loughbury?”

“The same as I’d think about anything that somebody shoves into your hand for nothing. A favour’s wanted—a favour to match.”

“In this particular case, a big favour. You’ve seen a valuation?”

“Sure. Some very pricey artworks come in. Nice.”

“But why did it come in, Mrs Loughbury? Do you know that? Not, I think, in lieu of professional fees.”

“Lord, no. I didn’t know much about Dick’s business—beg pardon, his practice—but when it came to money, it was either cash on the nail or so soon afterwards the sealing wax was still tacky.”

The inspector listened. Distant teacup noises attested to Mrs Claypole’s being busy still in the kitchen.

“You are aware, are you, of the identities of the people who gave your husband expensive presents?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And they are...?”

Zoe pouted. “You know yourself who they are, Mr Purbright. Come on, now.”

“I know some. Four is my score. What do you make it?”

She nodded agreement and began counting off on her fingers. “The Venerable Raymondo...”

“Who?”

“Ray Bishop—the stuck-up old ponce that Ma Whybrow has in tow. That’s one. Then the restaurant bloke, him from Flax. Palgrove. Three, Spence Gash, the friendly farmer. And last but not least, the king of the big givers, Squire Cork-whatsisname.”

“Cork-Bradden.”

“Yep, him.”

“Now here’s another nasty question, Mrs Loughbury. Was it these four gentlemen you had in mind when you put that highly embarrassing notice in the paper that was supposed to convey the thanks of the so-called Mumblesby Relic Committee?” He saw the beginning of a grin, and added more sternly: “In other words, were you warning these people off by craftily dropping my name into the wretched thing?”

Zoe gazed at Purbright, at first contritely, then with friendly resignation.

“You’re not stupid, are you.”

The inspector said he appreciated the compliment, which, he felt sure, was of mutual applicability. “Ta very much,” said Zoe.

“Incidentally,” said Purbright, “I know who it was that knocked your wall down.”

Suddenly solemn again, she waited.

“No one we’ve mentioned so far,” said Purbright. “He’s promised to make a statement this afternoon and I don’t doubt he will. He’s a joker. Rather a carnal young man. Somebody put him up to it.”

“Aren’t you going to tell me who?”

“I don’t think I should, if you don’t mind. Not for the moment.”

For the first time, Zoe looked agitated.

“All right, if you can’t tell me who, tell me why... Why, for Christ’s sake? Why should some goon want to—“

Before she could say more, there came two interruptions. One was the approach of Mrs Claypole, pushing a tea trolley; the other, a peal on the front door bell.

They heard the trolley halt outside the room. Mrs Claypole, mumbling protests, went on to answer the door. There reached them the voice of Sergeant Love. A few moments later, he was in the room. He carried something loosely wrapped in newspaper.

“I’m not promising anything,” the inspector said to Zoe, “but this may be the answer to your last question.”

Chapter Fourteen

Eunice Tiverton heard the firm stride of her husband upon the path and peeped out of the window to see if what she termed his “raise thine eyes” humour were still upon him. It obviously was not. He was scowling at the gravel as though the devil had planted it with weeds overnight.

The door of the vicarage was not slammed exactly, but its closure was unequivocal. What, Eunice asked herself, could possibly have gone wrong?

By the time he entered the room, Alan Tiverton had composed his features into a smile (his “masterful martyrdom” one, reflected his wife). He sat, his legs stretched out before him, and pityingly regarded his shoes.

Without being asked, she poured and handed him a large, sweet sherry.

He thanked her and downed half of it in one. She awaited revelation, knowing it would be something to do with the lovely Pagetter christening.

“Can’t understand the man. I really can’t.” Half the remaining sherry was disposed of.

“What man, dear?”

“Cork-Bradden. Absolutely illogical. I really wonder if he hasn’t gone a bit odd.”

She waited, not prompting, one eye on his nearly empty glass. An excellent wife, the bishop once had called her.

“It’s the baptism,” Mr Tiverton began. “Cork-Bradden has got it into his noddle that we ought to stick to the ‘ordinary drill’ as he calls it. He says he thinks the full-scale ceremonial would be ‘inappropriate in all the circumstances’.”

“What circumstances?”

The vicar slapped the arm of his chair. “Precisely. I don’t know what he’s on about. He may be Vicar’s Warden, but this is the first time I’ve had my judgment questioned on matters of ritual.”

“What does he object to?”

“He says the village would be upset if it were thought I was going back to Romish practices, and had I worked out how many gallons of holy water it would take to make any sort of decent level in the font.”

“I suppose,” his wife suggested delicately, “that that could be argued to be a realistic point...”

“Not the rubbish about Romish practices, though.”

“Of course not. One would think the man was a Methodist or something.”

An unamused laugh from Mr Tiverton. “Not a Baptist, anyway. Or one of those Jehovah people. They’re all for total immersion.”

“Oh, God, and with everyone wearing macks...”

Eunice took her husband’s glass. “The Pagetters,” she remarked quietly, “are much more nicely connected than the Cork-Braddens.”

Her husband regarded her with kindly concern, touched with surprise. “My dear, you did not suppose that I might allow a churchwarden to abrogate my authority?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, and gave him a kiss and a refill of sherry.

“Dear me, no,” declared Mr Tiverton. “Whether or not Cork-Bradden approves, it is all systems go. If you will see some of your good ladies about the flowers, I’ll go over now and check on the font.”

Which is where Purbright, making a check for very different reasons, encountered him.

They exchanged light remarks. The vicars were perhaps, brisker, with hand-rubbing accompaniment: he was wondering how long this rather persistent though otherwise pleasant policeman would keep him talking. Purbright’s were cover for more serious speculation: how far dare he take into his confidence a man who might well, considering the special advantages of his position, be implicated in what by now was very clearly a village conspiracy?

He decided to take a risk (surely they couldn’t all be in it, for God’s sake?).

“Do you recall a little conversation we had, vicar, on the subject of relics?”

Tiverton tossed his head in good-natured derision. “Oh, good gracious, yes. The lump of firewood, eh? Yes, of course I do.”

“I rather think”—the inspector displayed the big, new-looking manilla envelope he was carrying—“that this could be it.”

The vicar looked blank. Then, suddenly, “Ah, of course—that shocking business at Loughbury’s—the connection’s just occurred to me.” He pointed. “Don’t tell me your chaps were doing all their sifting for that?”

Purbright opened the envelope and slid forward into the light a piece of wood three or four inches long. Two faces were relatively plain; a third uneven, as if it had been split away.

The vicar reached out.

“I don’t think we ought to handle it,” Purbright warned.

Ah, fingerprints, Mr Tiverton told himself, quite erroneously. He peered reverently at the exhibit and said: “Mmmm...”

Purbright knew this signified merely polite interest, not recognition of the nature of a brown stain with its appended fragments, perhaps of hair and skin.

He left the piece of wood displayed on the flap of the envelope.

“I don’t want you to read too much into this question, vicar, but can you call to mind any article in the church—anything commonly kept or used here—from which this piece of wood might have been broken?”

Tiverton looked puzzled. “I don’t quite follow. What sort of article?”

“Something a man could lift fairly easily. Does one have wooden lecterns? A small table, perhaps. A stool.”

“The only table is in the vestry, but that’s quite a heavy fellow. And the lectern’s brass. Stools, now...” Tiverton gazed about him, whistling soundlessly.

Suddenly, he turned and stared, wide-eyed, at Purbright.

“You’re looking for a weapon! A weapon—here in the church!”

Purbright raised a hand. “I am simply examining possibilities, Mr Tiverton.”

The vicar threw a glance to the tower gallery. For an instant, he cowered, as if threatened.

“Not that poor woman who...”

The man was by now so obviously alarmed that Purbright abandoned diplomacy.

“We no longer believe that Mrs Croll died as the result of a fall. We think she was attacked and struck down.”

“What, here? Attacked?”

“Here, yes.”

“In a locked church?”

“Churches are capable of being unlocked, vicar, like any other buildings.”

There followed a long pause.

“You must see the terrible implication of what you are saying, inspector.”

“And what is that, sir?”

“Oh, come now. It is obvious enough. If what you say is true, and this appalling thing has been done...oh, but no, you cannot be making such an accusation...”

“I have accused no one, Mr Tiverton.”

“But the keys, man. The keys. You talk of unlocking. Locking, unlocking—and by whom? A murderer? There are only two keys. Two, that’s all. I have one. My warden has the other. Which of us are you going to arrest, inspector? Or is it to be both of us?”

Purbright had caught a strong whiff of sherry. He gave Mr Tiverton what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“It is scarcely likely that I should be talking to you so frankly, sir, if I had any intention of arresting you. As for Mr Cork-Bradden, I don’t doubt that he will be able to give his own account of such matters as I might need to have explained to me.”

The vicar looked a little abashed. “This comes as quite a shock, you know, inspector.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Especially as we were just preparing for a joyful occasion. Our first baptism in the village for more than a year. We could have done without this...this unexpected shadow.”

For the next half hour or so, and with the vicar’s permission but not his company, Purbright roamed every accessible part of the church on the lookout for potential blunt instruments. Nothing suggested itself. He walked out into the sunshine.

The ancient yew trees in Mumblesby church yard looked solid and nearly black against the bright sky. When the light was not behind them, though, they had a curious viscous appearance, like hangings of dark green lava.

Beyond the yews and huddled beneath the tresses of a vast, arthritic willow, were some of the oldest graves in the parish. Their headstones leaned at random in the rank grass, peaceful as sleeping drunks.

Purbright strolled idly among the dead, deciphering here and there a name or a date. It was not a profitable, nor even in any sense a relevant occupation, but it served to delay his call upon one of the living, to whom he was by no means sure what to say.

It was when Purbright had reached the limit of this part of the burial ground and was about to descend to the path leading to Church House, that he happened to glance across to one of the plainly glazed windows of the church.

He stopped and stared, transfixed by the wild impression that the church, like some great stone ship, was slowly sinking, and that this had been brought about by none other than the vicar himself—its captain, as it were—whose hauling upon a rope had opened the sea-cocks.

The illusion lasted only a moment. It was not the church that was sinking, but something within it—an object of considerable mass, whose immobility one took for granted—that was just as improbably rising.

The great seventeenth century font cover of carved oak had parted from its octagonal base, the much more ancient font itself, and was being slowly drawn aloft.

Eventually, Mr Tiverton stopped pulling and lightly wound a few turns of rope round a cleat in a nearby pillar.

The font cover (it looked, Purbright decided, rather like a junior version of the Albert Memorial) was by now suspended at a height of three or four feet above the stone basin. Plenty of room, he supposed, to manoeuvre a baby into the prescribed baptismal attitudes.

The vicar stepped up to the font and leaned forward to inspect the basin.

Suddenly he frowned and pouted in a good-gracious kind of way. He reached down into the font and picked something up. Whatever it was, it was too small for Purbright to identify from where he stood.

For some moments, Mr Tiverton examined his find on the palm of his hand. Then he wrapped it in a piece of paper. He was about to put it in his pocket when his eye happened to meet the inquisitive gaze of the inspector.

At once, he held up the discovery and signalled by gesture that Purbright was welcome to share it.

The inspector returned to the church. Mr Tiverton had not moved.

“In the font,” he said. “How awfully odd.”

Purbright stared for a full minute at the little silver-cupped jewel that the vicar had handed to him.

When at last he raised his eyes, it was to seek out the arched top of one of the lancet windows. Then his regard moved to the font and, finally, to its suspended cover.

Mr Tiverton saw Purbright’s face muscles tighten, as if with pain, and heard a softly suspired “Christ!”

Chapter Fifteen

Ever since his breakfast-time encounter with Zoe Loughbury, Mr Buxton had found room among his sizeable collection of uncharitable sentiments to include the faint, but attractive hope that his late employer had met his end by other than natural causes.

Why otherwise, he asked himself, should the widow be so cheerful and at the same time so insensible of the sanctity of legal protocol? Her attitude towards the late Mr Loughbury’s testamentary disposition (“will” indeed!) had been almost flippant. This was not the behaviour to be expected of a woman bereaved.

“It was almost,” Mr Buxton had told his own, very respectful, wife that evening, “as if she regarded me as somebody from the Pools.”

He did not mention Zoe’s greater sin: her failure to make the bearer of good tidings the recipient of her personal gratitude, there and then.

That was not the only circumstance that fuelled Mr Buxton’s suspicion, of course. The marriage itself, furtively procured by special licence and largely unacknowledged by the sort of people with whom Mr Richard normally associated, had run less than a year of its course. (I put it to you, madam, that you could not wait for the Great Reaper to drop a fortune into your lap: you had to wield the scythe yourself, did you not? Thus Buxton, the eminent Silk, cross-examining in his own head.)

And why, if the death of the Senior Partner had been straightforward, were the Flaxborough police now making inquiries?

He himself had seen an inspector of his acquaintance call at the Manor House and there was talk among the solicitors about visits to the village by a detective sergeant.

But the best of all Clappers reasons for sanguinity lay in a locked drawer in the Church Close offices of Loughbury, Lovelace and Partners.

It was an envelope containing a number of foolscap pages that Loughbury had personally and privately covered with his tight, meticulous lawyers script nearly twelve months before—shortly after his marriage, in fact. (You might well consider that significant, members of the jury.)

Sealed with the green wax that the Partners reserved for especially confidential items of business, this envelope had been consigned to Buxton’s keeping, with the injunction (humorously expressed, he remembered, for Mr Richard was quite a droll old gentleman) that it be opened only in the event of his dying suddenly.

What was Clapper now to do with it? He could simply pass it on to one of the Partners. Or destroy it unread, for the knowledge of its existence was his alone. He was strongly tempted to open the envelope and judge of its contents himself, but he doubted if he could re-seal it convincingly.

For a long while after the Partners, and the two ladies who wore woollen jumpers and typed, and Mr Loughbury s temporary replacement, young and pernicketty Alexander Scorpe, had gone home on that Monday evening, Mr Buxton sat in the seclusion of his own cubby-hole of an office and gazed at the well-filled packet and wondered if it contained the means of bringing to book the disrespectful widow.

At last, he put it into the case in which Buxton QC daily carried his imaginary briefs and his real sandwiches. He telephoned the police headquarters in Fen Street. Was the chief constable by any chance still upon the premises? Robert Buxton, of Loughbury, Lovelace and Partners. No, the sergeant would not do. Yes, he would hold the line.

Mr Chubb was not at Fen Street. He was in the company of his Yorkshire terriers, geraniums and wife at his home in Queen’s Road. But as he knew Mr Buxton to be a solicitor’s clerk and hence likely neither to petition nor to canvass on his own behalf, Mr Chubb magnanimously suggested that he “call on his way home” (Clapper dwelt in a semi-detached villa at the better-but-not-much end of Jubilee Park Gardens, off Queens Road.)

Entrance to the chief constables house was through a big conservatory-like porch. All the woodwork was painted white. The outer doors were plainly glazed, the inner ones had frosted panes, bordered by stained-glass segments. Within the porch, four white urns held plants with clusters of pink flowers. Mr Buxton did not know what they were.

Response to his ring—it was by Mrs Chubb—was prompt enough, but both sets of doors seemed difficult to open. Her plump, good-natured, motherly face reddened as she pushed, pulled and rattled.

“It’s the boys, you know,” Mrs Chubb said, when at last a way into the house had been won. “The dogs. We use the back as a rule. Then there’s no problem. Never mind, Father’s expecting you.”

Mr Buxton sniffed secretly. There was a distinct smell of kippers. It did not seem right. Common. Dog food, perhaps?

“We’ve had tea,” remarked Mrs Chubb, cheerily, “so you can go into the lounge.”

Which is where the chief constable was already installed, his spare, almost frail, figure propped lightly against the wall by the fireplace.

Upon Buxton’s entry, Mr Chubb withdrew his hand from the pocket of the long grey cardigan that was his domestic livery and indicated a chair. He did not exactly greet his visitor, but he looked relaxed and tolerant.

“And what can we do for you, Mr Buxton?”

The chair was submissive as a quicksand. Clapper’s backside sank so deeply and his knees were left so far overhead that his struggle to open his briefcase made him look like an escapologist rehearsing a new trick.

Mr Chubb waited patiently, then stepped forward to receive the extricated package.

“You say you want me to open this? It is sealed, you know.” He turned the envelope about in his hand and looked at it without enthusiasm.

Clapper climbed out of the embraces of his chair and perched himself on its edge.

“It was sealed by Mr Richard,” he said. “I have full responsibility for its custody and disposal, naturally.” His original intention to address the chief constable with professional familiarity as “Chubb” seemed now less commendable.

Mr Chubb laid the package gently on the mantelshelf. “Perhaps,” he said, “you had better tell me all about it.”

Buxton QC outlined the case for the prosecution. It took considerably less time than he had supposed it would. Mr Chubb heard him out without interruption.

There followed a silence. Clapper cast a few exploratory glances about the room, hopeful that they might reveal a decanter. He was disappointed.

The chief constable frowned at his finger nails. “There is one strong objection to what you suggest, I’m afraid, Mr Buxton. Mr Loughbury was having medical care over a period of weeks; he died in hospital, and the doctors were quite satisfied as to the cause of his death.”

Buxton QC, thwarted spirits fancier, countered: “My position is simply this, chief constable: I should not feel happy if Mr Richard’s confidence in his friends on the police force failed to prevail over a formality such as a medical certificate.”

Mr Chubb tried to work that one out. He asked: “Do you mean that Mr Loughbury expressly wished his letter to be opened and read on his death, irrespective of circumstances?”

It was a good question, and the Silk allowed his Junior to answer. “Well—yes and no,” said Clapper.

In some distant part of the house, the opening of a door initiated a tumult of barking and scampering, with which a woman’s cries competed in vain until the same door slammed.

Soon afterwards, Mrs Chubb appeared, rosy and out of breath. She beamed at the visitor.

“I expect you’d like a nice cup of tea.”

She waited for him to taste it. It was lukewarm and much diluted. “Lovely,” said Clapper.

When his wife had departed, the chief constable picked up the envelope, felt it, and tried its weight. There was, he judged, an awful lot of reading matter inside. Dick Loughbury always had been inclined to long-windedness.

“I think, you know,” said Mr Chubb at last, “that my Mr Purbright is your best bet. He knows the district, you see.”

A man who could solemnly imply personal ignorance of a locality of which he had been chief constable for over thirty years was too much even for an eminent Silk.

“If that is what you would prefer,” murmured Mr Buxton, looking about him unhappily for somewhere to set down his cup.

Chapter Sixteen

Whereas I, Richard Daspard Loughbury, of The Manor House, Mumblesby, solicitor, have reason to believe that my life may be in danger by reason of my knowledge of such facts as shall be set forth in this, my statement following, I hereby declare that the said statement is true to the best of knowledge and belief.

SIGNED, Richard D. Loughbury

WITNESS to signature only, G. R. Buxton

STATEMENT

For the past six or seven years, I have been the legal representative of Mr Robin Cork-Bradden, of Church House, Mumblesby. I have acted in the same capacity for other residents of the village, including Mr Leonard Palgrove, of the Old Mill Restaurant; Mr Raymond Bishop, of Church Lane, the retired orthopaedic surgeon; and Mr Spencer Gash, the farmer.

In 1978, I was consulted over a land conveyancing matter by another farmer in the vicinity, Mr Benjamin Croll. In the course of conversation, Mr Croll made certain remarks concerning his wife’s fidelity which I found offensive and embarrassing. He, however, obviously was accustomed to making such comments on the shortest of acquaintance.

About the end of May 1980, I had occasion once more to visit the farm of Mr Croll and once again he sought to turn the conversation to the subject of his wife. In spite of my objections, he succeeded in imparting the information that she was now (in his words) being “knocked off” by Mr Raymond Bishop and that he expected “all hell” to be raised by Mrs Constance Whybrow, Mr Bishops companion of many years’ standing.

Although the subject was by now exceedingly distasteful to me, it became clear from the tactful inquiries I made during the next few weeks that her husband had not exaggerated the scope of Mrs Croll’s activities. At least four persons were involved—all, unhappily, clients of mine. Their names appear in the first paragraph of this statement.

This is how the situation appeared to me in the early summer of 1980.

Croll, though complacent to a degree, regarded his wife as a financial liability and a general nuisance. Bishop was flattered, no doubt, by Mrs Croll’s allowing him certain liberties with her person, but the possibility that his consort might find out must have worried him considerably. Gash was Master of Foxhounds; such a position would require any partner in turpitude to be unfailingly discreet, a quality in which Mrs Croll was notably deficient. In Palgrove’s case, not only his marriage but his livelihood would be put at risk by discovery. As for Cork-Bradden, a county councillor and a magistrate, any open acknowledgment of his intimacy with Mrs Croll would be disastrous.

I did not personally make the acquaintance of Bernadette Croll until I was introduced to her by Mr Cork-Bradden at a wine and cheese party organized on behalf of the local Conservative Association. Her attractions, sexually speaking, were undeniable and she was having considerable success in selling raffle tickets. My impression, though, was that Cork-Bradden’s main object was to “unload” the woman on to me, in order to placate his wife. On more than one occasion subsequently, I encountered her at the Cork-Braddens in circumstances that strongly suggested an actual liaison.

Spencer Gash was another of her “beaux”. It was he who provided the money with which she bought the little green sports car that was to become a somewhat infamous symbol in the locality. Gash boasted that year to a mutual acquaintance that he had “laid” Mrs Croll eighteen times during Flaxborough Fair Week.

In June, there were rumours in the village that Mrs Cynthia Palgrove, joint owner of the Old Mill Restaurant, had left home following her discovery of Mrs Croll, in a near naked condition, on the rear seat of her motor car, which Mr Palgrove claimed to have been tuning in the restaurant garage late one night. Leonard Palgrove himself came to me shortly afterwards and confided that although his wife had returned, she was determined that continuation of the marriage, and of the business partnership, should be conditional upon his severing his adulterous association. I drew up a document of undertaking and he signed it.

On Thursday, July 17th, I received a visit at my Flaxborough office which, it seemed to me, might well bring to a head the whole unfortunate business. My caller was Benjamin Croll. His wife, he asserted, was pregnant, and he demanded that proceedings for divorce be instituted immediately. He alleged adultery with all the persons mentioned above. I pointed out at once that the law presumed legitimate paternity so long as a wife resided with her husband, but Croll refused to be advised.

Exercising the utmost discretion, I apprised my other clients of the turn matters had taken. All displayed anxiety and distress. It was agreed that I act as intermediary and attempt to achieve a mutually acceptable accommodation.

Croll proved to be less vindictive in mood once he learned the probable total cost of divorce proceedings. He said he would discontinue in consideration of £200 in cash and his wife’s undertaking to have an abortion free of any charge upon himself.

The “consortium”, as I henceforth shall call the four interested parties, met thereafter and heard Croll’s proposition. I undertook to make personal representation to Mrs Croll with a view to obtaining her co-operation in her own interests.

(I feel that I owe it to myself to place on record here a suggestion which, though “laughed off” by the person who offered it, deeply shocked me at the time. The remark, made by Spencer Gash, was: “I vote we do the bloody woman in and save ourselves all this trouble.”)

Mrs Croll came to see me at my office on July 29th. I outlined the difficulties in which, however unintentionally, she had placed not only her husband but others. Her answer, unfortunately, was to declare herself delighted with her condition and happy to be divorced whenever it suited her husband.

Reluctantly, I introduced the possibility of financial inducement. At first, Mrs Croll said she was not to be “bought off”, as she termed it, but eventually she agreed to give the matter further thought.

On August 6th, we had an interview at the Crolls’ farm. Croll himself was not present. She told me that she no longer ruled out the possibility of abortion, but her agreement would be conditional upon payment of £5,000 in cash. For £3,000 more, she would undertake to leave the district.

Doubting if such terms would be acceptable to my clients, I made a further approach to the husband two days later. Harvesting had begun, and our meeting took place in the open air. It did not take long. Crolls price had risen to eight thousand. I realized at once that there now was collusion between husband and wife and I lost no time in warning the consortium of their unethical behaviour.

On August 18th, the Vicar of Mumblesby and his family left for a short holiday in the Lake District. The consequent cancellation of services made it a simpler matter for my clients to confer in the seclusion of the church. On the evening of the following day, Mrs Whybrow telephoned me at home and asked me to come to their meeting place. I did so, and was told that the consortium had decided to make a final, direct appeal to Mrs Croll.

The settlement they had in mind was generous, and it would be put to her confidentially, there in the church, away from her husband’s influence, late on the evening of Thursday, August 21st.

I agreed to be the intermediary just once more. Mrs Whybrow said something to the effect that I should not be the loser. This intimation of special reward, I had, of course, to rebut at once. I asked for my instructions. They surprised me considerably. The message I was to take to Mrs Croll was that Mr Cork-Bradden would meet her “in the usual place” at half-past eleven the following night. If he had not arrived, she was to wait. One of the church candles would be left burning, but on no account was she to switch on any of the electric lights.

It was the first clear indication to me that Cork-Bradden and Mrs Croll had been indulging in adulterous relations in a systematic manner. Their choice of venue shocked me particularly, attributable as it was to his privileged position as churchwarden. However, it was my clients’ contractual dispositions that concerned me, not their morals.

I accordingly attended upon Mrs Croll the next morning and gained her promise to keep the appointment.

The remainder of the day I spent at my Flaxborough office. Towards the end of the afternoon, I was surprised to receive a telephone call from Mrs Cork-Bradden. It was an invitation to drinks at Church House at nine o’clock that evening.

Such an inappropriate function did not appeal to me, but I had no wish to offend the Cork-Braddens, so I presented myself at their house at nine and was admitted by Priscilla.

Drinks were served in the lounge. As I had foreseen, my fellow guests were Raymond Bishop, Mrs Whybrow, Palgrove and Spencer Gash. Another lady was present but she was not introduced and I learned only later that she was Mrs Gash. At ten o’clock, we were given some supper, and soon afterwards Mrs Gash was sent home. Mrs Cork-Bradden excused herself and retired for the night at eleven.

Her husband took the rest of us to his study on the first floor and poured more drinks. At about eleven-twenty, he got up and switched off the light, saying, if I remember rightly, “Let us see if the lady has turned up.” He drew back one of the curtains, near which I was sitting, and I looked out. The candle burning in the church was plain to see. Close beside it was something white and rectangular.

I was still watching the candle flame when Mrs Whybrow said loudly, “There she is!” I saw movement beyond the light. It was a woman, and she came to where the candle was, but I could not recognize her because her face was turned towards the white rectangle. I supposed it to be a notice of some kind. It absorbed her attention.

I jumped when I heard Cork-Bradden’s voice behind me in the darkness. He was standing by the door, and what he said was, “Dick, open the window, there’s a good fellow; it’s getting a bit stuffy.”

It was a perfectly ordinary request to make, yet even as I raised the casement catch, I hesitated. There had been a certain self-consciousness in Cork-Bradden’s manner, almost as if the remark had been rehearsed. Everyone else was silent, and this added to my feeling of unease.

I pretended the window was stiff because I wanted an excuse for taking so long. I looked back towards the door. It was just closing. A moment later, I heard another door open and close, not far away.

The obvious explanation was that our host was paying a visit to the lavatory before leaving to keep the appointment in the church. It seemed a good opportunity for me to slip away. I pushed open the window and secured the stay, then moved over to Mrs Whybrow to tell her my intention.

At that moment, we heard a sound that drove other matters from my mind. It was a scream, and I would have sworn that it came from inside the house.

I got to the door as quickly as I could, opened it and stood listening. Everything now was absolutely silent. It was Bishop who spoke first. He said, “Hello, it looks as if she’s pushed off.” Then Mrs Whybrow said something about the woman being “too damned impatient”. I looked out of the window, across to the church. The light was not there any more.

When Cork-Bradden came back in the room two or three minutes later, he at once switched on the lamp. They told him about the candle going out. I don’t think he was surprised. He was pale and did not look well, but he went round re-filling our glasses.

I drank my final brandy as quickly as I decently could and prepared to leave. Cork-Bradden saw me to the front door, where he had the grace to apologize for my having wasted my evening. Nothing more was said by either of us. I walked a little way along the path, then stopped in order to accustom my eyes to outdoor conditions.

It was while I was standing there that an alarming thought entered my head. Had that supper party been deliberately contrived in order to compromise me, to involve me in something I knew nothing about?

The more I considered my clients’ failure to keep the appointment with Mrs Croll, the more unreasonable it seemed. I was now feeling angry that I had been considered capable of being duped, and I determined to learn the truth of the matter.

For a start, I would look inside the church.

As I expected, the south door was unlocked (Cork-Bradden would have left it so for Mrs Croll to come and go). I let it close gently behind me, then, very carefully, I moved forward, alert for obstacles but resolved to use only if absolutely necessary the small pocket torch I always carry when I am out at night.

The first thing I noticed was a distinct odour of cosmetics above the church smells of damp and mould and candles. I thought it a rather cheap kind of scent, not very pleasant. Soon afterwards, my foot struck some metal object. I stepped over it. It was then that I saw something lying further off, dark and shapeless against the paler stone of the floor, and I knew that I could put off no longer the use of my torch.

One hears many arguments nowadays about the definition of death, but that this poor woman was dead could not be doubted for an instant. Some dreadful blow had twisted and stretched her neck like that of a slaughtered bird.

I do not know if even the little light I allowed myself had been noticed, but as I looked down at the body of Bernadette Croll I heard the sound of a door shutting in the distance.

As luck would have it, in the very instant of extinguishing my torch my eye fell upon a piece of wood caught in strands of the woman’s clothing. I freed it and thrust it in my pocket before hastening to the door—not a moment too soon, for already there reached me the sound of footsteps on the path from Church House.

That concludes my statement, so far as personal evidence is concerned, but I hope that before my good friends the police re-open the case in which they were so cleverly deceived, they will permit me to present them (posthumously, alas) with the solution.

It is now clear to me, after reflecting upon all the facts set out above, that Bernadette Croll did not fall from the tower gallery, as was supposed at the inquest, but was killed with a blow from some heavy wooden article which, if not since destroyed, should be identifiable from the fragment I recovered from the body and kept thereafter in secure but visible custody (in the hope that the murderer might thereby be harrowed into confession).

I believe that the supper party at Church House was staged for the purpose of persuading me that Mrs Croll was killed at the very moment when my four clients were with me and safely remote from the scene of the crime.

In common parlance, I was to be their alibi, should the police decline to believe the suicide story. Had I not seen Mrs Croll alive and in the church shortly before half-past eleven? And heard the scream she uttered on being attacked?

I need hardly say how quickly I detected the weakness of the scheme. The woman in the church had kept her face turned away. She could have been anybody. I now believe that it was, in fact, Mrs Cynthia Palgrove, impersonating Bernadette Croll. As for the scream—it is obvious enough that Cork-Bradden diverted my attention to the window business in order to slip out unnoticed to an open window in another room and scream out of it himself.

Given these subterfuges, it follows that the murder could have been committed at any time between Mrs Croll’s departure from home and my encountering her body.

It will be for the police to establish, perhaps by elimination, the identity of the actual murderer. My long experience of the law leaves me in no doubt but that his confederates will, when questioned along lines indicated by this statement, incriminate both him and themselves.

Chapter Seventeen

When Inspector Purbright drove into Home Farm, he found the approach road to be an almost exact replica of the entrance to Mr Pritty’s property. An identical concrete runway was bordered by the same open sheds, sheltering stocks of the same blue and yellow plastic bags of fertilizer, the same brands of insecticide and herbicide in their enigmatically coded canisters. What machines there were, though, looked older, more ill-used, than Pritty’s. Purbright identified two spray tenders and a crawler tractor, thickly encrusted with mud. From behind the tractor, Benjamin Croll emerged, carrying two five-gallon cans.

When he saw Purbright’s car, he stood still stockily, not setting down the cans, and stared. Purbright braked and got out. “Mr Croll?”

The farmer did not deny it. Purbright showed him a card and told him his name and rank. Croll betrayed no excitement. He was a dark-faced man with a tiny, sucked-in mouth. From the exact centre of the mouth hung a pipe. The inspector found himself looking at the ring of whitish deposit, rather like lime scale, that had been formed round the black vulcanite mouthpiece by the constant pursing and relaxing of the man’s lips.

“I want to talk about religion, Mr Croll,” said Purbright, pleasantly. “Is there somewhere more comfortable we might go?”

Croll’s expression did not alter. He seemed in no hurry to be relieved of his double burden. On the contrary, when at last he raised one hand to remove the pipe from his mouth as a prelude to speech, the can was elevated with it, borne on a single finger as effortlessly as a teacup.

Croll held the pipe, stem down, and watched it exude a black, tarry tear very, very slowly.

“What did you say your name was?”

Purbright gazed past him at the charred furrows that stretched into the far distance like a vast oven floor. Croll, like most of the farmers round about, no longer baled and stacked his straw after harvest but took the simpler, if more noxious, course of setting fire to it.

“I’ve been looking at the statements of witnesses at the inquest on your wife, sir. They contain one or two errors—misunderstandings, no doubt, but it would be better if they could be cleared up.” He added, quietly: “I’m sorry if this is reopening old wounds.”

Pensively, Croll spat. “I said nowt but what the lawyer telled me to say.” He put his pipe back in his mouth and moved away. Purbright followed at a companionable distance.

Croll slung the two cans into the back of a pickup truck. He trudged round towards the front, stopping twice to look at his boots and kick one against the other to loosen lumps of clay.

When he reached the drivers door, he found the inspector already leaning against it, looking thoughtful.

The farmer jerked his head. “Come on, shift yer arse or the bloody wind’ll change.” There was, seemingly, a further acreage of straw and stubble to be burned off.

Purbright stayed put. “Mr Croll,” he said, “you look to be a very busy man. I may not look it, but I am busy also. Suppose we agree to deal in a businesslike way with two perfectly simple questions? Then you may set fire to the whole county so far as I am concerned.”

Croll had begun to scowl more darkly, but he made no attempt to push past the inspector. The pipe was removed again.

“Religion? What d’you mean, religion?”

“No, sir; what do you mean by religion? In particular, what did you mean by it twelve months ago when you told the coroner that your wife was religious?”

“Eh?” said Mr Croll.

Purbright waited placidly. He watched a great blue-grey cloud that was rolling up out of the east. A neighbouring farmer had begun his straw burning.

“No wife o’ mine, that’n wasn’t,” declared Mr Croll.

Purbright affected surprise. “Oh? She sounded from your own account of her to be a very devout lady.”

“Very what?”

“Devout. Caring a lot for God.”

“All Detty cared about,” averred Mr Croll, “was dick.”

The inspector did his best to sound stern. “Then why did you tell the coroner that Mrs Croll was religious?”

Croll regarded Purbright reproachfully. “Are you saying now’s I ought’ve spoke ill of the dead?”

“You didn’t need to make things up, Mr Croll.”

“I did ’s the lawyer said, and that’s all.”

“By lawyer, I take it you mean Mr Loughbury?”

“Ar.”

“Why did you think Mr Loughbury wanted you to say that your wife was in the habit of staying out at night in order to pray?”

The smoke cloud from the adjoining farm was now overhead, darkening the sky. Black motes drifted down. The air had become blue and strongly acrid. Croll’s eyes were half closed and the scowl more intense in consequence.

“Best f’r everybody, mester.”

“Not to speak ill of the dead.”

“Bloody right.”

The inspector nodded, commendingly. “Just one more thing, Mr Croll.” He moved a little away from the truck door. “If you were so considerate of your wife’s reputation, why did you tell Mr Loughbury last July that she was pregnant as the result of her promiscuous behaviour?”

To Purbright’s surprise, his question provoked no anger but derision.

“And where,” Croll demanded, “did you get hold o’ that bloody tale?”

Purbright watched him yank open the door of the pickup, pause, then turn, his face crumpled with genuine bewilderment.

“Pregnant? How th’ell could Det be bloody pregnant? We ’ad ’er spayed ten years back ’n’ more.”

“Do you not think, Mr Purbright, that this man Croll was lying? From what you tell me, he would seem to be as unsavoury as some of the expressions he uses.”

Mr Chubb had had a heavy day. It began with the discovery that his detective inspector was determined to apply for a warrant, with quite appalling implications. The rest had followed inescapably: the re-reading of the Croll inquest depositions; a study of the wordy and painfully self-congratulatory testament of the late Richard Loughbury; then a hearing, during the warmest part of an afternoon rendered mortiferous by countless straw fires up-wind, of Purbright’s account of his own researches at Mumblesby.

“No, sir; he was not lying. The post-mortem report bears out what he said.”

“Then Loughbury must have been.”

The chief constable’s tone was uncharacteristically crisp, almost snappy. This straight-to-the-pointness had been coming on all day. It signified that Mr Chubb no longer expected to escape involvement in the case of what he rather unfairly persisted in calling “that village of yours, Mr Purbright”. His only hope now was that the more masterful he managed to appear, the sooner would it all be over.

The inspector sensed the new dynamism, and prepared to get the best out of it while it lasted.

“You are right, of course, sir. He was lying. In that particular respect, and in many others. Loughbury’s entire statement is punctuated with lies.”

Mr Chubb tutted.

“You will have noticed, though,” Purbright went on, “that they are not lies of convenience—lies along the way, as it were. They are introduced constructively into the narrative, side by side with established facts, and they seem to build up to a genuine set of circumstances.”

He indicated places in the solicitors statement.

“By the time one has read all these apparently ingenuous references to Mrs Croll’s pregnancy and to her husband’s wish to divorce her, one tends to regard both as facts that were never in dispute. But both were myths, myths invented by Loughbury in order to frighten clients from whom he and Bernadette hoped to extort money.”

“He and Bernadette...”

The words were repeated absolutely flatly by Mr Chubb. He wanted an explanation, but not at the cost of betraying his own failure to grasp what Purbright was driving at.

The inspector glanced at him admiringly. “The two of them, you say, sir? Oh, yes, I agree. There had to be collusion there for Loughbury’s scheme to work. I expect he promised her a share.”

The chief constable nodded wisely.

“I wonder,” said Purbright, “if ever it crossed Loughbury’s mind that he could be pushing his clients too far. I don’t suppose he can have envisaged the possibility that the poor woman might get murdered.”

The chief constable said he was sure that, whatever faults Dick Loughbury might have had, he would not have condoned violence.

“No, sir, not condoned. Exploited, though, would you allow? Once the murder had taken place, Mr Loughbury seems very promptly to have seen how he might thrive by it.”

“You mean these so-called gifts he is supposed to have solicited. He was spreading his net rather wide, was he not?”

“Oddly enough,” said Purbright, “I don’t think that Loughbury, for all his shrewdness, ever did find out who it was that actually killed Mrs Croll. But all he needed for purposes of extortion was the short-list of suspects represented by those who attended that extraordinary supper party. All felt compromised, and none dare shop another for fear of general exposure. To what extent they had actively conspired to do away with the woman, I doubt if we shall ever know. The person we propose to charge is most unlikely to help us there.”

Mr Chubb pursed his lips and contemplated the cuff of the white linen jacket he had donned in token of hot weather devotion to duty.

“Bad business, Mr Purbright, whichever way you look at it.”

The inspector, who was perfectly well aware that Mr Chubb’s and his own “way of looking at it” sprang from very different considerations, chose to be perverse.

“Oh, a beastly business, sir, I agree. I don’t remember a more impressive mixture of hypocrisy and brutishness.”

There was a distinct pause.

“Nor,” added the inspector, “a victim for whom I felt more sympathy.”

When the chief constable spoke again, it was after he had taken a seat at his desk and spread before him a number of photographs.

“You’ll have to help interpret these for me, Mr Purbright, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The sitting down was abdication, after a fashion. Purbright resolved not to be too hard on him. He indicated two of the prints.

“This shows the font cover in its normal position; in this one, it has been hauled up on its cable until the rim is at head level, more or less. Once the free end of the cable is secured there, at the pillar—you see, sir?—you have in effect a long pendulum, with the font cover as its extremely heavy bob.”

“Weighing what, would you say?”

“Between two and three hundredweight, I understand, sir.”

The chief constable turned his attention to a photograph showing much enlarged areas of the cover.

Purbright pointed out some slight irregularities of grain at the rim.

“That is where impact split away the piece that Loughbury found on the body. You can see where the place has been repaired afterwards, but with a very soft, light wood— probably modelling wood. It would pass notice in the ordinary way.”

The fourth print had been marked with an arrow in white paint. It pointed to a little black circle.

“That is a hole drilled in the opposite side of the font cover,” Purbright explained. “A hook would have been screwed in there and a line attached, something relatively fine but strong enough to take the strain of holding that cover twenty or thirty feet out of perpendicular.

“The line would first have been passed through the hole made for it in the lancet window, and its other end made fast in some room on the first floor of Church House. All one had to do then was to wind the line in—by an improvised winch of some kind—and the cover would be drawn over, close to the wall.”

“Ready to swing back.” The chief constable demonstrated with a pencil held loosely at its end.

“Yes, sir.”

Mr Chubb nodded. “Almost like a pendulum, in fact.”

Purbright said nothing.

The chief constable turned his attention to a marked plan of the church floor.

“I doubt if we need puzzle very long over this chap.” He pointed to a sketch of the wrought-iron stand with its lighted candle and notice. “It quite obviously was intended to lure the victim into the exact, er...”

“Trajectory?”

“As you say—trajectory. There is no chance, I suppose, of finding any trace of that notice so late in the day?”

“No, sir. I think we may assume that it was removed and destroyed before morning during the general arrangements to suggest suicide. The font cover would have been replaced, of course, and perhaps the position of the body adjusted. At the same time, the handbag would have to be taken up to the tower gallery.”

Mr Chubb silently contemplated the assorted fruits of his officers’ labours. With his pencil point, he lifted and let fall one of the transparent envelopes assembled neatly on the desk. It contained the earring that had fallen into the font basin. In another envelope was the piece of wood found by Sergeant Love’s recovery team, now itemized as “fragment of font cover (ref. print C)”. A third packet was labelled “glass fragments from site below lancet window 2, south aisle” and into a fourth had been coiled a few inches of top-weight Piskalon fishing line discovered after long and painstaking search in some undergrowth between St Dennis’s and Church House.

“I suppose,” said Mr Chubb, at last, “that hopes of our having been mistaken are by now extremely thin.”

The inspector raised his brows in quizzical helpfulness.

“Hopes entertained by whom, sir?”

The chief constable sighed. “I should be the last—as you well know, Mr Purbright—to discourage tenacious pursuit and prosecution of a criminal, whatever his social standing.”

Purbright said he had never doubted it.

“That said,” went on Mr Chubb, “there are features of this present case which I find unfortunate, even if they do not necessarily come under the head of extenuating circumstances. For one thing, it has to be said that the people concerned were terribly badly served by their solicitor. I really cannot imagine what the Law Society were doing to allow him to practise. And then there is the question of the poor woman’s own moral culpability. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I’m sorry, sir; I don’t quite understand.”

Mr Chubb consulted his finger ends. “Not exactly provocation, perhaps, but what about contributory negligence?” He looked up. “In quite high degree, I should have thought.”

The inspector sat on, impassively.

“That scream,” said the chief constable, giving no sign of having changed the subject, “was something Loughbury did not explain.”

“No, sir, but by saying he thought it came from inside the house he implied that it was part of the deception—he suggested, if you remember, that someone was impersonating Mrs Croll at the time.”

“Do you believe that there was deception?”

Purbright shook his head. “There was no need. I think the reason for requiring Loughbury to be there was twofold: to compromise him, and to make him witness to a sort of joint alibi—as he himself guessed. What no one could foresee was his taking a notion to go into the church. From that moment, he held an even better instrument of blackmail than the pretended divorce threat.”

The chief constable rose from his desk and walked slowly to his habitual position beside the fireplace. He looked thoughtful.

“That scream...”

“Yes, sir?”

“You think it was genuine, do you, and not some kind of ruse?”

“I am convinced that it was a real noise.”

Mr Chubb looked pleased to hear it.

“In that case, Mr Purbright, I hate to have to tell you that your theory concerning the woman’s death cannot be sustained. Defence counsel would make very short work of it, I’m afraid.”

Purbright appeared concerned. He asked the chief constable to elaborate.

Mr Chubb regarded first the ceiling, then the view through the window.

“You surprise me, Mr Purbright,” he said. “I am no detective, but I should have thought the objection was obvious straight away. The woman was struck on the back of the head. So she must have been facing in the opposite direction when this font cover thing swung down. She could not have seen it. People do not scream when there is nothing to scream at.”

“People don’t, sir, no.” Purbright began to sort into order the papers and exhibits on the desk. “But I did not ascribe the noise Loughbury heard to a person—certainly not to Mrs Croll.”

“All right. Who did scream, then?”

“That word”—the inspector checked that the series of photographs was complete—“was used by Loughbury. He had just opened the window. Sounds carry well on the night air, particularly high-pitched sounds. Soon afterwards, he came across a corpse. He associated one with the other—the body and the noise. Had Loughbury been a detective and not a lawyer, perhaps he would not have made the elementary error of asking who screamed, instead of what.”

Mr Chubb was paying heavily for a moment of delusively relished triumph. He shook his head, crossly.

“You are not making yourself very clear,” he said. “And it is rather late. Very well, then: what screamed, if that is how you prefer the question to be framed.”

Purbright smiled gently.

“The reel, sir. The improvised winch. I do not myself have any enthusiasm for fishing, but even I have heard talk of a reel ‘screaming’ when the line runs out unchecked.”

There was a long pause.

“Yes,” said the chief constable. A moment later, rather quietly: “Yes—yes it does.”

Purbright continued to collect together the documents and prints and to check them against a list on the cover of their folder. He spoke without taking his eyes from the task.

“The noise Loughbury heard came very shortly after his host had slipped from one room to another. I have no doubt that he went to watch for the opportune moment for releasing the catch on the reel. It would not necessarily be fixed to a rod; it could have been clamped or screwed to anything stable—the window sill, for instance.”

“At what time,” asked the chief constable, gloomily, “do you propose making the arrest?”

“That rather depends on what I hope to learn shortly from Sergeant Love. He’s gone over to Mumblesby to make tactful reconnaissance.”

“Reconnaissance?”

“They do entertain quite a lot, I understand, sir. One would wish to avoid a clash of engagements, so to speak.”

The inspector closed his folder. “I have arranged for either Mrs Framlington or Mr Snell to hear the remand application at whatever time the special court can be convened tomorrow.”

“The earlier the better,” said Mr Chubb, with what remained of his day’s store of decisiveness. “Remand centres are as difficult as hotels these days.”

“The prisoner,” suggested Purbright, “could stay here in our cells overnight, sir.”

For a moment, the chief constable seemed to be having difficulty with his hearing. Then, quite snappily, he said: “Out of the question.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we might have no choice in the matter.”

There was a knock on the door.

The chief constable glanced with indifference at the door and again addressed Purbright. “It would be neither seemly nor...”

While he searched, frowning, for the word he wanted, the knock was repeated. Mr Chubb indicated with a peevish jerk of the head that the inspector should deal with the interruption.

Purbright opened the door. He leaned out to lend an ear to brief, urgent murmuring. It was Love whom he ushered into the room.

“I think you should hear what the sergeant has to say, sir.”

Love responded to the chief constable’s chilly acknowledgment with a boyish geniality of visage emphasized by the wait-until-you-hear-this set of his mouth. Without preamble, he addressed Mr Chubb.

“Well, as I said to the inspector, sir, it looks very much as if the party’s taken off.”

The announcement was made so cheerfully that for some seconds the chief constable supposed that this pink-faced young man’s irruption into his office had been brought about by some ridiculous misunderstanding.

“Party?” he muttered.

“The party with the double-barrelled name. The suspect.” Love now was looking surprised as well as cheerful. He looked from one to the other. “Mr Cork-Bradden.”

Purbright explained for Mr Chubb’s benefit. “It appears that he has left home, sir. Ostensibly for a fishing holiday.”

“Where did you obtain this information, sergeant?” asked Mr Chubb.

“Oh, it’s right,” affirmed Love. “The vicar told me. He’d been talking to Cork-Bradden about some christening or other—he’s a whatsit, a churchwarden—and according to what was said Mr Bradden must have gone off by car yesterday morning.”

Purbright turned to the chief constable.

“It would seem that Mr Tiverton has been less discreet than we hoped, sir. Of course, he would only need to mention his finding that earring...”

The chief constable gently stroked the line of his jaw. “Quite so. And now, as one might say, the bird has flown.”

It was a solemn celebration of the obvious. Mr Chubb waited a moment, as for an Amen. Then he said:

“But you really must not reproach yourself, Mr Purbright.”

Chapter Eighteen

A congregation widely representative of public life attended the funeral service in Mumblesby Parish Church yesterday (Thursday) for the late Major Robin Hugh Lestrange Bradden Cork-Bradden, whose tragic death in a boating accident off the Cornish coast was reported in our last week’s issue.

The body had been brought back to the village for interment following the inquest at Newquay, at which an open verdict was recorded. The coroner said there was no evidence to explain how Major Cork-Bradden, an experienced sea angler, came to fall from the boat in which he had sailed from Penzance for a solitary fishing trip.

The Vicar of Mumblesby, the Rev. A. Tiverton, MA, officiated at the ceremony, and a brief address was given by the Rev. Kenneth D. Perry, BSc, a “padre” of the Brigade of Guards.

“You were in the Guards, were you not, Edgar?” remarked Miss Teatime. “They actually sent a clergyman along to your squires obsequies, according to this. How considerate.”

Mr Harrington looked up from his examination of a china poodle. The watchmaker’s glass screwed into one eye gave his mouth a slightly idiotic cast. “The army of today’s all right,” he said. Miss Teatime laughed delightedly.

A little later, she lowered the Flaxborough Citizen and frowned.

“Here is a curious circumstance,” she said. “The list of mourners includes an envoy of the Magistrates’ Association and also our indefatigable friend, Mr Scorpe, as ever representing the Law Society. But of the constabulary, there is no mention. Now, I wonder why.”

The Rev. Perry paid tribute to the military career of the deceased and to his subsequent achievements in the fields of commercial endeavour and public administration. “His sword did not sleep in his hand,” declared Mr Perry, “nor did he cease from mental fight.” Perhaps his interest in the maintenance of law and order and in the moral problems of the young people of today would be longest remembered; but to sport, too, he had made notable contributions, being as keen a practitioner with rod and line as he was in pursuit of Reynard. “It speaks volumes for the wholeness of this man,” Mr Perry added, “that Robin also found time to cherish works of art, with a modest but choice collection of which his own home was embellished.”

Zoe Loughbury, her attention concentrated upon the printed page, bit unguardedly upon a coffee eclair. Whipped cream blipped past her left ear. She retrieved it from the shoulder of her dress with one finger, which she then licked. When she had finished reading the account of the funeral, she put the paper aside, stretched out both legs, then drew up one knee and cradled it in interlaced fingers. She stared, pouting, at “Staircase with Valves”, which she had lately moved to the wall above the fireplace.

Mrs Claypole, seated on the far side of the room, prim as a museum attendant, had watched every movement. “You ought to get rid of that thing,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because it’s awful. I could draw better myself. I can’t understand why your hubby gave it house room.”

“It was to oblige a friend.”

“It would oblige me if you gave it straight back.”

Zoe transferred her gaze from the picture to the window, through which some scaffolding could be seen. She smiled.

“If you must know, Mr Harrington’s sending it down for auction at Christie’s next month.”

Mrs Claypole’s air of disapproval thawed perceptibly. “Oh, he thinks it’s worth something, then?”

“Enough to buy a decent horse,” said Zoe, carelessly. “And some hunting gear.”

Her mother stared.

“I wonder sometimes what’s got into you, my girl. The sort of people who go hunting aren’t likely to want you along with them.”

Zoe leaned over the side of her chair and fished up a mug half full of cold coffee.

“They’re going to have to get used to it, then, aren’t they?”