Flaxborough Chronicles - Hopjoy Was Here Part 1

Hopjoy Was Here.

Colin Watson.

Chapter One.

Never before had the inbabitants of Beatrice Avenue seen a bath carefully manoeuvred through one of their front doors, carried down the path by four policemen, and hoisted into a black van. Everybody watched, of course; whether from the vantage point of a bedroom window or delicately through parlour lace or with bold and naked curiosity at the gate. A postman was frozen in sidelong contemplation on a doorstep five houses farther up. A butcher's boy and two window cleaners huddled in temporary comrades.h.i.+p with a rate collector on the opposite kerb and stretched involuntarily in time with the policemen's efforts as the bath was lifted and eased along the floor of the van. Twenty or more children, mysteriously summoned by their extra-sensory perception of odd goings-on, formed the nearest and most importunate section of the audience. They savoured the affair with the discrimination of experts, comparing it with the fire in Harley Close two months back, last summer's impaling of the greengrocer's horse, and the wonderful, blood-chilling entertainment in Gordon Road the previous Easter when Mrs Jackson had gone bonkers and thrown all the portable contents of the house, including a gramophone and two chamber pots, down upon some men from the council.

The children jostled for glimpses of the bath, gleaming dimly in the depths of the van. "Mister, wotcher been and took it out for?" "Where yer goin' with it, mister?" And a rash jest, thrown out by a bobbing, streaky-faced girl of twelve: "They're going to wash their socks! All the coppers is going to wash their socks!" There was a quick squawking cadenza of laughter. A little hysteria was mixed in it: not all the children were insensitive to the sinister obscenity of the bath's removal.

Two of the policemen, ponderous and flushed, shut the van's rear doors. Not looking at the children, they paced slowly to the cab and climbed in. As the van drew away, the third policeman made awkward shooing gestures and announced: "Nothing more to see. Run along home, all of you." Then he turned with his companion and they went up the little path and into the house, closing the door behind them.

The watchers in Beatrice Avenue remained alert for varying periods but by the end of half an hour only two or three of the chronically curious had not tired of peering at the unrewarding facade of number fourteen and at the black police car that still stood a few yards from its front gate.

Luckier were the occupants of the house in Pawson's Lane that backed on to fourteen Beatrice Avenue. They, a mother and her middle-aged daughter, had a view denied to those who lingered on doorsteps or behind parlour windows.

Overlooking the pa.s.sageway at the side of number fourteen-a s.p.a.ce hidden from the front street by a tall, solid gate-they were able to see the intriguing activities of two men in plain clothes.

This pair worked with a sort of fastidious dedication. They were unhurried and seemed to be taking good care of their suits as they knelt on sheets of newspaper and pa.s.sed implements to each other like brother surgeons.

Together they levered up the grilled cover plate of a drain, examined it and set it aside. Then, using a long-handled dipper, one began to ladle liquid from the drain and pour it gently through a funnel held by the other into the first of two big Winchesters. At the end of about twenty minutes both bottles were full. The man who had been holding the funnel stoppered them and moved them out of the way.

He next selected and handed to his companion what appeared to be a tea-strainer on the end of a rod and prepared a wide-mouthed gla.s.s jar to receive whatever might be dredged.

The strainer was lowered into the drain. Its manipulator held it lightly and probed for a few seconds like a well-bred guest trying to determine whether his hostess had sugared his tea. When the strainer was withdrawn its mesh held a black, dripping slime-bound miscellany. This was allowed to drain awhile, then turned and tapped out into the jar.

A second and a third exploration produced further gobbets of solid but as yet unidentifiable matter. Patiently as anglers, the kneeling pair went on with their task until the strainer repeatedly emerged empty. Then one replaced the drain grill, the other screwed down the lid of the jar, and both stood, stretching gratefully and plucking straight their trouser creases.

The old woman, perched on the side of her bed, her chin resting on arms folded on the window sill, acknowledged with a grunt the completion of the operation. But she did not take her eyes from the opposite pa.s.sageway.

Her daughter, a desiccated woman with a cruel, helmet-like perm, and an air of irreparable disappointment, did not move either. She continued to stand stiffly at her mother's side, holding the curtain like a s.h.i.+eld in apprehension of a flight of arrows.

"What have they found, Mirrie?" the old woman whispered.

"I don't know. Something in the drains. I can't see any more than you."

"Do you think Mr Periam knows they're there? The police, I mean. It is the police, Mirrie. That one in the grey who's just gone in-I saw him at the station when I went about the purse. It's funny Mr Periam's not there, though."

"He's still away, I expect."

"What about the other chap, his friend or lodger or whoever he was?"

"I don't know about him."

There was a pause. "It's funny about all those policemen," the old woman said. "Policemen don't clear drains." She sounded annoyed rather than intrigued.

The daughter said nothing. She moved the curtain a little farther aside and watched a short ladder being placed carefully against the wall by the remaining occupant of the pa.s.sageway-the one not in grey. He climbed and peered into the cup of the fall pipe. After exploring delicately with one finger and apparently finding nothing of interest, he descended, laid the ladder down beside the dividing fence, and entered the house.

This now contained two uniformed constables, who had put their helmets side by side on a table in the kitchen and were standing, large, uneasy and tousle-browed near the front door; the plain-clothed pair who had been busy outside; a plumber strapping up his bag in the denuded, forlorn-looking bathroom; and two sharply contrasted but seemingly intimate figures who systematically searched and appraised the stuffy, brown, s.h.i.+ny-papered dining-room.

One of these was several inches over six feet tall; he stood loosely, as if good-humouredly apologetic for his bulk, and looked around with his head slightly on one side like a very high cla.s.s auctioneer deliberately ignoring the bids of merely moneyed men. He had the firm, amused mouth of a good listener. Now and then he ran long fingers through springy, corn-coloured hair.

His companion was shorter by a head, but made of a lot of prime meat. His smooth, glowingly healthy face looked about eleven years old. It had set like that, in point of fact, twenty-three years before, when he really was eleven.

The man with yellow hair opened the doors of a mahogany sideboard and knelt to look inside. On one shelf there were neatly stacked piles of patterned china and some folded table linen. The second shelf contained some bags of sugar, cruet and b.u.t.ter dish, three opened packets of various breakfast cereals, jars of jam and marmalade, a supply of canned food and a basin with about an inch of a white, congealed substance in the bottom. It had set around the bristles of a broad paint brush.

"Excuse me..."

A third man had silently entered the room. He looked inquiringly at each of the searchers. "Detective Inspector Purbright?"

The kneeling man rose. "I'm Purbright."

"Good-O!" The new arrival grinned and launched himself at the inspector with a curious crouching stride, his hand extended like that of a j.a.panese wrestler. After involuntarily stepping back a pace, Purbright braced himself and allowed his arm to be pumped.

"My name's Warlock. Hang-'em-on-a-thread Department." He peered kindly into Purbright's face and added: "Forensic science lab, you know. I understand I might be able to help you, squire."

Purbright murmured politely, introduced his companion as Detective Sergeant Love, and gave Mr Warlock a quick but careful scrutiny.

The man seemed to be itching to play basketball. He kept stretching up on his toes, flexing first one leg then the other, and swaying gently from side to side. Every now and then he touched finger-ends and drew them apart again with delicate restlessness.

Love regarded him sullenly. He put him down as a clue-hog, an alien live wire.

Still undulating like an undersea plant at the turn of the tide, Warlock glanced rapidly round the room. "What's supposed to have been going on?" he asked. "I've only just got here. They didn't tell me much."

"I'm not surprised. We're in a bit of a vacuum at the moment, Mr Warlock." Purbright drew out two of the cold seated, rigidly matched dining chairs. "Here, we'd better sit down for a minute."

Warlock abandoned his limbering up exercises and perched in an att.i.tude of comparatively immobile attention. The sergeant turned his back and started going through the contents of a varnished oak bureau surmounted by twin cupboards behind leaded gla.s.s: an arrangement that Love approvingly voted 'd.i.n.ky'.

"The day before yesterday," Purbright began, "we received an anonymous letter. That was...yes, Tuesday. I haven't got it with me at the moment but I can give you the gist of it. 'Why don't you take a look into fourteen Beatrice Avenue because I'm sure something awful has happened there.' That was the first sentence, I remember. Then there came some rather confused stuff about a lot of noise coming from the house last Thursday night and what did we make of that? You'll have noticed how d.a.m.nably rhetorical these anonymous letter writers always are?"

Warlock nodded his small, very round head. His face, Purbright reflected, was that of a vigorous, self-employed artisan: weathered, a little coa.r.s.e, but perkily good-humoured. He had thick, straight hair, carefully combed low across the forehead, and as he nodded a hank of it slipped down to the bridge of his b.u.t.ton nose; he reached automatically for the comb in the breast pocket of his rumpled sports jacket.

"The letter posed a few more questions, all very portentous. Why should someone want to dig in the garden at two in the morning? Why was the bathroom light on half the night? That sort of thing."

Purbright stared past Warlock through the gla.s.s panelled door that led to a small formal garden. "We don't take much notice of our back bedroom vigilantes as a rule. They're mostly old friends, of course, and we'd rather they worked their persecution mania off on us instead of mangling the neighbours. This letter was different, though. For one thing, it didn't hint at fornication. Secondly, it was just a bit more circ.u.mstantial than usual. And thirdly..."

Purbright's voice trailed off. He watched a big grey cat, gloomily hunch-shouldered, picking its way along the fence at the bottom of the garden.

Warlock glanced behind him just as the cat halted, turned its head at right angles and scowled. "Thirdly?" prompted Warlock. The cat presented its rear, its tail momentarily a quivering exclamation mark, and disappeared into the farther garden.

"Well, as a matter of fact we did happen to know a little about the set-up here," Purbright was speaking more carefully. "Nothing sinister, but there were features that might be thought unusual."

Again he paused. Then, "Look, I know you'll think this d.a.m.ned stupid and starchy, but can I have a peek at your identification?"

Warlock stared, grinned, disinterred a slim wallet from a bunch of papers and handed it to the inspector. Purbright glanced at it apologetically and hastily returned it. "I do hope you didn't mind."

"Not a bit of it, squire. Who did you think I was, anyway-Philby?"

Purbright shrugged. "Everyone goes through the prescribed motions nowadays. The discipline of disbelief. It's supposed to make us feel safe."

The chained onyx light-bowl in the centre of the ceiling rattled as footsteps pa.s.sed across the floor of the room above. Purbright leaned towards Sergeant Love.

"Sid, I think you'd better clear those lads outside again. Tell them to get a spade apiece and do some gardening. The places to try will be obvious enough still-if there are any, of course."

Love moved to the door.

"Oh, and there's no need for both the uniformed men to stay. Peters can go back to the station." Purbright turned to Warlock again. "You'll not want a herd of them trampling on your insufflator. Now let's get on with the story.

"There are-or were-two people living in this house. Both fellows in their late thirties. Not related. The actual householder is called Gordon Periam. He keeps a tobacconist's shop in the town. The house he inherited from his mother. She was a widow and they lived here together until her death just over a year ago.

"The name of the other chap is Brian Hopjoy. He's supposed to be a commercial traveller based here in Flaxborough with a line in pharmaceutical sundries, or something like that. Is there such a thing?"

"I believe so," Warlock said.

"Aye, well it doesn't matter much; I gather the travelling job is just a cover for something else. Anyway, Hopjoy turned up a few months before the old woman died and she took him in as a lodger."

Warlock fleetingly reviewed the solid, carefully tended furniture. "Paying guest, surely," he amended.

"Quite. It seems to have been a pretty amicable arrangement because after Mrs Periam's death Hopjoy stayed on. I don't know how they managed for meals and cleaning up; there's no sign of a regular housekeeper, although the woman next door says a girl came round occasionally. She thinks she was a friend. We'll sort that out in time."

Purbright saw that Warlock had had enough of sitting. Refusing a cigarette, he began to rock slowly on the very edge of his chair and to make short chopping gestures with his hands. The inspector looked away. "I wonder if you can see an ashtray anywhere..."

Gratefully Warlock leapt to his feet and began a spring-heeled, neck-craning tour of the late Mrs Periam's ornaments.

Purbright flicked his ash into the fireplace and resumed his story.

"I wasn't at the station when that letter arrived on Tuesday. The sergeant was rather sceptical-naturally enough, on the face of it-and he just sent one of the uniformed men round to ring the bell and give the place the once over. There was no one in, and they left it at that.

"Yesterday morning the letter was reported to me. I took it straight to the Chief Constable-have you met old Chubb, by the way?" Warlock, peering at a row of silver trophies on the sideboard, shook his head. "Oh, you must," said Purbright. "He thinks that crimes in this town are committed only in his policemen's imagination. This time he's worried, though."

"It doesn't look as if he need be on Periam's account," Warlock said. He had finished reading the inscriptions on the cups. "Athletic type."

"So was Samson." Purbright looked at his watch. "No, the position is this, Mr Warlock. Both these characters are missing. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation-despite the anonymous letter-but we don't think so. One of the pair happens to be in a rather special category. Only the Chief and I know about that and I'm afraid we'll have to keep it to ourselves for the moment, but I can a.s.sure you that it makes an important difference. At least-I'm supposed to think so."

"You don't sound too certain."

Purbright smiled. "That's just my parochialism; we like to think our crimes are home grown."

"Even murders?"

"Murders especially."

"And in this case..."

"In this case, Mr Warlock, I must beg you not to try and relieve me of confidences, however much I deplore having them thrust upon me. The fact of murder has yet to be established. That is why you are here."

"Leave it to me, squire. Any pointers?" Again Warlock was the eager handyman.

"There are one or two things we've noticed. I'll show them to you now."

As the two men were about to leave the room, Sergeant Love's s.h.i.+ning face appeared in the doorway. "They've started, sir. There was a spade in the garage." He glanced over at the garden door and added approvingly: "This rain's just come at the right time to soften things up a bit for them."

"It's as well, then," Purbright said to Warlock, "that I had that drain emptied. A heavy shower would have flushed it." He stepped into the narrow, carpeted pa.s.sage and walked to the foot of the stairs near the front door.

"Drain?"

"Yes. It's all nicely bottled for you. The stuff from the bathroom, you know."

"Bathwater, do you mean?"

Purbright winced. "Good Lord, no. I mean Mr Periam-or Mr Hopjoy. In solution."

Chapter Two.

Warlock surveyed the bathroom with the tense incredulity of a curator viewing empty picture frames after a burglary.

"I'm sorry if we've been a bit impetuous," said Purbright, just behind him. "The Chief Constable was anxious to have the prize exhibit kept somewhere safe. It's over at our place; you can see it whenever you like."

"Yes, but prints..."

"Oh, don't worry, we collected what there were of those before the plumber was set loose. In any case, he was told to touch nothing but the pipes."

Warlock looked far from rea.s.sured but he stepped forward into the centre of the floor to make room for the inspector to stand beside him.

Purbright pointed to the wall opposite the dusty, water-stained rectangle from which the bath had been taken. It bore a number of tiny splashes, dark brown against the green distemper which ran from the white half-tiling to the ceiling. The group of marks was at Warlock's head level. He gave it close, rapidly ranging scrutiny, like a short-sighted man reading a telegram, then briskly he turned to Purbright. "And the next, squire?"

"Down here...and here..." With his foot Purbright indicated two points at which the grey linoleum was just perceptibly stained. Immediately, Warlock was down on his knees. "Could be," he said. "There's been some wiping up, though."

By what seemed effortless levitation Warlock stood up and looked expectantly at Purbright once more.

Purbright resisted the temptation to confess aloud that he was beginning to feel like the feed man in some bizarre variety turn. Quietly he went to the small mirror-fronted cabinet above the wash-basin and opened its door. "We found this tucked away in the corner under the bath. It's all right; n.o.body's handled it."

Warlock leaned over the wash-basin and stared at the hammer lying on a sheet of stiff card in the lower compartment of the cabinet. It was an ordinary household hammer, weighing perhaps a little over a pound. He withdrew it carefully, using the cardboard as a tray.

In the light from the window the fore part of the hammer head looked brownly varnished. A few hairs clung to it.

Warlock drew in his lips and released them with a popping noise. "So much for the do-it-yourself kit"-he replaced the hammer in the cabinet-"but what about the job it was used for?" He glanced again at the wall splashes and turned to Purbright.