Flaxborough Chronicles - Hopjoy Was Here Part 14

"Upset?"

Love looked uncertain. "Well, shocked of course; she was there when it happened. But not hysterical or anything."

Purbright beckoned the others. He unlocked the door.

On the far side of the long room, with its indigo ceiling, pearl-grey walls and scallop-backed armchairs panelled with alternate plum and yellow, sat a solitary figure. It seemed to have been waiting for them there a long, long time. Slumped a little sideways in the big, embracing chair, it stared stupidly as if just awakened from a doze.

In front of the chair was a low, kidney-shaped table bearing a tray set with a teapot, milk, sugar and two cups and saucers. One eye of the corpse seemed directed at the pot; the other fixed upon the advancing party, defying them to ask for a share in the refreshment.

The police surgeon bent over the body, lightly touched eyelids, wrist and neck, and stood back. With a pencil he pointed to a spot just above the dead man's collar, an inch or so to the left of his windpipe. "There's the puncture," he said to Purbright. "That little bluish mark." They all drew close and peered, heads together, at the throat of the dead Mr Periam.

Purbright made a rapid survey of the table top. "Where's the lighter, sergeant?"

"On the floor, sir. There, by his left foot."

Very cautiously, Purbright picked it up and held it in his open palm. "You'd better tell us just what happened. From the beginning."

Love gave a frown of concentration. "Well, I'd taken the thing round to everyone I could think of who knew Mr Hopjoy-George Tozer first, then one or two of the people in Beatrice Avenue. They didn't recognize it, so I tried a few licensees in town. I hadn't much luck with them, either. Then I thought that Mr Periam would be the best bet, even though it meant coming right out here. Well, they'd lived in the same house, after all. He recognized it at once. 'That's old Brian's,' he said. 'Where did you get hold of it?' "

"They were sitting here, were they-Mr and Mrs Periam?"

"That's right, sir. The girl at the desk told me to come through. They were quite friendly. Asked me to sit down-I sat in that chair over there-and I took the thing out of the envelope. I hadn't let any of the other people actually handle it-well, I understood it was evidence, in a way-but Mr Periam leaned across and took it before I could stop him. He said, 'Oh, yes, I've seen this lots of times' and started to try to get it to light-you know, as anyone might out of curiosity. He kept on pressing the top. It didn't even spark, though. Then he spotted that little trigger thing on the side and pushed it with his thumb nail. There was a sort of hiss-very sudden, with a bit of a pop about it-and he dropped the lighter and felt the front of his neck as if he'd been stung. He said, 'That's a queer do'-oh, three or four times; he kept on saying it and rubbing his neck. Then after a bit he couldn't seem to get his breath and just sat there staring and choking. Mrs Periam ran out for help while I held him. But within a minute or two he'd had it."

Purbright turned to Ross. Gingerly, but knowledgeably, Ross took the lighter between thumb and forefinger and examined it. "Very neat. Czechoslovakian, probably. I need hardly say that our people aren't issued with quite this sort of thing."

"Naturally not. How did Hopjoy get hold of it, though?"

"Won it from one of their people's baggage, perhaps. Or he could have bought it. As a souvenir, you know. Some of their chaps are hopelessly mercenary." He dismissed the point with a shrug. "See that little hole? The thing's a sort of airgun, really. Primed with the plunger and set off with this catch. Tiny cyanide pellets, I expect. That's the usual drill."

Pumphrey heard the exposition with marked disapproval. He put his hand on Purbright's sleeve. "You'll see that this contrivance doesn't get bandied around, won't you, inspector? It would be most undesirable, security-wise, if..." He broke off, looking worried.

Purbright appeared not to have been listening. He gazed thoughtfully at the dead man's face. It looked puffy, stupid, impotent. Purbright felt constrained, as he often did, to attempt the loan of some little dignity to one who had lost all his own. "You know," he said quietly to Ross, "be would have done awfully well in your line."

"He'd have needed a course in b.o.o.by-traps first."

"No doubt. But that"-Purbright weighed the lighter in his hand-"was just bad luck. b.o.o.by-traps, in a much more subtle sense, were his forte. The criminal who proves too clever is common enough; but I must say I'm enormously impressed with a criminal who is able to calculate exactly to what degree the police will prove too clever, and who arranges his crime accordingly."

Two ambulance men and a constable had entered and were standing hesitantly near the door. Purbright motioned them over. Like tactful, proficient club stewards called to remove a member regrettably immobilized by port, they advanced noiselessly upon the corpse, tweaking up their sleeves. The doctor nodded and departed.

The others moved to a table farther away. Over his shoulder, Love stole a last glance at Periam before a sheet rendered him mere freight.

"It's funny," he said, "but he doesn't look the type to smash a bloke's head in with a hammer."

"He didn't," said Purbright. "I think we'll find that strangling was the method, actually. Warlock should enjoy himself looking for skin fragments on Periam's chest expander. 'Doing his exercises' was how Miss Cork put it. Now we can add it to our collection of wisdom after the event."

"You mustn't be too hard on yourself, Purbright." Ross delicately sc.r.a.ped a few flakes of carbon from the bowl of his pipe with a reamer fas.h.i.+oned (as he could have disclosed) from a secret Skoda steel tool and capable, when keyed to the spindle of an ordinary electric shaver, of grating armourplate away like cheese.

"I'll try not to be," Purbright said humbly.

Ross looked up. "There's one question that hasn't been answered. And it's so important that I'm going to put it frankly to you here and now. For whom was Periam working?"

There was a long pause. Then Purbright sighed. "I'm afraid, Major Ross," he said, "that this is where we must acknowledge that we inhabit quite different worlds. You see, the only answer I can honestly give to that question will be meaningless in the context of your work and your interpretation of this case. You will consider it fatuous, if not completely idiotic. Perhaps we should leave it at that."

"Not at all. I'm interested in your opinion. I really am."

"All right, then. I believe that in so far as Periam was working for anybody-and I shouldn't have used that phrasing myself-it was for his mother."

"Ah, Freud comes to Flaxborough!" Ross's broad smile was caught by one of Pumphrey's nervous, sidelong glances of inquiry, and promptly emulated; unfortunately, mirth sat upon Pumphrey's countenance as gracefully as a drunk on a catafalque.

Purbright looked mildly surprised. "Oh, yes; even in Flaxborough we have our compulsions, you know. Periam's, I fancy, was partly a natural desire to avenge himself on his young lady's seducer-you'll notice, by the way, how carefully he hid this motive by pretending that she was Hopjoy's girl-but what really pushed him to murder could have been the knowledge provided by the Cork woman, and possibly confirmed by his own observation afterwards, that it was that shrine of a bedroom that had been desecrated."

"In that case," said Ross, "why didn't he kill the girl as well?"

"We can't say for certain. Perhaps he had something in store for her later-two murders at the same time would have been infinitely more difficult to conceal than one, and Periam had a strong self-preservative instinct. Or he may have considered that making her a party to the crime was a more fitting punishment."

"You think she was in it, do you, sir?" Love asked eagerly.

"I think she believed Hopjoy was being got rid of, in the sense of being frightened out of the town-I put it no higher than that. She couldn't have been averse to the idea; her affair with the fellow had been merely a bit of secretive self-indulgence to relieve the tedium of an unconscionably long engagement. As soon as Periam produced the special licence, Hopjoy was out. It was she, of course, who made that phone call, the one described so convincingly by Periam-and remembered by the night porter here, incidentally-which was supposed to have conveyed Hopjoy's summons to a show-down at Beatrice Avenue. She may or may not tell us what she thought the object of it was, but it certainly made her an accomplice, if only technically."

Pumphrey, who had been tugging his ear-lobes even more ferociously than usual, now impatiently tapped the table with one finger. "It seems that what you are trying to argue, inspector, is that Hopjoy was liquidated"-"Literally," murmured Purbright, but the interjection was ignored-"for reasons quite unconnected with his work, his special work, I mean-I think you understand." Pumphrey threw poor Love a quick glance of distrust, then glared challengingly at Purbright. "To be frank, I simply cannot understand how an experienced police officer could be so naive."

Ross s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably in his chair. "Oh, come now, Harry. .."

Purbright raised his hand. He regarded Pumphrey genially for several moments. Then he said: "Thimble Bay...that's what you're worried about, isn't it, Mr Pumphrey? Right. Well, do you know the nature of the establishment at Thimble Bay?"

Pumphrey's slightly open mouth snapped shut. He looked as if he wished to stopper his ears against impending blasphemy.

"I hadn't meant to tell you this," Purbright went on gently, "but I feel it's only fair to...to put you in the picture fact-wise. About a month ago, a poacher friend of mine left England to live with a daughter in Tasmania. He told me he'd spent quite a lot of his time at Thimble Bay. All that perimeter wire has created a rather nice little wild-life sanctuary. And as long as he was careful not to trip over the remains of two old army huts and to avoid falling into a great overgrown pit, he could take all the hares and pheasants he'd a mind to." He paused lightly. "You see, the place was abandoned for some reason or other nearly eight years ago. I feel sure there must be a mention of the fact somewhere in your people's archives, even if Hopjoy seems to have been unaware of it.

"The point, Mr Pumphrey, is this. We all have a streak of naivete in us. It is only when that natural simplicity is allied to an obsession of some kind that all power of discrimination seems to be lost. That is why the credulity of some clever men is so monumental.

"Hopjoy was a fraud. I think even you must see that now. He traded on credulity-and not least on the credulity of his own employers. What got the poor fellow into trouble finally was not his false pretences but his determination to seize every opportunity of...what shall I say?...of brus.h.i.+ng up his carnal knowledge.

"He underestimated Periam, if indeed he thought of so dull a dog at all, and never guessed, of course, that the fantasy life he had created for his own purposes was a gift to the man who was going to murder him. Hopjoy's end was a cla.s.sic case of being hoist on one's own petard, and Periam planned it brilliantly and precisely as such. He knew that the more thoroughly the ensuing investigation, the more compelling would-be the evidence of Hopjoy's having engineered his own disappearance.

"Consider that pork we were meant to suppose the clever Hopjoy had purloined for his acid bath. Not just anybody's pork, of course-but half a pig stolen from the Crolls' farm, one of Hopjoy's known haunts. It's only now we know the rest of the story that we can see the significance of Periam the tobacconist having been on chatting terms with Hicks the butcher and slaughterman in the shop next door."

Purbright paused to look down the room at where the heads of some of Mr Barraclough's non-residents could be seen through the gla.s.s of the door. They peered in, pushed, and conferred. One or two stared resentfully at the privileged occupants, then made off with manager-seeking expressions.

"Tell me, Major Ross," Purbright resumed, "did you ever actually see this man Hopjoy?"

"Not as far as I know. Of course, names don't necessarily signify in our game."

"Quite. No, I was just wondering about his physique. The point is one that I've been unforgivably slow to appreciate. Heaving ten-gallon carboys and sides of pork is not an exercise for the puny. Periam saw his danger there; he carefully provided a picture of his victim as a fit, husky fellow. One of his most risky lies was the pretence that Hopjoy had emerged unweakened from hospital. I'm sorry to have to say that our old and mutual friend, security, helped Periam there, too. But that doesn't absolve me from having forgotten all about certain trophies of Periam's on his sideboard. They were for weightlifting...

"Ah, well..." The inspector rose and stretched. "We mustn't reproach ourselves, gentlemen. Things have really cancelled themselves out rather neatly after all. If they've proved anything, it's simply that time wounds all heels"-his eye flicked slyly to Pumphrey-"as Marx so succinctly put it."

Pumphrey gaped, as if with sudden gastric seizure.

The inspector patted his arm kindly. "Oh, not Karl," he said. "Groucho."