Flaxborough Chronicles - Hopjoy Was Here Part 8

Purbright studied the photographs a little longer and said: "Obviously, we'll have to come back to these. But perhaps you'd like to run over what's left of the other things first."

The remainder of the report was straightforward enough. The broken gla.s.s unearthed from the garden included large fragments easily identifiable as portions of a commercial acid carboy, whose protective basket of iron strapping had been found in a wardrobe (Purbright loyally forbore from mentioning Love's encounter with that article). Gla.s.s splinters on the second hammer, that left in the garage, clearly indicated its having been used to smash the carboy.

Two sets of fingerprints were recurrent throughout the house. One set corresponded with prints at Periam's shop. The other, presumably, was Hopjoy's. There had been found no print belonging to either man which could be considered of special significance in relation to whatever had happened in the bathroom. The surfaces of the hammer shafts, the razor blade, and the pieces of carboy had yielded nothing.

Microscopic examination of hairs taken from combs in Periam's bedroom and shop and from clothing in a cupboard in his lodger's room had virtually settled the origin of those on the hammer. They were almost certainly Hopjoy's.

"There you are, squire. Make what you like of that lot."

Purbright rubbed his chin reflectively. "You've certainly been thorough."

Warlock beamed. He tossed up an imaginary tennis ball and thwacked it through the window.

"It's just as well," said Purbright, "that I didn't clap Periam in irons this morning. I suppose I couldn't have been blamed if I had. Yet there was something rather pat about the set-up at that house. It was too much to expect a nice conclusive lab. report..." he tapped the photographs-"...with follicles."

"Sorry."

"Those hairs, then, were..."

Warlock winked, turned two fingers into a pair of scissors and snipped off an invisible forelock.

Purbright carried Warlock's report to the Chief Constable not in confidence that Mr Chubb possessed a superiority of intellect consonant with his rank but rather as a man with a problem will seek out some simple natural scene, the contemplation of which seems to set free part of his mind to delve more effectually towards a solution.

Thus, while he gazed at the gentle, dignified vacuity of Mr Chubb's face, the inspector mentally weighed and dissected each fact as he pa.s.sed it on.

Mr Chubb, as usual, was leaning elegantly against his fireplace. He seemed never to sit down except at home, and then almost exclusively at meal times. "Harcourt," his wife once averred, "even watches television standing up; I think his mother must have been frightened by Edward the Seventh."

The Chief Constable gave a delicate, dry cough. "Do I understand, Mr Purbright, that you feel an arrest would be unwise at this stage?"

"Ah, I thought that might be your reaction, sir. It's this queer business of the hammer that's spoiling everything."

"It strikes me," said Mr Chubb, "as a singularly unnecessary complication. Do we really have to take Warlock's word that the thing was deliberately contrived?"

"I'm afraid we do. And the case won't hang together until we can explain why the murderer went to that particular piece of trouble. He'd prepared to dispose of the corpse; the logical thing was to erase all other signs of the crime-wash away bloodstains, burn the ligature or bury the knife or get rid of the gun, wipe off fingerprints, and so on. But no, he actually manufactured some evidence of violence by cutting off a few of the victim's hairs and sticking them on a hammer head with a dab of his blood. You notice the choice of hiding place, incidentally-under the bath-accessible to methodical searchers, yet just not obvious enough to arouse suspicion of a deliberate plant."

"I hate to see subtlety showing through these affairs, Mr Purbright. Murder is such a beastly business in the first place. It becomes positively crawly when you have to strain a decent intelligence to sort it out. And nowadays, I'm afraid, the better the address the more distasteful the crime turns out to be. Odd, that, isn't it?"

"You're thinking of Beatrice Avenue, of course..."

"Well, it is quite a nice road. I remember old Abbott and his sister used to live in that place with a yellow gate, up at the park end." He paused, frowning. "You know, this is going to drop the values a bit."

Purbright observed a short, respectful silence. He resumed: "One thing is abundantly clear: the murder wasn't done on the spur of the moment. If Periam had killed Hopjoy during that quarrel and without premeditation, how could he have set about getting rid of the body so efficiently? A carboy of acid isn't something you keep handy around the house, and you'd hardly be able to nip out and buy one at that time of night."

"One might steal it," suggested the Chief Constable. "It would be a good time for that."

Purbright acknowledged the possibility, but thought that burglary on top of murder was cramming rather a lot into one night.

"The acid must have been obtained beforehand and hidden in readiness-not necessarily at the house, although there's an inspection pit in the garage that would have served very well."

Mr Chubb nodded sagely. "I grant premeditation."

"Which leads us," Purbright said, "to two further points of some importance. Firstly, the chances of Hopjoy's having been killed and, shall we say, liquidated by anyone not actually living in the same house must be considered very remote indeed. The whole situation, before and after the crime, demanded what might be termed residential qualifications-privacy, time, freedom from the curiosity of neighbours, knowledge of the house itself. Periam really is the only candidate, you know, sir."

The Chief Constable thoughtfully inspected the lapel of his jacket. "Put like that...I suppose there wouldn't be much point in propounding the roving maniac, much as one would like to. I can't say I know this Periam myself, but he's a decent type by all accounts. Why on earth should he want to do such a frightful thing?"

"Precisely, sir. That's the second point I wanted to bring out. His motive must have been of pathological intensity."

"Any money involved?"

"Far from it. Hopjoy seems to have left nothing but debts. Even the car was going to be s.n.a.t.c.hed back by the hire purchase people."

"Debts?" Mr Chubb stared. "But what about the work he was supposed to be doing? I mean, a man in his position would never risk..."

"Oh, but he did, sir. You haven't forgotten the Arliss business, surely."

"Arliss?"

"The tailor. He wanted us to do Hopjoy for false pretences. We'd quite a job cooling him down."

Mr Chubb made show of searching his memory. "Ah...that was Hopjoy, was it?"

"It was. He told Arliss that the suit had been impounded by M.I.5 because one of his machinists was suspected of pa.s.sing micro-film in hollow fly b.u.t.tons."

"And did they get the fellow?"

"Hopjoy, you mean, sir?"

"No, the fellow who was doing that b.u.t.ton trick. n.o.body thought to tell me afterwards what happened."

It dawned on Purbright that the point of the affair had eluded Mr Chubb completely. "I suppose," he said, "that he was investigated. Probably put on less sensitive work-cuffs, maybe."

When the Chief Constable spoke again, it was with the careful tone of a man aware of his own inadequate sense of the ridiculous and determined not to betray it by rebuking flippancy. Mr Chubb did not so much mind his subordinates being impertinent-that was, after all, a form of acknowledging inferiority; what he dreaded was that any of them might say something really funny without his recognizing it.

"Be that as it may," said Mr Chubb. "I agree that robbery seems out. Do you suppose Periam was being threatened, then? Paying the other chap money, I mean?"

"That's unlikely, sir. We've checked Periam's accounts; there's no indication of extortion."

Mr Chubb gazed upwards. There came to him a thought he found difficult to express. "One doesn't like to be uncharitable," he began, "but perhaps we shouldn't ignore... Well, two fellows on their own in the same house..."

Purbright rescued him. "The record leaves no doubt of Hopjoy's having been almost aggressively heteros.e.xual, sir."

"Oh, was he? I'm glad to hear it. One knows that sort of thing goes on, of course...Still, I wouldn't like to think of you having to fish in those waters."

The inspector was glancing through his notebook record of the conversations at Brockleston. "Do you know the Neptune Hotel, sir?" he asked, without looking up.

"I think I went into the place once," said Mr Chubb, guardedly. "A bit on the flashy side."

"Decidedly," Purbright agreed. "It struck me as a slightly off-key choice for a honeymoon. Periam was mother-ridden, though; perhaps the Neptune appealed as a symbol of emanc.i.p.ation. Also it could have been in line with his role as seducer; that was Hopjoy's girl he married, you know."

"Really?"

"Which is another curious feature. One would have thought that it was Hopjoy who had cause to kill Periam, not the other way round. Husbands are sometimes eliminated from triangles, but I don't think I can recall a case of fiancecide. Anyway, it's the rejected suitor who is apt to be violent, not his successor."

"Do you think the girl knows what's been going on?"

Purbright considered. "I'm not at all sure. There's a certain ruthlessness about her. I wonder if you can imagine a bed-hopping Sunday school teacher..."

It was evident from Mr Chubb's expression that he couldn't.

"What I mean is that she looks almost frumpish-unfas.h.i.+onable clothes, no make-up, dreadful hair style-yet underneath she seems to be continually flexing and shuffling. She gives a most disconcerting impression of...well, appet.i.te."

"She doesn't sound a very nice young woman. She is young, I presume?"

"Younger than her husband, certainly. I find it hard to understand why she dropped Hopjoy-very much the .accomplished buck, by all accounts-in favour of a man like Periam."

"Women," stated Mr Chubb, "are unpredictable."

Purbright recognized that the Chief Constable had received as much confusing information as he could stomach at one session. He picked up the report and photographs. "Is there anything more at the moment, sir?"

"I don't think so. We shall just have to carry on ploughing our furrow, you know. See what turns up."

"Very well, sir." Purbright walked to the door.

"Oh, by the way, Mr Purbright..." Mr Chubb disengaged himself from the mantelpiece and meticulously slipped his finger-ends into his jacket pockets. "I had a chat with Major Ross this morning. I suppose he and Mr Pumphrey are trained to take a rather less mundane view of these affairs. Of course, they do operate in a wider sphere than ours. I have the impression that they readily conceive of possibilities which you and I might dismiss as excessively dramatic..."

"Yes, sir?"

Mr Chubb traced a pattern on the carpet with one well-s.h.i.+ned toecap. "Yes, well I think I ought to tell you that Major Ross and his colleague don't share your opinion that Periam is the man responsible. In their parlance, he is described as 'cleared', and they are looking much farther afield."

"I don't think we should take exception to that, sir. I'm glad of any a.s.sistance they can give."

"Oh, quite so. I'm sure you don't regard their co-operation ungenerously. No, that isn't what I'm anxious about. It's simply that outsiders tend to underestimate our people, Mr Purbright-in the country districts particularly. We don't want these gentlemen running into any unpleasantness, do we? After all, they are our guests, in a sense."

Purbright nodded. "I'll do my best to look after them."

Mr Chubb achieved a smile. "I thought I'd better mention it. Major Ross did say something about making a few inquiries in Mumblesby, as a matter of fact."

"Merry Mumblesby," said Purbright, reflectively. He opened the door.

Chapter Eleven.

"Ingenious," Ross said. He lifted the narrow rectangle of paper aloft with his pipe stem, held it in draped balance a moment, then withdrew the pipe sharply. The paper side-slipped twice and floated to rest on the table by Pumphrey's elbow.

"Chubb was perfectly correct, you see. It is a betting slip." Ross lengthened his face in mimicry. " 'We collect plenty of those, Mr Ross: they are merely symptoms of one of our little local weaknesses.' Poor old Chubb. Tretnikov or Dzarbol would have three of him for breakfast. It isn't innocent things like bus tickets or jam labels that pa.s.s unchallenged, but the obviously illegal ones. Betting slips? Of course they are taken for betting slips. What else could they be?"

Pumphrey peered at the paper earnestly, pulling his right ear lobe as if it put him in circuit with an electronic scanner. "Five s.h.i.+llings each way Needlework Hurst Park 4.30 Peter Piper" he read in an unpunctuated monotone.

"Pre-selected pseudonymic code: impossible to break. We needn't waste time on it." Ross held out his hand.

"Hold on a minute..." Pumphrey's ear became tauter, redder. He muttered the message again to himself, then tapped the paper. "Needlework," he said with emphasis and looked up.

"Name of the horse. I've checked. It's running in the 4.30 all right." Ross spoke mechanically. His attention was held by the bright, blood-flooded lobe of Pumphrey's ear. He pictured the fearful rending tongs fas.h.i.+oned by that Cracow goldsmith whom fate, and an ungrateful party secretariat, had made their first victim; 'unfeatured' was the word that had been sardonically entered in his prison hospital record.

"Yes, but needlework...examine it a.s.sociation-wise. Needle...sewing...thimble...Thimble Bay."

Interest glimmered in Ross's eye, but only briefly. He shook his head. "Attractive, Harry, but just that fraction too obvious. No, what matters is that our friends' main communication channels are being confirmed. It's our immediate job to follow them. I'll say this for F.7: he left some pretty positive leads."

Pumphrey watched Ross place the betting slip in his briefcase. "I've sent a screening requisition on Anderson, of course."

"Anderson? Oh, old dot and carry one. Good. Chubb's fellows have him tabbed simply as a bookie's runner, but I expected that. They probably think nuclear disarmament's another name for the Oxford Movement." Ross looked at the ivory and zirconium face of his wrist.w.a.tch. "Just nice time," he observed, "to pay Mrs Bernadette Croll a call before Farmer Croll homeward plods from his turnip patch or whatever. Coming along for the drive?"

Mumblesby was a hamlet of fourteen houses, a decrepit church and a ruined water mill. Its founders seemed to have tucked it quite deliberately into a green fold of the hills so that no one else should find it. Even today, when a main road to the coast ran within a quarter of a mile of its crumbling gables and rat-ridden thatch, Mumblesby still crouched in its valley unseen and unsought.

Speeding silently away from Mumblesby was a huge Bentley with a prow of gunmetal, whose pilot, Ross, remarked to his companion: "About another four minutes should do it." But the car, painstakingly misdirected by humorous rustics, continued to sail through the high, greenish-white foam of cow parsley and past banks empurpled with campion before a signpost confirmed Pumphrey's suspicion that they were about to re-enter the out-skirts of Flaxborough.

Ross grasped the situation immediately. He neither slacked pace nor changed direction. "We'll stop at the first decent-sized stationers and get an ordnance survey map," he announced. "You shouldn't have taken those fellows literally, you know, Harry. I thought they were having you on."

Pumphrey's lean and diligent face swung round indignantly. It had been Ross who had taken charge of what he called the 'peasant-parley'. "But look, I didn't..." Ross quickly smiled and patted his arm. "My dear Harry, you're far too easily drawn into categorical protestations; it doesn't do, you know."

At the newsagents where the required map was produced, Ross bought himself a fudge and roasted hazlenut bar. Pumphrey he treated to a sixpenny Yummie-honey-spun raisins in a cus.h.i.+on of chocolate praline, twice whipped for lightness.

Twenty minutes later, the Bentley rocked to a halt among roadside flowers, just clear of the narrow lane that pierced Mumblesby's encircling groves of ash and elm. Ross examined the map. "I'll go up to the farm; it's about two hundred yards up there on the right, according to this. You stay here if you like, unless you want to nose around what there is of a village."

Ross turned from the tree-vaulted lane, where the air was cool and green as old gla.s.s, on to a flint work road that ran straight between brown, sun-hardened fields. The earth was yielding the first clenched leaves of a potato crop, but still so few that no pattern of its sowing could be discerned. At the end of the track, the grey brick and funereal slate of a Victorian farmhouse defied the sun to soften their sour angularity. The older out-buildings, preserved when the original house was demolished and replaced, were roofed with red pantiles. They looked like robust, bibulous suitors attending upon a sick widow.

A few chickens pecked in the dust of the untidy yard, the only other occupant of which was a mired and malevolent-looking goose. Ross stepped carefully over the wheel ruts that still held in their depths the foetid residue of winter rains and seepage from the crew-yard, opened a wicket in the wire fence enclosing the house and its narrow strip of garden, and walked up to the front door.

His knock produced a hollow, unpromising reverberation, as if the house had sullenly murmured 'go away' in its sleep. He waited, knocked again, and listened. From somewhere fairly distant came the sound of music. The door remained shut. Ross reached for the big brown enamelled k.n.o.b. It twisted loosely and without effect.

"Are you the killer?"

Ross spun round. The soft, rather bored voice had delivered its appalling question as flatly as if it had asked him for a match. "People usually come round to the back, you know. You could have waited here all day."

"Am I the what?"

The girl, unaware of the singularity of her accomplishment in having startled, of all people, Ross, looked him up and down. "No, you're not Mr Ra.s.smussen, are you? I think he's a Dane or something. Anyway, he's the killer from Gelding Marsh. Ours has a septic thumb."

"I see." Ross tried to imagine a rational connexion between thumbs and a.s.sa.s.sination. "You mean he's a strangler?"