Coffin Scarcely Used f-1 Read online

  Love looked over the names. “There’s Leadbitter here. He lives nearly opposite a sister of mine and I’ve seen him sometimes from her place when I’ve been there for tea. But I don’t think he has any idea of who I am.”

  “He’s never been in court, has he?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Certainly never when I’ve been there.”

  “Good. Then tail him, Sid. His appointment is for the day after tomorrow at a quarter-past eight. You’d best make a day of it.”

  “Follow him all day long?” Love, with memories of frozen feet in St Anne’s Place, looked pained.

  “Certainly. He’s not likely to call and tell you when he’s ready to go newel-viewing. If you try and pick him up in the evening, the odds are that you’ll lose him. You’ll have to keep him more or less in sight from when he leaves his house in the morning. Can that sister of yours put you up tomorrow night, do you think?”

  “I imagine so.”

  “That’s all right, then. Has this fellow a car?”

  “He ought to. He’s the biggest meat wholesaler in Flaxborough.”

  “In that case, Sid, we might stretch a point and let you borrow an o-fficial ve-hicle. Take the Hillman, and for heaven’s sake don’t scratch it or park it without lights or anything; the police are bastards in this town. Now let’s see what our butcher friend is after in the antique line.” He traced Leadbitter on the list. “Pewter Antique Tankard, indeed. And eight pounds. Always eight pounds. Why?”

  “Probably as you said—a standard deposit.”

  “Don’t talk wet. No one puts deposits on things they haven’t even seen. And these boys aren’t after antiques anyway, Japanese or any other kind. From what I know of most of them, they couldn’t tell a Queen Anne leg from a barmaid’s elbow. Unless I’m mistaken, though, they have one thing in common.”

  “Money,” said Love without hesitation.

  “Exactly. And respectability. Wouldn’t you say so?”

  “Four of them are on the Council, if that counts for anything.”

  “We’ll allow that.”

  “And eight...no, nine, belong to the County Club.”

  “So does the Chief Constable. That should make them unimpeachable.”

  Love opened his mouth, shut it, and then blurted: “Look—I know it sounds corney, but what about blackmail?”

  “Oh, Sid!” Purbright gave him an upward glance of sad remonstrance.

  “Yes, but why not? These adverts, could be a sort of reminder that another instalment of hush money is due. Look at the sort of people who reply—or pretend to be replying. They’re all well known and well off, too. Gwill owned a newspaper. He could easily have found out things about them that they would be scared of seeing in print. We know that Gwill was careful to handle the adverts, and the box replies himself. It could be that the people paying him had been told to enclose a letter explaining the money in case an envelope went astray or got opened by one of the office staff by mistake.”

  Purbright had listened attentively. “Attractive,” he conceded. “A neat idea. But it doesn’t tie up with certain facts. In the first place, Gwill had been dead a couple of days, and known by the whole town to be dead, when these letters were sent off. Instead of posting their eight quidses, these people would have been celebrating the closing of the account.”

  “Only if they knew who was blackmailing them,” said Love. “We can’t be sure that they did. In fact the whole beauty of the box reply system would have been the concealment of the black-mailer’s identity.”

  Purbright rubbed his cheek. “That’s perfectly true,” he said; then, with a frown, “But why all this appointment nonsense? There could be no point in it once the money had passed over. Even as a blind for anyone who might open the letter by mistake it’s unnecessarily elaborate.”

  Dampened by this objection, Love decided against putting forward his final and most entrancing theory. Drugs, he calculated, was not the suggestion the inspector was waiting to hear.

  Chapter Eleven

  The account of the curious end of the proprietor of the Flaxborough Citizen that had been allowed to appear in his own publication was presented with none of the air of repressed delirium that had characterized earlier revelations in the national Press. But it was fulsome enough in its own way.

  Once the Citizen had made it clear that the occasion was one it ‘regretted to announce’ and that the victim was the ‘well-known public figure’ who had enjoyed the privilege of being a ‘principal in the town’s leading printing and publishing concern’, it treated his corpse pretty well like that of anyone else.

  The inquest was reported in detail and, as if to compensate for the dullness of its formalities and its inconclusiveness, followed up by Inspector Purbright’s intriguing request for information. This was enough to have most readers speculating happily on what had been going on and, indeed, on what was Up.

  Purbright, for lack of anything better to do, took a copy of the paper along to the office of the Chief Constable. Mr Chubb had, as it turned out, read it already, and was now interested to know if some obliging witness had come forward to prove that the whole affair was just an unfortunate misunderstanding.

  “You do see, don’t you, my boy,” he explained in his thin, cultured voice, dried up with calming important citizens and lecturing Flaxborough Historical Association on Bronze Age burial, “that the sooner this business is cleared up the better. There is doubtless some quite simple explanation which eludes us. On reflection, I find it incredible that poor old Gwill would have been mixed up in anything, well, untoward.”

  “I fully appreciate that, sir,” said Purbright. “None of us cares for discredit to be hanging over the town.” Chubb nodded his approval of this sentiment. “On the other hand, sir, it is my duty to advise you that the inquiries we have made into the matter so far have all tended to strengthen the case for supposing Mr Gwill to have been murdered.”

  The Chief Constable looked pained, then raised his brows in invitation to Purbright to elaborate this distasteful theme.

  Purbright spread out a couple of sheets of paper on which he had jotted notes. Unhurriedly, he glanced over the main headings, read some of the paragraphs to himself, and then looked up to Chubb, who, on the inspector’s entry, had levitated as usual while inviting his visitor to a chair and now leaned gracefully athwart a tall filing cabinet in one corner.

  “It appears,” Purbright began, “that contrary to our earlier supposition, Gwill was not alone in his house on the night of his death. Mr Gloss has since admitted that he was actually in the company of Mr Gwill until quite late. He has further alleged that Doctor Rupert Hillyard was with him also.

  “His story was that while he and Doctor Hillyard were talking to Gwill, the telephone rang and Gwill answered it. In response to the call—and Mr Gloss says he couldn’t gather who made it or what was said—Gwill is supposed to have hurried out of the house and not returned. If all this is true, the likelihood of a calculated attack on Gwill, or rather of some sort of trap laid for him, becomes very strong.”

  Chubb shifted his position slightly to stare out of the window. “Mr Gloss has acted rather foolishly in not coming forward at once with these facts. And I must say I’m surprised at Hillyard’s reticence. He’s said nothing to you, has he?”

  “I haven’t questioned him yet, sir.”

  “All the same, the man surely must have realized something was wrong and that it was his duty to come along and give us what information he could. Of course”—Chubb turned to Purbright and smiled gently—“Hillyard’s rather an odd chap in some ways. He’s not always quite himself.” And with this indulgent interpretation, the Chief Constable’s gaze went back to the sycamore against the further wall of the station courtyard.

  Purbright continued. “A witness has also been found who saw a van being driven out along Heston Lane late on Monday night and watched it return. Her description suggests that it was Mr Jonas Bradlaw’s van. It seems very likely, in my opinio
n, that all three of them were there that night, and not just two.”

  “Why should Mr Gloss not have mentioned Mr Bradlaw’s presence, in that case?”

  “I don’t know, sir. One explanation could be that Mr Bradlaw and the doctor knew that they had been seen on their way to the house on foot but relied on no one having noticed Mr Bradlaw, who would have been pretty well concealed inside his van. It also happens that Mr Bradlaw went to some pains to establish an alibi for that time.”

  “A false one, you mean?”

  “It could very well be false.”

  “Is there anyone else concerned, do you think?”

  “I thought at first that the nephew was probably implicated.”

  “The newspaper fellow?”

  “Lintz, yes. But as time goes on he seems to slip further away as a possibility. For one thing, he was deliberately made part of Bradlaw’s alibi, and nothing we’ve been able to find out suggests collusion between him and the other three. Still, we can’t forget that he benefits materially from Gwill’s death more obviously than anyone else.

  “There is one other person,” went on Purbright, “who I can’t help feeling fits into the business in some way or other. Mrs Carobleat.”

  Chubb gave him an inquiring glance. “But she was miles away, surely?”

  “So she says. I propose to have a word with the Shropshire people about that and perhaps take a trip over there myself. If you’re agreeable, of course, sir.”

  The Chief Constable looked doubtful. “That’s a bit out of the way, isn’t it?”

  “I shouldn’t like to rely on another force making the sort of inquiries I have in mind, or I shouldn’t hesitate to pass them on, sir. I’ve an idea that a close check on Mrs Carobleat’s movements might be rewarding. It’s almost certain that she was Gwill’s mistress, and...”

  “Oh, come; are you sure of that?” broke in Chubb, frowning.

  “That’s the consensus of opinion, I’m afraid, sir.”

  “You don’t suggest the woman might have had a hand in the fellow’s murder?”

  “I shall be in a better position to say when we know what she was doing at the operative time, sir. And before, of course. The fact that she was away at all may have significance.”

  Chubb sighed. “These affairs are damnably unpleasant. All this questioning and poking into other people’s business. I don’t know how you bring yourself to do it, Purbright, I don’t, really. The only other murder in Flaxborough I can remember was quite different. It was the shooting of old Mrs Donovan by Hargreaves, the pet-shop man. He was the perfect gentleman, poor Hargreaves. Came along here straight away afterwards and stood waiting at the counter downstairs until someone had time to attend to him. Then he handed over the revolver—he’d put it in a clean paper bag, I remember—and put eightpence in the Boot and Shoe Fund box, then confessed as nicely as you like. He used to keep that shop a perfect picture.”

  Purbright bore with this reminiscence and then told Chubb about his arrangements for investigating the matter of the advertisements in the Citizen.

  The Chief Constable listened. “My, but you’re being kept busy,” he said. “It’s amazing, isn’t it, how many odd little things go on under the surface of a place like this?”

  “Yes, isn’t it, sir,” agreed Purbright. “Takes all sorts to make a world.” Not for the first time, he was visited with the suspicion that Chubb had donned the uniform of head of the Borough police force in a moment of municipal confusion when someone had overlooked the fact that he was really a candidate for the curatorship of the Fish Street Museum.

  “When do you think we can expect an arrest, my boy?” asked Chubb. “Or would that,” he added in bloodless parody of jocularity, “be telling?”

  Purbright clenched his teeth.

  Mr P. F. F. Smith, manager of the Flaxborough branch of the Eastern Provinces and Bartonshire Consolidated Bank, rose and greeted his visitor with almost explosive affability. He had made sure, when the appointment was being fixed, that none of the bank’s much advertised services and favours would be invoked.

  “Grand day,” beamed Mr Smith, motioning Purbright to The Customer’s chair.

  “Well, it’s cold and rather foggy outside, actually,” Purbright corrected him.

  “Yes, how miserable,” agreed Mr Smith. “Seasonable for the time of year, though.” He grinned over the gleaming nakedness of his desk top, on the very edge of which his aseptically manicured fingers beat a refined tattoo.

  “We should be glad to have your help, sir...”

  Mr Smith inclined his head and continued to register delight. “Anything we can do, we shall be only too pleased.”

  “...in a somewhat delicate matter,” Purbright added, and the tiniest flake of frost settled upon Mr Smith’s manner.

  “You will have heard of the death last Monday night of Mr Marcus Gwill?”

  “Indeed, yes. A shocking affair. A gentleman and a most charming man.”

  “You found him so, sir?”

  “Oh, yes.” A slight pause. “Within the limits of our professional relationship, of course. What was, er, your impression, inspector?”

  “If I had formed one, it would scarcely be relevant to my present inquiries, sir.”

  “Quite so.” Mr Smith nodded and gave the first of the tiny, flicked glances at the clock above Purbright’s head that were to accompany his every second remark throughout the interview.

  “But the general impression conveyed to me by others is that Mr Gwill was not outstandingly easy to get along with.”

  “I can quite understand that, inspector, now that you mention it. He was reserved, you know, and perhaps just the least bit forbidding. Charm was not his strong suit.”

  “What I have to ask you, Mr Smith, is not so much concerned with the gentleman’s character as with his cash. He dealt predominantly with this bank, I understand.”

  “I see no harm in confirming that he did have a private account with us.” Mr Smith’s eye was now more watchful within its smiling socket.

  “Small or large?”

  “Of late, quite substantial. And it was about to become much more substantial, as you no doubt know already.”

  “I don’t, as it happens, sir. I wonder if you’d care to tell me about that?”

  “Ah...” Mr Smith had realized his indiscretion. “I think perhaps you should not press me in these somewhat confidential matters, inspector. A client’s affairs are with us—what shall I say?—like the secrets of the confessional.”

  “But not, surely, after he’s been murdered, Mr Smith?”

  “Murdered?” The manager succeeded in looking as if Purbright had suddenly asked for an overdraft.

  “Oh, yes. So now he’s my client as well, in a sense.”

  “I see...But how dreadful.”

  “This is news to you?”

  “But decidedly. I had no idea.”

  “Except for rumours, perhaps?”

  Mr Smith shrugged delicately. “We make it our business not to pay too much attention to rumour, inspector. The bank likes to be absolutely sure of everything.”

  “So do the police, sir. That is why I have presumed to trespass upon your time.”

  Mr Smith nodded sagaciously and joined his fingertips. “Please ask me anything you like, inspector. It is the duty of us all to cooperate in the solution of crime, especially”—his smile returned and resumed its seat, as it were, upon the smooth cushions of his face—“especially when the victim is a person of integrity.”

  “And recently augmented substance,” Purbright put in, suggestively.

  “Ah, yes. I was about to elaborate on that theme, was I not? Well, the addition to Mr Gwill’s fortunes, such as they were, was to have been brought about under the terms of the will, of course.”

  “The will?”

  “Yes. The late Councillor Carobleat’s bequest. A matter of”—Mr Smith rolled his eyes upward for a moment—“oh, some eighteen thousand pounds.”

  Purbrigh
t frowned. “But surely he left a widow?”

  “Ah, the widow. Yes.” Mr Smith picked an invisible thread from his cuff. “A peculiar circumstance, that. But the will was quite explicitly in Mr Gwill’s favour—and in that of certain other beneficiaries. Mrs Carobleat has not suffered as much as you might think, however.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Er, so I am led to understand. A substantial sum. Then there was the house, and so forth. She is well provided for.”

  “That was my impression,” said Purbright. “Even so, it isn’t customary to will away all one’s money over a wife’s head, so to speak.”