Coffin Scarcely Used f-1 Read online

  Gloss had put himself at a disadvantage by accepting a seat before he remembered that the Chief Constable habitually remained standing, even in his own drawing room. He was, therefore, obliged to crane a bull-like neck in order to keep Chubb in the focus of his little fierce eyes.

  The solicitor spoke quietly and carefully.

  “I need scarcely point out,” he began, “that what I am about to say is in the strictest confidence. It may be impossible of confirmation. I certainly wish, at this stage, to accept no personal part in the matter and to bear no responsibility for the veracity of anything I now mention.”

  Mr Chubb nodded graciously. The solicitor turned further round in his chair and rested his folded arms along the back of it.

  “You may be aware that I am—or was, rather—an acquaintance of Marcus Gwill, of whose shocking death I was apprised a short while ago. Indeed, he was my client. Naturally, I am unaware of the details of how he is supposed to have died, but I have heard the rumours that follow upon an incident of this kind. You will perhaps tell me if I am correct in believing the circumstances to have pointed to electrocution.”

  Again Mr Chubb nodded.

  “I see,” said Gloss. “My further information is that there were no witnesses of this unfortunate occurrence and that its nature is surmised on the strength of Marcus having been found beneath the electricity pylon opposite his house.”

  “The police have no reason to suspect anything but an accident, if that is what you mean,” observed the Chief Constable. “A peculiar accident, certainly, but one that is not inconceivable.”

  “Were I to say my conviction—my purely instinctive conviction, if you like—is that Gwill’s death was not accidental, would you be prepared to be guided by that without my providing evidence to support it?”

  Chubb raised an eyebrow. “Might you explain what you have in mind, Mr Gloss?”

  “That is just the point, my dear sir. The situation is such that I can give precious little explanation. I am, in a sense, a materialization of an anonymous letter writer. The anonymous letter, as we both know well, is given no less consideration by the police than a signed one, providing its contents promise to be useful. I could have gone to the rather absurd and distasteful length of pasting clipped-out words to a sheet of paper and sending you that, but I prefer to act straightforwardly and logically. In so doing, however, I think I am entitled to claim immunity from involvement.”

  “Your duty, Mr Gloss, is to help the police in whatever way you can especially if you have reason to suspect a crime has been committed.”

  “I am a solicitor, Mr Chubb, and well aware of what citizens are supposed to do. I am also aware of how seldom they do what they should, and of how little the police can do to make them. That is why I am here now instead of concocting a mysterious message from newspaper clippings. You and I are civilized, sophisticated and, let us admit it, privileged persons, who can afford to be advised by each other without going through all the wasteful, compromising nonsense of ‘official procedure’.”

  Chubb paced slowly across the carpet and back. Standing before the fire, he regarded his fingernails thoughtfully. “I think you’re quite wrong, you know,” he said.

  “In what respect?”

  “In supposing Gwill to have been murdered. That is what you mean to imply, isn’t it?”

  “It is.” Gloss looked at him steadily.

  “But that’s absurd. The man wasn’t robbed. No one stuck a knife into him. He hadn’t run off with someone’s wife; I’d have heard soon enough at the club if he had. No, it’s not nice to say of a chap who always seemed absolutely sensible and level-headed, but it’s perfectly obvious that he must have gone off his chump all of a sudden in the night. You and I can see that, but there’ll be no need for the town to make a song and dance of it. The local paper can hardly do anything else but soft pedal. You know he owned it, I suppose?”

  “Of course. I was his solicitor and I presume I shall continue to handle the legal affairs of the company. But we are straying a little from the point. The very fact that I stood in a professional relationship to Gwill surely should carry weight when I tell you that he was not without enemies.”

  “Few of us are, Mr Gloss.”

  “I might also add...” Gloss hesitated.

  “Yes?”

  “It should be understood, perhaps, that my motives for approaching you on this matter are not entirely altruistic. You see, I am not confident that my own safety is henceforth assured.”

  Chubb blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “Simply that I am extremely apprehensive. For what other reason do you suppose I might have come to see you? To put it absolutely baldly, I am asking you to provide—unobtrusively and unofficially—what I suppose we must call police protection.”

  “But protection against what, man?” The slightest suggestion of fluster had crept into the Chief Constable’s voice.

  “I cannot tell you. You will just have to trust me when I say that I have ample cause to be alarmed and to urge you to regard the death of Marcus Gwill as deliberately contrived—and perhaps the prelude to further crimes. Believe me, Mr Chubb, I have no desire to seem guilty of sensationalism, but when the alternative is to await in silence another curious accident of which I may be the victim, I am prepared to shed a little dignity.”

  The precise phraseology was maintained, but upon the solicitor’s brow and neck had appeared a gleaming dew.

  Chubb, too, looked uncomfortable. He shook his head. “I’m afraid any special arrangements by us would be out of the question. We haven’t the men available, and even if we had I couldn’t authorize the individual protection of someone who won’t say what he wants to be protected against.”

  Gloss compressed his lips and stared at the thin, rather loose figure of the Chief Constable leaning lightly against the fireplace. He decided to make one more attempt.

  “Naturally,” he said, “I do not ask for the attendance of a...a bodyguard, in what I conceive to be the American sense. The contingency I envisage is not likely to arise during daylight. Would it be out of the question to augment your normal night patrol in the St Anne’s Place area with an officer charged simply with keeping my house under observation?”

  Chubb sighed. “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about? Surely you see how difficult you make it for me to help. Let us be frank, Mr Gloss. Who is threatening you?”

  “Please believe me when I say it is no one against whom you could possibly take action.”

  “Yet you imply that whoever it is has already committed murder.”

  “All I wish you to realize is that someone of homicidal intentions is at large, someone clever enough to have misled your men on one occasion and capable of doing so again.”

  Chubb put his hand in his pocket and jingled change. Patiently, he asked: “How, do you suggest, was Gwill killed?”

  “I have no idea. That, surely, is for your officers to discover from the evidence. The crime must have been carefully and perhaps elaborately planned.”

  “And with what motive was he killed?”

  “In revenge, perhaps...or to gratify sheer evil-mindedness. But again, we digress. May I have your answer to the question I put a few moments ago?”

  “I have already given it, Mr Gloss. I’m sorry.”

  Whatever the solicitor felt, he showed nothing. Briskly he rose and brushed his stiff black hat with the sleeve of his overcoat.

  At the front door, the Chief Constable gave parting advice. It was a brief homily about the inadvisability of withholding information from the police. He had no confidence that it would do any good. And, indeed, it didn’t.

  Some twenty minutes later, Chubb’s enjoyment of a delayed lunch was modified by his wife’s announcement that Inspector Purbright had called and was awaiting him in the front room. He immediately concluded that the damnable affair of the electrocuted newspaper proprietor had taken a turn for the worse and that Purbright bore confirmation of the forebodings
of his earlier visitor. He champed his apple tart mournfully and wandered, still nibbling a clove, into the drawing-room.

  He found the inspector examining the plaster statuette of a yellow-haired Venus, petrified into Art while apparently picking a corn.

  “I suppose,” said Chubb without preamble, “that you’ve come about Gwill.”

  Purbright nodded. “I’m afraid I have, sir,” he said, as though breaking the news of the running over of one of Chubb’s Yorkshire terriers—in other words, with just enough pretence of regret to hide a real inward satisfaction.

  The Chief Constable motioned him to a chair and took up his own position of command and disparagement by the fireplace. “Carry on, my boy,” he said.

  Purbright carried on. He described the finding of the body that morning by a farm labourer on his way to work. Gwill had been wearing an overcoat, unbuttoned, over his suit, and a pair of slippers—sturdy leather ones, certainly, but slippers. He had lain, apparently since late the previous night, in the grass beneath the power pylon from which he was assumed at first to have fallen; at least, that theory had been adopted as soon as burns were seen on both his hands by the policeman who removed the body.

  The front door of Gwill’s house had been found closed but not latched. The drive gate was open. Gwill had been alone, probably, at the time he left his house, for the woman who looked after him had been staying elsewhere overnight.

  Purbright gave the gist of what Lintz and Mrs Poole had said and wound up with something about marshmallows that sounded sinister and, thought the Chief Constable, a bit psychological as well, which was worse.

  “Are you quite sure,” he asked when the inspector had done, “that you aren’t making too much of this?”

  “Quite sure, sir,” said Purbright simply.

  “Ah...” Chubb considered a moment. “So we’d better take a closer look into things, then; that’s what you think?”

  “It does seem indicated.”

  “Mmm...” Another pause. Then, “It’s rather odd,” said Chubb, “and I’d better mention this while I remember, but you’re the second chap to come along here today with doubts of this business having been quite above board.”

  “Really, sir?”

  “Yes. That solicitor with the thick neck and the bow tie—Humpty, I always call him—was here just before you called. Gloss. You know him?”

  “I’ve met him in court.”

  “Ah, well, he was being very mysterious, and frightened, too, I should say. He seemed quite convinced that poor old Gwill had been murdered. I thought he was just being morbid, but there you are.”

  “That’s interesting, sir. Did he say how he’d come to that conclusion?”

  “He didn’t. He was very cagey. He asked if I could put a man on his house at night. I turned that down, of course. He wouldn’t give a reason, you see.”

  “I’ll have a word with him later on, sir. If he’s really nervous, he’ll probably be more forthcoming after a night or two of listening to creaking floorboards. In the meantime, there’ll be other people to question. I’ve no notion at the moment of where to bore into this case, as it were. The little sounding I’ve been able to do so far hasn’t produced any helpful echoes. You follow me, sir.”

  “Yes, oh certainly,” responded Chubb with haste. “I mean old Gwill wasn’t the sort of fellow you’d expect to get murdered. Except by an employee, perhaps. They tell me that newspaper of his is a bit of a sweat shop.”

  “We’ll look into that side of it, of course, sir. At first sight, though, one would think George Lintz had most to gain. I believe the control of the business will go to him. On the other hand, there’s the rather curious relationship that seems to have existed between Gwill and the Carobleat woman. You remember the Carobleat affair, I suppose, sir?”

  The Chief Constable frowned. “It’s a bit late in the day to drag that up again, isn’t it? After all, you didn’t manage to find much at the time.”

  “I wasn’t likely to, considering all the books had disappeared,” said Purbright drily. “What with the firm having evaporated overnight, the owner dead and the widow paralysed with ignorance, it was hardly to be expected that we’d fasten anything on anyone.”

  “Just as well, perhaps. It wouldn’t have done the town much good, you know. Anyway, it’s done with now. By the way, would you like me to have a word with Amblesby? You’ll want the inquest holding over a while, I expect.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, sir. He’ll probably take the suggestion more kindly from one of his own—” Purbright nearly said ‘generation’ but substituted ‘neighbours’ on remembering that the desiccated solicitor lived amidst dust and despotism in a mansion on the older side of Chubb’s road.

  “Very well. I’ll ask him to adjourn it sine die or pending inquiries or something so that you can all get your heads down for a bit. Bad business...” The Chief Constable shook his head and devoutly wished the world were a great dog show with policemen having nothing to do but guard the trophies and hold leads.

  Purbright made his way back towards the police station. As he was walking past the railway station, he noticed a woman in tweeds and flower-pot hat among a small crowd emerging from its portico. He crossed over and greeted her. “I nearly called in to see you this morning, Mrs Carobleat.”

  Joan Carobleat, a matron competently parcelled and attractive in a mature, leathery way, raised rather over-made-up brows and returned Purbright’s smile. “It’s just as well you didn’t then, inspector, isn’t it?”

  “You’ve been away?”

  “I’ve just got back from Shropshire, as a matter of fact. Did you want to see me particularly? Oh, it’s not”—she frowned mockingly—“not that business about the shop again, surely?”

  “Your husband’s firm. No, not that,” Purbright glanced around. “I hoped you might let me know when it would be convenient for me to have a word with you.”

  “Urgent?”

  “Moderately.”

  “Look, then: I’m dying for a cup of tea after that appalling journey. Why not come into Harlow’s here? It won’t be too hectic at this time of day.”

  They took refuge in one of the inglenooky seats and Mrs Carobleat gave her order to a girl exhausted with the effort of carrying countless roast-lamb-onces to relays of predatory female shoppers.

  When the crockery had ceased to vibrate from its percussive assembly before them, Purbright looked at his companion and said: “I only hope this will be construed as proper. I don’t normally interrogate in teashops.”

  “You’re surely not afraid of being unfrocked or disbarred or something,” said Mrs Carobleat, warily testing the almost red-hot handle of a teapot that contained, paradoxically, lukewarm tea.

  “We coppers never quite reconcile ourselves to living in a perpetual draught of uncharitable thoughts.”

  “That’s what comes of being such a suspicious lot yourselves.” She spooned sugar evenly into both cups without asking if Purbright took it, added milk and poured the tea. She took a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her suit, lit one, and pushed the packet across the table. “Now then, what are you after?” she asked, as if Purbright were a small boy suspiciously anxious to wash up.

  “Where did you spend last night, Mrs Carobleat?” The question was mildly put, yet it sounded incisive.

  “Oho, something new, not the silly old shop business again, after all.”

  “That, as village constables are supposed to say, is as maybe.”

  She stirred her tea reflectively. “May I ask why you want to know?”

  “You tell me first. Then I’ll let you have a question.”

  “All right, then. Where did I spend last night? Most of it, I should say, at The Brink of Discovery.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m sorry; it’s a geographical joke, but perhaps you don’t know Shropshire. The Brink of Discovery is a pub, a small hotel rather, on the far side of Shrewsbury.”

  “Rather remote from Fl
axborough?”

  “I think it’s my turn, isn’t it, inspector? The reason for you asking, please.”

  “Your next-door neighbour was murdered last night.” Purbright’s expression remained pleasant but his eyes were intent.

  Mrs Carobleat took the cigarette quickly from her lips. “Not Marcus?”

  “Mr Gwill, yes.”

  She stared at him for a few seconds, then looked into her cup. “But that’s extraordinary. Are you sure?” She brought her gaze to him again, not, he thought, without an effort.

  “If I weren’t sure, I’d scarcely be chasing around asking questions.”

  “No; of course. That was silly of me. But it came as rather a surprise.”