Colin Watson - Hopjoy Was Here

Love puffed out his schoolboy-pink cheeks. “A proper lad, that Hopjoy. And on tick, too...”

“You feel that makes his excesses the more reprehensible?”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but I reckon they don’t call old Tozer the poor man’s friend for nothing.”

“You’re sure you’re not confusing the merchant with his merchandise?” Purbright put the barber’s reckoning aside and picked up a letter from the Happy Motoring Finance Company. “Ah, the car...I was wondering when we’d come to that.”

“In the matter of your outstanding instalments, which now amount to £242 16s.,” the letter ran, “I am directed to refer to your personal letter to Sir Harry Palmer, in which you say that the nature of certain confidential work undertaken by you for H.M. Government requires you to foster a false appearance of impecuniosity. I regret that the Chairman must decline your invitation to seek confirmation of your position from the Minister of State, as this would be outside the scope of our Company practice. Accordingly, I must inform you that unless your instalment payments are brought up to date within fourteen days we shall be obliged to take appropriate action.”

Purbright regarded the letter in silence for a while. Then he looked quickly through the rest of the contents of the writing case. Beneath the bills lay an unsuggestive miscellany of theatre programmes, hotel and resort brochures, a London restaurant guide, a couple of wine and food lists, maps, a jeweller’s catalogue and the maintenance booklet for the Armstrong. Then came a wad of blank, thin paper sheets of the kind Purbright had seen in the hands of Ross, and finally a cheap writing pad from which the top sheet or two had been torn.

Purbright flicked through the pages of the pad. They enclosed nothing. He leaned back, staring out of the window and gently tapping the pad against the edge of the desk.

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, “how Mr Hopjoy rated as a counter-espionage agent, but if he applied to his job only half the talent he showed for fornication and insolvency I’d say Russia’s had it.”

Love glanced at the inspector a little dubiously.

“Oh, don’t worry, Sid. The fellow obviously made no secret of what he was up to. He even traded on it. I don’t see why we should behave like old ladies pretending they can’t smell the drains. Which reminds me...wasn’t Warlock coming in today some time?”

“About four,” Love said. “He sounded jolly bouncy over the phone.”

“He’s probably run across some little titbit like a fingernail or a kidney. Incidentally, I don’t see anything among this lot that gives colour to Hopjoy’s pose as a commercial traveller.”

“That’s all there was at the house. Perhaps he had an office somewhere,”

Purbright shook his head. “None of the chemists in the town remembers his calling. No, I think he just couldn’t be bothered to keep up that part of it; who was to care, anyway?”

The sergeant watched in silence as Purbright closed and fastened the writing case and pushed it and Periam’s belongings to the back of the desk. Then, “It’s funny, you know,” he said hesitantly, “but what with one thing and another—all that money trouble and everything—you might almost say that getting done must have come to that bloke as a happy release.” He swallowed. “If you see what I mean.”

There was no flippancy in Purbright’s voice when he replied: “I do see what you mean, Sid. I do indeed.”

Chapter Ten

Sergeant Warlock blossomed into Purbright’s office like the Man from the Prudential. He carried a briefcase and a squat, black wooden box with a handle.

“Now then, squire.” The luggage was placed in precise symmetry on the desk top. Warlock’s hands, thus released, flew into joyful union and vigorously rubbed each other. “How’s tricks?”

Purbright conceded that tricks were merely so-so.

His visitor, after taking two turns round the room, in order, Purbright supposed, to dissipate some of the momentum of his arrival, poised himself by the briefcase and flicked it open. He looked zestfully at the inspector. “Nicest little job I’ve had in years. Absolutely fascinating...” His glance went down to the papers he was drawing from the case. “I hardly know where to begin.”

“By sitting down, perhaps?” suggested Purbright unhopefully. Warlock chuckled and seemed to grow two inches taller there and then. He spread pages of typescript on the desk and rapidly reviewed the underlined sub-headings.

“Ah, well; we might as well start with the bath, eh? You were quite right about that. It was melted paraffin wax that had been brushed over the chipped parts and the metal plug seating. There were still traces of it, although I’d say the whole caboodle had been sluiced out afterwards with water from the hot tap. And the chain was still thickly waxed. Your lad saw that, didn’t he? Now then, what else...Oh, yes; spots of corrosion on both taps. Splashes, probably. Slight discolouration of vitreous enamel consistent with submersion in fairly highly concentrated sulphuric acid. Acid traces on bathroom floor...”

Warlock’s finger moved slowly down the page. “Wax on bath corresponded with solid deposit in basin in dining-room sideboard...” He looked up. “Queer slip, that: leaving the thing about. Never mind, that’s not my pigeon.” He read on. “No distinguishable fingerprints on basin, damn it—still, it would have been asking a bit much.”

“Drains,” announced Warlock after a brief pause. “We didn’t do too badly with drains.” While still keeping his eyes on the report, he felt for the black box and slipped its catch. “Analysis of contents of drain trap established presence of unusual quantities of fat and carbon compounds, possibly of animal derivation, also distinct calcium traces...you’re with me there, I suppose, squire?”

Purbright nodded. “The late Mr Hopjoy, I presume.” He received an approving beam from the expert.

“Mind you, you mustn’t get the idea that anything like actual identification is possible from this sort of thing. It’s all a bit tentative.”

“Oh, quite.”

“But circumstantially impressive, all the same.” Warlock sounded eager to please. “Naturally, there’d been some dilution of what went into the drain trap. Fat and acid tests were absolutely conclusive, though. I’m only sorry there wasn’t anything exciting in the solid line—plastic buttons, gold teeth fillings—you know.”

“Pity.”

Warlock lifted back the lid of his box. He drew a test tube from a small rack at the back of it. “This has flummoxed us, I admit. It had caught in that little grill thing under the plug.”

Purbright turned the tube round in his hand. Within it he saw a knotted loop of whitish, translucent fibre. He held it to the light. “Animal, vegetable or mineral?”

“Oh, mineral,” said Warlock. “Almost certainly nylon.”

“Out of a nailbrush, perhaps?”

“Too long. Anyway, it wouldn’t be joined up like that. It’s not out of a brush of any kind. Nobody at the lab. had a clue.”

“Are you worried about it?”

Warlock scowled indignantly and whisked the tube out of Purbright’s grasp. “Of course I’m worried about it. We haven’t been foxed by anything in this line since the Retford fly-paper case. Do you know, we spent two months making inquiries at jewellers about that cuff-link in old Mrs Hargreaves’s duodenum. In the end we traced it to the bloody surgeon who did the autopsy.”

He put the test tube back in its rack. “Oh, we’ll get some joy out of this, don’t you worry. I’m sending it off to the top bods in the artificial fibre industry. I expect they’ll check it with their gauge records or something.”