Colin Watson: Hopjoy Was Here

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 naïve.”

Ross shifted 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 naïveté 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 brushing 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 classic 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 glass 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.”