Colin Watson - Hopjoy Was Here

The inspector, answering without haste, gazed directly but mildly at Ross’s face. This now wore an expression of eager courtesy—that look which is only a polite version of imperiousness.

“Beyond the not particularly intelligent deduction that someone was murdered in that house and his body disposed of,” Purbright began, “I can’t pretend to having much to offer. Not even the fact of murder can be confirmed until the laboratory reports come through although, as I say, I haven’t much doubt of it. Then the question of identity will have to be settled. We are in no position at the moment to say who killed whom. Naturally, we assume the choice lies between the owner of the house, Periam, and your man Hopjoy. You, sir, might have reasons of your own for supposing Hopjoy to be the more likely candidate...”

“Not necessarily,” Ross broke in. “Our chaps are fairly adept at looking after themselves, you know. We give them credit for that.”

“You mean you would not be surprised to find that it was Periam who was killed?”

“In my job, Purbright, we soon lose all capacity for being surprised.”

“But if Hopjoy was responsible...”

“Then he must have had some very compelling reason.” Ross removed his pipe and squinted along its stem. “Mind you, I think that possibility is unlikely. I’m not aware that Hopjoy had any general authorization to take executive decisions. On the other hand, I shouldn’t necessarily have been informed if he had.”

“Well, that’s helpful, I must say,” said the Chief Constable. “Don’t any of you chaps know what you’re up to?” Flushing slightly, he straightened and stood clear of the mantelpiece. “Four years ago I received a confidential request to give this fellow Hopjoy co-operation if he asked for it and not to bother him if he didn’t. Fair enough. As it happens, he never came to us for anything. But there were one or two occasions when we were able to smooth things out for him in little ways behind the scenes. There was no fuss, no gossip, nothing.” Chubb spread his hands and nodded. “All right, we were just doing our duty. But now”—he jabbed a finger in Ross’s direction—“it looks as if something has happened that can’t be glossed over. Something absolutely intolerable. And you must realize, Mr Ross, that I have no intention of allowing my officers to temper their efforts to solve this crime with consideration for what you may regard as higher policy.”

Purbright, who had been examining his finger-ends while marvelling at the length and vehemence of Chubb’s speech, looked up blandly at Ross. It was Pumphrey, though, who spoke first.

“It seems to me, Mr Chubb, that you don’t quite understand that this business involves security.” The final word leaped from the rest of the tightly controlled sentence like a whippet trying to break its leash.

Ross, still amiable and matter-of-fact, gave a quick, chairman-like glance round the others, reserving for the Chief Constable a smile that promised concession. “No,” he said, “that’s not altogether fair. Mr Chubb appreciates that this affair has certain delicate features, but a crime’s a crime and he’s perfectly right to view this one from the standpoint of the very good policeman we all know him to be. Of course the investigation must proceed in the way he thinks best. Major Pumphrey and I ask only that we be allowed to assist with what specialized knowledge we have.”

Like a peal proclaiming a peace treaty, the ringing of the telephone on Chubb’s desk provided a distraction from uncharitable thoughts. At a nod from the Chief Constable, Purbright took the call.

When he replaced the receiver he thrust a hand beneath his jacket, scratched himself gently, and announced: “The car’s been traced, anyway. At the moment it’s parked in the Neptune yard at Brockleston. It might be as well if I nipped over there now, don’t you think, sir?”

Chapter Five

The thirty-mile drive to Brockleston brought Purbright into the town’s main street at exactly five o’clock, when it looked like a row of aquarium tanks.

Staring out at him from behind the windows of the twenty-three cafés and snack bars were the perplexed, hostile eyes of holiday-makers awaiting the fish and chips, pies and chips, ham and chips, egg and chips, sausage and chips—in fact, every permutation of succulence except chips and chips—that were being borne to their plastic-topped tables by girls with corded necks and dress seams strained to the limit as they ferried their great trays.

Brockleston was a day trippers’ resort. Its resident population, no greater than that of a village, occupied a string of timber bungalows on the lee side of the dunes or lived in the flats above the few shops not associated with the chips industry. There were no boarding houses, for the ephemeral pleasures of the place did not justify a protracted visit. The dunes, while adequate for desultory, gritty fornication, served no other purpose than mercifully to screen a muddy beach from which jutted derelict anti-tank blocks. The sea at most times was an afternoon’s, march away.

Yet it was the sea, distinctly visible as a glinting streak of silver beyond the steamy, creek-veined plain, and therefore an object of pilgrimage, that accounted for all the coming and going along the Flaxborough road, the seasonal cramming of the twenty-three cafés and two small pubs, and the enforced but bitterly begrudged construction by the rural council of a public convenience whose necessarily ample proportions had earned it the local epithet of the Taj Mahal.

The Neptune Hotel represented a totally different tradition.

It had been erected only five years previously by a Flaxborough jobbing builder whose coincidental relationship with the chairman of the housing committee had put him in the way of contracts for five estates of bay-windowed rabbit hutches and made the chairman the brother-in-law of a millionaire. The Neptune was now as valuable a property as any three hotels in Flaxborough put together.

There may have been something a little Victorian about the Flaxbrovians’ propensity to translate a novelty into a fashion and a fashion into a steady habit, but the creator of the Neptune saw no point in derogating any trend from which he might capitalize. He knew his fellow citizens, Victorian or no, and was concerned, as he put it, only with what they would ‘go for’.

“You know, Lizz,” he had said to his housekeeper one night, “they’re a rum lot of buggers in Flax. They like to get the hell out of the place to enjoy themselves, but all the same old faces have to be there at the other end when they arrive. Even when they just want to tread each other’s missuses once in a while, damn me if they find any fun in it unless they can say how d’ye do to the women’s husbands on the stairs. They pretend not to be sociable, but that’s just a pose, you know, Lizz. What I reckon they want is a place right off the track where they can be sociable in private. Here, gal, pass us that map a minute...it’s on the table there, just by your pillow...”

Thus had the Neptune been conceived.

Its progenitor had not attempted the actual construction himself but had entrusted it to a competent builder whose tenders for the Council estates he had always managed to underquote and on whom, therefore, he felt constrained to bestow a measure of compensatory patronage.

The hotel was an imposing building, four storeys high and with a glass tower at one corner. In this tower sat a huge robot fashioned in neon tubing, a mechanical celebrant that raised at regular intervals a glowing tankard and pledged good cheer to the surrounding acres of empty sea and marsh. The only people who considered it merely vulgar were those who wouldn’t have spent much in the hotel anyway and therefore didn’t matter; the rest, eagerly seeking from their Brockleston-bound cars a first glimpse of the roysterer in the sky, thought it a marvel of cleverness that reflected great credit on one and all, including, naturally, themselves.