Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

Love found Purbright digesting, like a sleepy boa constrictor, the offerings of Harper and Pook. He added his own news that Bradlaw had called upon lawyer Gloss and been driven off by him in his car. This was accepted by the inspector with a mild “Did he now?”

“Anything new?” asked Love.

“Oh, bits and pieces. They may make sense eventually. Unfortunately we’re still at the stage of not knowing what to throw away. Harper’s just unloaded this lot, for instance. ‘Middle-aged man with stick, carrying case and looking at numbers on gates...girl in hurry wearing dark fur-trimmed coat and high-heeled shoes...Maurice Hoylake, garage proprietor, on bicycle...man, fairly well-off looking, with trilby hat and small feet...Dr Hillyard, general practitioner, of Flaxborough...Mr William Semple...man in raincoat, rather drunk...Miss Peabody, millinery assistant and amateur dramatics secretary...’ And from Pook, with apologies and stiff-lipped readiness for further foolish errands, ‘One black van, driven to the danger of cats up and down Heston Lane all of a Monday midnight-O’.”

“And what are they supposed to mean?”

“They are the fruits of inquiries by Messrs Harper and Pook of the residents of Heston Lane. A list of everyone seen in those parts around the time that Gwill was likely to have been murdered. They’ll all need to be questioned when we can get round to it, but at the moment, it’s the last name that rings the loudest bell, isn’t it?”

“Hillyard?”

“Yes. Do you know him, by the way?”

“I’ve never actually met him. He’s a bottle-hitter, from what I hear.”

“It seems so. He turned up while I was talking to the Carobleat woman yesterday afternoon. She knew him well enough to dislike him, and I’d say he’s not over fond of her. Wherever he was going on Monday night, I doubt if it was to an assignation with Mrs Carobleat.”

“You’ll tackle him about Monday?”

“Naturally. It might not be easy, though. When he’s sober, which may not be very often, he’s probably well fortified with professional dignity and Gaelic awkwardness. And when he’s drunk, I expect he becomes a mystic, which will be a damn sight worse.”

Purbright looked again at his notes. “What do you make of the ‘well-off looking man with trilby hat and small feet’? Small feet...what a curious thing for anyone to notice at that time of night.”

“Not necessarily. When I used to be on nights I could tell some people by their feet. It’s the way they walk and the amount of noise they make. Those with little feet look rather like those prancy characters of Edward Lear—you know, walking on points.”

Purbright regarded him with admiration. “Sid, you read books!”

Love beamed. “I’m jolly well educated,” he retorted cheerfully. “I can detect, too. Roddy Gloss walks like one of Mr Lear’s Old Men Of.”

The telephone forestalled Purbright’s reply. It was Lintz. He had just realized, apparently, that his uncle’s end was the beginning of a news story that was likely to run a course quite independent of his own feelings in the matter. He had toyed with, but finally abandoned, the idea of announcing the death in simple ‘We regret...’ terms designed to give the impression that Gwill had expired unaided and in an orthodox manner, and now wished to know if he could give instructions for the local account of the affair to include an official statement from the police.

Purbright pondered. He had quickly learned to meet the bright, hungry questions of men who called him ‘Old Boy’ and seemed passionately interested in irrelevancies, with a non-committal geniality that they were pleased to take as confirmation of everything they asked. But the Citizen might prove useful. Unlike the Nationals, whose touching faith in their readers’ readiness to believe absolutely anything was so misplaced, a local weekly commanded credence.

“Look, Mr Lintz,” said Purbright, “you can use all the facts as I believe you know them already. I’d like you to add this, though. Say the police are anxious to hear from anyone who was out in the Heston Lane area on Monday night from eleven-thirty onwards. Oh, and you might add a mention of a plain, black van. We’d like a word with the driver...Yes, same place, Heston Lane; it went up from town just before twelve and returned about half an hour later. Pardon? Yes, black...That’s very good of you, sir.”

He grinned as he replaced the phone. “I was wondering how to put the wind up Lintz. That might have done it.”

“The bit about the van?”

“Yes. How many plain black vans would you say there are in Flaxborough?”

“There’s ours.”

“Don’t be fatuous.”

Love thought a moment. “There can’t be more than a couple of others. Bradlaw’s is black, isn’t it?”

“It is. Now what did you make of his story this morning?”

“Thin.”

“Very. I rather fancy, d’you know, that Bradlaw and Lintz cooked it up beforehand at Nab’s instigation. He certainly took Lintz home with him—I’ve checked on that. Since the murder, he could have rubbed it into Lintz that as Gwill’s heir he was bound to be suspected, and given him to believe that he, Bradlaw, would provide his alibi. But Nab was smart enough this morning to leave a hole in his story—the part about Lintz going out into the yard. It was deliberately added for our benefit. And for Bradlaw’s. It was the surest way of putting Lintz under suspicion. You noticed how Nab implied that he’d had a good deal to drink? The air of uncertainty about the game of chess...the suggestion that he had dropped off to sleep and wouldn’t have known how long Lintz was away...he did it all very nicely.”

“Don’t you think you’re giving him too much credit for cunning? We don’t know for certain that either of them left the house.”

“There’s the report of the van.”

“Just passing through from some other town, perhaps.”

“Don’t forget it came back again.”

“True.”

“Incidentally,” Purbright went on, “just before you came in I rang the Unionist Club and had a word with Hubbard, the steward. He confirmed what I’d suspected. Nab can drink all night and still see the sixteenths on that foot rule of his. Lintz pewks on a pint. On Monday night he picked his way out like a deep sea diver. Nab was cold sober and steering him.”

Love looked impressed. “In that case, it’s possible that it was Bradlaw who knew what was going to happen and who felt in need of an alibi.”

“Quite possible. But suppose we can prove that Nab took his van and drove to Heston Lane end and back. We still have no notion of why he should have wanted to murder Gwill. He can’t be so short of work that he has to provide it for himself. We still don’t know how it was done. And we don’t know who else might have been involved; heaving the body around was too much for one, surely.”

“Hillyard was seen going that way. But I suppose he could have been visiting a patient.”

“What, on foot?”

“No, perhaps not.”

Purbright rubbed his cheek. “We can’t stretch coincidence three ways. Hillyard was identified. Someone resembling the nimble Mr Gloss was described. And a van very like Nab Bradlaw’s was spotted. All around the same time and bound in the same direction. All three were friends of the murderee. One is now frightened and a second produces a leaky alibi, while the third breathes whisky fumes and gives portentous Caledonian grunts. Pray heaven we’re not faced with a conspiracy, Sid. Conspiracies are the most dreadful things to sort out. Oh, God, they’re maddening, believe me...”

The telephone rang. Again it was Lintz. The inspector would remember the instruction to insert three advertisements in that week’s issue on the lines of he knew what? Yes, well, it had turned out that four insertions had been ordered by Gwill himself the previous Saturday. Mr House had just seen them in proof. He hadn’t known about them before because the girl had taken them while he was out of the office. What did the inspector want done now?