Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

Gloss paused to look at Purbright’s lightly pencilled shorthand worming between the lines. “Please tell me,” he said, “if I am forging too far ahead of that admirable squiggle.”

“Not at all, sir,” said Purbright, evenly. “My squiggle likes a fleet quarry. But I should like my cup of tea now, if you don’t mind.” And he drank it. “Will you go on from ‘social nature’, sir?”

Gloss frowned, then smoothly resumed.

“Hillyard was seated by the fire and drinking a glass of whisky. He appeared contemplative. Gwill fetched a glass for me and invited me to help myself from the decanter. He took nothing to drink himself; he was an abstainer, you know. I noticed he was chewing, however, and I remember feeling a little irritated at the sight of his jaws working away. Adult sweet-eaters invariably annoy me. They seem furtively self-indulgent and sensual in a horrid, immature way. I mention the fact of Gwill’s chewing because it explains why I can tell you very little of something that occurred almost immediately after my arrival, something which I think now may have been of significance.

“The telephone rang, and Gwill took the call in the room where we were sitting. As he listened, he put another loathsome sweet-meat into his mouth, and I was so preoccupied with the way his mastication moved the telephone earpiece up and down that I failed to take any notice of the conversation. There was no doubt of its outcome, though, for Gwill put the instrument down and hastened out of the house with no more than a mumble about being back in a few minutes.”

Gloss paused, then looked very solemnly at Purbright. “He did not come back and I never saw him again. Hillyard and I waited for perhaps half an hour. Then I went upstairs to ask Mrs Poole if she had any idea of where he might have gone and to request her to remain awake until his return. She was not there, of course. Hillyard and I could think of nothing practical to do in the circumstances and so we left the house and walked to our respective homes.”

Purbright glanced up. “Did you lock the door of the house, sir?”

“We decided it would be better to leave it insecure than to risk his having taken no key and being obliged to break a window or something of that kind.”

“You felt no anxiety on his behalf other than being worried about locking him out?”

“None. Why should we? As a matter of fact, we both took it for granted that he was visiting some house fairly close at hand. It was only later that I realized the unlikelihood of that having been the case.”

“What led you to realize that?”

“I remembered two things about the telephone call that did not register on my mind at the time but which must have made a subconscious impression.”

“Yes, Mr Gloss?”

“Perhaps a minute before the telephone bell rang, I heard a vehicle draw up in the road outside. It has occurred to me since that a public telephone kiosk stands on Heston Lane some little way nearer the town and on the opposite side of the road. I incline to the belief that the call to Gwill’s house came from that kiosk and was made by the driver of the vehicle I heard.”

“Can you say what sort of a vehicle it sounded to be, sir?”

“I’m afraid I cannot. It made a noticeable noise, so it is likely to have been a moderately large car or a small lorry.”

“Might it have been a van?”

Gloss considered. “Conceivably,” he said.

“And now, sir, perhaps you’ll tell me the second thing about the telephone call that has come back to you since Monday night.”

“Oh, yes; the second thing.” Gloss’s gaze fell; he drummed fingers on his knee and gave, Purbright thought, a fair impersonation of reluctant prosecutor. “I am almost certain,” he said, “that Gwill addressed the maker of the telephone call as George.”

“George?”

“That is my recollection, inspector. But I wish to be perfectly fair. My attention, as I have said, was distracted. It is just possible that the name was something similar.”

“Surely there aren’t many names that sound similar to George, Mr Gloss?”

“No? No, perhaps not. I have not given the matter much thought. I wished only to be frank and to impart impressions as they have come to me, quite undisturbed by conjecture.”

“Ah, very proper, sir.” The inspector’s face was blank. So was the other’s. They remained a while looking at each other in querulous politeness. Purbright broke the silence.

“Why did Mr Bradlaw come to see you this morning?”

“Bradlaw...” Gloss smiled. “You had made him nervous, I think. He came here to seek reassurance.”

“Why should he have been nervous?”

“He is inclined to be more sensitive to questioning than you might imagine, inspector. He has a rough manner, but that is deceptive. The troubles of others upset him to a greater extent than is healthy, perhaps, for one in his profession.”

“I have known Mr Bradlaw for quite a few years, sir.”

“Then you will be acquainted with his, ah, idiosyncracies.”

“Yes, I am.”

Gloss nodded and stared up at the ceiling.

“Tell me,” said Purbright in a brisker tone, “was Bradlaw at Mr Gwill’s house at any time on Monday night?”

Without lowering his eyes, Gloss said gently: “He may have been. But of course he was not present while I was there—as you must have judged from the fact that I made no mention of him in my account of what transpired.”

Purbright gave a little bow of acknowledgement. Then he asked: “Did you notice if Mr Gwill took a bucket or a can of water down the drive that night?”

For the first time in the interview the solicitor looked surprised. “Water? What on earth would he have been doing with buckets of water?”

“What, indeed,” said Purbright, watching him. The bewilderment seemed genuine. Then Gloss’s expression changed. “Wait a moment,” he said, “I still fail to see the significance of your allusion to water-cans, but I do remember now something that struck me as slightly out of the ordinary when I arrived at Gwill’s house. On opening the gate, I noticed the gravel felt sodden underfoot as though heavy rain had fallen. But there had been no rain, of course. And the ground was wet only at that one point.”

“Near the gate?”

“Yes. Just inside, I should say.”

Purbright looked at his watch, stood up, and began buttoning his coat. “I’m most obliged to you, Mr Gloss; you’ve been very patient. I do believe I’ve run out of questions.”

“And I’m not at all sure,” replied Gloss with a court-room smile, “but that I have run out of answers.”

While Gloss was carefully contributing to Purbright’s mounting collection of enigmas, contradictions, deductions and doubts, two other professional men of Flaxborough were discoursing.

Said Mr Bradlaw to Dr Hillyard (with whom he had lately lunched and who now sat regarding him mournfully in his spacious but musty drawing-room): “The whole damned thing will have to be dropped for the time being. We can build it up later when the fuss about poor old Marcus has died down.”

Said Dr Hillyard, self-consciously sober and liverishly emphatic: “It cannot and it needn’t. Get that into your head, man. Marcus asked for what he got, by God he did, but it can’t be left at that. What’s running smoothly now will have to keep on running or else be abandoned altogether. And I’ll not see that happen after what we’ve put into it.”

“But the police...”

“The police! Aye, and what will they do? Run round in ever-decreasing circles until they become their own colonic stoppages.” Hillyard stretched out a lanky leg and kicked at coal at the fire edge. He scowled at the upsurge of flame.

“Listen,” said Bradlaw, “I know the man Purbright. He may not be brilliant but he perseveres. He makes himself a thorough nuisance and rubs it in by constantly apologizing. I had him to put up with this morning. I tell you he’ll be on our backs until kingdom come, with his ‘I hate to trouble you’ and ‘Mightn’t it be so’ and ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell me’.”