Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

Love tried hard. “It suggests confidence, doesn’t it?”

“Ah,” responded Purbright, “you’re right. These people are confident. We can be fairly sure, then,” he went on, “that this means of communication, or doing business, or buying something—whatever it is—has been used by them over a long period. They trust it. Perhaps it’s a game they enjoy for the sake of some little element of risk or thrill, as well. Another possibility, of course, is that the writer must identify himself properly, or substantially so, in case a reply or a cancellation needs to be sent. One letter actually said ‘if inconvenient, kindly send card’. That was Harry Bird.”

“He makes reapers,” said Love, helpfully. The inspector considered this information for a moment but apparently found it irrelevant, as indeed it was. He waved his pencil over the second column of his table. “Dates and times,” he murmured. “What stands out here?”

Love read dutifully down the list, checking entries with the names and addresses beside them in the first column. “All the times are in the evening,” he announced.

“They are, aren’t they?”

“And on days during this next week.”

“Yes.”

“Well?” Love looked up.

“Nothing. I just wondered if a fresh young mind might spot something significant.”

The sergeant sniffed and glanced again through the list of times. “Seven to nine—they all fall between seven and nine.”

“So they do. Perhaps those are recognized antique viewing hours.”

The pencil hovered now over column three. “What,” asked Purbright, “is an antique Japanese newel, for pity’s sake?”

“A newel is a post. Something to do with a staircase.”

Purbright said, “Well, well,” and looked further down the inventory. “Quite a number of them, aren’t there? An old flourishing industry, do you think? In Japan, at any rate...Ah, no, here is an Egyptian newel, inlaid dodecahedronic.”

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Love.

Purbright reached down a dictionary from the shelf above his head and plunged after dodecahedronic. “Something solid, with twelve equal sides,” he announced without enthusiasm. “Where does that take us?”

“A robbery split twelve ways?” suggested Love recklessly. “A fence’s code, you know.”

“How ingenious. And Superior Antique Lampstand? What nefarious coup would you say that concealed?”

Love scowled and began to pick his teeth with a match. “I know...” he said. “Try other words with the same initials. S, A, L...smash and, smash and...”

“Languish? What about Swipe Auntie’s Laundry?” Both stared a little longer at the table. Then Love shrugged impatiently. “There’s only one thing to do. Pull in a couple of these characters and drag out of them what it’s all about.”

Purbright pondered. He shook his head. “No, not just yet. There may be a better way. Look—is there anyone in this lot who doesn’t know you, who you can be sure wouldn’t recognize you as a heavy-footed copper?”

Love looked over the names. “There’s Leadbitter here. He lives nearly opposite a sister of mine and I’ve seen him sometimes from her place when I’ve been there for tea. But I don’t think he has any idea of who I am.”

“He’s never been in court, has he?”

“Not to my knowledge. Certainly never when I’ve been there.”

“Good. Then tail him, Sid. His appointment is for the day after tomorrow at a quarter-past eight. You’d best make a day of it.”

“Follow him all day long?” Love, with memories of frozen feet in St Anne’s Place, looked pained.

“Certainly. He’s not likely to call and tell you when he’s ready to go newel-viewing. If you try and pick him up in the evening, the odds are that you’ll lose him. You’ll have to keep him more or less in sight from when he leaves his house in the morning. Can that sister of yours put you up tomorrow night, do you think?”

“I imagine so.”

“That’s all right, then. Has this fellow a car?”

“He ought to. He’s the biggest meat wholesaler in Flaxborough.”

“In that case, Sid, we might stretch a point and let you borrow an o-fficial ve-hicle. Take the Hillman, and for heaven’s sake don’t scratch it or park it without lights or anything; the police are bastards in this town. Now let’s see what our butcher friend is after in the antique line.” He traced Leadbitter on the list. “Pewter Antique Tankard, indeed. And eight pounds. Always eight pounds. Why?”

“Probably as you said—a standard deposit.”

“Don’t talk wet. No one puts deposits on things they haven’t even seen. And these boys aren’t after antiques anyway, Japanese or any other kind. From what I know of most of them, they couldn’t tell a Queen Anne leg from a barmaid’s elbow. Unless I’m mistaken, though, they have one thing in common.”

“Money,” said Love without hesitation.

“Exactly. And respectability. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“Four of them are on the Council, if that counts for anything.”

“We’ll allow that.”

“And eight...no, nine, belong to the County Club.”

“So does the Chief Constable. That should make them unimpeachable.”

Love opened his mouth, shut it, and then blurted: “Look—I know it sounds corney, but what about blackmail?”

“Oh, Sid!” Purbright gave him an upward glance of sad remonstrance.

“Yes, but why not? These adverts, could be a sort of reminder that another instalment of hush money is due. Look at the sort of people who reply—or pretend to be replying. They’re all well known and well off, too. Gwill owned a newspaper. He could easily have found out things about them that they would be scared of seeing in print. We know that Gwill was careful to handle the adverts, and the box replies himself. It could be that the people paying him had been told to enclose a letter explaining the money in case an envelope went astray or got opened by one of the office staff by mistake.”

Purbright had listened attentively. “Attractive,” he conceded. “A neat idea. But it doesn’t tie up with certain facts. In the first place, Gwill had been dead a couple of days, and known by the whole town to be dead, when these letters were sent off. Instead of posting their eight quidses, these people would have been celebrating the closing of the account.”

“Only if they knew who was blackmailing them,” said Love. “We can’t be sure that they did. In fact the whole beauty of the box reply system would have been the concealment of the black-mailer’s identity.”

Purbright rubbed his cheek. “That’s perfectly true,” he said; then, with a frown, “But why all this appointment nonsense? There could be no point in it once the money had passed over. Even as a blind for anyone who might open the letter by mistake it’s unnecessarily elaborate.”

Dampened by this objection, Love decided against putting forward his final and most entrancing theory. Drugs, he calculated, was not the suggestion the inspector was waiting to hear.

Chapter Eleven

The account of the curious end of the proprietor of the Flaxborough Citizen that had been allowed to appear in his own publication was presented with none of the air of repressed delirium that had characterized earlier revelations in the national Press. But it was fulsome enough in its own way.

Once the Citizen had made it clear that the occasion was one it ‘regretted to announce’ and that the victim was the ‘well-known public figure’ who had enjoyed the privilege of being a ‘principal in the town’s leading printing and publishing concern’, it treated his corpse pretty well like that of anyone else.

The inquest was reported in detail and, as if to compensate for the dullness of its formalities and its inconclusiveness, followed up by Inspector Purbright’s intriguing request for information. This was enough to have most readers speculating happily on what had been going on and, indeed, on what was Up.