Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

“What’s that?” asked Love.

“Enemas.”

“He didn’t look as if there was anything wrong with him. And I’m sure he couldn’t have thought I wanted an enema.”

Purbright glanced at him briefly and again addressed the ceiling. “No, I’m sure he couldn’t. So there must be some other reason for the recognition of one man of the world by another.”

Love lifted one eyebrow, but said nothing.

“These cubicle things,” said Purbright. “Would you say they’d been there long? Were they an original part of the house?”

“I don’t think so. They looked like conversions. Not brand new, but recent.”

“Solid?”

“Well...” Love considered. “I don’t know much about building, but they looked a pretty sound job of carpentry. Sort of semi-permanent.”

“You didn’t go down the second corridor?”

“No, there was a sign up...”

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten.” Purbright was silent. Then he looked again at his watch and yawned. “We do see life, don’t we?” He began tidying up his desk.

Before Love could ask what he was supposed to deduce from the evening’s events, he heard footsteps approaching from the main office. Purbright listened. “The Chief Constable,” he said, “is upon us.”

Mr Chubb knocked punctiliously before entering. He wore a grey overcoat of remarkable rigidity and carried a bowler hat and what he himself would have termed a gamp. He looked as if he might have been attending a public meeting of the better, quieter sort; of the Friends of Flaxborough Cathedral, say.

“Ah, Purbright,” he said, with “Evening, sergeant,” in kindly parenthesis, “I’ve just come from having a word or two with the Coroner. No, sit down, sit down.” He propped himself against a cupboard in his customary attitude of elegant detachment and gave the impression of being ready to hear petitioners. After some seconds he said: “He wants to get this Gwill business cleared up, you know. Amblesby’s rather old for adjournments. He can’t always remember what he’s adjourned or why.” Mr Chubb permitted himself a weak smile, then extinguished it and added: “A perfectly sound old fellow, of course.”

“Oh, yes,” Purbright agreed, with a shade of querulousness.

“You’re still confident poor Gwill was deliberately, er...”

“Quite, sir.”

“Mmm...” Mr Chubb regarded his yellow knitted gloves. “Anything turned up since last we talked about it?”

Purbright salvaged his file from the drawer into which he had pushed it a few moments before and turned over a few pages of notes. “I had quite an interesting conversation with Mr Smith, of the Eastern Provinces,” he announced.

“Percy Smith. Oh, yes; I know him very well. Extremely sound on coarse fishing. Not terribly forthcoming, though, as a rule.”

“No, sir,” Purbright agreed, drily. “But he did confide that Gwill was a beneficiary under the will of the late Mr Harold Carobleat—they were next door neighbours, if you remember, sir—in spite of the widow having been left nothing. And he also admitted that Gwill received and deposited sums of money in cash that appeared to have had nothing to do with his newspaper business.”

“Goodness me,” said the Chief Constable, tonelessly. He looked at Love, then back to Purbright. “Do you suppose that what Smith told you—the money side of it, one might say—had anything to do with the poor fellow coming to a sticky end? Of course,” he added hastily, “that will business sounds absolutely incredible. It does, really.”

Purbright replied that it was beginning to appear, in his opinion, that Gwill’s mysterious source of income might have had a great deal to do with his death and, further, that the arranging and accomplishment of his murder could no longer be assumed to have been the work of a specific individual.

“You think several people might have been in it?”

“Three, sir. Probably four. Perhaps even five.”

“Not Flaxborough people, surely?” There was a note of pleading in Mr Chubb’s voice.

“Those I have in mind are no strangers to the town, sir.”

The Chief Constable compressed his thin mouth, walked slowly across to Purbright’s desk and actually drew up a chair for himself. Then he sighed and said: “You’d better give me the names, my boy. Might as well know where we are. You could be wrong, of course.”

“Oh, certainly,” Purbright agreed. “I hope I am. But if it turns out that only one person did it, after all, it will be rather nice to feel that four citizens have been restored, as you might say.”

He went on, briskly: “As a matter of fact, you have the names already. I ran over them when I saw you after the inquest opening. They are all the obvious ones, of course, but I see no reason for discarding them on that account. Gloss presents an interesting study. He is a man whom professional training should have taught to leave no part of his dealings with the dead man capable of being interpreted unfavourably. Yet scarcely is the crime discovered before he is round to see you, sir, with hints of secret knowledge and personal danger. He admits to me his presence in Gwill’s house on the night of the murder. He is surprisingly frank about certain financial aspects of his client’s affairs. He gives all sorts of unexpected replies to questions. In short, he asks so persistently to be suspected that we can be quite sure he is trying to lead us along a blank alley, at the end of which he will have no difficulty in refuting any specific charge we might feel constrained to level against him.”

Love looked on in undisguised admiration of Purbright’s dialectic. Then he glanced to see how Mr Chubb was taking it.

The Chief Constable roused himself to ask: “But what hard evidence have you to support all this? It sounds—if you’ll forgive me saying so—just a fraction theoretical. I must admit,” he added almost with warmth, “that I never suspected you of applying such...such a wealth of psychology, as you might say. I’d always thought traffic was your forte. But it’s the unexpected that really puts us all to the test. Pity, in one sense, that we’re rather badly off for crime round here. Nastiness is as much as most of them can rise to.”

“Then there is Doctor Hillyard,” Purbright went on, keeping to his own track. “Hillyard was Gwill’s doctor and on fairly close social terms with him. He also was present at his home on the night of the murder. It may or may not be significant that Hillyard was the doctor in attendance upon Harold Carobleat at the time of his death six months ago.”

Mr Chubb started and puffed out his cheeks. “Oh, look here,” he said, then subsided and murmured, “Good Lord,” with great restraint.

“Yes, sir?” Purbright inquired respectfully.

“Well,” said the Chief Constable, “it’s only that you’ve mentioned this chap Carobleat several times before. If you’re going to bring him up again, at least you might explain what he has to do with all this. I really don’t see the connection, except through the widow woman, so to speak.”

“That is one connection, certainly,” Purbright agreed. “But I think I also mentioned Carobleat’s will, didn’t I, sir?”

“Yes, you did.”

“Which only turned up fairly recently.”

“I don’t remember your saying that.”

“No, sir. But that is what happened. And in view of the fact that Mr Gloss proves to have been Carobleat’s solicitor as well as Gwill’s, we might be forgiven for finding the unorthodoxy of the chain of events that began with Carobleat’s death somewhat disquieting. Particularly”—he forestalled another interruption—“as it is fairly clear that Carobleat, Gwill, Gloss, Hillyard and the undertaker Bradlaw were originally concerned together in some enterprise that they succeeded in keeping remarkably private, but which, if I am not mistaken, was illegal.” Purbright paused, then added with the air of having given the point some consideration, “And immoral, to boot.”