Colin Watson - Coffin Scarcely Used

The doctor took his arm, not ungently, and said, as if speaking to himself: “The time is past for pretence. That’s too dangerous now. We need to make the legend a reality, or God knows when we’ll sleep again.” Then he grinned in the dusk and added sharply: “And so, my tubby little meat packer, let us go to redress an ancient wrong.”

Together they regained the road and began walking back the way their van had come. The figures in the thickening dark were like those of Don Quixote and his fearful squire.

Chapter Seventeen

The landlord of the Brink of Discovery was not a local man but a former singer from the North of England who had saved the proceeds of brief but phenomenally profitable popularity and invested them in what he called ‘the mine host racket’.

“You see how it is,” he said to Purbright and his companion. “The locals haven’t enough honest thirst to keep the flippin’ beer engine from rusting. Do you know what they do? They brew some filthy liver-lifter of their own and guzzle it in bed until they’re in the mood to get up and fire a few ricks. What? You’d never believe. Honest, you wouldn’t. And they’re all related, this lot are. Here, even when they bother to get married there’s no call for half of ’em to change their names. My Freda says: ‘There’s another three village idiots going to church’ every time the wedding bells ring. They’re a bright lot round here, I’ll tell you.”

“We were hoping...” Purbright put in.

The landlord poddled him in the shoulder with one finger. “So you see,” he went on relentlessly, “there’s nothing round here to keep a pub’s brass polished. They’re not civilized. Arson and incest, them’s their hobbies, my Freda says, and that’s just about it. Well, if I had my way I wouldn’t have ’em in the place. They just sit round and keep spitting in their beer to make it last out and gouging holes in the bar floor with their ugly great boots. Look, now—look over there at that trestle—one of ’em’s been hacking at it with a bloody scythe. I tell you they bring scythes in here. They do—no, really.”

Seizing the opportunity for speech that seemed to be presented by the landlord’s brows rising so high that his eye-pouches were pulled taut like grey elastic, Purbright tried again.

“We’re...” was all he managed.

“You’re dicks—yes, I know.” The landlord beamed upon them like a school matron. “It’s those raincoats. Here, I expect you’re after one of these straw-chewing zombies for slipping a hunk of rat poison into his auntie. That’s a favourite of theirs, rat poison is. Some of ’em get used to it. No, you’d not believe that, would you? But it’s right. They eat it like bloody sandwich spread. Never mind”—he tossed his head—“we’ll not waste time talking about that lot, shall we. I was telling you how I came to make this place pay. D’you know where the real trade comes from? The real money? Do you?” He leaned nearer, filling the little service hatch with his affable moon-face. “From the city. Brum. And over from Shrewsbury, some of ’em. And Stafford an’ all. Even Liverpool in the summer. You know why, don’t you? Listen. It’s what we call a gimmick in show business. A gimmick, that’s what. Like echo chambers and crimpy hair and walloping great fat chests and that. You see, I got my old agent to come and give the place the once over when I took it on. First thing he did was change the name. The Bull, it used to be. We’ll give ’em Bull, he says. You want something classy and half-sloshed like, that’ll go down with the intelligentsia out with one another’s missuses. Mind you, it’s all above board. No Mr and Mrs Smith or any of that lark. Proper names and all different. Aye, anyway...But look here, you’re the pollis, aren’t you? You’ll be wanting to know something, I suppose. Come on, don’t be bashful. Hey, Freda! Freda, love!” He disappeared.

Purbright’s companion blew out his cheeks and softly suspired an appropriate obscenity. “Sorry about him, old chap, but he’s not one of our home-reared, believe me. My chief just asked me to help you with the geography and the language; we didn’t bargain for a blasted walking public address system.”

A door opened behind them and they were joined by the landlord, bearing a tray set with three glasses. “Here,” he said. Purbright and the other policeman each took a whisky. “Right,” said the landlord. He sat down and regarded them with the air of a grocer ready to take a list. His furious loquacity seemed to have burned itself out.

In the hatch vacated by the landlord suddenly appeared the face of a heavily breathing, youngish woman with lemon-coloured hair. She gazed at them with a mixture of interest and amusement. “Lookin’ for corpsesez?” she asked.

The landlord flapped his hand at her. “Go switch the log on in the Tudor,” he commanded. His wife wrinkled her nose and lumbered off into the interior. “Miss Openshaw Palladium 1946,” he explained, then, half to himself, “That was before wide screens, mind.”

Purbright made formal introductions and began putting his questions.

“We’re interested in a roundabout way,” he said, “in a lady from Flaxborough—you know where that is, I suppose?—called Mrs Joan Carobleat. Has anyone ever stayed here under that name?”

The landlord yelled “Freda!” and added in normal tones, while the glasses still quivered, “Aye, I get you. Wait till she brings the book.”

Once more his wife materialized, Judy-like, in the hatch. “The book, love—fetch it here, will you?” Again she was gone, good-naturedly contemptuous and foot-dragging. Purbright and the local inspector each received the distinct impression that she had winked at him.

The landlord quickly found the signature he was looking for. He held out the book and pointed to it. Purbright saw that it was for the two nights before his encounter with Mrs Carobleat as she was leaving Flaxborough station. It confirmed her own story.

“You’re sure she actually stayed here—slept here, I mean?” he asked.

“Oh, yes, rather do I. I noticed, you know. She’s not exactly a stranger here, if you know what I mean.”

“And there’s no doubt she could have been nowhere else but here in the hotel on that second night?”

“Not unless she climbed out of the window and climbed back again in time for six-thirty tea. Look—it’s marked here—tea, six-thirty. She left to catch the eight-five at Hereford.” The landlord slammed the book shut and jutted his face forward. “What’s up? What’s she done? I’ll not, er...you know. Here, don’t tell me she’s been minced or something?” The last question was delivered with hopeful interest and a manual gesture suggestive of sawing.

Purbright said: “She stayed here fairly regularly, then? How often?”

“Oh, once or twice a month, maybe.”

“As often as that?” Purbright sounded surprised.

“Oh, aye. Recently, anyway. Of course, I’ve not been here all that long.”

“Since when?”

“Early last summer. May or June. She’s been here eight or nine times since then. Just for the odd night or two.”

“And always on her own?”

The landlord hesitated.

“Well?” Purbright’s tone was inoffensive, yet pressing.

The other scratched his ear. “Put it this way,” he said. “She was on her own all right when she was actually here. But she generally pushed off early in the evening and turned up again for breakfast. Oddly enough, though, this last time she did stay the night just as I told you. You needn’t worry about that. But most other times she didn’t.”

“What was the idea? Did she tell you?”

“She didn’t say anything, but I thought the same as anyone else would. She’s no chicken, but goodish looking. Married for a cert. And probably with a husband who’d want to know where she’d been. Well, if ever he came here he could see she’d spent the night very respectably in a single room with none of that Mr and Mrs Smith malarkey.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see any harm in obliging her. There was nothing common about her.”