“The only thing even remotely connected with the cine club that sticks in my mind is the death of that wretched girl who drank developer or something in a darkroom.”
“Edith Bush,” supplied the sergeant, promptly.
“That’s the one, yes. Probably absolutely irrelevant. The business just lingers in the memory, that’s all. A singularly silly death, as well as wasteful.”
“There, was no suggestion of foul play,” Love said. The stiff official phrase was laid before the inspector like a stick retrieved by a youthful, diligent Labrador.
Purbright affected airy scepticism. “No, there wouldn’t be, would there? Old Amblesby was coroner then, remember.”
Love raised his brows and was silent, awed by such worldliness.
“Never mind, Sid.” Purbright turned from the window. “Some rather more immediate problems have landed on our plate, thanks to these same enterprising guests from Fleet Street.”
“The court case, you mean?”
“Well, that shouldn’t give any trouble, now that the chief has trimmed it of Constable Cowdrey’s excesses. It goes on as a straight careless driving. Five or ten minutes and no blood spilt. No, I’m thinking of the Charlie Hockley business.”
“Just his fun,” suggested Love, hopefully.
“ ‘Fun’ in this context, Sid, is defined at law as either conduct likely to lead to a breach of the Queen’s peace, or issuing threats of grievous bodily harm, or conspiring to discharge firearms to the danger of life, or...oh, I don’t know, lots of laughable alternatives of a like kind. Mr Chubb has been reading his Blackstone and brooding on all of them.”
“I suppose he wants Alderman Hockley restrained?”
“You could say so, yes.”
Love looked thoughtful, then, quite suddenly, knowing.
“I reckon,” he said, “that he’s being put up to it.”
The inspector mutely invited him to expand his theme.
“Well,” said Love, “it does seem funny that there should be all this talk about duels just after a pair of duelling pistols was sold by old Knocker Cartwright.”
“You mean he sold them to Charlie?”
“No, to that pal of Mr Kebble’s. Little sarky bloke from Chalmsbury. Optician.”
A grin of fond recall spread over Purbright’s face. “Good Lord! Hoole. Barrington Hoole. Remember the Chalmsbury dynamitings, Sid? 2 Barry lost his eye.”
2 Reported in Bump in the Night
The sergeant frowned. “He had two when I saw him on Friday.”
“No, not his own eye. It was a bloody great glass model that once hung outside his shop and lit up at night. It used to give people quite a turn if they weren’t used to it.”
“I reckon one of those pistols would give someone a turn if it went off,” remarked Love.
Purbright considered. “I must say those newspaper interviews were suggestive of another hand in the affair,” he said. “Charlie sounded as if he was working to a script.”
“Kebble’s?”
“Could be. But in any case, I shall have to go and see him. No township can tolerate a chief citizen who invites every visitor with a complaint to stand up and be shot.”
Purbright found the mayor in the garden of his home. He was standing at the far end of the lawn, close by the post from which a line of washing was suspended. The mayoress, who had come to the door herself to admit the inspector, was now unpegging some of the clothes and loading them into a big wicker basket. Among them, Purbright noticed, were several heavy woollen vests and a number of pairs of drawers, singularly capacious and of the hue of pease pudding: Mrs Hockley, it seemed, was not of coquettish inclination in the matter of underwear.
His Worship acknowledged with a mere grunt his wife’s announcement of “the inspector of pollis”. He had assumed an awkward-looking sideways stance and was gazing for approval at Mr Hoole, whose plump but trim figure was discernible some twenty yards away against a clump of michaelmas daisies. Mr Hockley’s right arm was raised and he held in his hand a rolled-up newspaper, bent in crude representation of a firearm.
“Better, a little better,” Mr Hoole called out, distance lending his voice an even more nasal quality than usual. “You ought to be safe against a ball through the heart. Trouble is, your gut profile is a bit mm...obtrusive. If he fires low, you could lose the lot.” And Mr Hoole mimed with two hands in a most disconcerting manner the rupture and discharge of a laden abdomen.
Mrs Hockley was scowling at some socks she had just taken down from the line. “If you don’t soon cut your toenails, my lad, you can set about mending these yourself.”
“Och, piss off, woman!” retorted the mayor. She looked reassured and gave Purbright a smile of understanding before picking up the basket and returning to the house.
The inspector strolled slowly across to Hoole, who hummed and glowed and nodded several times, then averred that it was pleasant to renew acquaintance with a civilized policeman. “A very rare mm...phenomenon, inspector, as you will readily appreciate.”
Purbright said he hoped this good opinion would survive the knowledge of why he, the policeman in question, had called. “I don’t know what the custom is in Chalmsbury, Mr Hoole,” he went on, “but duels are much frowned upon in this borough. Indeed, they are accounted a most serious breach of the law.”
The optician had been watching his pupil with something less than approval. He now called to him: “I think we must consider the alternative position of your presenting your rear to the adversary and firing over your left shoulder. It is not without, ah, precedent and it has the advantage of its being difficult to penetrate the digestive organs from behind. Let us see how you manage.”
Mr Hockley began to lumber about in a circle. His body being far too thick to twist, all he managed in the way of taking aim with his bent newspaper was to stick it under his arm and blindly wave it about.
The optician turned to Purbright with a smile and placed the tips of his fingers together. He seemed pleased to have an excuse to abandon the practicalities of his job as the mayor’s second in favour of consideration of its academic aspect.
“You may be surprised to learn, inspector,” he said, “that statistically the chances of being hit are as low as one in six. It is calculated, moreover, that only one man in every fourteen who ‘go out’, as the duelling term is, actually receives the coup de cæur”.
Purbright had a fleeting mental picture of fourteen men with pistols trooping forth, rather like the men in the song who went to mow a meadow. “It is still against the law, Mr Hoole,” he murmured, “however small a proportion of casualties proves fatal.”
The spectacle of the suspended vests had caught Mr Hoole’s eye. He frowned and called out to the mayor: “Are those mm...garments on the line yours? Those which look like knitted shrouds.”