Malley shook his head and puffed his cheeks in refutation. “Mr Bush, as I understand it, wasn’t much given to grief. He was a bit of a one for the totties, they tell me. Both before and after his missus passed on.”
“Very well, then, Bill. What do the insurance people want to believe? That he was done in?”
The sergeant squinted down his pipe stem. “I reckon they’d settle for that. Aye.”
“I fail to see what we can do to help at this end. The fellow’s wife certainly couldn’t be proved to have been murdered. There was no one near her at the time. Indications of accident were straightforward enough. And there wasn’t a whisper of anybody wishing to harm her—for insurance or any other reason.”
Malley grunted. He gave the inspector a glance that was partly speculative, partly sceptical. “So we kept saying at the time,” he said.
Purbright was examining his sleeve. “What else did your London friends tell you, Bill?”
“Not much. There was something queer about the fire, though. Very violent, he said. Almost explosive. And they found traces afterwards of celluloid.”
“Which would explain the violence.”
“Aye. But modern film isn’t made of celluloid. Not any kind that Bush might have been using, anyway. They think he must have had several reels of really old-fashioned stuff lying about in there.”
“Open?”
“Unwound, even. That’s the theory. I said nowt. You get on with it, mate, I thought. I wasn’t going to have him quoting a copper from two hundred miles away to help them upset a verdict that their own coroner’s already recorded.”
“The inquest wasn’t adjourned, then?” Purbright asked.
“Oh, no. Death by misadventure. That was that, apparently.”
“In that case,” said the inspector, “let us continue to plough our own furrow, Bill.” After a pause, he added: “Still, it’s interesting to know what’s been turned up in another corner of the field, isn’t it?”
Malley continued for a while to scoop tarry fragments from his pipe bowl. Purbright recognized in the sergeant’s lingering a sign that he would, in the fullness of time, either impart a piece of surprising information or make a suggestion that he feared might be unwelcome. He waited.
The quantity of pipe reamings that Malley caught in his big, cupped hand eventually satisfied him as adequate and he tipped them carefully into an old envelope, which he folded, re-folded, and dropped into the inspector’s waste-paper basket. Purbright caught a whiff of what a whaler’s forecastle must have been like after a five-year voyage.
“Old-fashioned,” said Malley, reflectively. He pocketed the pipe, snorted a little breath in and out of his nose, and added: “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Well, there was that film that cremated poor old Henry—if we’re to take the word of whoever investigated the fire...”
“The police, presumably,” interposed Purbright.
“Aye, London police,” the sergeant amended carefully. He went on: “Well, that film was old-fashioned, out of date, not the sort that’s used any more. Bloody dangerous, and all. Right?”
“Certainly, if it was celluloid.”
The fat man gave two more of his little clearance snorts. “Now go back to the wife’s death. That stuff she swallowed in her coffee was a film-processing chemical. One of the cyanide salts. Sodium, was it? I can’t remember which, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, it was a chemical that’s not used any more. Bloody dangerous. Out of date. Old-fashioned.”
Purbright gave the matter thought. “Pretty tenuous,” he said, at last.
The sergeant looked encouraged. He nodded. “Just what I thought.”
“Ah,” said Purbright.
Chapter Twelve
The managing editor of the Sunday Herald was, at half past four that afternoon, suddenly and urgently desirous of conversation with Clive Grail. His personal assistant, a young man who could speak English and look up telephone numbers, made the call. Becket answered.
“It’s Richardson,” Becket said to Birdie, his hand over the mouthpiece.
“Christ, he’s quick off the mark. Never mind, here we go.” And she took the phone. “I could say that I was just about to ring you, Mr Richardson, but that would not be true. I had intended to telephone at six o’clock if the situation had not changed. The fact is that we are having the teeniest bit of worry up here.”
“Grail. I asked for Grail. Didn’t they tell you I asked for Grail? You’re Miss, er... Yes, I didn’t ask—how do you mean worry? Put Grail on, will you, miss, er...”
“He is not here, Mr Richardson. This is Birdie Clemenceaux. Mr Grail went out some hours ago. And that is why we are a little anxious.”
“Out? Where’s out? There’s nothing there to go out to, is there? My info was that it’s some kind of a village.”
“Flaxborough is a market town of several thousand inhabitants, in point of fact, but what I...”
“In point of nothing, Miss Clemenceaux. What are you trying to tell me? I simply want to talk to Grail. Go shout for him. Loud. Won’t do you any harm. I was raised on a farm in New South Wales. You don’t know what distances are.”
Birdie said very patiently: “Mr Grail left the house about six hours ago. He said he would take a walk to clear a headache. He did not return for lunch. He has not been in touch by telephone. There probably is a perfectly simple explanation, and I should not have bothered you yet if you had not happened to ring. But the story Mr Grail has been preparing is, as you know, a delicate one; and local feelings have run a little high.”
She waited, knowing that some of the things she had said would be filtering by now into the managing editor’s consciousness.
Several seconds passed.
“Very worrying,” said Richardson, with newfound gravity.
“Oh, I wouldn’t go so far as...”
“Extremely worrying,” he said. “Do you have,” Richardson asked after a further interval for thought, “some sort of a village constable around the place?”
Birdie resisted the temptation to say yes, but he’s mending the stocks at the moment. She suggested instead that no police force would take kindly to being asked to mount a search in broad daylight for an able-bodied adult who had missed his lunch.
“Right, we’ll give him another couple of hours,” said Richardson, grudgingly. “But keep in touch. I’ll be here until eight or nine. After that, you can reach me at home.” He handed the phone to his personal assistant, who told her the number of what he denned carefully as “Mr Richardson’s private residence in Addington Park.” (It felt like getting the MBE, Birdie told Lanching afterwards.)