“That’s all right, old chap. I’ve been thinking.”
“Good. About places where your car might have been left on its own in the last year or so?”
“Aye.” Kebble frowned. He was palm-rolling a pencil. “Any idea of a likely date?”
“None. How long have you had the car?”
“Oh...three, nearly four years.”
“Do you have it serviced?”
“When it’s asthma gets bad. Not regularly.”
“Where?”
“Tom Nicholson does it.”
The inspector shook his head. “I can’t see Tom as Flax’s Cecil B. de Mille. Anyway, his place wouldn’t be big enough.”
For a while, Purbright stared absently at Mr Kebble’s hat, which still reposed on the back of its owner’s head. When he spoke again, it was in the manner of delivering a casual afterthought. “Tell me, Joss—did you ever have anything done to your wagon by South Circuit Motors?”
A gleam shone suddenly in Mr Kebble’s eye. “You’re right, old chap. I did. They took it in for a fortnight last year to fit a new cylinder head. August, I should think.”
“Mr Blossom,” said Purbright, “has pretty extensive premises, with that showroom next to the service bay. It must ease his problems when cars under repair have to be kept there for a few days.”
The editor knew better than to push speculation too far. He changed the subject. “They tell me there’ll be another adjournment of Becket’s driving case tomorrow.”
Purbright confirmed that this was so. He found himself wondering why the worldly-wise Kebble should mention a matter of such relative triviality. Then he saw that the man wore the expression of amused mystification which he recognized as a portent of confidence-sharing.
“Funny thing about that case,” remarked Mr Kebble. “It’s about as serious as farting on a Sunday, yet Grail’s tottie went to the trouble of coming in specially to talk to me about it.”
“To try and have it kept out of the paper, you mean?”
“Aye—well, that’s what it amounted to, although she was fly enough to wrap it up as some sort of professional favour.”
Purbright considered. “Why do you think they didn’t want the case to get into print?”
“I don’t know, but it’s odd. A journalist wouldn’t dream of trying that on unless there was the hell of a lot at stake. These people aren’t even near home. Why should they worry about local publicity?”
“Local publicity?”
“Aye. It was the Flaxborough paper the girl was bothered about. And then only for the next couple of weeks—you know, as if they wanted to be out of the area before names got around.”
Purbright frowned. “But everyone knew they were here—and why. Their own paper had already seen to that.”
Mr Kebble agreed that the motive for Miss Clemenceaux’s approach was difficult to guess. “One thing you can be sure of, though, old chap—she’s not likely to tell you if she doesn’t want to.”
The inspector had only one more question to put to the editor of the Flaxborough Citizen, and he had little hope of its proving productive. “Do you happen to remember,” he asked, “a man called Henry Bush? In his early thirties. Something of a philanderer, I believe. His wife died of poisoning.”
Mr Kebble diligently rolled his pencil. “I remember the woman’s death,” he said. “It was a damn good story. That was before I came to Flax, though. I tell you who would be able to tell you about him—or about her, rather. Bush was supposed to have skipped off with another tottie some time before his missus died. Have a word with Harry Pearce. He’s a councillor. Used to keep a draper’s shop, they tell me.”
At Miriam Lodge, Purbright remarked to Love on the way in which Pearce’s name kept cropping up. The man himself had now done so, announced Love, with the air of a successful conjuror: Hollis had brought him in nearly half an hour ago.
“I really must apologize,” said the inspector to the stringy, narrow-headed, humourless-looking man whom he found waiting nervously in a room on his own, “for keeping you so long. It was good of you to come.”
“In point of fact, and actually,” said Mr Pearce, “I was brought.”
Purbright smiled reassuringly. He remembered Pearce now in connection with two events. As one was a murder trial and the other an inquest, the possibility occurred to him that the man might be beginning to regard himself as investigation-prone.
“Oh, not brought, Mr Pearce—or only in the narrowest sense of your being afforded transport.”
“As I understood matters, I was being asked to help the police with their inquiries, but nobody has said what inquiries.” Councillor Pearce followed up this slightly plaintive observation with a thoughtful silence, then said suddenly and to no purpose that Purbright could imagine: “With respect.”
“A gentleman named Clive Grail—a journalist from London—has died suddenly while on a visit to Flaxborough, Mr Pearce. Hence the inquiries you mention. Were you acquainted with Mr Grail, sir?”
“The answer to that must be no. Definitely no.”
Purbright looked surprised. “But he was anxious to talk to you, or so I have been told by more than one person. It seems you shared a common interest.”
“Am I allowed to know what interest, officer?”
“Of course you are, sir. Photography. And you really have no need to be defensive. No one has thought of accusing you of anything.”
Pearce looked as if he was about to dispute this. Then he turned his head aside and stared, in mute martyrdom, at the empty fireplace.
“Having regard to photography,” he said, “I don’t suppose that the point about me being secretary of the Cine Society is in dispute, and so I rest it where it stands.”
Undismayed by the imponderables of Mr Pearce’s council debating style, the inspector tried a straight question. “As secretary, did you ever hear it suggested that certain members of the club might be concerned in making films on the side—the sort of films that the general membership would not have approved of?”
“Never,” declared Mr Pearce. “Very definitely, never.”
“So, Mr Grail would have been wasting his time if he had come to see you in hope of your confirming the truth of such stories?”
“His time and mine.”
Purbright nodded, then, without pause, added: “You were acquainted, of course, with Mr and Mrs Henry Bush, at the time when they both were active members of the club?”
“Now, look here, inspector...” Pearce had half-raised a hand, as if to ward off an assault. For an instant, Purbright saw actual alarm in his eyes. He pressed his advantage.
“Would it surprise you, Mr Pearce, to learn that it was Bush who gave Clive Grail the information on which the Sunday Herald decided to base a story about pornographic filming in Flaxborough?”