“By God, he had room to talk!”
Too late did Pearce realize that his venting of long-suppressed anger and disgust had also let out what this policeman would see at once as a highly suggestive accusation.
“By which,” said Purbright, “I take you to mean that Bush was involved in precisely the sort of activity the Herald wished to investigate.”
“You can take me to mean that the man you’re talking about had an evil mind and evil ways,” Pearce retorted sulkily.
“Did you know he had made approaches to the paper?”
“For money?” Pearce made the phrase sound like the entire Judas story.
“Oh, yes; for money, certainly.”
“So I had heard.”
“Had others heard, Mr Pearce?”
“I suppose so. Some of them had telephone calls from the paper. They were pestering calls.”
“Do you know if Mrs Bush ever received such a call?”
Again anger flared; it seemingly was an emotion that Pearce found difficult to control before it could set off an indiscretion.
“Do I know? Never mind if I know. You know, all right. Why else would you be asking me all this? Why else should poor Edie have...” The sentence tailed into bitter, recriminatory silence.
For some moments, Purbright regarded Pearce thoughtfully. When he spoke, it was quite without overtones of blame or suspicion. “I can recall nothing being said at the inquest on Mrs Bush about her having been subjected to inquiries from a newspaper.”
Pearce said nothing.
“And yet,” the inspector went on, “she must have been receiving them not very long before the accident.”
Again Pearce made no reply.
Purbright shifted his long frame into a more relaxed posture in his chair. “Tell me, Mr Pearce—you seem to have known Edith Bush fairly well—how did she come to marry a man who showed so little concern for her?”
It looked at first as if Pearce had settled into sullen uncommunicativeness. Then Purbright saw the thin hands unclench, the shoulders droop within the rusty black Sunday-best jacket into which the draper’s wife had insistently thrust him for his outing in a police car, and the sad, watery eyes rise to meet his own. It’s what he wants, thought Purbright. Talking about her. It’s what he wants.
“He was rubbish,” declared Pearce, “but she was infatuated with him. He could make her do anything he wanted. I don’t know where he turned up from. Not from round here. And not from Brocklestone, either.”
“Brocklestone?”
“Brocklestone was Edie’s home. She came here after her father died and got a job with Fieldings Photographic. That’s where he met her, as I understand it. He made out he was some sort of fashion photographer. Before many weeks were out, he’d put paid to her self-respect.” Pearce gave the inspector a long, meaningful stare. “They co-habited.”
Purbright had the feeling he was expected to register profound shock. He did his best with a soundless whistle. It made him look momentarily nonchalant. “They did marry, though, surely?”
“Oh, yes,” agreed Pearce, with heavy irony, “they locked the stable door.”
“But it was not a happy marriage.”
Pearce pondered the proposition as if the word “happy” had never before occurred to him in a matrimonial context. Then, “He debauched her,” he declared with finality.
“In what way, Mr Pearce?”
“I would rather not say.”
Purbright sighed. “Look sir, I’m not sure if you appreciate the object of the questions we are now asking you—among others. A man is dead. The circumstances of his death are odd, to put it mildly. I think now that two earlier deaths may not be unrelated. So long as the facts remain obscure, there must be a danger of further violence. You can help prevent this happening, but only by giving frank answers.”
“I’ve been as frank as I can. As my conscience permits.”
“That is not my impression, Mr Pearce.”
“Never mind your impressions, officer. There is a right and a wrong way of going about these things. Why don’t you ask the man Bush about what he made his wife do, if you’re so interested?”
“Because,” said Purbright, “the man Bush happens to have been killed. His was one of the earlier deaths I mentioned just now.”
The statement was made quietly, almost casually, but there was alertness and calculation in the inspector’s eye. He did not miss Pearce’s quick intake of breath. What he was not prepared for, though, was the draper’s immediate seizure of his arm and the hoarsely whispered demand: “Did they get the one who did it?”
Chapter Seventeen
The proprietor of the South Circuit Garage had a manner exactly suitable to the fleeting nature of most of his commercial transactions. He was a breezy man. And Mr Alfred Blossom’s breeziness would intensify in ratio to the questionableness of the deal in hand at the moment.
Policemen inspired him to a positive gale of facetious good fellowship.
To Purbright and Love he offered in quick succession a handshake, the eye-winking hope that they knew better than to look for any knocked-off wagons on his premises, and an invitation to drink what he called “some special sherry wine” in his office.
The inspector, whose single experience of Mr Blossom’s hospitality had left an impression vaguely suggestive of antifreeze, explained regretfully that they both were on duty. Mr Blossom laughed in the back of his nose. “That’s right, matey. Yes, matey. Gorblimey-O’Reilly!”
Love smiled in sympathy with the roguishness of the jolly car dealer. “Bit of a card, this one,” he whispered to Purbright, as they crossed the court behind Blossom.
“Yes, Sid,” the inspector said.
They climbed some stairs and entered a prefabricated cabin containing two big desks and some comfortable office chairs on plain but good quality carpet. There were typewriters, an elaborate looking calculator and a filing system that contrived to embody a buzzer and coloured lights. The heat was considerable. On the walls hung six calendars, presented by tyre and accessory factors; each pictured a near-nude in some unlikely situation.
“We should be obliged,” Purbright opened, “if you could tell us when a particular car was brought in here for repair.”
Mr Blossom leered delightedly at each in turn. “All in the records, matey.” He swept an arm towards the filing cabinet. “Everything’s there. All the lot. God-alive-o.”
The inspector gave Blossom the registration number of Josiah Kebble’s car and his address.