“That’s all I need matey. Everything’s here. This is how we do it. God-alive-o.”
And Blossom delved amidst the keys and fairy-lights of the filing system. A minute later, he emerged, his little pink eyes puckered with exasperation behind their pebble lenses. He shook his head. “I don’t know, matey. You’d think they could use a simple thing like that without ballsing it up. Hang on, I’ll fetch Jenny. Blimey-O’Reilly.”
The girl who appeared in response to Blossom’s summons was his secretary. Hers was the look of patiently borne suffering that successive relays of staff at the South Circuit Garage carried as a testimonial to their employer and a warning to their own prospective successors.
Jenny produced the relevant card without trouble, and left immediately. The inspector noticed that she automatically kept a fixed distance from Blossom.
“Hand-picked, my staff is, matey. Hand-picked. No rubbish.”
Purbright was looking at the card. “It appears from this that Mr Kebble’s car was on these premises during the first week of September, last year, sir.”
“Does it, matey? Yes, well, it must have been, then. If that says so.”
For a moment, the inspector treated Mr Blossom to a regard of trusting earnestness, rather as one might expose meat to infra-red rays to render it more edible.
“I feel sure,” he said, “that I can safely take you into our confidence regarding a matter which I admit has nothing to do with the motor trade.”
“Do you, matey? God-alive-o. Yes, I reckon so. Just you carry on.” And Blossom assumed an expression of solicitude that would have added fifty pounds to any car in his stock.
“What I want you to tell me about that period early last September, sir, concerns not car repairs but films.” And Purbright, anxious not to promote association of ideas, tried to avoid looking at any of the calendars.
“Films, matey?” The fishbowl magnification of Blossom’s blue eyes behind the thick lenses was quite steady.
“I know, of course, that you’re a member of the Photographic Society, and that you help where you can to provide your fellow members with indoor facilities.”
“Ah. You know that, do you, matey? That’s all right, then.” The facetiousness had an edge of challenge not quite in keeping with Blossom’s fixed grin.
“Oh, perfectly all right, Mr Blossom. I should think a cleared showroom would make an excellent studio for private filmmaking.”
“Should you, matey? I wouldn’t know.”
From Purbright, a long, reassuring smile. “You know, Alf, you’re wasted in this corrupt and mechanized age. It is too sophisticated, too devious for you. You are a natural-born horse trader. May we now deal on that basis?”
Nothing flattered Mr Blossom more surely than an implication of villainousness. His grin suddenly became one of real pleasure; he lowered his head in a curiously diffident attitude, like a bird seeking shelter beneath its own wing; he closed his eyes and simultaneously raised his brows; and protested, in even more adenoidal tones than usuaclass="underline" “I don’t know what you mean, matey. Taking it out of me again, I suppose, matey. God alive-o. Don’t know what you’re on about. God alive-o, matey.”
Sergeant Love stared in his perplexity first at Blossom, then at Purbright, but both men appeared to find the exchange perfectly natural.
“What I wish to know,” the inspector was now saying to Blossom, “is pretty urgent from my point of view, so I shall offer the favours first. One: no fuss to be made about unauthorized use of premises where a special fire risk exists. Two: I propose to accept that the head of a respectable and long-established automobile business would not knowingly be associated with the making of pornographic films, let alone take any of the profits.”
Blossom signified by a prolonged nasal snigger his recognition of the preposterous nature of any such suggestion. “God alive-o, matey. You’re making jokes again. They all do that, matey. Come here and make jokes. Take it out of old Alf. Blimey-O’Reilly, matey...”
The sergeant had tugged Purbright’s sleeve and was now addressing a quiet aside to him. The inspector nodded. He looked again at the garage proprietor.
“Three...”
Blossom’s amusement abated.
“Favour number three,” said Purbright. He pointed to a packing case that had been pushed almost, but not quite, out of sight behind a steel cabinet. “If you answer a couple of my questions without wasting any more time and then telephone Fen Street and report having innocently come into possession of four stolen car radio sets...”
“God alive-o, matey—how was I supposed...”
Love intervened with all the majesty of the opportunely observant.
“They were on that list I brought you last Monday, sir.”
What the police surgeon called his short-term autopsy report arrived by hand at Purbright’s home a little after nine o’clock that evening. He scanned it and drove at once to Mr Chubb’s house in Queen’s Road.
The chief constable received him with a face that registered grave apprehension; out-of-hours calls always upset him.
“Potassium cyanide,” said the inspector, as if to put Mr Chubb at ease by tossing in the choicest morsel first.
“Good lord!”
“It had been quite cunningly administered, too. In the ordinary way, it is so lethal that the victim dies more or less on one’s hands. Which, of course, could be very awkward, sir.”
Mr Chubb nodded, unhappily.
“But in this case,” Purbright continued, “the dose had been put into a capsule which would take a while to dissolve. Traces of gelatine were still fairly obvious in the stomach. Grail was in the habit of taking similar capsules after meals for indigestion. Anyone could have emptied one—or more—and replaced the dose of harmless antacid powder with the cyanide. The two halves of a capsule slip apart and together again perfectly simply.”
“In that case,” said the chief constable, “the deception could have been engineered at any time, could it not?”
“Oh, certainly it could, sir. The man carried a whole jar of the things. The exchange could have been made quite a while ago. The jar would thus have become a sort of unlucky dip.”
Mr Chubb frowned at the levity of the description, then looked narrowly at his inspector. “Must have been a nasty surprise for his kidnappers,” he said. “They’ll carry a strong presumption of guilt, you know, Mr Purbright. Bound to.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause.
“You sound a bit doubtful,” said Mr Chubb.
Purbright consulted the report. “I made a special request for the listing of identifiable items of food. The pathologist has come up with these: ‘nut fragments, probably almond; rice grains; shreds of chicken; vegetable shoots’. I’m sure you will find the combination very suggestive, sir.”