“No. No, we haven’t actually. But you really mustn’t distress yourself, Mrs Persimmon. There’s no certainty that your husband has come to any harm.”
Purbright’s words appeared to have gone unheard. She continued to stare into space. The hand edged slowly off her breast and under her arm. She abstractedly scratched herself.
“Of course, you don’t know what I’ve been through.”
She launched her body away from the door and walked across the room. Pausing by a semi-circular table set against the wall, she adjusted the position of two china figures that stood upon it. “Oh, God!” She impetuously passed a hand over her hair without disarranging it.
“Perhaps it would be better if you sat down, Mrs Persimmon.”
Purbright indicated a square-cut sofa covered in orange plastic. She hesitated, then lowered herself into diagonal occupation of the sofa, one thin white arm along its back (like toothpaste, Purbright reflected).
The inspector found a chair for himself and sat opposite her. He felt in his pockets and produced a ball-point pen and an old sales receipt, blank on one side.
“I understand you last saw your husband on Wednesday.”
She put a hand over her eyes. Purbright took the gesture to be affirmative.
“At what time, would you say? Approximately.”
The shield of ringers remained over the pale, back-tilted face. “When he left for business. About ten o’clock.”
“But the store opens at eight-thirty, surely?”
“My husband is not a counter hand, Mr, er...”
The correction, Purbright fancied, had been delivered with a trace more acerbity than he would have expected from a putative widow.
“Did he not return home that day for a meal?”
“No.”
“He usually has lunch in town, does he?”
“Always. He eats at the Roebuck. They reserve a special table for him.”
“In the evening, though—weren’t you surprised when he didn’t come home on Wednesday evening?”
“Oh, no. It was his ‘samaritan’ night.”
“I’m sorry—his...?” Purbright turned his head slightly, as if to present his keener ear.
“His ‘samaritan’ night. Mr Persimmon does social work. I thought you would have known that, Mr, er...”
“Purbright.”
“Mr Purbright. Yes, he received his OBE for that. He’s on lots of committees.” Mrs Persimmon had removed the hand from her face. She was looking a little stronger now.
“I’m not sure that I quite understand what you mean by ‘samaritan’ night, Mrs Persimmon. There is an organization called The Samaritans. Do I take it that your husband is a member?”
“Oh, no, not that organization but it’s just what I’ve always called, that’s all—his ‘samaritan’ night. It’s to help people. I expect one of the other gentlemen can tell you more about it if you really want to know.”
Purbright nodded with every appearance of having understood. “Of course. The other gentlemen.” He held his pen poised.
“Well, there’s Harry,” said Mrs Persimmon. “You know—Sir Henry Bird.”
“Ah, yes.”
“He’s a particular friend of my husband, and I should say they’ve done this social whatever-it-is, this ‘samaritan’ business, as I call it, oh, for a couple of years at least, ever since...oh, God”—she hoisted herself forward and opened her eyes—“but you won’t go and ask him a lot of questions, will you? You’ll not do that? I don’t think my husband would like Harry to be bothered unnecessarily.”
“We try not to bother anybody unnecessarily, Mrs Persimmon.”
There was a pause. Mrs Persimmon straightened her posture and sat facing forward.
“Perhaps,” she said quietly, “I’ve been rather hasty in sending for the police.”
Purbright watched her face. “Why do you say that?”
“I don’t know. It seems silly, though. To panic. I mean, I would have heard if anything had happened to him. Don’t you think so?”
“Almost certainly you would have done, yes.” The inspector was wondering why dramatic expletives and gestures had given way first to social defensiveness, then to this unhappy deflation.
“Well, then,” she said at last, “we’d better just forget about it for the time being, shall we?”
She stood. Purbright motioned her to sit down again. He sighed gently.
“Look, Mrs Persimmon. Today is Saturday. You have told me that you last saw your husband on Wednesday. His absence during that night did not surprise you because you knew he was doing some kind of social welfare work. Very well. But he did not come home on Thursday night either. Nor last night. So you telephoned us this morning and reported him missing.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I...”
“No, don’t apologise, Mrs Persimmon. I don’t at all consider your phone call to have been hasty, as you put it. What I do find difficult to understand is why you waited so long before making it.”
She considered.
“We don’t live in each other’s pockets, you know,” she said coldly. “Me and my husband, I mean.”
“I don’t suppose you do.”
“Well, then—what are you making all the fuss about?”
“I came because you asked for help.”
“All right. Well, now you can go because I don’t want any after all.”
The childishly crude retort Purbright recognized as a symptom of deep unease. He could not quite decide whether Mrs Persimmon was aware of the possibility of her husband’s having decamped with another woman. Was it scandal she feared? She clearly was the kind of person who rated neighbourhood opinion very highly. And yet he doubted if this was the only or even the main reason for her distress.
“Mrs Persimmon, you must forgive my asking this, but are you perhaps just a little afraid of your husband?”
A reflex frown of annoyance faded quickly. The tall, thin, angular, expensively-dressed woman seemed suddenly to suffer a kind of interior unstarching. Very softly, she said: “He’s not always the easiest man in the world to get along with.”
“Is this the first time he’s stayed away from home for more than the one night?”
“No, it’s happened two or three times before. But always over a week-end. He didn’t lose any time at the shop.”
“And did he tell you where he’d been?”
“No.”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Not directly. He doesn’t like being what he calls quizzed.”
“But did you find out? From somebody else, perhaps?”