Neither girl could say that she had actually seen Edna with a man during her spare time since before Christmas. She had made oblique references to a “friend”, certainly, but he had not been produced and she had not mentioned anyone specifically by name.
Love thanked his informants and followed them back into the main office in order to tell the head clerk that he would not require the co-operation of any more members of staff that morning.
Mr House cast an eye quickly over Miss Beach and Miss O’Conlon, as if to satisfy himself that no parts of them had been damaged or abstracted as souvenirs, and said that it was just as well because the department closed at noon on Saturdays and it was then 11.53.
Purbright seemed to find Love’s account of his interviews less disappointing than the sergeant thought it sounded.
“At least we know two things now that we didn’t know before. One is that although Edna Hillyard is over thirty and unmarried she’s considered by people who know her fairly intimately to be far from frigid. The other is that she’s taken some trouble—uncharacteristically—to keep her current affair secret.”
That, Love said, had been his impression.
“And why should she do that?”
“Reputation, I suppose.”
“Yes, but whose? What you were told by Miss O’Conlon doesn’t suggest much reticence on Edna’s part in the past.”
“She’d have had her work cut out to be reticent about Pally Palgrove. They reckon he leaves footprints on his girl friends.”
“And Alf Blossom?”
“He runs the South Circuit Garage.”
“Yes, I know that,” said Purbright, a little tetchily. “I mean he’s no great conquest, is he? Not socially. I’m leading up to something. You’ll see in a minute.”
Love resolved to make no more irrelevant observations. “Stud-wise,” he said with dignity, “Alf Blossom isn’t even in the book.”
The inspector nodded. “So we can assume that Edna’s present consort is someone she values more than she would value Palgrove, say, or Blossom, or any of those she told her office friends about. The probability is that he is married—which would explain their care not to be seen together—also respectable, and reasonably well-heeled. I’d put his age at a bit above fifty.”
“Job?”
“Profession,” Purbright corrected. He pretended to consider. “Store manager, I should say. A fairly big store.”
Love, suspecting a leg pull, looked cheerily sceptical. “You wouldn’t know his address, I suppose?”
“My guess would be somewhere in Debtors’ Retreat or up by Jubilee Park. How likely does The Riding strike you?”
Love frowned and remained silent. Then, suddenly, “Oh, Christ! Of course...”
“Mr Persimmon, of the Bridge Street supermarket.”
“You really think they’ve skipped off together?”
“Their simultaneous disappearance does rather suggest it.”
“It could be coincidence.” Love’s slowness to catch the inspector’s drift of thought had left him feeling less than generous.
“In London or New York, perhaps,” said Purbright. “But there’s not much random duplication in a town of fifteen thousand inhabitants.”
“What about her car, though?” Love protested.
“Well, they don’t need two. It isn’t usual to elope in a convoy.”
“Then there’s her job. His, too, for that matter.”
“I gather his head office is giving the books a good looking over.”
Again the sergeant was visited with a sense of having missed a significant possibility. “Oh,” he said, gloomily.
Purbright relented. “Of course, there’s no evidence at the moment of anything crooked having gone on. We’ll have to wait for the audit.”
“Perhaps,” said Love, “it was just a case of irresistible passion.”
“You could be right, Sid. How nice it would be if you were.”
Chapter Seven
On the evening of Saturday, 3 May, there was held an emergency meeting of the Flaxborough Branch of the Sabbath Conservation Society at the elegant home in Mather Gardens of Mrs H. L. Framlington, JP. There was a good attendance, despite the brevity of notice that circumstances had dictated, and the tastefully decorated drawing room contained not one empty chair.
Mrs Framlington presided. She sat behind a dark mahogany table on whose polished surface lay a thick, black-bound book, a black candle in a squat holder of polished brass designed like a bishop’s mitre, a small enamelled incense bowl on a trivet, and a tumbler of water.
By her side was the secretary, Mrs Pentatuke. Her alert, slightly bronzed face wore a grim half-smile as she peered through her harlequin-framed glasses round the room and ticked names on a list she had taken from between the leaves of the book. Pausing in this task, she leaned forward to light an ochre-coloured cigarette at the candle flame. The smoke she blew forth aggressively over the hat feathers of the nearest members smelled of sulphur.
Mrs Pentatuke was fully dressed. She wore an outfit in bottle-green woollen fabric. On the floor by her sturdy, nylon encased calves lay a large handbag, a stumpy, furled umbrella and a pair of gloves of the same shade of violet as her shoes.
When she had finished putting ticks on her list, Mrs Pentatuke nudged Mrs Framlington, who had been contemplating dreamily the cornices of her elegant drawing room, and indicated with a nod the incense bowl.
Mrs Framlington smiled vaguely, patted her grey, wispy, untidy hair, and accepted the box of matches that Mrs Pentatuke handed to her. She managed with the third match to ignite the tip of the small heap of material in the bowl. There rose a grey fume, thin at first but then broadening and becoming laden with sooty motes. There was a smell of singed poultry. Mrs Framlington glanced apprehensively at her ivory-faced wallpaper.
“Amen, evil from us deliver but temptation into not...” Mrs Pentatuke’s ringing tones brought to a sudden end the murmur of witchly small-talk. The Coven was in session.
Mrs Framlington half rose from her chair and bobbed a welcome to the assembly. Then she sat again, leaning slightly forward and resting a hand against the right side of her neck in readiness for its being cupped as a hearing aid.
“Ladies...ah, sisters, sisters and warlocks... It’s most gratifying to see such a good turn-out this evening. This, of course, is not the regular meeting, as you all know. Our next little get-together was not due until the end of this month, but we did feel—that is, the ladies, the sisters, rather—the sisters and Warlock Gooding of the Sabbath sub-committee, did feel that in the circumstances...”
“Point of order, madam chairman!”
The interruption came from the bald-headed man who had taken part in the Walpurgis-night Revel in rolled-down stockings and motoring pennons. His costume now was considerably more formal but there was still noticeable in his eye a certain wildness that contrasted with a countenance which one might have thought expressly designed to hover over hymn-books.