Purbright found himself being eyed sourly by the room’s five occupants.
“I am an inspector of police and my name is Purbright.”
At first no one moved. The inspector had a momentary impression that the three expensively dressed, gloomy-looking men and their languid companions supposed his appearance to be connected with some puritanical local application of the liquor laws. Then he realized that their depression was rooted in some earlier and more serious cause.
“Which of you gentlemen is the Lucillite representative?”
The man called Gordon gave a start and leaped nimbly to his feet.
“Terribly sorry, inspector. We were rather preoccupied conference-wise. I’m Dixon-Frome, DD Division. This is Richard, our consultancy colleague”—a nod and a purr from the adman—“and Hughie, of course, who is our Assistant Environmental Research and Liaison Executive.”
“And anyone who can say that gets a free packet of Lucillite right here and now!”
The man with the aubergine nose was suddenly erect and grinning. He pumped Purbright’s hand, then stood back and upped and downed him in an appraising gaze of enormous geniality.
“Fabulous! Absolutely fabulous!”
To Purbright’s astonishment, he found an arm round his shoulder and Hugh’s grin bobbing about a couple of inches from his face.
“Let us,” said Gordon, elbowing Hugh aside like an over-exuberant dog, “not forget the most important members of the team. Sheila darling...”
He reached toward but did not touch the hand of a girl whose most immediately noticeable features were lemon-blonde hair, tight wash-leather shorts and a butt-end of cigar on which her mouth worked as tirelessly as a boxing promoter’s.
“Sheila’s our Personnel and Welfare Executive,” Gordon said.
“Detergents Division, Domestic,” squeezed wetly past Sheila’s cigar butt.
Purbright thought he detected a note of irony and held her glance a little longer, but the girl’s eyes remained solemn.
He looked away to a plump, sallow-complexioned young woman who had been examining a sheaf of photographic stills and making rings upon them with a white crayon
“Hendy,” Gordon announced, extending his hand towards her. “Assistant Co-ordinator, Visual Kinetics.”
Hendy examined two more stills, marked them, then looked up at the inspector. She gave him a smile like the movement of a camera shutter and resumed her task.
“Fabulous,” murmured Hugh, for no reason that Purbright could determine.
“I’m sorry to interrupt you in conference,” the inspector began, “but I do think that there are one or two ways in which you can be especially helpful to us.”
“To the police, you mean?”
“I don’t wish to put it quite as narrowly as that, sir. To the police, yes; but in the main to the community. There has been a murder in the town and a woman has disappeared. We are very anxious to trace her quickly. If she is not already dead, that is.”
Hugh’s face registered disbelief, then horrified surprise, and set after a few more modifications into the lineaments of grave determination to see justice done.
“But that’s terrible, inspector. Really terrible.” He turned to Richard. “Isn’t that terrible, Richard?” And to Gordon. “Gordon—did you hear what the inspector said? Isn’t that terrible? Hendy darling...”
Purbright waited for the equitable distribution of Hugh’s dismay to be completed.
“You’d heard nothing of this business, then, sir?” he asked Gordon.
“Not a word. But we aren’t exposed, really, to the neighbourhood thing. Not in any viable sense, are we, Richard?”
“I wouldn’t say we were, Gordon, no. I mean, we haven’t personalized communications outside the wash-psychology thing. There just isn’t...”
“Who’s dead?”
Sheila was looking up at the inspector. The cigar butt, perilously short now, seemed about to be ingested within her puckered lips.
“He’s a shopkeeper,” Purbright said. “Or rather, a store manager.” He saw interest flare suddenly in his audience.
“Not a supermarket manager?” prompted Gordon, hesitantly.
“That’s right, sir. A man called Bertram Persimmon.”
“Christ!” Richard said.
Purbright looked from one to another. “Did any of you know this man, then?”
“Well, I don’t know that we’d actually met him, had we, Richard? Not in a social situation.”
“He was a great person,” Hugh interposed fervently.
“I have an idea,” Richard said to Gordon, “that we did see him once—person-to-personwise, I mean. Wasn’t he at the prepromotion thing at the Dorchester? Right?”
“Right. Well, probably, anyway.”
“Right.” Richard turned to Purbright. “Persimmon rated with Dixon-Frome. I know you’d like to know that. You mustn’t think of Flickborough as right off the map. I’m with Thornton-Edwards—on the Lucillite account, right?—and I don’t think I’m breaking our client’s confidence when I tell you this is a potential zoom-zone. I can tell the inspector that, can’t I, Gordon?”
“Sure. Anything.”
Hugh, in reverie, shook his head. “A very, very sincere person. No, I mean really sincere.”
Purbright had been wondering for some time about the talk’s curious quality of disjointedness. He indicated Hugh with a nod and asked Gordon very softly: “He knew Persimmon, then, did he?”
Gordon looked surprised.
“No, no—none of us knew him. Why should we? He was supposed to have got things laid on, that’s all. And he let us down. Of course, what you say does explain why. But we’ve been bleeding blood over the past couple of days, we really have.”
“Would you like to tell me more about this letting down, as you term it. Persimmon was supposed to have made certain arrangements, was he?”
“You could say that. Sure. Richard here will tell you his consultancy had Persimmon lined up for product co-operation. Right, Richard?”
“Right.”
“You mean he was going to sell your washing powder in his shop?”
There was a brief silence. Richard and Gordon looked at each other.
“Oh, dear,” said Gordon, quietly.
Richard stroked his smooth chin, spicily fragrant with “Gunroom” after-shave.
“Mr Persimmon,” Richard explained to the inspector, “is—or was—the manager of a supermarket which is the local unit of the merchandizing division of Northern Nutritionals, a subsidiary of Dixon-Frome, which as you know is controlled by the Wyoming Cement Corporation.”