“The boot and shoe complex?” offered Purbright, unable to help himself.
Richard’s expression of patient patronage parted to allow a glint of surprise and admiration.
“Exactly,” he said. “So you will see that Persimmon was but a cog, a very small cog, in our product promotion machinery. But one specific task he did undertake—he was to issue private invitations to forty or fifty local washwives to take part in some film work for television commercials.”
“I’m sorry—local what?”
“Washwives,” Gordon said. “Women whose life-style depends for an enhancement element upon the know-how of the detergent industry. We don’t apologize for a word like that, inspector. It’s a tell-word, and tell-words are what we like to use. Right, Richard?”
“Right.”
“Do I understand,” asked Purbright, “that the forty or fifty invitations were not in fact issued by Persimmon?”
“They were not,” said Gordon. “We had to use our own home-call operatives to recruit the ladies at the last minute. The day was not entirely successful.”
“Have you any idea at all of what prevented Mr Persimmon from doing as you had expected?”
“We were told by his staff on Friday morning that nothing had been seen of him for two days. Two whole days, for God’s sake. Richard here practically orgasmed and I can’t blame him. The location and everything had been set up. Even a marvellous boatman character. Then, pfft—no washwives. Nary a bloody one.”
A disgracefully wayward but attractive notion had blown through the casement of Purbright’s imagination.
“This man’s disappearance,” he said slowly. “Could it have been of critical importance to the campaign you’d all come here to launch?”
The Deputy Chief Brand Visualizer of Thornton-Edwards, Arnold and Konstatin nodded with grave emphasis. It seemed to Purbright that the adman saw nothing outrageous in the situation at which he had hinted; perhaps his world really was one that admitted the nobbling of supermarket managers in the cause of The Product.
“Oh, but surely,” began Purbright, drawing back from the brink.
Hendy was on her feet. She stepped in front of the inspector and thrust at Gordon the photographs she had been marking.
Gordon sorted through them quickly and handed two or three to Purbright. On each he saw, ringed in white, the malevolently cross-eyed visage of Miss Amy Parkin.
Hugh’s arm was clamped round Purbright’s shoulder before he could step clear.
“Can you understand, inspector, what makes people do those terrible things? I think they must be sick, don’t you? Don’t you think people who do these things must be sick?”
“All that film,” lamented Richard. “Every last shot.”
“Spoiled?” ventured Purbright.
“My God! Image-wise, anything like that slays, but slays. Listen, all these are bad-ad—jokes, sarcasm, knocking animals, politics, death. Right? But worst, worst, worst is deformity. Limps, squints, leg-irons. They’re bad-ad in profundis.”
“This was fixed,” asserted Gordon, tapping the pile of prints.
Purbright turned. “By?”
“No names.”
“G and P, darling, for a ducat.”
Sheila had stretched herself almost horizontally in her chair and was holding to her eye, telescope fashion, an empty gin bottle.
“No names,” repeated Gordon.
Sheila grinned, as at the discovery of an amusing new planet.
“All right, then. E and S. Bet you.”
“No names,” Richard said testily.
Yawning, Sheila scratched long, honey-coloured thighs with her free hand. Hendy gave her a glance of disapproval, then crossed to the door.
“I’m going down to the bar for some cigarettes.”
“Just a moment...”
Purbright was drawing from his pocket the envelope of copies of the photograph of Edna Hillyard.
He handed one to each of them and put the rest on the table.
“This young woman is in her mid-thirties now, but probably not much different in looks from when this picture was taken. She was friendly with the man we have been talking about. First of all, I want to know if any of you recognize this girl or remember having seen her at any time.”
All gazed dutifully at the picture, then signified that Miss Hillyard was absolutely unknown to them. Only Hugh offered a comment.
“Oh, but fabulous. Absolutely fabulous!”
Extravagant concern flooded his face. “And do you mean to say, inspector, that this poor girl has been done to death?”
“That I do not say. But, as I mentioned before, she is missing. In view of what has happened to Persimmon, we have very good cause to be anxious. The help I am asking from you people is this. You are running a promotion campaign involving door-to-door calls. Your canv...”—Purbright caught the look of pain in the Dixon-Frome man’s eye—“Your home-call operatives will be covering ground that might well yield useful information. Could they not slip in a question on the side, so to speak? You know—Have you seen this girl lately?—that sort of thing. It might be most valuable.”
Gordon pondered.
“The HCOs aren’t really depth-orientated, are they Richard? I mean, in what sort of depth do you want this, inspector? We’ve no M-R people on this one, actually. Not at the moment.”
“M-R?”
“Motivational Research.”
“I don’t really think that would be necessary. Just the straight question and the picture. We should do all the following up, naturally.”
After a little more thought, Gordon nodded.
“Sure. Sure. Will do. Sheila—extra special briefing for the Lucies in the morning, love. Right? OK Richard?”
“OK Gordon. Just one point, Sheila.”
“Point awaited, darl.”
The gin bottle, gripped now in the crutch of the Personnel and Welfare Executive, was being rocked from side to side by means of a sort of sedentary belly-dancer’s technique.
“Those girls are not of the brightest. They are practically on top quiz-load already. Give them the one extra question only. Absolutely simple. ‘Have you seen?’ And the picture. Roger?”
“Roger and out.”
For a few moments more, Sheila watched with a self-centred smile the oscillations of her bottle. Then she reached a fresh cigar from a box on the floor beside her and bit nearly an inch off its end.
Purbright returned to the subject of Persimmon, but with no real hope of progress. The manager’s part in the Lucillite campaign had been settled beforehand by correspondence and a couple of subsidiary telephone calls from the London office. None of the team now in Flaxborough had met him personally or even spoken to him by phone. Apart from the hinted but quite unsubstantiated involvement of some other powerful protagonist in the detergent war, no one had been able to suggest a reason for the man’s violent end.