Julie’s evidence concerning the phone call, examined beside what little was certain about Persimmon’s movements on that Wednesday, should have suggested some line of inquiry. It must, after all, have had relevance—perhaps vital relevance—to whatever course and commitments were to lead Persimmon to his death. And yet those overheard fragments of conversation remained, however diligently Purbright sorted and examined them in his mind, as unilluminating as they must have been to the girl who had recorded them.
“ ‘Dilly’,” the inspector said to Love the moment he encountered him emerging from the side entrance of the police station.
Love halted and looked politely attentive.
“Supposing,” Purbright said, “you had heard somebody referred to as ‘Dilly’, who would you think was meant?”
The sergeant pondered.
“I think I’ve heard young women called dillies. It’s supposed to mean that they’re a bit of all right.”
“No, I don’t want the generic application, Sid. What about nicknames? Is it an abbreviation for something?”
“Ducks are dillies,” announced Love after further consideration. “Somebody short in the leg, maybe?”
Purbright looked unimpressed. “Never mind.”
Love, brightening as at the recollection of an agreeable piece of tidings temporarily eclipsed by duller matters, said: “Harry Bird’s had a spell put on him.”
Purbright closed his eyes for an instant.
“He’s what?”
“It sounds like that parish church business over again. One of the newspaper people came in looking for you. He said somebody’s cut a black cockerel in two and nailed both bits to Bird’s front door. I was just going to drive over and have a dekko.”
“Which reporter told you this?”
“The one with fangs. I think he said he was from the Daily Sketch.”
“And how did he know what had been nailed to Bird’s front door?”
“He said they’d had a tip-off.”
Purbright was silent for some moments. Then he motioned Love to follow him into the yard where his car was parked.
“I think I’ll have a dekko myself while we’re about it. Incidentally, Sid, have you noticed what a lot of tipping-off there’s been lately? Anxiety to oblige is something I don’t much care to see in this town. It’s usually a sign of conspiracy.”
Sir Henry Bird was the head of a firm of agricultural machinery manufacturers. His knighthood had been conferred only the previous autumn. He thereupon had moved out of 14 Birtley Avenue and into a big double-fronted house with pink stucco walls and false turrets behind one of the high hedges bordering Oakland, a cul-de-sac that ran parallel to The Riding, off Partney Drive.
Purbright and Love got out of the police car just in time to see a kneeling woman in a flowered overall wring out a cloth and vigorously rub the central panel of the front door. The water in the bucket beside her was slightly stained. A few black waterlogged feathers revolved slowly.
The woman glanced over her shoulder and got up, laboriously.
“Not more of you, surely.”
“Is Sir Henry in?”
“He’s not seeing anybody else.”
Purbright said that they were policemen and that he was sure Sir Henry would have no objection to their going in to see him.
“I thought you was from the papers,” the woman said, grudgingly converted. She picked up the bucket and trailed off round the side of the house.
A little puff of pride distended the cheek of mistaken-for-a-journalist Love. He stroked the case of the portable tape recorder that hung from his shoulder.
Purbright bent and examined the step. The woman had missed two or three spots of blood, now dry and glistening like black varnish.
The door opened.
“Mr Bird says you can come in. He’s in the front room.”
The chairman of Autocult (Flaxborough) Limited amplified this instruction by calling out: “In here, Purbright. In the lounge.” He made the word sound long and squeezy and expensive. Purbright was prepared for red plush and Renoir reproductions.
In fact, the atmosphere they entered was cool and at first seemed restfully dim. But soon the eyes tired of the kind of light diffused by the long yellow muslin curtains that were draped and looped and re-looped with fussy precision over the entire window area, light that after a while made everything in the room look to be made of butter.
“To what,” asked Sir Henry, “do we owe the pleasure of a visit from the constabulary?”
The voice, affable and with a pronounced smoker’s rasp, was in keeping with the florid well-fleshed face. What Purbright found unfailingly fascinating about the man, though, was his ears. They were very small—no bigger than dried apricots and of similar colour—and set so snugly within corresponding recesses that only at close quarters could they be discerned at all.
Purbright explained that a report of damage to Sir Henry’s property had reached him. “Or defacement,” he qualified.
“Aren’t there more serious matters to keep you people busy just now?”
Sir Henry’s eyebrows, whose conspicuousness more than made up for his curious auricular deficiency, hunched like combatant caterpillars, challenging each other across the bridge of his nose.
“Serious, yes, sir. But not necessarily unrelated.”
Bird watched without comment the adjustments that Love was making to the tape recorder, which now was switched on.
“This defacement, as you call it. You know what happened, do you?”
“According to what little information I have, a mutilated chicken was left hanging on your front door.”
“A cockerel, Purbright. The distinction does matter, you know. A black cockerel.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“You sound as if you know something about black cockerels.”
“By repute, yes.”
“Ah, by repute, Purbright. Tell me, now, what is your understanding of this matter of black cockerels?”
The caterpillar-brows of Sir Henry reared to denote a sort of fierce interrogatory amusement. The inspector saw that “Knocker” Bird, as he once had been known in the town, and still was by some of his contemporaries, was in a mood to make him feel small. The press, no doubt, had been troublesome. Purbright resolved to make allowances.
“It isn’t a subject I know much about, sir,” he replied, “apart from stories of black magic and that sort of thing.”
“Voodoo,” prompted Love, with a surreptitious nudge.