The inspector put another question at once. “Do you know who made the call last Wednesday night that resulted in Persimmon going out?”
“I have no idea.”
“What is your recollection of that call, doctor?”
“None, naturally. I didn’t take it.”
“Persimmon did?”
“Yes. We’d had one or two earlier, but they were—well, relatively trivial. Then this one came through about midnight.”
“Did he not say anything that might suggest who the caller was?”
“Not a single word. He scarcely looked at me. Just slammed the receiver down and went straight out. Then I heard his car start up.”
“That was the last you ever saw of him, in fact?”
Dr Cropper spread the fingers of his right hand on the desk before him and scrutinized them sadly.
“As things turned out—yes, I’m afraid it was.”
Chapter Fourteen
The boot, or trunk, of the late Mr Persimmon’s car had been crafted with special care to solve for the family man all those holiday luggage problems; to provide the modern business executive with space equivalent to a second office; and to give the sportsman the big, BIG, B-I-G-G-E-S-T rod, gun or clubs locker he had ever dreamed of.
It was now known to have served a fourth, unscheduled, purpose—the posthumous transportation of its owner.
The fact had been established quite simply and quickly in a Nottingham police laboratory by analysis of blood samples and by comparing fibres recovered from the boot with others taken from clothing on the corpse.
Of the significance of fragments of hard varnish and aged, brittle, animal hair, also found in the boot, the forensic scientists had offered no opinion.
Purbright treated Love to his own confident interpretation.
“They must have chucked that bull’s head mask in with the body and then dumped them both in the river.”
The sergeant thought about this for a moment. Then, “Who’s ‘they’?” he asked.
“One, the man who killed Persimmon, whoever he is. Two—and I’m afraid there seems to be no doubt about this—the Hillyard girl.”
“You mean she helped him?”
“There are her prints all over the car. Those inside and round about the boot are bloody. And their position indicates that she must have been helping to lift. That’s what the report says, anyway.”
“Perhaps he forced her to.”
“Perhaps.”
“And abducted her afterwards.”
Purbright sighed. “You have a chivalrous disposition Sid.”
He looked at his watch.
“In twenty minutes from now, our colleagues will be paying simultaneous calls upon three of the folklore enthusiasts we discussed earlier. I want you at the same time to take four county men and give Mrs Gloss’s grounds a thorough going over. What story-fixing there’s been up to now between these people can’t be helped, but at least we can deny them a chance to tip one another off today.”
Leaving Love to marshal his squad from the men lent by County Chief Constable Hessledine, Purbright entered the office of his own superior, Mr Harcourt Chubb.
“This warrant, Mr Purbright—I’m not altogether happy about it, you know. Mrs Gloss is not a poor woman. She has the means to make things awkward for us if it turns out that you’ve acted hastily.”
“On the contrary, sir. Persimmon was murdered last Wednesday. I think you can claim to have acted with great restraint in waiting so long before ordering a search of the grounds where he almost certainly met his death.”
“But is it your contention that Mrs Gloss was involved in the crime? I mean, this is just what people are going to think when they see policemen on the place. You’re using some of the county fellows, I understand,” added Mr Chubb, with the slightest wrinkle of distaste.
“I wouldn’t go so far as to...”
“Sit down, my dear chap, do.”
Mr Chubb made no move towards a chair himself but remained standing by the mantelpiece, on which he supported one elegantly-extended arm.
“I would not go so far,” repeated the inspector, “as to accuse Mrs Gloss of actually having a hand in what happened to Persimmon. But I certainly do believe that she and some of her friends were aware of it soon afterwards and came to an agreement among themselves to keep quiet.”
“And why should they do that?”
“Because they did not wish the police, or anyone else for that matter, to find out what they had been up to that night.”
“You are talking about this folk-singing carry-on, are you?”
The chief constable sounded disparaging yet intrigued.
“It was something rather more sinister than that, sir.”
Mr Chubb slightly widened his regard of the inspector, but said nothing. Purbright explained.
“The ground behind Mrs Gloss’s home was being used for black magic rites of some kind. Possibly fairly harmless. Possibly not. It rather depends on one’s point of view. But erotic—that, I fancy, we can safely bet on.
“We don’t know yet how long these things have been going on, nor at what point did a society genuinely devoted to local folklore become dominated by its witchcraft lobby. The newspaper stories are not only extremely unreliable in detail; they have been deliberately inspired by somebody who knows about the black magic activities and for some private reason wants to embarrass their organizers.”
“They’ve certainly embarrassed me,” said Mr Chubb, with feeling. “That fellow Hessledine was on the phone yesterday, making what I suppose he thought were jokes about magic spells. I had to be rather short with him. Never mind about that, though. What I can’t understand is how a decent sort of chap like Persimmon got mixed up in all this nastiness.”
“You don’t know, sir?”
“Of course not. Why, do you?”
Purbright pondered how favourably he could present the manner of the passing of a vice-chairman of the Conservative Club.
“He was a member of a small but very public-spirited group of citizens—something on the lines of Rotary, I gather—formed to try and counteract the influence of the black magic cult. They had what I believe self-dramatizing politicians like to call a ‘hot line’. A number that can be rung in an emergency.”
“It sounds rather far-fetched,” observed Mr Chubb.
“So I thought, sir, when I heard about it. But someone called that number on Wednesday night, and it was Persimmon who went to the rescue.”
“Rescue of whom?”
“His mistress, actually.”
The chief constable took his arm from the mantelpiece.