Mrs Pentatuke affected silent contempt, but her face had paled noticeably.
Harper slowly turned the pages of the notebook. After a while, he raised his eyes.
“Do you wish to offer an explanation of why you keep a memoranda book in the...” He sent an inquiring glance to the policewoman.
“It was taped behind a sort of dividing panel in the freezer.”
“...in the position my colleague has described?”
“I intend to say nothing more to you,” declared Mrs Pentatuke. “Your presence here is preposterous and your behaviour unspeakable. What your object is, I have no idea, but I warn you both that unless you can be shown to have had some very good reason for bursting in on my privacy you and your superior officers will find yourselves in the most serious trouble.”
Harper waited patiently for this speech to end. Then he returned the notebook to Policewoman Bellweather, motioned her to hang on to the box and its contents, and said to Mrs Pentatuke:
“I have to tell you that I propose now to take to police headquarters, Flaxborough, the articles which I have shown to you and which I believe to be your property. I shall give you a signed receipt for these articles, and they will be treated with all reasonable care. Do you wish to make objection to my removing them?”
But Mrs Pentatuke’s vow of silence seemed to have been put already into operation. The faint stirring of her lips conveyed nothing to Harper. Which was just as well, because she was then placing upon him in yellow, dun and black degrees, the miring malediction of Saint Gringoire.
Love and Miller nearly collided with each other in the corridor outside the CID room. Both were in a hurry.
“Conference,” said Miller. “You did know, did you?”
“Twenty minutes yet,” Love said. He dodged into a file closet and started pulling out drawers. “Tell Harper when you see him. Oh, and Brevitt, too.”
Purbright appeared at the end of the corridor, then turned and was gone again. Love heard the clanking of an iron staircase.
When Harper and Sadie Bellweather came in from the transport yard, it was Harper who was carrying Mrs Pentatuke’s deep freeze container. Encountering the bulky obstacle of Sergeant Mally, Harper halted and invited the coroner’s officer to take a look.
“Christ, we’re not having inquests on bloody frogs now, are we?”
“Where’s the inspector?”
“Upstairs.”
They squeezed past each other.
Harper was hailed by Love and told about the conference. Proudly, he displayed his collection. Love picked up the mouse by its tail, which had become limp in the warm air, and pretended to set off in search of Policewoman Bellweather. “No, don’t piss about,” Harper told him, grabbing back the mouse.
The face of Constable Palethorp appeared round the door.
“Tapes,” he said to Love. “The inspector says don’t forget the interview tapes. And can you come up straight away, he says.”
“Righty-ho,” said Love.
Palethorp moved closer. “Hey,” he said softly, “they reckon old Purby’s going to knock off the vicar for that Persimmon business. Has he said anything to you?
Love, slipped two cassettes in his pocket and started to leave.
He looked happy but said nothing.
Closeted in one of the two small interview rooms with a Mr George Tozer, Detective-Constable Pook frowned peevishly at the noise of all the comings and goings in the corridor. He had been hearing from Mr Tozer—a man of slow speech and gesture with black cavernous eye-sockets and hairy nostrils—about certain strange tribulations suffered lately by members of Flaxborough Chamber of Trade, whose current secretary and spokesman Mr Tozer was.
“I shall pass on these people’s complaints, sir,” Pook assured him. “It isn’t nice for that sort of thing to be happening. Especially in food shops.”
He was ushering his informant out when Sadie Bellweather, clutching a new notebook and two shiny red pencils, patted his arm as she bounded by.
“Conference. Now. They asked me to tell you.”
Love reappeared, waving his hand like a shipyard foreman trying to stop a launch.
“Sorry, slight delay,” he called along the corridor. “Not to panic, though.”
Purbright, slightly out of breath, joined him. The inspector was putting on his raincoat. He paused to beckon the two nearest men. They were Harper and Palethorp. All four hurried towards the transport yard.
“Quickest way would be by St Anne’s Place and Spindle Lane, wouldn’t you say, sergeant? Save going through the Market Place.”
Purbright took the wheel.
At the East Street junction, Palethorp got out, audaciously held up the cross traffic despite his being in plain clothes, and climbed back into the car.
“Who rang in?” Love asked the inspector.
“Grewyear. I’d asked him to keep an eye on the place until someone could be spared to make a search.”
The car travelled two-thirds of the length of Spoongate, turned sharply left between two stone gate pillars, and drew up in the lee of a big beige Daimler in the courtyard that separated the Vicarage from the Church Hall.
Two men were coming out of the hall’s back door.
They carried between them what appeared to be a small flexible raft. Not until they were within a few feet of the open boot of the Daimler did they notice the police car.
Purbright got out and strolled towards them.
“Do you need any help, gentlemen?”
Neither Sir Henry Bird nor Dr Cropper appeared to be in the slightest degree disconcerted.
“That’s extremely obliging of you, inspector,” said Bird, “but I think we can manage.”
“Unless,” remarked Dr Cropper, “you or one of your colleagues would be good enough to bring that old box across for us.”
He indicated with a nod something large and brown and cylindrical that had been left standing beside the hall door.
“It would save us making another journey.”
Purbright made a sign to Palethorp, who set off across the courtyard.
Love and Harper had moved quietly round the front of the Daimler. Love stood close to the door on the driver’s side.
Bird and Cropper lowered their burden into the Daimler boot. It could be seen now to be a narrow mattress, about six feet long.
Purbright felt it. It was resilient, made probably of foam rubber. The canvas cover was stained brown here and there. He bent the mattress over, to examine the other side. Streaks of green. He touched the streaks with a finger tip and looked inquiringly at Bird, then at Cropper, but was careful not to put a question in words.
“Paint,” said Bird. “It’s pretty messy in that hall.” He reached across as if with the intention of lowering the boot lid.