He paused and continued more resolutely.
“I’m not going to give you any details, but this is roughly how things went. Last summer—it was just about this time of year—a girl was knocked down and killed by a car in Watergate Street. It was Stan Biggadyke’s car, a great powerful sports thing, and Biggadyke was pretty drunk. He was arrested and taken to the police station. Hector was there and he took charge. He sent the sergeant out to fetch a doctor he said Biggadyke had chosen to examine him. The doctor was out of town. There were some more delays and by the time a doctor did arrive Biggadyke was dead sober. A case went to the assizes but although the policeman who made the arrest stuck to his story that Biggadyke had been drunk at the time the fellow was acquitted. The lack of medical evidence and a good bull-shitting barrister saved him.
“What puzzled everyone who knew Biggadyke and his habits was how he’d managed to sober up so quickly in the cells. There were rumours of pep pills and cold douches and so on, but I knew that no drunk would have been able to get up to tricks like that while an experienced policeman was keeping an eye on him.”
Pointer gave a short, mirthless laugh. “That’s what I thought, anyway. Then about a couple of months after the trial I happened to be in the White Hind on business when I heard Biggadyke braying away just behind me at the bar. He was pretty far flown and I was just about to scoot out of range before the damn fellow spotted me. Then something he said caught my ear.
“I’ll never forget it. ‘Payne, old man’, he said—he’d buttonholed that blackguard who lodges at your place—‘Payne, old man’, he said—and these were his exact words—‘if ever you get pulled in for being drunk, just ask for a bucket of Larch’s luscious larrup.’ That’s what he said. Payne asked him what he meant but I couldn’t hear any more after that.”
“You drew your own conclusions, though?”
“I did, Mr Purbright. And I think I was right, too. You see, I once asked Hilda whether she packed supper for Hector when he stayed late at the station. She said no, nothing to eat, because if he wanted it the caretaker’s wife would make him a few sandwiches. But he often took a big flask of coffee, she said. Strong and black was how he liked it.”
Pointer was silent. Then he looked with anxious appeal at Purbright. “You’ll not take this any further, will you? I mean...well, nothing could be proved now, anyway.”
“Why have you told me this, Mr Pointer?” Purbright asked quietly.
“It’s worried me. That’s one reason. I have public responsibilities and I’ve always liked to have a clean conscience. You’ve no idea what an ordeal it was for me when I was pushed on that deputation to the chief. I’d been told that people here suspected Hector of covering up for Biggadyke. But theirs were only suspicions. I knew damned well he’d protected him once before and got him off one of the most serious charges in the book.”
“Can you suggest why, sir?”
“Does it matter?”
“It may matter a great deal.”
Pointer shrugged. “Well, Hector owed Biggadyke money, for one thing. Quite a lot, I believe. And Biggadyke had helped him in other ways. Socially and so forth. He was generous enough to anyone he palled up with, I’ll say that for him.”
“I see. So you don’t think it likely that Mr Larch could have wished him any harm? You reject that rather fanciful theory of mine about Biggadyke’s accident?”
“That Hector kidded him on to play with explosives, you mean.”
Purbright nodded and waited.
“No,” said Pointer in a low voice, “I don’t reject it, and that’s the truth. Just now when I said that Hector wouldn’t be capable of doing such a thing, it was because...”—he spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness—“Oh, I don’t know: he’s a member of my own family. But of course he’s capable. It’s just the sort of method he’d choose.”
“And are you still convinced that Mr Larch never found out about his wife’s meetings with Biggadyke?”
Purbright saw that Pointer was trembling. He sat down on the grass and motioned the wine merchant to join him.
Pointer squatted, wiping his brow and staring gloomily across the valley. “I know this much,” he said. “If Hector does find out about Hilda—and it must be common knowledge when you managed to pick it up so soon—if that happens, I wouldn’t give much for my girl’s chances.” Pointer clutched the policeman’s arm. “Suppose she’d been with Biggadyke that night in the caravan. It could have been meant for her, too.”
“Look, sir,” said Purbright, “I think we’d be wise at the moment not to envisage too many possibilities. The chances are that your son-in-law is a perfectly decent and harmless fellow and that your daughter’s in no danger whatever. They’ll probably get over their troubles like any other married couple who hit a bad patch.”
He hoped that these shameless platitudes would have sedative effect upon poor Pointer. The last thing he wanted was for the man to panic; he had underestimated his vulnerability to suggestion.
But Pointer showed an entirely unexpected reaction. Mottled with sudden anger, he stared savagely at Purbright. “What the hell do you think you are? A marriage counsellor?”
“I’m sorry; I don’t quite...”
“You don’t quite,” Pointer mimicked bitterly. “Oh, but you do quite. You must have got something for your rooting and grubbing. They’ll have been ready enough to tell you.”
Purbright watched the inflamed, protuberant little eyes. To his embarrassment, they were beginning to flood with tears of self-pity.
He shrugged gently. “Unless I know what you’re talking about, sir...”
“Lovers, Mr Purbright.” He forced out the word like a distraught shop girl pronouncing some indelicate medical term for the first time. “They run in families, you know. But of course you must know. A busy-bodying detective inspector. My God, man, they even told me! The very day I got back.”
Purbright divined that he was expected to help the man play out some familiar rite of self-abasement. “I see,” he murmured.
Down the wine merchant’s memory-puckered cheek a tear rolled. “I was away in France all that fortnight. In the Rhone Valley. An extraordinary summer. Marvellous.” He looked woodenly at Purbright. “But you’ll remember it yourself, I expect?”
Purbright glanced warily at his watch. “Hadn’t we better be getting back now, sir?”
“I asked you,” said Pointer in the tone of a moneyed diner putting a waiter in his place, “if you remembered the summer we had in 1937.”
The inspector gave a controlled sigh. “Not very clearly, sir. It...was a long time ago, wasn’t it.” He got up and stood by the car.
Pointer remained sitting in silence for a few seconds more, then rose and climbed in behind the wheel. When next he spoke it was to draw Purbright’s attention to some village church.
Chapter Fourteen
Mrs Crispin fully realized that gentlemen boarders needed an adequate substitute for the ministrations of absent or non-existent mothers and wives. They were deprived creatures, leading an unnatural life from the moment when they returned from business (she used the term with flattering lack of distinction, whatever their employment) until they retired to that good-night-sleep-tight whither they were consigned some five hours later by their guardian, still beamingly solicitous as she stood holding ajar the door of the staircase cupboard and beginning silently to count up to the hundred at which she would switch off the electricity and glide to her own chaste and immensely strong couch in the kitchen.