But how could the gentlemen’s exile from homes proper and complete be rendered less arid? She had given the question much thought and it was in accordance with her conclusions that the appointment, furnishing and tending of the gentlemen’s sitting room had evolved.
Cosiness, Mrs Crispin had mused, was what the domestic male valued above all else. She therefore sank some of her capital in a hook and stable wherby the door connecting the sitting room and kitchen could be held open on winter evenings, thus allowing air warmed by the kitchen stove to circulate freely through both apartments.
Mrs Crispin considered next the frequent use, in magazine stories about happily integrated husbands, of such adjectives as old, battered, well-thumbed, chewed, shapeless. These, she noticed approvingly, nearly always appeared in conjunction with favourite (his favourite old pipe/hat/old easy chair, moulded into comfortable contours by his grateful frame, etc.) Such guidance to masculine predilections in the furnishing line was perfectly clear, and Mrs Crispin followed it faithfully.
She showed consideration for eyes tired after a day at business by making the room lighting as discreet and restful as a single forty-watt bulb could render it.
The same motive partly dictated her decision not to install a television set, but in this case, too, she was influenced by her gleaned knowledge of male psychology. In the comfort of their well-moulded old easy chairs, their favourite pipes drawing well, men wished to chew the fat and swap yarns, not to gaze dumbly at a little screen.
Unfortunately for Mrs Crispin’s careful designs, neither Cornelius Payne nor Inspector Purbright shared her idealist conception of manly leisure. After the celebration of high tea, they would retreat, a trifle furtively, to one or other of their bedrooms and there play chess.
On the evening after Purbright’s excursion with Councillor Pointer, it happened to be Payne’s turn to provide hospitality. This meant that he sat on his bed while his guest occupied a small cane-seated chair by the window. The chess board was set between them on a pile of three suitcases.
Purbright was by far the inferior player and Payne had handicapped himself by a bishop, a rook and two pawns. His victory would thereby be postponed long enough for the game to last until dusk when Phyllis, prompted by a mistress who associated lodgers’ silence with suicidal intentions and a possible sudden rise in the gas bill, would burst in and ask if they were ready for supper.
“How did the inquest go?” asked Payne, opening the game with one of his depleted pawns.
Purbright surveyed the board while he reached for cigarettes. “Misadventure,” he said. “All it could be really.”
“Wouldn’t an open verdict have suited?”
“Too, vague. All right for drownings. Explosions, no.”
“There couldn’t have been much evidence, though.” Payne accepted a cigarette and struck a match for them both.
“Nothing direct. It really boiled down to the rejection of coincidences. One, two, three explosions in a small town. Then another. How could they be dissociated? Then there was Biggadyke’s reputation, of course.” Purbright leaned forward and moved a pawn.
Payne placed a finger lightly on one of his knights and considered. “His reputation, yes...” He moved the knight to threaten Purbright’s advancing pawn. “But what evidence could be brought to prove reputation?”
“None, now that you mention it. It seemed taken for granted.”
“Not very legal. Did no one suggest why he had been doing those curious things?”
“Motives weren’t questioned. It might have been interesting if they had been.”
Payne smiled. “You haven’t been making guesses, then?”
“The coroner seemed to assume that the man was simply an exhibitionist. I never met him, but from what others have said about him I should think that explanation is the most logical, bald as it is. Did you know him, by the way?”
“Slightly.”
Purbright catalogued. “Arrested development; pot-pinching sense of humour; technical expertize of sorts, combined with irresponsibility and a touch of dipsomania. How’s that?”
“Not bad,” Payne said. “Actually, though, there are thin threads of reason running through this business, you know.”
“Ah, now those,” Purbright said promptly, “I should like to hear about.” Spotting the threat to his pawn he moved out a knight to cover it. “Let’s take the explosions in order. What grudge did he bear the drinking fountain?”
“Not an aesthetic one, I assure you, though God knows that would have been understandable. No, the thing was a memorial. It was put up by the widow of a man called Courtney-Snell. And Courtney-Snell, in his time, had won an action for slander against Biggadyke.”
“Posthumous vengeance, you think?”
“Niggardly; but satisfying, perhaps.”
“All right. And the statue?”
Payne paused to open a path for his remaining bishop. “The statue,” he repeated. “That gesture was a little less personal, but if you knew Chalmsbury you would appreciate it. Does the name of the late Alderman Berry mean anything to you?”
Purbright shook his head.
“He was a notable zealot—or notorious bigot—according to taste,” Payne said. “I scarcely remember him, but they say that when he died the local brewery issued their draymen with white ribbons to wear in their hats.”
“A warrior of abstinence.”
“He was indeed. He also made a great deal of money, with a modest fraction of which he endowed an ugly chapel, so canonization—in Chalmsbury terms—was inevitable. We immortalized him in gunmetal, or whatever it was that Biggadyke found so challenging.”
“You suggest, then,” said Purbright, bringing up another pawn, “that Biggadyke’s second onslaught was that of a drinking man upon a totem of teetotalism.”
“You express it neatly. Yes, a gesture of principle, I should say. Biggadyke was not richly endowed with principles, so he was all the more likely to proclaim spectacularly what few he had. Had he lived, I feel he might have founded a Fellowship of Bad Templars.”
Purbright silently scrutinized the new position of Payne’s queen, which his opponent had just moved to the van of his bishop. Then he said: “And what of the great eye of Mr Hoole? That affair has a Kiplingesque flavour, to my mind.”
“The most intriguing of the three,” Payne agreed. He groped beneath the bed and produced a bottle. Without taking his eyes from the board, Purbright felt in his pocket and handed Payne a corkscrew. Soon they were sipping from tooth glasses one of Councillor Pointer’s more moderately priced clarets.
“You’ve met Barrington Hoole, I presume,” said Payne.
“Fleetingly, yes.”