“I think I do, sir. You mean that if nothing more definite could be established, Mr Larch would appear to have been unjustly treated.”
“Exactly. Tantamount to wrongful arrest.” The Chief Constable shuddered and faced the window again. “I wonder,” he said very quietly, “if Mrs Larch could be prevailed upon to help.”
“I really don’t know, sir; I haven’t yet met Mrs Larch.”
“You don’t fancy trying?”
“No, sir.”
“Ah.” Hessledine nodded thoughtfully. “It would be rather awkward, wouldn’t it? Snooping on the wife of a colleague. I wouldn’t ask anyone to do that. Not unless some serious crime were involved. On the other hand, it is sometimes possible to have a confidential chat without giving offence or sowing suspicion, you know.”
Purbright said nothing.
“Of course,” the Chief Constable went on smoothly, “if you do happen to meet Mrs Larch in propitious circumstances at any time, I’m sure you won’t allow false chivalry to blind you to her possible value as a witness.” He waved his hand elegantly. “After all, she must have been moderately fond of this Biggadyke person. She ought to have some idea of what he was up to, if anyone has. And for all we know she might be eager to tell.”
“There’s just one thing I should like to know, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Has it occurred to anyone to ask Chief Inspector Larch about this explosive that is supposed to be missing?”
Hessledine moved a little from the window and stared at him. “I don’t think you quite understand,” he said. “Discrepancies in Civil Defence stores are a most serious matter. National security is involved.” He paused to make sure Purbright was impressed.
“Strictly between ourselves,” he went on, “this matter came to light as the result of stocktaking. No one apart from the Civil Defence Officer and the county committee has been told. They asked me to make confidential inquiries. It so happens that you’ve been, well, unlucky so far; but, my goodness, Mr Purbright, I do hope you realize the whole thing is fearfully hush-hush.”
He leaned forward from the waist to emphasize the import of his final sentence: “It’s quite on the cards that the Home Office will come into it.”
“I take it, then, that Mr Larch has not been questioned, sir.”
“Certainly not. The C.D. Officer was most insistent on maximum secrecy. He was in Intelligence during the last war you know. Very well up in this kind of thing.”
“I still think you should tackle Mr Larch directly, sir.”
The Chief Constable raised his brows. “Aren’t you being a little direct yourself, Mr Purbright?”
“You might put it that way, sir.”
There was a short silence, during which Hessledine seemed to find his left cuff-link a new and intriguing subject of study.
“You feel you would rather not proceed with this investigation: is that so?”
“Not in the role of a sort of security policeman. It goes very much against the grain.”
The faintest flush appeared in Hessledine’s cheek. “Just as you like, Mr Purbright. I should be the last to expect you to undertake anything you felt to be unethical.” He paused. “If I can think how Larch might be approached tactfully I may have a word with him. Meanwhile you’d better stay on in Chalmsbury for a couple more days just to give the impression that you’re clearing up the loose ends. I don’t want coroners to get the idea that they’ve only to say the word for the police to go skipping off like hired ponies.”
“Then you wish me to return to my own division at the end of the week, sir?”
“I think so, yes. I shall let your chief know, of course.”
They parted with cool formality.
Chapter Fifteen
Barrington Hoole humed contentedly as he dangled his short, plump legs from the visitor’s chair in the Chronicle office and read the galley proof of Kebble’s account of the inquest.
“A fitting consummation,” he remarked when he had finished.
Kebble rolled up the proof and put it like a telescope to his eye.
“Guess who saw it happen,” he invited, squinting round the room.
“Saw what happen?”
“Stanley’s catastrophe, old chap.”
“I didn’t,” said Hoole. “Worse luck.”
Kebble grinned and brought the paper tube to bear on Leaper, gloomily occupied with scissors and paste at his desk. “He did.”
Hoole turned, then looked back at Kebble. “You’re not being funny?”
The editor shook his head.
“Good Lord!” said Hoole, then, more softly: “But he didn’t give evidence, did he?”
“He’s told nobody but me. He was there all right, though. Nearly trod on the corpse.”
“Shouldn’t he have gone to the police?”
“What, and be third-degreed by Larch?”
Hoole wrinkled his nose. “You’ve a point there.”
“All the same, the lad is going to talk to a policeman. I advised him to.” Kebble had lowered his voice still further.
“You remember that Flaxborough fellow I mentioned? He’s coming in this morning.”
“The local force must be far gone in corruption if outsiders need to be imported to look into our fatalities. Anyway, I thought the whole thing had been cleared up at the inquest.”
Kebble leaned close. “They tell me this Purbright’s an absolute bloodhound. He must be on to something or he’d have left by now.” He added that he had met the inspector and found him an uncommonly decent fellow.
“Obviously an imposter,” propounded Hoole. “All policemen are repressed rapists. Tell me: Did you look at his neck?”
“Not specially. Why?”
“Their necks are characteristic. Bright pink. Hairless. Like columns of luncheon meat straight out of cans.”
The street door swung open. “Here he is now,” muttered Kebble. He got up and hurried round the counter.
Purbright allowed himself to be led to a chair at the back of the office, where Kebble presented Leaper to him in the manner of a farmer dubiously confronting a veterinary surgeon with an ailing sheep. The editor then returned to his conversation with Hoole, having first stolen a glance at Purbright’s neck. “Not a bit like meat,” he announced, resuming his seat. “Perfectly nice chap.”
The inspector had little heart for his interview, which he had undertaken solely out of good nature. Yet as he listened, at first with politely concealed indifference, then with a sharpening sense of this youth’s having unknowingly observed something significant, he realized that he was now more eager to discover the truth than at any time since his arrival in Chalmsbury.
“You say there was a hole in one of the caravan windows. Do you mean the window was smashed?”
“No, the rest of the glass was all right. There was just this hole low down. Nearly round. No jagged edges.”