Grope gazed mournfully at Purbright and began buttoning up his long, green commissionaire’s coat. He looked like a bewildered old general, captured in a washroom miles behind the lines.
“How long,” Larch was asking, “have you been working here?”
“Fourteen years, or very near.” The rhyme flowed out so effortlessly that Larch did not notice it; he merely felt Grope’s reply to be indefinably insolent.
“And who employed you up to then?”
“I was at Barlow’s foundry...gentlemen.”
Larch scowled. He still could not place what it was about this docile, cheese-faced fellow that annoyed him. “What sort of work were you doing there?”
“Tool-room fitting...it took some care.”
“Precision engineering, eh?”
Grope, perplexed by the sudden appearance of a predatory gleam in Larch’s eye, hesitated and then blurted out: “That’s all I am going to say today.”
Larch looked at him with contemptuous disbelief. “Surely you realise the inadvisability of an obstructive attitude. My colleague and I are investigating a serious matter.”
Grope sat down on the chesterfield. He looked prepared to withstand a seige.
Larch spoke softly in Purbright’s ear. “He’s fly, this one. You followed the point about engineering? Those bombs. Could be.” To Grope he said: “Now let’s be sensible, shall we? Can you remember what you were doing on Tuesday, July the first?”
“No.”
“Come along. You haven’t even thought about it. It was the night Mr Biggadyke was killed. Remember?”
Grope probed his ear with his little finger.
“You were seen out in the town that night,” Larch persisted. “Quite late. How about telling us where you went?”
“Home.”
“Before that. Stop being awkward.”
“Go away,” Grope said.
Larch looked at Purbright with mock surprise. “He’d like us to go away. I wonder why?” Purbright’s eyes closed in despair as Larch turned back on his victim and rasped: “You had a pretty strong grudge against Biggadyke, didn’t you?”
The commissionaire remained silent.
“You hadn’t forgotten what happened to your daughter, had you? That was on July the first. Just a year ago, wasn’t it?”
Purbright tried desperately to think of some way to block this preposterous inquisition. He saw on Grope’s otherwise expressionless face a twitch of annoyance, or of pain.
“You don’t have to be ashamed of your feelings, Grope,” Larch went on. “You were bound to feel cut up. Even a bit vengeful, perhaps. Is that it? Understandable, you know. Your own flesh and blood.”
This embarrassing parody of Hollywood third-degree, Purbright knew, was simply Larch’s way of taking reprisal for the destruction of his own self-confidence. He was like a blinded man still lashing out when his torturers had departed. But he would have to be restrained somehow. Purbright coughed and was about to interpose a firm “It seems to me...” when he was put off his stroke by a totally unexpected reply from Grope.
“Flesh and blood?” he echoed. “Flesh and blood nothing. If you’re talking about poor Celia, you’ve got it all mixed up.”
Larch looked up at the ceiling. “Ah. Mixed up. Thank you, Grope.” He glared down again. “I suppose you’re going to tell me she wasn’t your daughter.”
“No, I’m not. But you were talking about flesh and blood. And Celia wasn’t. Not ours, I mean. We adopted her.”
Purbright seized his chance. “Now, Mr Grope...”—he sat beside him—“there seems to have been some little misunderstanding. This news of yours is interesting.”
“Why?” Grope countered, with no sign of finding his new interrogator any less provocative. “We never pretended the baby was ours.”
“No, but twenty years is a long time. Things can come to be taken for granted. Tell me, Mr Grope; did you know who Celia’s real parents were—her natural parents?”
Grope said nothing.
“You don’t know?”
“Things like that are confidential.”
Seeing Larch prepared to swoop in once more, Purbright gently waved discouragement. To Grope he said: “They are indeed. You are fully entitled to keep Celia’s origin secret if you wish. On the other hand, you could save us a certain amount of time—in record searching and all that, you know—by telling us now.”
It was a poor inducement, as Purbright knew. But Grope was of an essentially helpful disposition. In any case, the ponderous process of deduction which had been going on in his head ever since Larch opened his assault had now produced something the effect of which he was anxious to enjoy there and then.
He looked away from Purbright and stared boldly at Larch.
“Celia was put out for adoption by Mr and Mrs Pointer,” he announced. “That was straight after she was born, of course. But even so you might say she was really your sister-in-law, Mr Larch. Mightn’t you?”
Chapter Seventeen
Amelia Pointer received Purbright in the garden. Although the shock of acquiring one as a son-in-law had almost worn off, she still regarded policemen with considerable apprehension. Like open umbrellas, they were unlucky things to have in the house.
Hilda had answered the door, prepared her mother for the requested interview (“He looks quite human actually”) and made introductions. She now stood protectively beside Mrs Pointer and motioned Purbright to have his say.
“This isn’t going to be terribly easy,” he began.
“No, of course not,” said Hilda, looking very much at ease. Mrs Pointer shook her head and gave a little smile.
“You may have heard from Mr Larch,” Purbright went on, “that further inquiries are being made into the death of Mr. Biggadyke.”
Hilda spotted some seed pods on a spike of lupins and began nipping them off. “No,” she said.
“Oh. I thought he might have mentioned it. Never mind. The point is, you might be able to help us, Mrs Pointer—in an indirect way.”
“Mother will be pleased to do what she can.” Hilda stretched in search of further seed pods. Her movements were lithe and confident.
“We have a notion, you see—there may be absolutely nothing in it, of course, but you know how policemen move round and round a thing—we have this notion that some connection could exist between a girl called Celia Grope and the way Mr Biggadyke...passed on.”
Mrs Pointer’s lips fluttered like comatose moths suddenly stimulated by a touch.
“Do you know anyone called Celia Grope, mother?” Hilda asked her cheerfully. “No, Inspector; it seems that she doesn’t.”
“But you did, didn’t you, Mrs Larch?”
She eyed him shrewdly. “I vaguely remember the name. Wasn’t she the girl who was killed in a street accident some time last year? Or passed on from one, perhaps you’d say?”
Purbright ungrudgingly marked Hilda one up.