When they were a safe distance from the eyes of the old men, Worple brought out from his tunic pocket the envelope of clues. He invited Payne to look inside. “That’s about all I managed to find,” he explained. “Of course, a mine detector’s what you want on a job like that. You wear headphones, you know, and they give a sort of high-pitched squeal when the detector passes over metal.”
Payne peered politely at the collection of mangled bits and pieces.
“They all mean something, looked at properly,” urged the sergeant.
Payne gingerly extracted one of the objects and held it on his palm. “Try interpreting this,” he invited.
The sergeant regarded it with head inclined first one way then the other. Finally he said: “Part of the firing mechanism, I shouldn’t wonder, sir. Of the bomb, you know. That hinge, you see, would enable contact to be made when...”
“It’s a suspender,” said Payne. He dropped it back in the envelope.
Some minutes later when they were walking along East Street (it was regarded in Chalmsbury as no great reflection upon either party for a policeman and a civilian to be seen in companionship) Worple returned to the subject.
“I believe you’re right about that thing being a memorial. I remember now. It was subscribed—paid for, you know—by Mrs Courtney-Snell.”
Payne nodded. “Leather-chops. That’s right.”
Worple gave him a reproachful glance. “She’s a magistrate, sir.”
“Ah!”
“Yes, indeed. A Justice of the Peace. Now I wonder if anyone had a grudge against her. Or against her late husband, for that matter. He was a decent enough gentleman, though, as far as I recall.”
“Wasn’t he mixed up in a law-suit or something just before he died?”
“Not mixed up exactly,” the sergeant corrected. “He was the successful plaintiff. He sued that haulage contractor, Mr Biggadyke, for slander. That’s defamation of character by word of mouth, sir.”
“A somewhat impetuous man, Mr Biggadyke, by all accounts.”
“Very likely. But that was no excuse for him going round and telling everybody that story about the Colonel and Bessie Egan.”
“Ah, yes. And the spurs.”
Worple shook his head gloomily and turned his attention to the mussel boats that were slipping in slow procession beneath the Borough Bridge, bound for the stages another quarter of a mile up river. “Tide time,” he remarked, with the countryman’s instinct for allowing no merely human speculations to interfere with the conscientious marking off of nature’s periods.
“I suppose,” added Worple, “that you’ll be off for your dinner now. Think of me, won’t you: straight off nights and being kept out of bed by this bomb business.” The words were belied by his air of self-congratulation; obviously he found the bomb business a welcome diversion.
“Rotten luck,” said Payne, watching for a chance to cross the road.
“Of course, you know what the trouble is,” confided the sergeant closely. “It’s the chief inspector. He hasn’t the first idea when it comes to looking into something unusual. He’s not had the education, you know. Still, keep that to yourself.”
“I shall indeed. Naturally.” Payne raised his hand in farewell and stepped from the kerb.
He did not, however, go straight to lunch. Outside the Nelson and Emma he encountered Barrington Hoole.
Wordlessly, as if by treaty, both men stepped down into the cool stone passageway of the inn. They pushed past the arguing overflow of farmers and seed merchants from the great bow-windowed market bar and entered the comparatively deserted tap room.
Seated in a corner was Mr Kebble, diligently writing on the backs of envelopes a platitudinous confection that he hoped would pass muster as that week’s “Pew and Pulpit”, a feature normally contributed by a rota of local clergymen, the copy for which had been lost in the case-room.
Taking a hasty swig from his tankard of brandy and water, the editor spotted the new arrivals and beamed. “With you in a minute.” Then he penned, with the ease of long practice, three final unexceptionable sentiments, measured at a glance the total column-inchage, and thankfully screwed on the cap of his pen. “God bless us, every one,” he murmured and swept the envelopes into his pocket.
This action seemed to serve as a reminder. He delved into another pocket and withdrew a still damp print which he put down on the table before Payne and Hoole.
The optician pinched his lips and hummed nasally a little tune as he appraised the photograph. “I ought to know this ostentatious projectile.” He looked up. “It’s Biggadyke’s, isn’t it?”
Kebble nodded. “Look at the depth of focus,” he said enthusiastically. “Dead sharp.”
“What happened to Biggadyke, then?” Payne asked.
Kepple leaned towards him and pointed to parts of the picture. “He’s got every dent, has Harry. Every scratch. Look at that.”
“Yes, but what happened?” Payne repeated.
“Hit a lorry—you can’t touch the old focal-plane half-plate jobs. Heavy, but...God, see that fellow’s foot near the back wheel ? You could count the stitches in his socks.”
“I trust the lorry driver escaped injury,” said Hoole, anxiously.
Kebble wrenched his gaze from Harry’s achievement and picked up his tankard. “Oh yes, he’s perfectly alright.”
“What about Biggadyke, though?” Payne persisted.
“In hospital, they tell me,” He drank, then shook his head and frowned. “Those nurses must have a pretty rotten life.”
Hoole stared out of the window. In the gap between two warehouses a mast came briefly into view. “Tide time,” he dutifully observed.
Payne broke the silence that followed. “Didn’t I,” he asked Kebble, “see you in Jubilee Park this morning? With a policeman?”
“You did, old chap. I didn’t know you were there. That fellow Larch swoops about so. It’s like keeping up with someone on stilts. I say”—he poked his face forward and looked suddenly earnest—“who do you reckon did it?”
“Did what?” Hoole asked.
As Kebble described the outrage Hoole’s tight, smooth face gleamed with high amusement. “Oh God, the Snell cenotaph! Does she know?—No, of course she can’t; she was in my place just this morning.”
The editor grinned. “Once she does you’ll not see poor old Larch off the chain until he manages to arrest somebody.”
“That shouldn’t give him much difficulty,” said Payne. “Hasn’t Joe Mulvaney confessed yet?”
“Must have done,” said Hoole. “Unless he hasn’t heard about it.”
“Grope will have told him by now,” Kebble said.
“Well, then.”
The editor shook his head. “No, Joe’s been overdoing it lately. Claiming those Leicestershire stranglings was a bit too brown. Right out of his district.”
The trio prolonged the joke a little longer. None really believed that Joseph Terence Alloysius Mulvaney, cinema projectionist and slightly weak-minded victim of a sacrifice compulsion, would take credit for the Jubilee Park affair. It was just that he, together with versifying Grope and genially promiscuous Bess Egan and Edward Summerbine, fit-thrower, and Mavis Baggley, kleptomaniacal house-keeper of the town’s probation officer, and several more, were familiar bent coins in the social currency. They kept turning up among the loose change of conversation: droll reminders of life’s sportive possibilities.