“Cut along, then, young shaver! You’ll just have time to catch the tuck-shop before Latin!”
The boy stared as if at the sudden materialization of a character out of science fiction.
Mr Hive picked up his case. “By the way, where did this turn up? Do you know?”
The boy went on staring a little longer. Then Hive’s switch to intelligible English registered. The boy swallowed, sullenly mumbled “Cupboard somewhere”, and departed.
The next hour or so Mr Hive spent very pleasantly in the devising of his account, inspired jointly by brandy and the now obvious approbation of the barmaid. Greeting him like an old friend, she had said that he might call her Helen and that she would call him Mort. She really was a splendid creature: he had not the heart to tell her that he would have preferred Mortimer (‘Mort’ sounded so unhappily like ‘wart’).
“What’s all that writing you’re doing, Mort? Do tell me.”
She was leaning forward across the bar, chin on hand, prettily amused by so much industry. Mr Hive’s table was only three feet away; there was no one else in the room and he had moved it boldly out of line.
“I am preparing an account of professional fees and outgoings.”
“You’re not! You’re writing a love letter!” She twisted her head a little, pretending to make out some of the words.
Hive smiled, not looking up. “Might I hope that you could be free for an hour or so this evening, Helen?”
“I dare say I could tell you—but only if you let me know what you’re really writing.”
“I’ve told you. I am making out an account.”
“Honest?” Without taking her chin from her cupped hand, she delicately inserted into one nostril the tip of her little finger. “You a commercial traveller, then?”
Mr Hive raised his head. “I am a private detective.”
He watched the girl’s bantering manner fade. Her eyes widened, but she kept in them enough of disbelief to proclaim that she, Helen Banion, had not been born yesterday.
“I am not pulling your leg,” added Mr Hive, with a touch of gravity that she allowed herself to find impressive. “The fact is that I undertook a certain commission that brought me to Flaxborough. My inquiries are complete. My client is satisfied.” He spread his hands. “So now the bill.”
“And a night off, by the sound of it.”
“Exactly. At what time will you be free?”
“Well, I can’t, actually. Not tonight.” She looked thoughtfully at the finger end she had withdrawn from her nose, then nibbled it. “It’s my day off tomorrow, though. If you’re still here, I mean.”
“Nothing,” declared Mr Hive warmly, “will be allowed to take me anywhere else!”
He drank and composed peacefully until closing time. The account, completed at last, was a copious document that ran to four pages of small writing. He decided it would do very nicely. There were lots of to attending upons and to making provision ofs, with here and there an as per approved scale. Disbursements abounded and each and every charge was presented in multiples of a guinea. Mr Justin Scorpe himself could scarcely have done better.
The man Purbright saw standing in the doorway of the lounge of Dunroamin was not quite as tall as himself. His hair, though crisp and glossily black still, had receded a good deal. The face was flushed and fleshy, the eyes quick-moving. He wore what the inspector took to be an expensive suit; it was just on the grey side of black and it hung comfortably yet without spareness; the cloth had a soft-hard look, a sort of sleek durability. Under the open jacket, a white shirt—aggressively white—and narrow, tasteful tie—aggressively tasteful. The man’s consciously erect bearing and his mannerism of occasionally thrusting back his shoulders could not quite disguise the build-up of fat that paunched over the trouser band and breastily plumped the shirt.
“Mr Palgrove...” Purbright rose from the chair in which he had been sitting and moved towards the door but rather aside of it: he did not want to seem to be inviting the man into his own room. Palgrove nodded to him, then to Love, and slowly came further in.
“I’m afraid this is rather a sad home-coming for you, sir.”
Again Palgrove nodded, his face blank. He looked about him at the floor, at the chairs, then sat in one, well forward with his hands on his knees. He had not forgotten to give his trousers a high, crease-preserving hitch.
Purbright resumed his own seat so that Palgrove should not feel that he was being questioned from a perhaps intimidating angle.
“You’ve heard from the officer what has happened, I suppose, sir?”
“The gist of it, yes. No details.”
The voice came to Purbright as something of a surprise. It was not exactly brisk, yet its slightly cockney curtness was in unexpected contrast to Palgrove’s expression of weary abstraction. The inspector reminded himself that the effects of emotional stress were never predictable: a boardroom tone was probably part of a determination not to break down.
“We are by no means sure yet how the accident happened, Mr Palgrove. It is not so much a question of how your wife came to slip into the water as why she was unable to extricate herself.”
“Poor old Henny was daft about those damned goldfish.” Again a staccato, matter-of-fact announcement.
“Was Mrs Palgrove in fairly normal health?”
“Nothing wrong so far as I know. Nothing serious.”
“I was thinking of heart trouble, Mr Palgrove. Or of anything that might have made her subject to blackouts.”
A slow headshake. “You think she could have passed out?”
“It does seem the only explanation. Who was her doctor?”
Palgrove thought for a moment. “Used to be old Hillyard. But that was a while back.”
“Doctor Hillyard has not been in practice for some years,” Purbright said. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Love’s smirk: it was, in fact, exactly ten years since the conviction and imprisonment of that luckless practitioner.
“No, I’m sorry; can’t tell you.”
“Never mind, sir. Now, about these goldfish—was it usual for Mrs Palgrove to go out and feed them at night?”
“Don’t know about feeding. She’d go and look at them at the oddest times. Show them off to anybody who called.”
“Do you happen to know if she was expecting a visitor last night?”
“No idea. Wouldn’t be surprised, though. She was on committees and things, you know. Those people are always in and out of each other’s houses.”
Palgrove had begun to glance around nervously. He stood. “Look, can I get you fellows a drink? Whiskey?”
Love, who thought that all liquor other than ginger wine tasted rather awful, declined. Purbright accepted.
He watched Palgrove let down the door of a cocktail cabinet. A light went on inside it, setting glasses and bottles a-glitter and frosting the outlines of birds engraved on the compartment’s mirror backing. At the same time, a mechanical tinkling started to form itself into a tune.