Mr Scorpe looked with heavy scorn over the top of his spectacles at no one in particular. “Is Dr Fergusson here as a medical witness or as a gardening expert?”
“I see no harm in offering an illustration in language that people can understand,” retorted the doctor. He added, before Purbright could head him off: “But of course I am not a member of the legal profession.”
The coroner turned upon him his agate eye; dentures clacked menacingly.
“Thank you, doctor,” said Purbright. Fergusson stacked his papers, rose and started to make his way out. Malley leaned to Mr Amblesby’s long, whiskery ear. “The doctor’s fee, sir...” The old man remained hunched in stubborn immobility. He watched the door close behind Fergusson and craftily smiled to himself. “Eh?” he said.
Palgrove, looking pale, delivered his brief, formal evidence of identification, then Sergeant Malley quietly laid a typewritten slip on the table before the coroner. Mr Amblesby lowered his gaze.
“I now adjourn this inquiry sine die...to enable the police to...to make further investigations.”
All but Mr Amblesby rose. He stared at them suspiciously for several seconds. Malley touched his arm. “You said you wanted some sausage on the way back, sir; I’ll stop at Spain’s if you come along now.” Grudgingly, the old man stood up. Malley ushered him out.
“I do believe he’s got even worse,” said Mr Chubb. It was five minutes later and the chief constable and Purbright were on their own in the room.
“You think so, sir?”
“Well, don’t you, Mr Purbright? You see more of him than I do.”
“Malley says he’s a wonderful old gentleman for his age.”
“Does he, indeed? I must say I admire the way Mr Malley seems to manage him.”
“Oh, like a mother, sir. I don’t know what would happen to poor old Mr Amblesby if it weren’t for the sergeant.”
The chief constable pondered Malley’s devotion, then dismissed the subject with a satisfied nod. “Now, then, Mr Purbright,” he said briskly, “what have you got to tell me about this unfortunate lady from Brompton Gardens?”
The inspector, too, became more businesslike in manner.
“At the moment, everything points to the husband. He’s given a hopelessly unsatisfactory account of himself—two accounts, in fact; one disproved and the other unlikely. There’s not much material evidence, but that wasn’t to be expected, anyway. What there is, he can’t even begin to explain. His cigarette case in the water under the body, for instance. And those letters she sent to people. There’s no doubt at all that she wrote them.”
“Where does he say he was at the time when his wife was drowned?”
“At first he said he’d been to Leicester that night and had slept in his car after stopping on the road home. Unluckily for him, the car had just been serviced and the mileage recorded on the service log made nonsense of his story. He didn’t even try and bluster it out. He changed it altogether.”
“And do you believe the second story?”
“I accept it because it cannot be disproved, sir. Not on what evidence we have. And if he’s still lying, the odd thing about this second tale is that it does him no good at all.
“The Palgroves bought themselves a cottage a couple of years ago, you see, sir. It’s a few miles out along the Brocklestone road. At Hambourne Dyke. They used to spend week-ends there, but the novelty eventually wore off and they went more and more rarely. What Palgrove now says is that he stayed in that cottage during the whole of the night of his wife’s death.”
“What reason did he give for that?”
“He said he needed to be on his own occasionally. He denied ever quarrelling seriously with his wife but said she had a forceful personality that was liable to get on his nerves. That night just happened to be one when he felt this compulsion to have a spell of solitude.”
Mr Chubb considered. “It does sound reasonable, you know Mr Purbright.”
“On the face of it, yes. So why the tale about going to Leicester? Which, incidentally, he’d told in advance to his secretary at the factory.”
“Oh, I think that’s easily enough explained. It was the excuse he’d prepared for his wife. No woman likes to think that her husband is spending a night away from home simply because he wants a rest from her.”
Purbright’s brow lifted slighily. “Oh, I see, Sir. I’m aftaid that wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
Mr Chubb looked uncomfortable.
“There is something else I ought to mention,” Purbright went on. “The suggestion is strong that Palgrove has for some time been having an afair with a married woman. “This would be a much more cogent reason for his going out to the cottage than a sudden desire for solitude. He doesn’t strike me as the contemplative type.”
“Do you know who the woman is?”
“Not yet, sir. But I expect to, shortly. Sergeant Love is very resourceful in these matters.”
“I suppose you can’t afford to be over-squeamish in a case like...”
“No, sir; you can’t.”
Mr Chubb frowned. “It seems such a pity that these people spoil things for themselves—and for others, too, of course.” He paused, looked up. “What do you propose to ask the lady when you find her—or when Mr Love finds her, rather?”
“The situation will be somewhat delicate...”
“It will, indeed.”
“No, sir; I didn’t mean in a moral sense. Delicate in a criminal sense. You see, Palgrove may be denying the existence of a mistress—as he persisted in doing yesterday, by the way—not because he simply wants to protect her reputation, but because she was an accomplice in the murder of his wife.” The inspector watched Mr Chubb’s face. “You remember, of course, what Mrs Palgrove wrote in her letter?”
“Something about a plot, a plan...?”
“Precisely, sir. I have heard the plan discussed. If murder was being proposed—as she very plainly stated—who else but the mistress would be the second party to the conversation? It may very well be that Paigrove was, as he says, at the cottage that night. The woman, too. But he needed only to make a ten-minute car trip to kill his wife. He could have been back again in half an hour. And we needn’t expect the mistress to do other than swear that Palgrove never left the cottage at all.”
The chief constable said he saw how difficult the situation might prove. Had the inspector any other lines of inquiry in mind? Yes, said Purbright, he had, but he entertained no great hopes of them. Mr Chubb was sorry to hear that, but he was sure something would emerge sooner or later that would repay his trouble.
“There was one thing Palgrove said that I’m inclined to believe,” Plurbright announced, rather as an afterthought. “He claimed that somebody had been following him about a good deal lately. A stranger.”
“Doesn’t that sound a little fanciful?”
“That is what I thought at first. But he described the man in some detail, and I think I know who he is.”