“It has been going on. There is no doubt about that. I have been given...well, evidence.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“Very upsetting evidence.” Her fingers were firm now upon the handbag fastening. Purbright again marvelled at the robustness of the clasp. What had she got in there—a pet eagle?
“A number of people have come into the flag day headquarters,” Miss Cadbury went on. “They have complained very bitterly. As well they might, although we ourselves, of course, were in no way to blame. We tried to convince them of that, but these things take an awful lot of undoing.”
“It might be of some assistance,” Purbright said, “if you were to tell me what they were complaining about. I mean, how did they know that they had made contributions to unauthorized collectors? I can appreciate that this worries you, but why should distinction between official and unofficial soliciting worry ordinary members of the public?”
“We do not solicit!” Miss Cadbury’s august indignation proclaimed a bosom he would not have given her credit for.
Sergeant Love helpfully intervened. “It’s some of the flags that have been the trouble, sir. I think they’ve given offence.”
“Ah,” said Purbright. “Perhaps you would tell us about that, Miss Cadbury.”
She nodded. “Unauthorized emblems, very like our own but quite, quite unauthorized, have got into circulation. There are...”—she hesitated—”words on them.”
“Aren’t there words on yours?”
“Not these words!”
The inspector’s obtuseness could not have been more eloquently reproved.
“They were, as you might say, messages,” Miss Cadbury resumed after a while. “Printed very boldly upon a clever imitation of our emblem. Perhaps message is not quite the right description, though.” She frowned.
“No?”
“No. Invitations. And of the most embarrassing kind.”
Love again was ready to elucidate. “Like at fairs, sir. You know, on funny hats.”
The huge handbag clicked and gaped dramatically. “There is nothing funny”, boomed Miss Cadbury, “about these, Inspector!”
Down in the town, there was no longer the rattle of a single collecting can—authorized or unauthorized—to be heard. The workers for the Kindly Kennel Klan had abandoned their strategic pitches and converged upon the committee rooms in Catherine Street. While they sat and gratefully sipped tea around a field kitchen urn borrowed for the occasion from the Civil Defence people (Note: in case of atomic attack, emergency urn at 41 Stanstead Gardens), a fresh relay of Miss Cadbury’s workers cascaded coins upon a long trestle table and counted the take.
Mr Hive had returned with all possible speed to his lodgings after telephoning his report, and, having spent five minutes in puzzled scrutiny of his reflection in the wardrobe mirror, had at last hit upon the cause of his ostracism. The offending emblem—a sort of jaunty Good Housekeeping seal of sexual prowess—he had transferred to the breast of a life-size mezzotint of Prince Albert that hung over the mantlepiece.
Now, thoughtfully sipping gin from a thick-walled tumbler, Mr Hive surveyed the things set out upon the table. They were a ponderously old-fashioned half-plate camera, some plate-holders, a box of flash bulbs and a battery. He tested the battery with a flash-lamp bulb mounted on callipers, then slipped it into a recess in the camera. He packed all the equipment into a battered hide carrying case with a long leather shoulder strap and set it down near the door. Finally, after consulting the Marquess of Grantham’s appreciative watch, he refilled his tumbler and reclined with a sigh on the bed.
At Flaxborough station, a train was coming in. It was the third, and last, train of the day for Nottingham. Among the twenty or so people on the platform were a man and a woman who had the constrained air of having just suspended an argument for the sake of public appearance. The woman, who wore a bright green hat and carried a small dressing case, was frowning and silent. Her companion, though equally taciturn while the train rumbled and squealed to a halt, wore an expression of kindly but determined concern. He pointed to an empty compartment and stepped before her to open the door. The woman spoke at last. “I told you there’d be plenty of room. There was no need at all for you to come.”
She got into the carriage and perched, stiff with resentment, in the corner seat. The man remained on the platform. He was about to shut the door when he caught sight of a woman in the act of boarding the train a few yards lower down. He shouted and waved. The other woman looked very surprised. Again he waved. She hesitated for several seconds, then, forcing a smile, came towards him. He cheerfully ushered her into the compartment and slammed the door. The train began to move. The man on the platform watched until the last carriage glided out past the signal box and the level crossing gates swung back to release the pent stream of cars and bicycles at the station’s west end. Then he turned and walked towards the exit. His smile of persevering solicitude had broadened into one of amusement.
The streets were full of bicycles, clattering droves of them, bowling homeward from the docks and timber yards and factories. The riders sensed that by sheer weight of numbers they had taken over the town just for that hour. Timber men, packers, engineers, men from the wharves, converged in speeding groups which then split at junctions and crossroads with banter and shouts of farewell. The older men, riding alone or in pairs, let the others pass while they sat in straight-backed dignity on their saddles and showed off their skill at lighting pipes with one hand. They affected not to notice the antics of the boys, who stood on their plunging pedals like rodeo performers or crouched, chin to handlebars, and furiously raced one another, with the squeals of the cannery girls as prizes.
The shops were closing. Not brusquely, as in a city, but with an accommodating casualness. Time in Flaxborough was like most other things, a matter of compromise. Thus at twenty to six Sergeant Malley was not in the least surprised to find unlocked the door of a butcher whose trading was supposed nominally to cease at five o’clock. He went in and bought some pressed beef for his supper. In natural deference to the Coroner’s Officer’s calling (and perhaps the butcher’s, for that matter) the small talk was of bodies. “Two this week,” the sergeant confirmed. “One natural, as it turned out. The other was young Perce Hallam.” “Oh, aye: the motorbike business.” “Trouble is, they always come in threes. Always. And now I feel I can’t get on with anything. You know—like the bloke in the hotel bedroom waiting for that bugger upstairs to drop his other shoe.” “What bugger upstairs?” “The one with three legs.”
As the sergeant emerged from the butcher’s shop, a blue town service bus went by on its way to Heston Lane End. He was not to know the destiny of a passenger who sat three seats from the driver on the left-hand side. Otherwise he certainly would have given more than a fleeting, indifferent glance at the woman who was going home to become the subject of the third inquest.
She was Mrs Henrietta Palgrove, aged forty-three, housewife, of Dunroamin, Brompton Gardens, Flaxborough: charity organizer, voluntary social worker, animal lover. She would, as the Flaxborough Citizen was to affirm the following Friday, be sadly missed.