Purbright watched Gibbins going through pockets. “Any name tags?” he asked.
“Not one. No letters, no papers. Plenty of money and some odds and ends.” Gibbins laid on the dressing table a bundle of notes, cigarette case and lighter, keys, a pen and two handkerchiefs.
“No driving licence?” Purbright inquired. Gibbins shook his head.
Purbright moved about the room, unhurriedly peering, probing, picking up and setting down. He glanced into ashtrays and at the titles of a couple of books. His manner was inconsequential, like that of a bored man in a waiting-room. On the bedside table was a small china ornament. In passing, he lifted it and shook it gently, then tipped its mouth to the palm of his other hand. Out rolled a tiny, pear-shaped bead of glass. Purbright stared at it thoughtfully for a moment and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.
Both men returned together to the kitchen.
Purbright stopped at the door and looked carefully round the room. Then he walked slowly from one end to the other, methodically examining the floor. Suddenly he stooped down and peered closely at the boards. Another piece of glass glittered in a crevice. Purbright prised it free with his fingernail, compared it with the first fragment, and held out both to Gibbins who mmm-ed politely but without comprehension.
“They’re off little glass phials,” explained Purbright. “You know—medical phials.” He stepped to the sink and surveyed the things that stood in it or on the draining bench close by; he did not touch them. They comprised a small saucepan that seemed to have contained milk; a deep plate with a few cereal fragments on its rim; a large china beaker; and an empty jug. All had been rinsed—apparently with water from a ewer that stood on the floor.
“I’d dearly like a sample of the milk that was in that jug,” Purbright said.
Gibbins stood disconsolately at the sink. “Do you think it was poured away? It could have been used up.”
“It could; but most people remember to leave a drop of milk in reserve, and there isn’t any other in the house. In any case, it stands out a mile that somebody’s...”
“Wait a minute,” Gibbins broke in. He bobbed down and thrust his head into the small cupboard beneath the sink. “See if you can get hold of a clean jar or bottle. A jar would be best.”
As Purbright searched shelves on the opposite wall, he heard Gibbins tapping in his retreat. He picked out a clean jam jar and handed it down. A moment later there was the sound of running liquid.
Gibbins emerged, red but triumphant, from the cupboard. He help up the jar, half filled with a whitish fluid. “Waste pipe,” he explained. “Now then, what do you reckon we’ve got here?”
“Something,” Purbright replied, “of which I fear Mr Barnaby has caught his death.”
Chapter Eighteen
When the Chief Constable opened the door of Purbright’s office shortly after eight o’clock the following morning, something more chilly than the draught from the corridor entered the room. His terse “Good morning” had an edge of irritation, and he said nothing further while he slowly and deliberately peeled off his gloves and laid them neatly side by side on the desk.
Purbright knew better than to waste time on mollifying preliminaries. “I understand, sir,” he said, “that Dr Hillyard is now at his home. I wish to execute the warrant at”—he glanced at the clock and considered—“at half-past nine. A special court has been fixed for ten. Formal remand, sir. In custody, of course.”
“Well?” Chubb had no intention of forgiving lightly the telephone call that had precipitated an early and unsatisfactory breakfast.
“Well, sir, the whole case may conceivably come to the boil, as it were, at any time now. I thought it desirable that you should be on hand. We may need your support in several ways that I cannot predict at the moment.”
Chubb regarded Purbright thoughtfully and with slightly less obvious disfavour. Then he pulled a chair to the middle of the room and sat down. “Go on, Mr Purbright.”
“In the first place,” said the inspector, manfully coping with the novelty of addressing Chubb from above, “I’d better give you a few more of the background facts we’ve been able to discover. We arrest Hillyard. Right: now there is plenty of evidence of his having allowed and, for that matter, actively helped to organize, the running of a...an immoral enterprise in a part of his house not accessible to his genuine patients.”
Chubb raised an eyebrow.
“The original idea was Carobleat’s. He had a flair for that kind of thing—as we suspected, but couldn’t prove before his death. As you know, sir, a town like this has hardly any open prostitution. Members of a small community daren’t risk their reputations.
“Not so long ago, of course, the shipping trade brought seamen here who had no reason to be scrupulous, so some prostitution did exist in the harbour district. But since the war most of the ships using Flaxborough have been small coasters manned by pretty stolid types who are a poor proposition for the ladies of Broad Street. Then there was all the cleaning up agitation in the council and the local paper. Mr Carobleat was largely responsible for that, you’ll remember, sir.”
“And a damned nuisance he made of himself,” confirmed the Chief Constable bitterly. “Oddly enough, the wife tumbled to him straight away.”
“Really, sir?”
“Rather. She used to tell me many a time about his having had his ‘hot little eyes’—that’s what she called them—all over the women on that moral welfare committee he started.”
Purbright tried briefly to visualize this mass flirtation. He failed and went on: “What Carobleat had seen, of course, was his opportunity to reorganize the declining and amateurish vice trade on a novel, very profitable basis. He used his spurious moral welfare approach to recruit a dozen or so of the more presentable women and promised them a regular living on good-class clients. But he made it clear that he was to manage the financial side himself and pay them commission. They must have found the proposition fairly attractive—especially as he undertook to arrange the ticklish question of premises.”
Chubb was looking doubtful. “Just how do we come to know all this, Mr Purbright?”
“Quite simply, sir. One of the women was interviewed by our persuasive Mr Harper. She told him a great deal. The system was rather ingenious. She used to receive by post at regular intervals a list of appointments, so called, together with a sum of money in notes at the rate of a pound for each appointment.”
“In advance?”
“That’s so,” Purbright agreed. “All she had to do then was to arrive at Dr Hillyard’s surgery by the back door just before the stated time and go straight upstairs to what were ostensibly women’s treatment cubicles. The actual...er...assignations took place in small rooms connecting the male and female cubicles.”
“How abominable,” murmured the Chief Constable.
“You’ll not wish me to elaborate on that particular aspect, sir?”
“No, no. Certainly not. I’d like to know how the others came into it, though.”