“We went out through the front door and walked back to where we’d left the van under some trees. It was dark by then and we knew we’d be able to tell when Barnaby turned up because we’d see the lights of his car. I don’t know how long we were sitting there. It was bloody cold and I tried two or three times to get Rupert to give up, but he wouldn’t take any notice.
“I was just about asleep when a car passed us and drew up lower down. We waited until he’d driven in and then we followed. There was a light in the cottage and we crept round the back. Through the window we saw Barnaby walking about the kitchen and doing something with the stove. There was a saucepan on it. That seemed to make Rupert quite excited and several times he said: ‘He’s bitten; the bastard’s bitten!‘ After a while, we saw Barnaby pour some of what was in the saucepan into a plate and the rest into a beaker. He sat at the table with his back to us.
“About ten minutes later, he got up and went out of the kitchen. He came and went once or twice after that, but the last time he walked in he was looking queer. He kept feeling out for things and rocked about a bit. Rupert laughed when he saw, and I was afraid Barnaby would hear, but he didn’t. He tried to sit down at the table again, but he seemed to miss the chair and flopped down out of sight. We went right up to the window and looked through, and he was there on the floor, flat out.”
Purbright licked his finger and flicked back another leaf of his notebook. At that moment, there was a knock at the mortuary door and the constable opened it to admit Love.
The inspector turned to him. “You managed?” Love nodded. To Bradlaw, Purbright said: “We might as well get this finished now, don’t you think? Tell me if you’d rather carry on over at the office, though.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Bradlaw. “There’s not much more to tell. I just want you to know I wasn’t to blame for what happened next. Honest to God, I wasn’t.” He spoke pleadingly, but with an undertone of weariness.
“All right, Nab. Take your time.”
“We got back into the cottage the same way as before. Barnaby was lying fast asleep half under the table. The two of us picked him up and managed to carry him into the bedroom. He was a hell of a weight. We dropped him on the bed, and he opened his eyes and started grunting something at us. Then he went bang off again and began to snore.
“By that time, I was sick of the whole business. I went back into the kitchen to see if there were any things for making tea. Rupert stayed behind. He was standing at the foot of the bed, staring down at Barnaby with a sort of sideways grin. He hadn’t said a word since we’d gone back inside.
“I couldn’t find any tea things, so I went to the bedroom door to see what Rupert was up to. He was by the side of the bed and bending over it. He heard me and sort of half turned round. Then I saw he was holding that syringe again and I knew what he’d done.”
Bradlaw stopped. Looking up, Purbright saw him pass a hand round the back of his neck. He was staring at the coffin and breathing quickly through half-open lips. The inspector waited, saying nothing. It seemed to him that the barking of the consumptive old gas fire was growing louder, until the dismal little building could be fancied to shake in response to it.
When Bradlaw began speaking again, the words emerged tonelessly, like the recital of a medium. “I fetched the van and Rupert and me carried him out to it and put him in the back. We drove off straight away and kept going. As soon as we got into Flax, we took the van into the yard at my place. When I opened it up, he was dead. That’s all.”
The silence that followed was broken by Purbright suddenly slapping shut his notebook. He paced a few steps up and down, then wheeled on Bradlaw.
“Tell me, Nab—why was it necessary for Barnaby to be stripped before you brought him back that night?”
Bradlaw gave no sign of having heard. He walked to the gas fire and stooped to hold both hands before it.
Quite gently came Purbright’s voice again. “It was because he was going to travel back in style, wasn’t it? In the coffin you’d remembered to take with you in that van of yours?”
Bradlaw remained crouched and silent, staring at the trembling cones of flame.
Once more Purbright addressed him. “When Barnaby arrived at the cottage, how did you recognize him? How were you sure he was the man you were after and nobody else? You said you had never met him before.”
This time Bradlaw gave an answer, but sullenly and without turning his head. “Rupert had seen him. You don’t forget someone who’s tried to stick a knife in your belly.”
“You remember what he looks like, maybe,” said Purbright. “But it’s easy to get a name wrong sometimes. I think we’d better have a second opinion, Nab.” He nodded to Love, and again the placid doorkeeper sprang to his task.
The sergeant returned almost immediately. He entered and stepped to one side of the door while the woman who had followed him stood hesitantly for a moment on the threshold. It was Joan Carobleat.
She looked from the constable to Purbright, glanced at the squatting figure of Bradlaw, and then stiffened as her eyes fell on the coffin. She turned to throw a half-smoked cigarette into the yard before coming far enough into the room for the constable to close the door behind her.
“A little party, inspector?”
She gave Purbright, who had placed himself between her and the occupied slab, a nervous, derisory smile.
“I took the liberty of asking you to come here, Mrs Carobleat, in the hope that you would be able to help us in a formal matter of identification. These things are always a little disturbing, but I promise there’s nothing here to frighten or revolt you.” He took her arm and drew her gently forward.
Tense now, pale and wide-eyed, the woman allowed herself to be led towards the long, darkly gleaming box that seemed to hover monstrously, unsupported, amidst the insubstantial whiteness of the place.
They were within five or six feet of it when she suddenly stopped. Purbright felt through her arm a great rising shudder. Then another. He looked at her face. The jaw hung open and a deep rasping sigh seemed to be held there in her throat. Seconds passed. Then the sound escaped like a frothing rush of blood. It formed a single, agonizingly expelled word.
Love jumped forward to help Purbright hold the woman as she collapsed. They lowered her gently to the floor.
When she had been carried from the mortuary by Love and the constable, Purbright turned to Bradlaw.
“I thought you might have been wrong about the name,” he said. “If this is John Barnaby, why should Mrs Carobleat have called him Harold?”
Chapter Twenty-One
“So the late Harold Carobleat was much later than we thought,” said Mr Chubb. He permitted himself a wisp of a smile in celebration of the jest.
“He was a very astute gentleman, sir.” Purbright, from an armchair in the Chief Constable’s drawing-room, stared absently at the yellow-haired Venus and listened to the faint music of crockery that came from whatever domestic retreat Mrs Chubb enjoyed.
He had just related how, six months before, increasingly importunate police inquiries into the affairs of Carobleat and Spades had driven the broker and his friends to devise evasive action. Of how, according to a second long statement by Bradlaw, this had taken the ingenious form of the supposed illness and sudden death of the principal, his secret removal to a rural retreat in Shropshire, and the burial of his firm’s books and other incriminating trifles within the coffin that Bradlaw caused to be carried, in ballast, from the house of mourning. And of how Carobleat had lain low while growing the beard that was later to persuade Mrs Poole that the dead not only walk but lack razors beyond the grave.