Back again.
“Tell me, Mrs Poole, did Mr Gwill have any regular visitors?”
“Well, only the people you’d expect. Mr Lintz came sometimes, of course. He’d never stay for long, though. Not for meals. Then Mr Gloss came over occasionally, and...”
“Mr Gloss?”
“Yes, sir. The solicitor. He’d sometimes bring Dr Hillyard with him, but just as often the doctor came on his own.”
“Mr Gwill wasn’t having treatment, though?”
“Oh, no—at least, not as far as I know. The doctor came in the evenings. He’d usually stay for dinner. There were times when I served for him and Mr Gwill and Mr Gloss and Mr Bradlaw as well. The...the builder.”
Purbright noticed her reluctance to name Mr Bradlaw’s main occupation. “Those three gentlemen were personal friends of Mr Gwill, I take it.”
“They were, sir.”
“And no one else called here regularly?”
Mrs Poole did not reply for a few moments. Then she nodded towards the wall beyond which she had previously indicated “That one”, and said coldly: “Only her.”
“Mrs Carobleat?”
“Now and again. Once a week, maybe.”
“Another personal friend?” Purbright avoided putting the slightest emphasis on any of the three words.
“Not of mine,” Mrs Poole hastily asserted, “and more than that I can’t say.”
Purbright stood up. “I wonder,” he said gently, “if you’d mind very much my taking a quick look round the house? You don’t have to say yes if you’d rather Mr Lintz were here to give permission.”
Mrs Poole sniffed. “I’m not employed by Mr Lintz, sir, and I’m sure his permission doesn’t matter much in this house.”
“You are agreeable, then?”
“You’re the police, sir. You’re welcome to see what you’ve a mind to.”
She carefully placed four lumps of coal on the fire and rose. “Which rooms were you wanting to look at?”
“Where did he do most of his work, Mrs Poole? Assuming that he did work at home.”
The housekeeper led the way along the corridor and opened a door. “This was where he spent quite a lot of his time.”
Purbright entered a small room that contained an elderly roll-top desk, a big table faced with leather, and two office chairs. Brown velvet curtains hung at the single window. Over the desk was a bare light bulb, its flex anchored to the picture rail by a length of twine. The room looked like the office of a not very successful suburban lawyer or a part-time registrar.
Purbright padded round the table and glanced into a wall cupboard. It was empty except for a thick file of newspapers. Near the window, he bent down and picked from the floor a piece of silky material, a headsquare or small scarf. He handed it to Mrs Poole.
She shook it out with faint distaste. “Something of hers, I suppose,” she said, folding it quickly and putting it on a dusty, black-painted mantelpiece beside a stone ink bottle and a spike of faded cuttings.
“Not what you might call a cosy room,” Purbright remarked.
“Mr Gwill didn’t like to use anywhere else when he had business to attend to. He used to say no one could work properly if they were comfortable.”
“Then it seems Mrs Carobleat called partly, if not altogether, for business reasons?”
Mrs Poole stared at him, then glanced at the folded scarf. “I don’t know why she came. She used to push her own way around and I always kept clear until I heard her leave.”
Purbright gave the desk cover a casual trial with one finger. It was unlocked and slid back easily. The compartments inside contained a few tidily stacked papers. He did not disturb them. Instead, he flicked through several of the books that lay there. The first two were ledgers. The third contained newspaper clippings. They had been taken from classified advertisement columns and pasted into the book, a couple of dozen or so to each page.
The inspector read quickly through a few of them. “Was Mr Gwill interested in buying and selling furniture, d’you know?” he asked.
Mrs Poole shook her head. “Not specially. He bought a sideboard about a year ago. A bit before that we had the dining-room chairs re-seated.” She looked doubtfully at the book. “That’s all office stuff. He kept some of it here and worked on it in the evenings sometimes.”
Purbright showed her the open pages. “You wouldn’t know why he kept these, I suppose?”
She peered at the cuttings. “They’re adverts,” she said unhelpfully, “from the paper.”
“Oh,” said Purbright. He closed the book, put it back with the others and drew down the desk top.
Mrs Poole stood aside as he left the room. She closed the door behind them and asked if he wished to see anything else. Purbright hesitated. “There’s the bedroom,” prompted Mrs Poole.
“I’m a terrible old nuisance, aren’t I?” he said brightly, as they moved towards the staircase.
“That’s all right, sir. I only want it all to be settled and no more harm done to anyone.” She reached the landing and turned off towards a second, shorter flight.
Purbright silently kept pace with the housekeeper along a passage that he judged to correspond with the corridor below.
She stopped before a door almost at the end. They were at the back of the house. The air was cold and damp.
Mrs Poole looked at him earnestly. “Do you know when they’ll be bringing him home?” she asked. “I thought I’d better keep this room ready.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you definitely, but it shouldn’t be later than tomorrow. You understand that what we call a post-mortem examination has had to be made?”
“I see.” She opened the door quietly and motioned him in. The room was dim but the outlines of its few pieces of furniture showed it to be spacious and arranged with austere practicality. Purbright walked slowly across to the window, pulled the curtain slightly aside, and looked out.
Below was the large back garden, dank and shrubby. A line of poplars screened its end like huge brooms stuck handles down in the earth. Weak winter sunshine fell aslant one of the two flanking walls. The bushes were motionless and dark against the frost-whitened soil.
Purbright let the curtain fall and re-crossed the room. The woman said nothing. He went past her and waited for her to close the door. Her eyes, he saw, had become slow and devoid of expression, like raisins in the dough of her face.
He put his hand on her arm. “What has been frightening you, Mrs Poole?”
She looked up and caught her breath. Then she gave a jerky little smile and replied: “Nothing frightens me, sir. Not now. I think it’s over.”
She began to lead the way back along the passage.
Chapter Three
Inspector Purbright did not pay his promised call on the lonely widow of Mr Carobleat. As he walked out through the open gate of The Aspens, he noticed activity in the field beyond the fence on the opposite side of the road and crossed over.