Detective Sergeant Sidney Love was gloomily trudging around in the grass, followed closely by a confused-looking uniformed constable. As Purbright joined them, he saw a small wooden stake driven into the ground a few feet from the base of the power supply mast.
Love eyed him without enthusiasm. “We’ve taken measurements, sir.”
Purbright gazed up at the pylon. “What an odd perch for a newspaper proprietor,” he murmured. “Power without responsibility, I suppose.”
“Is there anything else we can do?” Love asked. “It’s jolly cold here.”
“Have you measured the height of the cable arm?”
“What, climbed up, do you mean, sir?” The sergeant looked incredulously at the steel network.
“Maybe it’s pointless,” Purbright conceded. “Call it twenty-five feet, shall we? No, twenty-seven—that’ll sound as if we really know.” He walked slowly round the stake, scuffing the grass here and there with his shoe. “Nothing round here, Sid?”
“What had you in mind, sir?”
Purbright looked at Love from under his brows. “Clues,” he said. “Cloth fibres. Nail parings. Dust from a hunch-backed grocer’s shop. You know.”
“Wilkinson here found a mushroom.”
“In December?”
“It wasn’t up to much. I advised him to throw it away.”
“In that case we might as well get back into town. I’ve already spent a useless half hour in that mausoleum over there. Mrs what’s-her-name should flee to relatives before she works herself into a state of demoniac possession.”
Love glanced at him. “She gave you that sort of tale, did she?”
“She did indeed. It was rather like the ‘Cat and the Canary’. Come on; you’re right, it is cold.”
“Mrs Poole isn’t the only one with queer ideas about this business.” Love kicked the stake from side to side, drew it out and handed it to the constable. “There’s talk at some of the farms about hauntings and what have you. That’s right, isn’t it, Wilk?”
Wilkinson frowned as he waited for the others to climb over the fence. “Mind you, sir,” he said to Purbright, “it wouldn’t do to believe everything they say down this end. They think telling lies is a great joke down here—more especially if it’s likely to give us fellows a job to do for nothing.”
“Yes, but you told me you’d heard this latest tale direct from a cousin or something,” Love put in.
“That’s right, sir,”
“Go on then, man,” urged the sergeant.
Wilkinson looked a little resentful. He had not intended a piece of country gossip, passed on in an effort to cheer a chilled and chilly C.I.D. man, to be officially reported to the bland and (he had heard) “sarky” inspector. But Purbright, walking now almost paternally between them, turned upon the constable a look of kindly encouragement.
“Well, sir,” said Wilkinson, “I’ve no reason to believe this nor to expect you to, but according to this relative of mine—he has a garage a bit along the road there—some of the country people have had the notion for a while now that some sort of a ghost was trying to get into Mr Gwill’s house. It sounds daft, put like that”—the constable reddened—“and I wouldn’t think of repeating such nonsense except for something this chap says he saw himself latish on last night. He was cycling home from town when he saw Mr Gwill just behind that gate of his and splashing water about on the ground from a big jar or a can. It was pretty dark, but Maurice was sure about the water. He could hear it slosh as he went by.”
Purbright had listened carefully; now he asked: “And what did your cousin think was significant about that?”
The constable flushed more deeply still. “The tale goes that it was holy water in that pot...But it doesn’t seem to make much sense. I only mentioned it, like, to the sergeant here...” He broke off.
“Jolly interesting little story, anyway,” said Purbright, rescuing Wilkinson from his embarrassment. “It helps to give us a picture of the fellow, which is more than I can get from the people who are supposed to have known him. You were quite right to tell us, constable.”
The trio made its way through the streets of the town without further conversation. Purbright liked staring about him when he was out and silently guessing the errands of such inhabitants as were not leaning against something. Love watched presentable young females from behind his disguise of pink-faced single-mindedness. As for Wilkinson, he ruminated on the inspector’s lack of ‘side’ and thought up ways of proclaiming it, with some small credit to himself, in the parade room later on.
One of the first things Purbright saw when he entered the police station was the unmistakable rear of Sergeant Malley, who was leaning over the reception counter to talk to the duty officer. In the centre of the serge acreage of his trousers seat was a round, white blemish. Purbright stopped and tapped his shoulder. “You seem to have sat on something,” he confided.
Malley’s hand stole searchingly down. Having peeled off what he could of the white substance, he stared at his fingers. “It’s one of those bloody marshmallows,” he announced.
“What bloody marshmallows?”
“The one’s from old Gwill’s pocket. It must have fallen on my chair when I was collecting his stuff together for Lintz to take away.”
“Oh,” said Purbright. He walked off to his own office.
Sergeant Love joined him. As there were now no girls to be regarded, he had allowed his face to resume its expression of slightly petulent innocence. Purbright looked upon it thoughtfully; he could never quite decide whether that cleanly shining feature properly belonged to a cherub or an idiot.
“Please give me”—the inspector had lifted the telephone—“the pathology block at the General. Doctor Heineman.” He leaned back against his desk and waited.
A mittel-European voice chimed brightly over the wire. “Mornink, inspector!”
“Good morning, doctor. Finished with that gentleman we asked you to look at?”
“But yes. You are requirink him back again?”
“What killed him?”
“Failure of heart, naturally. But before that there was asphyxia and before that shock from the electrics and nothing before that except joys and sorrows and delusions, dear chappie. A report I’m sendink you any minute. You must think I’ve somethink worse to do. I don’t play golf all day, you guess. How’s that funny little fellow that scrubs the face with carbolic or what? When’s he come and see us cuttink-up merchants again; that’s how he calls us, I know that. No, but I’m so busy now. Got what you wanted?”
“Stomach contents?”
“Ha, all sorts. Very jolly. Why?”
“Anything unusual?”
“Nothink corrodink, I should say. Want them done?”
“Not if you’re happy about the cause of death.”
“He was not poisoned. That I tell you. Shock and everything; that was it.”
“Very well, doctor. Oh, by the way...”
“Yes?”
“Did you notice anything about the mouth? Any trace of recent food?”