“Why?”
“It was before you said anything about...you know, about Bry. I didn’t want Doreen’s name to be dragged into it. The shindy was to do with her, you see.”
“There was a row, then?”
“Well...yes, I’m afraid there was. A sort of row, anyway.” Periam’s face muscles tightened. “It was quite one-sided. Bry bawled me out, if you must know. I suppose I deserved it, but he certainly gave me old Harry. What I said about his having had one or two was quite right, by the way—I should think he’d been getting up some Dutch courage to have things out with me.”
Purbright watched Periam’s hands. Tightly clasped, they were being pushed into the flesh of his thighs in a kind of kneading self-punishment.
“The truth is,” Periam went on, “that Doreen was Bry’s fiancée. They’d been going together for quite a while. He brought her home to tea once or twice when Mother was still alive. Then she started coming more often—after we lost Mother, I mean. She insisted on having a key and popping in to make things shipshape two or three times a week. She did most of the shopping and got us quite a few meals. Dor really is a brick, you know.
“Anyway, as time went on it just happened that we saw rather a lot of each other. You see, I was home more than Bry and... well, that’s how it was. It sounds terribly disloyal, but I mean when two people find they’re meant for each other... Of course, we didn’t do anything...well, you know—nothing like that. It was rather awful, all the same, having to face old Bry day after day knowing I’d let him down. I simply couldn’t tell him. Nor could Doreen; she hadn’t the heart, poor kid. So we decided to slip off and get married and face the music afterwards. It sounds a rotten thing to do, but...oh, I don’t know...” Periam lapsed into silence.
“It isn’t true, then,” said Purbright, “that Hopjoy lent you his car for your honeymoon. Nor that you told him you were getting married, for that matter.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Actually I said I was having a holiday on my own. That’s what I told Joan, too—Miss Peters at the shop.”
“Then have you any idea how Mr Hopjoy knew where to telephone you last Thursday night? And how he knew—as presumably he did—that you were about to get married?”
“It wasn’t he who phoned, remember. I didn’t recognize the voice of the girl who did, but my guess is that she was a friend of Bry’s who had heard what was going on from someone Doreen had confided in. Dor’s terribly sweet, but she does tend to let her heart rule her head. I tell her sometimes that she’s much too trusting.”
Purbright seemed to accept the explanation. “I should like,” he said, “to hear a little more about this quarrel you now say took place between you and Hopjoy. Was there any violence—actual physical violence, I mean?”
“Oh, no; no fisticuffs or anything like that. He just...well, ranted. At the top of his voice. I don’t know whether any of the neighbours heard. It’s a pretty solidly built house, fortunately, so I can only hope they were asleep.”
“Were you in any particular part of the house?”
Periam made a sound distantly related to a laugh. “It was in the bathroom of all places. Bry called me up when he heard me come in. He’d been having a wash, I expect.”
“And he...?”
“Let off at me. He seemed to be trying to get my goat. Of course, I can’t complain—I had pinched his young lady, after all—but he did come it a bit strong.”
Periam consulted a watch that he drew from his trousers pocket after first removing a leather purse. “Look here, I really must see to the inner man. It’s just on one.”
“It is, indeed. Perhaps I ought to see to my inner man, too.” Purbright rose, a little stiffly. “If you think I might be introduced to Mrs Periam without causing her too much alarm ,..”
“Well, I...I’m not sure that...”
“I’m sorry, sir. I assure you I don’t make a habit of intruding on honeymoons. There are some more things I must ask you, though—both of you—and they might as well be put socially, especially as everyone seems to be hungry.”
Together they set off towards the Neptune, Periam silent and staring gloomily aside from time to time at the lavender-coloured marsh with its silver fringe of distant sea, and Purbright preoccupied with the compatibility or otherwise of murder by acid bath with a world of chums, young ladies, and the Student Prince.
Neither looked remotely expectant of enjoyment. It was natural for the few people they passed on the way back to the hotel to assume, if they noticed them at all, that they were holiday-makers.
Chapter Eight
Hopjoy’s reports upon the Old Moorish Electric Theatre, Flaxborough, had been suggestive, espionage-wise, to an encouraging degree. Ross, having savoured their subtlety and noted how much their compilation had cost in expenses, felt that a personal follow-up should be undertaken without delay.
He parked the Bentley where it would be unobtrusive among a score of farmers’ cars against the northern pavement of the Corn Exchange. Immediately opposite was the flaking, ochred façade of the old theatre. The general idea of its columns and arches, its filigree screens and onion dome, had been the simulation of oriental splendour, but the fabric now looked diseased and pulpy. Within an arched opening beneath the dome once had stood, each Monday and Thursday, a junior commissionaire embarrassingly victimized by the whims of a zealous manager; robed and turbaned, wool-whiskered and smeared with shoe polish, this miserable sham muezzin had called forth the film titles and programme times to the faithful beneath. Now a mound of pigeon droppings almost filled the enclosure and a few tatters of faded paper flapped from the column-supported billboard, four-year-old relics of the cinema’s last dying week.
The main arch, which had spanned the entrance doors and paybox, was boarded up, but this drab barricade was pierced with a small door surmounted with the words: ‘Alhambra Club—Licensed for Billiards’.
Ross’s attention turned to a figure on the steps near the door. It was a one-legged man, who gave a first impression of being all chest and crutch. Then, jammed into the great blue-jerseyed barrel, a face became discernible. It was of the colour of smoked bacon rind and transversed with even darker lines, the concertina creases of immoderate mirth. The nose was a knobbled crudity, approximately central and perforated by pores suggestive of the inflictions of a shotgun. The mouth was a leathern slit, the eyes shiny black beetles that scuttled in perpetual restlessness back and forth along deep crevices.
The man wore a tiny black waterproof peaked cap, tugged down over one ear. Slung from his shoulders was a tray of paper flags, each bearing the image of a sick terrier looking through a lifebelt. The poster hanging from the tray invited contributions to the Dogs at Sea Society.
If the man was a parody of the Ancient Mariner, his solicitations were a good deal more forceful than those of an original contented merely with stopping one of three. With the air of one brandishing a blunderbuss, he thrust a collecting tin beneath the nose of every citizen who had neglected to cross to the other side of the street.
Ross watched the brisk and successful exactions for some minutes, at first idly, then with sharpened interest. He noticed that an occasional alms-giver failed in some small way to conform to the general pattern. These exceptions fumbled their gifts, but not in the normal manner of pretending a halfpenny to be a florin; they actually pushed paper, not coins, into the tin.