“About a hundredweight apiece. A fairly strong bloke could manage one on his own.”
“When you talk of people being in and out, you mean customers, I suppose.”
“That’s right. They just bring their cars into the yard there or back them into the shop. Some of them might want to help themselves to the air line, or a grease gun. We don’t bother so long as they’re not in the way.”
“Free and easy.”
Mr Blossom shrugged. “Why not? You can’t run a garage like a jewellers.”
“You feel that this thing must have been pinched during the daytime?”
“I really haven’t thought about it. As I said, I expect some idiot whipped it on the spur of the moment. He wouldn’t do that at night, would he? In the dark, I mean.”
Purbright walked to the corner of the L-shaped yard, looked round it, and returned. Mr Blossom forestalled comment. “Oh, yes, it’s open to the street. There’s nothing to stop anybody coming this far at any time if they wanted to.”
“Or if they knew these carboys were kept here and happened to want one.”
Mr Blossom slightly relaxed his smile to signify regret of the world’s waywardness and blinked. Purbright saw the set of pale blue concentric circles dissolve from the thick, upturned lenses and then spread back, more watery than before.
“Do you happen to keep a list of your customers, Mr Blossom?”
“We do, yes.”
“I wonder if I might take a quick look at it.”
Mr Blossom turned and led the way across the shop and up an open wooden staircase to his office. He pulled out the drawer of a small box file and graciously stepped aside.
The names were in alphabetical order. Purbright saw that Hopjoy’s card had a little scarlet disc gummed neatly to the upper left-hand corner. There were a few others similarly decorated. The name Periam was not listed.
“May I ask what the red circles mean?”
Mr Blossom peered innocently at the open file. “Oh, it’s just a sort of private mark we use in the accounting system...”
“Bad payers?”
“Well...” Mr Blossom spread his hands. “Oh, by the way...” He unlocked and opened the top drawer of his desk and handed Purbright a heavy cigarette lighter. “Found it on the scene of the crime. None of my chaps had lost it.”
Purbright turned the lighter over in his hand. It looked expensively durable and efficient but bore neither decoration nor brand name. “Might be helpful. Thanks.” He slipped the lighter into his pocket and pencilled a note of receipt.
“By the way, I notice you’ve done work on a car belonging to a man called Hopjoy, of Beatrice Avenue. Does he always bring it in himself?”
“The Armstrong, you mean. No, not always. A friend of his drives as well. The servicing’s not done in his name, though.”
“What’s the friend called?”
Mr Blossom wrinkled his helpful nose. “Perry, I think...no, Periam. He keeps a cigarette shop.”
But doesn’t smoke, Purbright added to himself. “All right, Mr Blossom. We’ll let you know if your magnum turns up.”
Not to be outdone in jocularity, Mr Blossom sang out in rasping baritone: “And if one green bottle should accidentally fall...” and wrung Purbright’s hand like an old friend.
Back at police headquarters, the inspector found Ross and Pumphrey awaiting him. The Chief Constable, faced with a bewildering variety of requests for information about a one-legged snooker player, a barber, a farmer, and a Scandinavian pig slaughterer, had gravely assured his questioners that “Mr Purbright handles all that sort of thing” and gone home to do some, gardening.
Purbright listened attentively until his visitors, judging him to have been put squarely in the picture, invited him to deliver reciprocal revelation.
He rose. “I think, gentlemen, that the best thing will be to call in a couple of our local experts.”
Pumphrey looked startled. “I don’t know about that, inspector. You realize all this is top secret...” He glanced at Ross.
Purbright leaned against the door frame. He sighed. “I don’t pretend to be an encyclopaedia, you know. Some of my men have a much wider range; they might save you a lot of time.”
“That’s all right, Purbright,” Ross said. “I’m sure you can question your chaps in a way that won’t set any rabbits away.”
When the inspector re-entered the room five minutes later, he was accompanied by Sergeant Love, looking as pink and innocent as if Purbright had just recruited him from a Dresden pastoral, and by a genial mountain whom he introduced as Sergeant Malley, the coroner’s officer. The inspector arranged chairs so that while the two sergeants and the men from London faced each other, symmetry suggestive of opposing quiz teams was avoided. Then he sat down behind his desk, lit a cigarette, and leaned back.
“George Tozer... Now, then, let’s hear what you know about Mr Tozer.” He blew a cloud of smoke at the ceiling.
Love and Malley glanced uncertainly at each other in mutual suspicion of having been drawn into some absurd game.
“But...but you know old George, inspector. The barber. Down in...” Malley scowled and snapped his fingers.
“Spindle Lane,” supplied Love.
“That’s it—Spindle Lane. The Rubber King.”
“You know George, sir,” insisted Love, looking at Purbright with concern.
“Of course I know him. But these gentlemen don’t. And it’s for their benefit I’m asking these things, not mine.”
“Oh, I see.” Malley turned his big friendly face to Pumphrey. “He’s a rum old sod, is George. Ugly as vomit. But he’d help anyone, wouldn’t he, Sid?”
Love grunted confirmation.
“They reckon it was George who fixed up Lady Beryl with that third husband of hers...”
“Fourth,” corrected Love.
“Fourth, was it? Never mind. That book salesman with one ear, I mean. Everyone reckoned Lady Beryl had had it for good when her third chucked in. She’d started drinking hair restorer by then. That’s how she came to know George, I suppose...”
Pumphrey, who had been nodding and making impatient noises in his throat, thrust in a question. “What are Tozer’s political affiliations?”
Malley’s eyes widened. He looked round at Love, who did his best to be helpful at such short notice. “Lady Beryl’s Conservative,” he said.
Malley regarded Pumphrey once more. “That’s right, she is. Although they don’t risk letting her open fêtes any more, of course. Mind you, I’m not saying George Tozer’s a snob—you’re Labour, perhaps, are you, sir?—well, the Labour people have done some good in their way. That’s neither here nor there, though; I’m sure George wouldn’t let your politics stop him doing you a good turn if he can...”
“He’s a bit of a flanneller, mind,” Love saw fit to warn Ross.
“Oh, aye,” agreed the coroner’s officer. “Reminds you of the barber’s cat, doesn’t he, Sid? All wind and .,.” He checked himself at the sight of Pumphrey’s frown of exasperation. “Still, I’ll say this for him—there’s many a family in this town would be too big to be fed if it hadn’t been for George’s eightpenny reliables.”