Mr Chubb leaned lightly against a trellised arch and gazed into the middle distance.
“This case from Beatrice Avenue, sir,” Purbright began. “I’d like to give you what we’ve gathered so far and to hear your opinion of it. Our first impressions may have been mistaken.”
“Ah...” Mr Chubb nodded almost approvingly. “That’s always to be expected, Mr Purbright. There’s no discredit in finding one’s calculations at fault. Seeds don’t always produce what’s on the packet, you know.”
“No, sir.”
Mr Chubb relinquished a few inches of his Olympian advantage and put his hand on the back of the bench. “I’ll tell you one thing, my boy. I’m very pleased that you’ve pegged away at this thing instead of leaving it to the heavies. Major Ross and his man are absolutely capable, I’ve no doubt, but outsiders never seem to understand just why people in a place like this behave as they do. It’s important, you know. Very.” The assertive frown cleared and Mr Chubb’s face went back aloft. “Sorry to have interrupted. Carry on.”
“Just before I left the office”—Purbright delved into the briefcase he was holding—“I had an idea about the anonymous letter that started off this affair. You’ll remember it, of course.” He handed a creased, pale blue sheet to the Chief Constable. “And now look at this, sir: it was among the papers we found in Hopjoy’s bedroom.”
Mr Chubb turned back the cover of the writing pad Purbright had taken from his case. He compared the letter with the top sheet of the pad, then smoothed one over the other. They corresponded in size, colour and texture.
“You can follow the ball-point indentations that have come through,” Purbright pointed out. “They persist for two or three pages down.”
“Not very anonymous now,” remarked Mr Chubb drily. He watched Purbright re-fold the letter and slip it into its parent pad. Then he frowned. “What the dickens are we supposed to make of it all? Some sort of a joke, or what?”
“It would have been no joke for Periam if he’d been convicted of murder, sir.”
“No, by jove, it wouldn’t,” murmured Mr Chubb.
“And yet,” said Purbright, “he very well might have been. The evidence that he killed his lodger and then disposed of his body is very impressive at first sight. We get this letter and naturally presume it’s from a neighbour who has heard a quarrel and might even have seen something suggestive of violence. It makes particular mention of the bathroom—a rather convincing touch, somehow. We have no choice but to investigate. And there they all are, the signs of very nasty goings on—bloodstains, wax coating on the bath, acid burns on the floor, a hammer stuck up with blood and hair. And buried in the garden, the smashed carboy, whose iron basket—too big to bury and too tough to be broken up—has been hastily pushed out of sight in a wardrobe.
“We look in the drains—quite predictably, of course—and sure enough they prove that a body has been destroyed by acid. Whose? Obviously, the loser of the midnight fight in the bathroom which was so considerately reported to us by a watchful neighbour. The winner, if and when we trace him, is bound to be the murderer.
“The survivor, Gordon Periam, is duly found. He is not far away, but that fact in itself is consistent with the self-confidence of the sort of man who can commit and conceal an exceptionally horrid crime. Indeed, all the circumstances in which he is found (as you doubtless recognized yourself, sir) are classically in line. The refuge in sex relations, the flashy hotel with its novel comforts and expense, enjoyment of the victim’s car as well as his girl...the pattern’s complete and absolutely damning.”
The inspector paused to light a cigarette. Mr Chubb regarded him very thoughtfully. He was trying to persuade himself that the point about the classic behaviour of murderers had, indeed, already occurred to him.
“And that, sir,” resumed Purbright, “was the situation as it was presented to us. ‘Presented’ is the operative word, of course. It could have gone straight to the Director of Public Prosecutions there and then, and I dare say that Periam’s indictment would have been automatic. But you were wise not to rush it, sir.”
The Chief Constable modestly turned his gaze to a group of border plants near his foot.
“It was almost inevitable,” Purbright went on, “that some part of so elaborate a set-up would prove faulty. The lab. people spotted it. Those hairs on the hammer were Hopjoy’s all right—or at least they corresponded with some found on his clothing—but they hadn’t arrived there through his having been bashed over the head. According to Warlock, they’d been snipped and stuck on.”
“Yes, but the blood...”
“It doesn’t need too much of a self-inflicted cut, possibly with the corner of a razor blade, to provide enough blood to be smeared on a hammer head. And perhaps a few splashes around the place as well.”
“There was a quarrel, though, Mr Purbright. I don’t think we should let ourselves be led too far away from that fact by chaps with microscopes.”
“Oh, yes, there was a row,” Purbright agreed. “Periam didn’t deny that, as he could very well have persisted in doing. But I think I told you that he said it was a very one-sided affair, with Hopjoy doing all the shouting. If we accept that, might we not consider whether the noise had a special object—to disturb neighbours and put in their minds the presumption of a quarrel?”
“And were they disturbed?”
“Those I’ve spoken to myself say they heard nothing. But Sergeant Love is making inquiries in the houses that back on to Beatrice Avenue. The people there are far more likely to have heard whatever there was to hear; the sound would travel straight across the gardens.”
The Chief Constable nodded. “All right. Now about this business of the body—how do you explain that away? The stuff in the drains and all that.”
“Have you ever read anything about cannibalism, sir?”
“Not avidly, Mr Purbright, no.”
“Well, it seems that human flesh quite closely resembles pork.”
“Indeed.”
“And I learned more or less by chance yesterday that half a pig carcass was stolen recently from a farm where Hopjoy had been a regular and quite intimate visitor. In the boot of that car of his, and in one or two places at the house, Warlock turned up traces of animal blood.”
For nearly a minute, Mr Chubb silently regarded an earwig’s progress along one of the trellis spars.
“I suppose we have to remember,” he said at last, “that tom-foolery of that kind was just the fellow’s line of country. It’s perfectly disgraceful, though, when you think of all the money that’s being spent on the intelligence service. The trouble is, they live in a world of their own. I can’t see that there’s anything we can do about him. I mean there’s nothing we can charge him with.”
Purbright pursed his lips. “Conduct likely to lead...”
“...to a breach of the peace?” Mr Chubb capped the phrase with a sort of sad derision. “You can see his people letting us go ahead with that one, can’t you? Worse than the blasted Diplomatic Corps. He’ll turn up somewhere else with a cock and bull story and start working up a new set of creditors, just you see.”
“There’s rather more to this,” said Purbright slowly, “than mere debt-dodging. A man can arrange his own disappearance without leaving somebody else to face a murder charge. In this case, a great deal of trouble and ingenuity was spent specifically on the incrimination of Periam. But the only thing poor old Periam wasn’t carefully provided with was a motive. Why should he have wanted to kill Hopjoy? If anyone had a motive for murder it was Hopjoy himself—the man whose girl Periam had appropriated.”