He switched back to his own field. “You’ve seen the bath?”
“I have, yes.”
“So must I. There would have been problems. I’ll be interested to find out how he managed them.”
“Because of the acid, you mean.”
“Certainly. It takes some withstanding. Heavy enamel might do it, but there’d need to be no scratches or chips. A rubber plug would serve. What about the plug seating, though? That’s always metal; it would go in no time. Chain, too...” Warlock enumerated the snags zestfully, like a surgeon counting tumours.
“All that,” Purbright interrupted, “was taken care of. I’ll show you when we go downstairs. Is there anything else you want to see here?”
Warlock gave a final deprecatory glance at the twisted, sealed-off plumbing, peered briefly into an empty airing cupboard, then went again to the cabinet. He looked at the jars and packets on the single shelf above the hammer. They included one of the less inhibited after-shave lotions, a box labelled ‘Friar Martin’s Herbal Blood-purifying Lozenges’, a lid-less tin of rather dusty first-aid dressings, a jar of Riding Master Hand Salve (Cherrywood) and another of anti-scurf ointment, two boxes of laxative pills and a plastic dispenser of Man-about-Town Body Acid Neutralizer (Apple Loft).
“An essay in divergent personalities,” murmured the inspector over Warlock’s shoulder.
Warlock gingerly shifted one or two of the jars aside. He craned to see the back of the shelf. “No sign of shaving kit. Did those boys have beards?”
“There’s an electric razor in the bureau thing downstairs. I imagine that would go with Riding Master and Man-about-Town. The herbal lozenge addict would be a soaper and scraper.”
“In that case I’d say he was the survivor, then. Took his stuff with him. Hello...”
Warlock reached into the cabinet with a pair of tweezers and withdrew from among the dressings a small rectangle of metal. It was a single-edged razor blade. “What’s he been doing with this, I wonder.”
He pointed to where the brightness of the steel had been dulled across one corner by a brown deposit.
“Odd,” said Purbright, feeling somewhat lightly armed in the matter of forensic speculation. Warlock carefully propped the razor blade against the hammer shaft. Then he turned and motioned the inspector to lead the way downstairs.
A few steps from the bottom Purbright paused, eyeing the looming obstruction of Constable Donaldson who stood by the front door and darkened the diminutive hallway. “Bring a chair out and sit down,” Purbright said. “You make the place look like Downing Street.”
Re-entering the dining-room, they found Sergeant Love had cleared the contents of the bureau out upon the table and was now glancing through the pile of papers he had collected from the drawers and pigeon-holes. Through the half-open window came the sound of an exploratory spade being thrust at fairly long intervals into the dusty soil of the flower beds. The threatened shower had held off. Both men in the garden had removed their jackets. One absent-mindedly swung the trowel he was holding—he had succeeded in being unable to find a spade—and gazed at the earth his colleague had disturbed.
Purbright opened the door of the sideboard and pointed out to Warlock the basin and paint brush.
“I was just looking at this when you arrived. I think it’s the answer to some of the questions you were asking upstairs.”
Warlock squatted and examined the basin closely, not touching it. He lowered his head farther and sniffed.
“Wax, isn’t it?” Purbright asked.
“Paraffin wax. Melted candles, probably; there’s a piece of wick in it.” Warlock rocked gently on his heels and looked up. There was simple pleasure on his face. “Brushed hot over the plug seating and any breaks in the enamel—just the job, squire. And the chain—that could have been dipped through it.”
Love scowled at the papers that he was now sorting into three heaps which he mentally classified as letters, bills and odds-and-sods. His resentment of the cheerful Warlock was sharpened by the laboratory man’s anticipation of the very theory he had been nurturing in his own mind with the intention of producing it, like a prize marrow, at the opportune moment. He salvaged what, credit he could by breaking into the conversation with an announcement.
“That’s quite likely to be right, about the bath, inspector. I noticed when I was going over it for prints that there were traces of grease on the bottom.”
“Ah,” said Purbright, nodding sagaciously at Warlock.
“It looked,” added Love, “rather as if an attempt had been made to rinse it clean with hot water. But whoever did that forgot about the plug chain. It was slung over one of the taps and still quite thickly covered.”
He returned to his sorting.
Warlock regarded the basin with possessive joy. “One decent dab on you, sweetheart, and...”—he made the cork-drawing sound that seemed, for him, to symbolize the ultimate in desirable achievement. Love winced.
“It would be very helpful,” Purbright conceded. “Provided, of course, that we can establish whose print it is. I suppose the presumption must be strong that it belongs to whichever of the two gentlemen is still alive.”
“Bound to, squire.” Warlock glanced round at the inspector as if in wonderment that a man could view a certainty with such caution. “Mind you,” he added, “I’m not promising that anything will show up. It’s the sort of job for which anyone with sense would wear rubber gloves. Sloshing acid about, and so on. Don’t you think so?”
Purbright let the point pass. It seemed unfruitful. “The hairs on that hammer, now,” he went on. “How far are they going to be helpful?”
“That’s hard to say.” Warlock rose and slipped his restless hands into his trouser pockets, where they continued to rummage like inquisitive mice. “It’s identification you’re after again, I suppose. Yes, well, in itself a hair doesn’t tell a great deal. It’s comparative tests that are significant. Give me hair A and hair B and I’ll tell you if they’re from the same head—with a reasonable degree of certainty, anyway.”
The inspector considered this offer. Then he addressed Love. “Sid, I want you to chase some hairs for this gentleman. We’ll need to have a pretty fair idea of whom they belong to, though. Periam’s shop is one possibility: he may have kept a jacket or something there. We don’t know that the other fellow—Hopjoy—had a place of his own, an office or anything. See if there’s marked clothing of his among the stuff here.”
“What about initialled hairbrushes, sir?” Love was young in heart.
“Oh yes, rather. Initialled hairbrushes by all means.”
There was a gentle knock on the door and one of the plain-clothes men thrust his head round. “Excuse me, sir, but we’ve turned something up.”
“Have you, Mr Boggan?” Purbright sounded pleased.
“Yes, sir. I thought perhaps you’d like to have a look.”
Purbright and Warlock followed him into the garden. It was a neat, uninspiring arrangement of lawn bordered on three sides with flower bed and enclosed by a shoulder-high fence of creosoted boarding. The grass was not rank, but it obviously had not been mown for several weeks. The few plants regularly spaced along the surrounding strip of soil looked like old hotel residents: deep-rooted, uncompromising and reluctant to bloom. A sterile plum tree stood primly in the far corner, its trunk collared with a blackened remnant of clothes line.