“But remember...” She pretended to look stern.
“Yes, sweet?”
“No biteys this time.”
“Scout’s honour.”
Chapter Ten
Every comminity seems to need to divide its history into manageable parcels. Before the Flood and after. Before and after the Conquest. Pre-war and post-war. The policemen of Flaxborough, or those of them at least who had had occasion to deal with death, habitually sliced the past into two sections, uneven in size and of utterly different connotations.
The first, and larger, was The Old Man’s Time.
The second was Since Amblesby, or Now That The Old Bugger’s Gone.
Sir Albert Amblesby, the senile, scrawny, shambling, agate-eyed lawyer who had confused and terrified inquest witnesses for nearly half a century, had died—still in his office of coroner—in 1974: choked, it was said, upon the honour of knighthood belatedly bestowed for the political skulduggery of his long-gone prime, as a dehydrated miser may choke upon a rich tit-bit.
His successor, another solicitor, James Bell Cannon, was a much younger and less malevolent man.
The coroner’s officer, Sergeant Bill Malley, was glad of Cannon’s correct attitude towards the grieving and distressed.
But sometimes he missed the challenge of the late Sir Albert’s wickedness and the satisfaction he had gained in thwarting it. Cannon was careful, proper, dull. His officer felt like a Saint George turned chauffeur.
So it was that when, on Friday morning, the analyst’s final report on the contents of Robert Tring’s stomach was delivered by hand at Flaxborough Police Station, Malley acquainted Mr Cannon with the findings before taking the report to Purbright. It was a piece of punctiliousness that would have been unthinkable in The Old Man’s Time.
Cannon received the summary gravely. He said that it would appear to complicate the issue somewhat. When was the inquest due to be resumed?
“September twenty-second, sir. Ten days.”
“Very well. We shall just have to see what else turns up, Sergeant. If a further adjournment is necessary, I don’t doubt that Mr Purbright will make application at the proper time.”
And he restored his attention to a nice meaty bit of conveyancing.
Malley found the inspector studying another analytical report. This, although issuing from the same laboratory, had been brought round a little later. It looked a good deal briefer than the first.
“Not very helpful,” remarked Purbright, handing the single sheet to Malley. “It’s the whisky.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing very exciting. The sample was too small—as we thought it would be. I hadn’t the heart to disappoint poor old Johnson, though, after he’d carried that bit of bottle corner all the way here from the Market Place.”
Malley passed over his report in silent exchange. Both read for a while. The Sergeant, finishing first, waited.
When Purbright looked up, it was to give Malley a pout of meaningful inquiry. “So the odds are that Digger was nobbled?”
“That’s what it looks like.”
“Oh, dear.”
Malley shrugged. “He wasn’t a very lovable character, mind. Not Digger.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that, Bill. It’s me I’m sorry for. I’m due to see Mr Chubb in five minutes. He thinks the only thing we have on hand at the moment is the Police Houses Chrysanthemum Competition.”
Which was true. The chief constable, himself a diligent gardener, believed horticulture to be an almost perfectly suitable pursuit for policemen off duty. Its simple symbolism could not be bettered. A rose was an honest life; a cucumber a useful one. Canker and mildew were the crimes to which weak and foolish men would soon fall victim if the police did not go round with spray and secateur. Flaxborough, fortunately, was fairly free of infestation.
“Morning, Mr Purbright.” Mr Chubb turned from his contemplation of the big, oak-cased aneroid barometer on his office wall after giving the glass one final tap with a knuckle.
“The death of Robert Tring,” proclaimed the inspector, hoping that brusqueness would forestall mention of chrysanthemums.
“Tring?” A second’s pause. “Ah, the youth who fell out of some aerial contrivance at the fair.” Mr Chubb indicated a chair for Purbright, then walked to the window, where he continued to stand, curator-like, for the rest of the interview.
“You will remember, sir, that the inquest was opened for evidence of identification. Dr Heineman also appeared, but only to give the actual cause of death.”
“Only? How do you mean, Mr Purbright? I should have thought that determining the cause of death was Heineman’s entire function.”
“In the ordinary course of events, yes. But there were certain circumstances that he noticed during the post-mortem investigation which struck him as odd. They are included in his full report, but he agreed there would be no point in mentioning them in advance of the analyst’s findings. I do have the analyst’s report now, sir.”
“I have the impression that something about alcohol came up at the inquest. Heineman didn’t keep that back.”
“He had no choice. The Q.C. for the fairground people drew it out in cross-examination. He wanted to suggest irresponsible behaviour on Tring’s part, of course.”
Mr Chubb sniffed. “That shouldn’t take much establishing. Very unruly lot round there, I believe.”
“The Tring family are not notably conformist, sir. On the other hand, Robert—or Digger, as they call him—never got into trouble through drinking, let alone drugs.”
“Drugs?” The chief constable looked nervous. He was not by nature an imaginative man, but he once had attended a Home Office film show on the subject that had so harrowed him that he could not now pass herbalist Gingold’s shop in East Street without half-expecting a fuddle of junkies to reel from its doorway.
“Heineman noticed some dilation of pupil, sir,” Purbright explained. “I don’t need to tell you, of course, that it is a symptom of narcotic poisoning.”
Mr Chubb’s anxiety was clearly increasing. “Do you mean to tell me, inspector, that Tring was poisoned? I thought it was the fall that killed him.”
“So it was, sir. But he had been drugged first. By...” Purbright quickly found the appropriate section of the analysis—“By two point seven milligrams of hyoscine hydrobromide.”
The Chief Constable looked grave. Hyoscine hydrobromide had a peculiarly menacing sound. “Where would he get hold of that?” he asked, putting just enough emphasis on the final word to suggest actual knowledge of what it was.
“I have no idea, sir,” Purbright admitted. He added, off-handedly: “Apart from the two obvious sources, of course.”