“The money would be raised,” said Harton, quietly and simply. “Julia was not kidnapped, though,” he added in exactly the same tone.
Purbright waited a few moments.
“When you telephoned yesterday to report that your wife had not been seen since Thursday evening,” he said, “my sergeant advised you—and I should have done the same—to make inquiries among her friends and members of her family before assuming that something had happened to her. By now, you have done that, of course.”
“Of course. Absolutely no result. Nothing.”
“Do you know if she took anything with her—clothing, luggage of any kind? Have you been able to check that?”
“A suitcase, I think, but I’m not certain. I mean, one doesn’t keep an inventory of these things.”
“No, sir. And clothing? Perhaps that would be even more difficult to be sure about, though?”
Harton smiled in a withdrawn, regretful way. “I am not the most observant of husbands, I’m afraid, inspector. There are many things about Julia I notice rather late in the day, if at all. Not very flattering.” Suddenly, Harton struck his knee with his clenched fist. “God! I can’t understand how women put up with our damned insensitivity.”
“Does that mean, Mr Harton, that you believe your wife has ceased to put up with what you consider your failings? That she has left you, in fact?”
“Sounds very simple, doesn’t it,” said Harton, mournfully.
“If it were that simple, you would have gone to your solicitor and not the police. Don’t you think, sir, that it’s time you told me what you really think has happened? What you fear has happened, rather?”
Harton looked up. “You’re very perceptive, inspector. Fear—yes, I suppose it’s there. But I couldn’t sketch it out for you. It’s quite formless. You know? What I can do, though, is to tell you certain things—very odd things, I think they are—that have puzzled and worried me a great deal, especially since Julia disappeared.” He rose from his chair and went to the sideboard. “Are you sure you won’t have anything to drink?”
Purbright saw him uncork a bottle of sweet sherry. There were several other bottles and a decanter. “Not in that sense; no, sir. I should appreciate a cup of tea, though, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Surely.” Harton moved to the door. “I’ll ask my woman to get you one.”
Mrs Cutlock came into the room five minutes later. She ogled Purbright with enormous curiosity while pretending to look for a suitable landing for the tray she held. The interview was suspended until she could no longer affect blindness to the empty and adequate table between the two men. As she was leaving, Harton called to her:
“Oh, Mrs Cutlock, you’ll remember what I said about the kitchen, won’t you? Not to move anything—just to leave it exactly as it was when you came.”
“Don’t worry. I heard what you said.” Mrs Cutlock looked offended. She resolved to tell that yellow-thatched pollis about the Hartons’ slanging match as soon as she could get him on his own.
Harton told Purbright that the significance of what he had said to his woman would be clear a little later. In the meantime he had some rather, well, some rather distasteful things to tell him. They concerned his marriage.
“Mark you, though,” he said, “I want to be absolutely fair. I do not consider myself a wronged husband or anything of that kind. Whatever has happened is attributable to shortcomings of my own. What those shortcomings are, I have never been sensitive enough—perhaps I ought to say intelligent enough—to understand.”
Purbright put milk and sugar in his cup and tipped the pot experimentally. The tea was of a reasonably amber shade but several leaves bobbed at once to the surface and remained swirling there, mutely accusing Mrs Cutlock of having neglected, in her haste to return and overhear more of the conversation, to boil the water properly.
“This matter of understanding,” said Harton, frowning at his sherry. “You can guess the area in which mine was most likely to fall short. I was an only child and I had the sort of monastic upbringing that is still the norm at public school. Not to put too fine a point on it, I had been led to regard sex as a function, not an art.”
Harton silently watched the inspector chase errant tea leaves with his spoon and land them, like dead fish, on the saucer’s edge. “You must think me very näive,” he said.
“Not particularly, sir. I appreciate that you are preparing to tell me something that has shocked you. It is perfectly sensible of you to make me understand how susceptible to shock you happen to be.”
Harton smiled gratefully and took several short, quick sips of his drink.
“My wife and I,” he resumed, “seemed to get along fairly well until a couple of months ago. I mean, it wasn’t one of these starlight and music marriages, admittedly, but we weren’t tearing into each other every five minutes, and we had a sort of mutual respect thing. Anyway, I thought she was pretty content, within limits. Mind you, the bed side of it—you know what I mean?—that was definitely short on viability. My fault. Sure. I mean I just had a different sort, a different degree, of appetite. She as good as asked me once if we couldn’t go out and—you know—do it—in the garden. She said she’d always wanted to, in a deckchair. That shook me. Unreasonable? Prudish? Right. Right. I know. But it’s just me. I can’t stand freakishness, as we old reactionaries call it. It’s like imperfection. To me, a woman has to be unblemished. Listen, you’ll think this silly, and I suppose it is, but do you know I couldn’t bear to sleep with a person who had a physical defect. Julia’s front teeth were a bit crooked when I married her. Once I noticed, I knew she’d have to do something about them or our marriage would crash. She was very understanding, actually; I got my London man to cap them. It cost me a couple of hundred, but there you are. It was that important to me.”
There was a knock at the door, and the head of Mrs Cutlock was introduced.
“All done now, Mr Harton. At least, I think so. Has Mrs Harton anything she wants seeing to? She doesn’t seem to be about this morning.”
“My wife is away visiting, Mrs Cutlock. I don’t think there will be much point in your coming on Monday. Make it Wednesday, will you?”
“Wednesday. Just as you like. All right—Wednesday.” The head gave Harton a formal nod. Purbright, in contrast, was favoured with one of Mrs Cutlock’s most confidential grins. “Mornin’, superintendent,” she said in a husky baritone of admiration. “Nice to see you on the trail again.”
“What did she mean by that?” asked Harton as soon as the door was shut once more.
“I’ve no idea, sir. I think perhaps she comes of a family of a naturally cheerful disposition.” Purbright saw no reason to add that the Cutlocks had achieved by long persistence in criminal endeavour that degree of intimacy with the police which looks to the uninformed observer very like comradeship.
“Anyway, now that she’s gone I can show you something that has been worrying me a great deal.” Harton drank off the rest of his sherry and walked to the door. His movements, Purbright noticed, were quick and unequivocal; they were those of a man who expected others to follow promptly and to do as they were told. Curious, that hidden area of sexual ingenuousness.