“The colonel? Yes, I believe so.”
The old man thought a moment. A slow grin. “That buglar’d larf all right if ’ee come up in front of Mester.”
Purbright smiled back, bade him goodbye and hastened to the corner. This suddenness of departure was in response to a reflection that the term “Mester” was unlikely to have been used by an odd jobs man summoned from elsewhere. And if the old man was one of whatever permanent staff the family could still afford, his usefulness as an informant would not survive his being seen in close company with a policeman.
The front door was slightly ajar. It was a big panelled door and had been painted dark green a long time ago. Now the paint was just dark. It was lustreless and had split away in the corners of the panels. Against this shabbiness, the shine of the heavy, ring-shaped brass knocker testified to regular polishing. Purbright raised and let it fall twice. The house sounded empty.
After a while he heard an unhurried approaching footfall, but not from within. He turned.
“Yes?”
Colonel Brace Pendamon Moldham, a tall, stringy, brownish man in a rugged-down tweed hat the colour of lichens, was standing on the gravel a few yards away. The twelve-bore couched from armpit to forearm looked as if it had grown there. He had an exactly rectangular black moustache, high cheekbones and soft brown eyes that hardly ever moved.
Purbright wished him good morning and announced his identity.
Colonel Moldham acknowledged the former with the slightest of nods but appeared totally unimpressed by the latter.
“I should like to speak to Mrs Moldham-Clegg for a moment or two, if that would be convenient.”
“About what, pray?” The tone was not hostile, but sounded a note of formal discouragement as if to give notice that one’s present suppliers were satisfactory, thank you, and one did not buy at the door in any case.
Purbright said: “I am making inquiries concerning an attack upon one of my officers yesterday morning, sir. It took place in an auction room and I have reason to believe that there may be some connection between the assault and certain articles that were subsequently sold-by pure coincidence, no doubt-to Mrs Moldham-Clegg.”
The colonel regarded Purbright in silence and without altering his stance. Five seconds went by. The inspector began to think that this was some kind of freezing tactic. He spoke again.
“Does Mrs Moldham-Clegg happen to be at home, sir? This matter need not take up much of her time.”
Colonel Moldham leaned forward and turned his head by a fraction. “Purbright, did you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
A nod of endorsement. “Yes, well, Purbright, I’m not at all sure, you know, that aunt can see you. She’s been a bit off colour.” A pause, then, stockily: “You see?”
Purbright smiled pleasantly. “That precisely is why I have come, sir. I wish to be able to release her property without putting her to the trouble of travelling to town to answer questions.”
“Release her property,” the colonel repeated half to himself, as though doubting the commission of so audacious an act as distraint, however temporary, upon anything belonging to a member of the Moldham family. He frowned, then smiled with half his mouth. “I don’t quite follow, Purbright.”
At that moment the old man who had been mending the window appeared from round the corner. Colonel Moldham at once stepped forward and pushed open the door. “Perhaps we had better go inside.”
The inspector found himself in a dark hall, from which two arched corridors ran left and right. The stone floor was bare except for the strip of well-worn matting that crossed from one corridor to the other. The walls were in part plaster, in part big wooden panels deeply buried in greenish-grey paint. He saw a chest, similarly painted, and a grandfather clock in a black timber case; its dark, cracked face and faded numerals offered little in the matter of time-telling, but the pendulum swung still and the “glunk” of its escapement echoed irregularly through the damp air like the beat of an old and much battered heart.
The hall smelled of mould, of burning pine cones and of dog.
A door was being held open by the colonel. Purbright entered the light, airy room beyond and was dazed for a moment by reflections of incoming sunshine in the white painted panels of tall, deep window embrasures and in the glassy surface of an oval table that looked nearly half as big as the room itself.
Until he realized that the colonel was addressing someone other than himself, he did not see Mrs Moldham-Clegg. She was seated in one of the two tapestry-covered wing chairs near the fireplace, her head bent forward in concentration.
“This gentleman is a police” (he pronounced it “pleess”) “inspector, aunt. He says he would like to ask you some questions. Do you wish him to ask you some questions?”
Purbright made a small bow in her direction and bade her good morning. He found interesting the colonel’s manner of introduction: the Moldhams clearly considered co-operation with the law to be like paying bills, a matter of patronage.
There came from the direction of the chair a faint “pop”. Mrs Moldham-Clegg was shelling peas.
Three pops later, she spoke.
“If the gentleman is a policeman why does he not wear a uniform?”
“It’s all right, aunt. I know Mr Purbright. He is a detective inspector from Flaxborough.”
Another soft pea-pod explosion and the sound of the peas cascading briefly against the side of a colander. “Purbright?” murmured Mrs Moldham-Clegg, as if tasting the name. “You wouldn’t be... No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
“No, no; not from Dorset, if that’s what you’re thinking of,” said the colonel, brusquely. “He wishes to ask you something.” Turning to the inspector, “Now then, what was it you wished to ask, Mr Purbright?”
Purbright resisted the temptation to reply For a chair; his host seemed to assume in others his own perpetual preference for standing.
“I trust you are feeling better now, ma’am.”
She glanced up suspiciously. “Yes, thank you.”
He went on: “I’m sorry that yesterday’s sale provided such unwelcome excitement, but...”
“I fainted, Mr Purbright, by reason of the heat in the auction room. For no other cause.”
“Of course. But it must have been annoying after all those bids to have your purchase taken into custody, as it were.”
“Very annoying, naturally. Quite frankly, it struck one as a most high-handed piece of behaviour.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg took another pea pod from a basket on the floor beside her. She scowled across at her nephew.
“Bruce, Mr Purbright is looming. Kindly bring him a chair or something. I cannot see when people loom.”
The colonel looked about him as if he did not know what a chair was. Purbright withdrew a little and also glanced around. For a fraction of a second he allowed his attention to be claimed by something on the further side of the room.