“Do you not think your glazier might repair it?”
“Glazier?” The colonel looked puzzled.
“The gentleman mending a window round the side of the house. I noticed he had a bag of very professional-looking tools.”
The colonel and Mrs Moldham-Clegg looked at each other. She frowned at her nephew. “Benton, does he mean?”
“He’s my gardener,” said the colonel. “Odd jobs, that sort of thing. Very useful chap. Not exactly a furniture restorer, though, one would have thought.” “Hardly,” agreed the aunt. The exchange was obviously for Purbright’s benefit but neither looked away from the other while it went on.
Purbright put down his cup.
“How did that window get broken, colonel?”
“My dear fellow...” Colonel Moldham’s lean face once again stretched into the lop-sided contours of false amusement, like that of a man with a slight stroke. “How does a window get broken? Children... Careless servants...”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg had finished shelling peas. She smoothed level those in the colander and put it on the table. She, too, was smiling wryly.
“If you would care for more coffee, Mr Purbright...?”
Purbright rose, shook his head, and made a small bow. He walked straight to the bureau and knelt before it. Around its lock an area of about the size of a playing card was ruptured and splintered. Marks suggested that a chisel or broad screwdriver had been used to lever open the lid. The surrounding surface appeared to have been wiped.
Getting to his feet, the inspector strolled back towards the colonel.
“I’m sorry, sir, but nothing is going to persuade me that the owner of an attractive and, no doubt, valuable article such as that is would perpetrate so crude an assault upon it, however pressing the occasion.”
It was as though Purbright had not spoken. The colonel, blank-faced, addressed his aunt: “I have to go over to Gosby with that saddle I promised Mallory. Tell Benson to see to the melon house door, will you? He knows about it.”
The old woman quitted her chair. Purbright saw now that she was wearing trousers. They were of crumpled cavalry twill. In the loose grey cardigan that covered a blouse and a purple silk scarf knotted at her throat was a brooch, an enamelled miniature of a spray of roses, set in heavy gold.
“It was good of you to call, Mr Inspector,” she said, not looking at him but busying herself with collecting colander and spent pods.
The door was being held open by the colonel.
“Give you a lift, Purbright?”
“That’s very good of you, sir.” The inspector passed by him into the half-light of the hall. “I do happen to have my own transport.”
“Splendid,” murmured the colonel, flatly. He remained standing on the porch step, legs a little apart, gun cradled once more within his arm, staring mildly at no part in particular of the Moldham family acres.
Chapter Five
When Purbright reached the corner of the house, he looked round it to see if Benton, the odd-jobs man, were still about, but there was no sign of him. The inspector followed with his eye the gravel path, a broad spur from the main drive, which continued past where Benton had been mending the window. It led to the back of the house. There, presumably, would be found the coachhouse to which Mrs Moldham-Clegg had referred.
Purbright decided to have a look. Herriott—whoever he was—had been mentioned in a way that suggested he had lived in the building. Was it still in occupation by somebody—Benton, perhaps? Or the Mrs Anstead who had been too busy to make coffee?
Somewhere not far away, dogs were barking sporadically. He halted. The colonel’s voice reached him, raised in command. Then silence, followed by the sound of a car being started against its will. Purbright glanced about for cover, then remembered the overgrown gravel and the latched and rusty gates; the colonel was not likely to use that way as an exit. He remained where he was. Gradually the noise of the car diminished to a distant grumble. An old and large car, he decided, not very well maintained.
The coachhouse was revealed as soon as Purbright drew level with the back of the house. It formed the further side of a walled and flagstoned court and consisted of three arched carriage bays and an upper storey. This was reached by an outside staircase on the gable end. There were two small windows in the upper wall, both curtained.
One bay, in the rear of which Purbright could discern a bench, tools and an oil drum, obviously served as a garage. In another was a stack of shallow wooden boxes, some piles of neatly folded sacks, an old motor-driven mower and a number of gardening tools hanging from nails. There was movement, also. Into the light emerged Benton. He was unravelling what looked like a screwed up piece of cloth. Purbright heard a door open, not far away. He drew close to the wall.
“Benton, you’ll not forget the melon house, will you?”
The old man neither looked up nor spoke. His only acknowledgement of Mrs Moldham-Clegg’s instruction was a non-committal flap of the hand.
The door slammed shut.
Benton continued slowly to cross the court towards the inspector, whom he gave no sign of having seen. He was so preoccupied that twice he nearly lost his footing on the slimy mosses that covered some of the flagstones.
When he did look up and see Purbright, by then only two or three feet in front of him, he observed merely: “Ah, y’aint gone yit, then.” He spread and held aloft what he had been holding, and added: “Dunno what you think but I reckon ’ee winged the bugger.”
“What bugger?” responded Purbright, cosily. He was careful not to appear impressed by the blood that had soaked into Mr Benton’s exhibit.
“That burglar, o’ course. I thought I heard ’im loose off two barrels.”
“Wake you up, did it?”
Benton chuckled wheezily. “Wok me up, d’y’ say? Y’can’t wok up a chap as dunt sleep, mate.”
“No, I suppose you can’t.”
“If I git two hours a night, it’s plenty. Plenty, that is. Sleepin’s nowt but bein’ dead on account.”
“Ah,” said Purbright, in a way that the old man seemed to accept as marking the approval of a fellow-insomniac, for he opened a door in the courtyard wall and companionably ushered the inspector through.
“Old Knickers wuz on about the melanus. ’Ear ’er, did you?”
Purbright translated “melanus” easily enough: they had emerged beside a lean-to glasshouse containing vine-like plants. The epithet for Mrs Moldham-Clegg surprised him, though. Mr Benton he had supposed to be something in the old retainer line and not given to such brashly disrespectful references. “ ’Knickers’?”
“Har. Veronica. Nicky, she gits from family ’n ’er county friends.” The old man looked up, craftily. “You ’adn’t nivver ’eerd ’er called Knickers, then?”