“Who was Clegg?” Purbright asked, after a while.
“Veronica’s husband, you mean?”
“Yes. Not top drawer, I understand.”
“Well, not by the Moldham stud book, I suppose, but probably as good as anything else she could get at short notice. He was a stockbroker or an accountant or something.”
“They parted, though.” Purbright again drew on Benton’s saga.
Malley shook his head. “No, not really. Nothing drastic. She came home when her brother was left on his own, and Clegg carried on living in London. He used to stay at the Hall sometimes but he wasn’t keen on the country.”
“Now deceased?”
“So I believe.”
The telephone on Purbright’s desk rang. PC Braine begged to inform him that the car believed to have been abandoned by Sergeant Love’s assailant was now in the yard, and that the inspector’s instructions were awaited.
“I’ll be down in a moment.”
The inspector returned his attention to the coroner’s officer. “Who’s Herriott?” he asked.
“You’re still talking about Moldham, are you?”
“Aye.”
Malley viewed with half-closed eye the paper clip he was using as a pipe-cleaner. The wire was still emerging from each trip up the stem with a heavy black viscous coating. “Herriott,” he said, “was the general dogsbody, though they called him the chauffeur. He took over when Whippy Arnold left.”
“Which was?”
Up went the sergeant’s shoulders. He evidently did not consider Moldham Hall a particularly rewarding topic. “Oh, twenty years, maybe. A long time. Nearer thirty, perhaps.”
“Dead now, is he? Herriott?”
“Must be.” Malley had transposed his pipe to belly level and was reaming out the bowl with a huge clasp knife. Purbright tried not to look.
“Funny we should mention Whippy, though,” said the sergeant, suddenly glancing up. “They cremated the old bugger not two weeks ago.”
When Purbright arrived in the yard he found Detectives Pook and Wilkinson sitting in the front seats of a toffee-coloured Austin 1100 and intently studying a magazine. They did not notice the inspector until he leaned down and tapped the windscreen. Pook immediately thrust the magazine into his colleague’s lap and opened the door on his own side. He got out with athletic haste, as if bearing dispatches from a battle.
Purbright looked past him to see Wilkinson twist round and slip the magazine among some newspapers on the back seat.
“Whole lot of good prints,” announced Pook. He spread a hand in eager indication of steering wheel and facia. “All done. All in the can, sir.”
“Good,” said Purbright, without making it sound like praise. “What about blood?”
Pook looked bewildered. Wilkinson, who had come round to stand beside him, said: “Nobody asked about blood, sir.”
Purbright did not wish Wilkinson, a mild and reasonably conscientious man, to share a reprimand with Pook, who was not only heavily armoured with self-esteem, but would doubtless find his own portion of blame as easy to pass on as a pornographic magazine, so he said merely: “Never mind, let’s see if we can find any now.”
They could, and did. There were smears of blood on the side of the driver’s seat, on handbrake and gear lever and on the off-side door panel. A chastened Pook took swabbings.
Purbright viewed earlier discoveries. They included three one-litre cans of oil, two hammers, a roll of broad adhesive tape, a jemmy and several tyre levers, as well as a box of tools of fairly catholic usefulness, a butcher’s knife and what appeared to be a shearing device with huge leverage. Bolt cutters, Pook said.
“An engagingly candid man,” remarked Purbright. “He could scarcely have advertised his trade more effectively if he’d put a board up.”
“There was no sign of a weapon anywhere,” Wilkinson said.
Purbright shook his head. “He may not be very clever, but he’s not so stupid that he can’t improvise—as poor Love knows to his cost.”
Wilkinson thought a moment. “But why should he have hit the sergeant, sir? He’d only to wait for him to go away and he could have pinched that thing he was looking at—and no bother.”
The inspector shrugged. “O’Dwyer’s a Londoner: he probably knows very little about auctions. Anyway, he’s a bit of a thruster. Anybody pugnacious and impatient watching Mr Love evaluate a work of art might think that knocking him out was the simplest way of getting a look at it himself.”
“Thruster, sir?” Wilkinson echoed, hungry for upper-rank mots justes.
“Hunting expression,” said Purbright, and left it at that. There seemed no point in admitting that he had first heard it himself only that day.
Chapter Six
The next morning was Saturday, the day on which the chief constable traditionally escorted his wife around the shops. It was partly duty, but Mr Chubb did not mind that. He quite enjoyed shopping, even in the huge bin-walks which had superseded so many of Flaxborough’s small family concerns, in each of which, it now seemed to him, the same fresh-faced, bald, bobbing man in a white apron once had offered slivers of cheese for approval, or held up entire flitches of bacon which he would proceed to guillotine with the most cheerful prodigality at a nod from the customer, or weighed half a pound of Oval Osbornes or Bath Olivers (whole ones, no bits) from a tin that had had to be opened by riffing a blade round its sealed lid, And the next, please...
“Whatever next will they find to obstruct this yard?” remarked Mr Chubb of the toffee-coloured Austin. He could, with a little trouble, have manoeuvred his own Rover into its reserved space, but this was Saturday: he was entitled, surely, to some respite from coping with awkwardness on this one day. He switched off his engine and got out.
Inspector Purbright, who had been talking to the nodding auctioneer, old Hector Durham, and felt slightly less than steady in consequence, was entering the yard from Field Street. He crossed to the Rover in time to assist Mrs Chubb to alight. She gave him a motherly beam before turning to extricate from the back of the car a big straw shopping bag, which she handed to her husband.
The chief constable waved the bag towards the toffee-coloured car. “That does not belong to one of our people, does it, Mr Purbright?”
“No, sir. It was abandoned in Cherrytree Avenue by the man I think was responsible for the attack on Sergeant Love.”
The chief constable stared at the Austin with sharper attention. “Stolen, I suppose. Have you checked with the licence people?”
“The car isn’t stolen, as a matter of fact, sir. It is registered in the name of Chubb.”
“Chubb?”