“This”—Purbright traced the perimeter of their table—“being Flaxborough?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, it would be somewhere near the next table but one, I’m afraid. Moldham lies a few miles along the main road that goes more or less north east to the coast.”
“That would be in the opposite direction to the London road?”
“It would.”
Bradley nodded and replaced the mustard. “So when Frankie had finished breaking into Moldham Hall, he might have considered it convenient to take Twilight Close into his homeward itinerary.”
“At two-ish in the morning?”
“He was not a man to stand on ceremony.”
“No,” said Purbright, “it seems not.”
Mr Maddox, looking stern and steamy, arrived at their table. He frowned at Cherrytree Avenue and Twilight Close and tweaked them back instantly to their proper positions. Then he stood aside in awful supervision of the seventeen-year-old youth, his face scarlet beneath a chef’s hat, who served Purbright with Bradley’s order of egg mayonnaise and Bradley with his guest’s smoked eel.
“All right, sir?” inquired Mr Maddox of each in turn while he side-eyed the youth with a wolfish smile. They said yes, fine, and began to eat what they had been given.
When they were alone again, Bradley said: “Do you think I should remonstrate with that man on the subject of the boy’s hat? The poor lad is painfully embarrassed, as well as he might be.”
Purbright counselled him to temper compassion with tact. “Maddox will undoubtedly suppose the boy to have slipped you a note of complaint if you say anything.”
Until the next appearance of the manager and his hostage, bearing the main course on a trolley, they talked about the late Mr Arnold.
“It looks,” said Purbright, “as though Arnold was O’Dwyer’s confederate, if he had one.”
“Confederate in what, though?”
“Theft of some kind, on the face of it. We may know more about that when the forensic people have finished with the picture from the auction sale.”
“What do you know of Arnold?” asked Bradley.
“Not a great deal. I hadn’t even heard his name until yesterday, when my coroner’s officer mentioned it. He died about a fortnight ago.”
“In that old people’s home?”
“So it seems.” Purbright was silent a moment, then added: “If you are going to ask if Arnold ever had anything to do with the Moldhams, the answer is that he was employed there at one time.”
“It would be tempting to postulate the man’s having purloined the family jewels and lain low until it was safe to turn them to account,” said Bradley.
Purbright smiled. “Tempting, indeed. It would be too much in the tradition of the thirties’ detective story, though.”
Bradley spread his hands. His normally sleepy eyes suddenly brightened. “My dear friend, what is this but a thirties’ detective story? Why else do you think I came here?”
Chapter Eight
The superintendent registrar of Twilight Close was called Vernon Wellbeloved, and Inspector Bradley had received from the name expectation of a large, pastoral person, very beneficient in manner, a sort of municipal Saint Peter. He was introduced instead to a sinewy little man with a head shaped like a mason’s mall and nearly as bald. It was a hard-looking head, with two holes left in it for even harder-looking eyes, one of which Mr Wellbeloved kept permanently half-closed as if in surreptitious scrutiny. Bradley was convinced that at night the other eye would be kept permanently half-open.
Purbright apologized for their having called on a Saturday afternoon. Mr Wellbeloved gave no sign of his finding the apology other than appropriate.
Purbright said that he and his colleague were wishful of talking to Mr Wellbeloved about the late Mr Frederick, otherwise known as Whippy, Arnold; and would appreciate in addition an opportunity of putting some questions to Mr Anderson, one of the residents.
The superintendent registrar considered these requests in hunched silence, far back in his chair, while he turned between the fingers of both hands a long, green pencil with a very sharp point.
When he spoke it was quietly but with a suddenness that had just as alarming an effect as a shout.
“Excitable, these old people. Very. You do realize.” A trace of Welsh accent.
“Mr Anderson will naturally be approached with consideration for his age,” said Purbright.
Mr Wellbeloved stared as if to challenge a blatant lie. Then he rocked himself forward and took a folder from the desk drawer.
Holding the pencil at its end, like a wand, he used it to trace an entry on one of the sheets the folder contained.
“He is not well.”
Bradley blinked. “Incapacitated not well? Or just fed up not well?”
The inquiry attracted the full one-and-a-half eye power of Mr Wellbeloved’s displeasure. “I have here”—he poised the pencil delicately above the folder—“the daily medical report sheets. The doctor has categorized Anderson as RC. Nothing to do with religion. Restricted communication is what that means. The old chap is not quite himself. Understand me?”
“Perhaps for the moment,” said Purbright, stiffly, “we should address ourselves to the other matter. Mr Arnold’s death. There are several rather...”
“May I ask,” Mr Wellbeloved interrupted, “why these inquiries of yours are being made? Has there been a complaint of some sort? Eh?” He turned sharply to scowl at Bradley. “An allegation by somebody? Eh?”
“No, sir,” said Purbright. “But we are interested in certain property that was sold on behalf of Mr Arnold’s estate, as I suppose the lawyers would describe it.”
“Estate?” repeated Mr Wellbeloved. “Property? What property? I recall being shown two or three rubbishy bits and pieces when his room was being cleared. Are those what you call his estate?”
Bradley spoke. “Inasmuch as they seem to have been his sole possessions, may we not now be considerate enough to avoid words like rubbish? Estate may be a conceit, but I see nothing wrong in that.”
Again Mr Wellbeloved subjected him to a baleful stare. “Did you say you were from London?”
“I did not say so, but London is where I usually work.”
“I see. Well, in Flaxborough, Mr...”
“Bradley. Detective Inspector. No MBE.”
“...Inspector Bradley—in Flaxborough, I say, we do not indulge in conceits. Some of my old charges are fanciful enough already. It would be mistaken kindness to encourage in them delusions of grandeur.”