Purbright enfolded the picture loosely in its wrapping and put it aside. He did not bother to put to her the question he had had in mind.
Bradley had been considering something. He spoke to the woman. “Edna, you remember Frankie did a bit of dealing in second-hand jewellery and that kind of thing in his watch-repairing days?”
She looked up at him, warily. “Well, sort of...”
“Did his friend Mr Arnold ever send him anything in that line?”
She shook her head. The ringlets quivered like brass springs. “Not that I know of. But he wasn’t forced to tell me, Mr Bradley, was he?”
Purbright said: “No, but you’ve said already that your husband was a terror for leaving things about.”
She smiled. “That’s true. I never saw no jewels, though. Anyway”—her manner sharpened—“they’d have come registered. And nothing ever came registered.” Wistfully, again, “ ’Cept summonses.”
There was a knock. Malley entered. He spoke close to Purbright’s ear.
“They’re doing the PM now. Heineman’s secretary rang me from the General.”
Purbright drew Malley a little aside. “Lead or water, do you think, Bill?” he asked softly.
The sergeant’s huge shoulders rose fractionally. “Wouldn’t bet either way, but the odds are on drowning. Some of the gunshot wounds look pretty superficial to me.”
“Inquest opening tomorrow morning, then?”
“Aye,” said Malley, and departed.
Sadie Bellweather undertook to find Edna some lodgings. They left together.
“A fence, was he?” Purbright asked. He waited for Bradley to pass him into the corridor, then shut, but did not lock, the door.
“Frankie? Oh, yes, he tried receiving for a short time, but he had no head for business, whatever poor old Edna may believe.”
Purbright led the way towards the staircase. “Living with so inept a criminal must have put a fairly severe strain on her loyalty.”
“Inept, yes—but consistently vicious, don’t forget. It was that which commanded the loyalty. And the admiration.”
They spoke no more until the spiral stair had been successfully negotiated. Then Purbright indicated the direction of the CID room. “We’ll take a posse. Show of strength.”
“I thought,” said Bradley, “that the landed gentry had too much sang-froid to be intimidated by numbers.”
“Oh, that’s true,” Purbright conceded, “but what I’m hopeful of is that so long as they are showing their sang-froid in the drawing room, they won’t get round to practise intimidation of their own elsewhere on the estate.”
“What, would you say, is Mr Chubb’s attitude?”
Purbright, about to open the door of the CID room, glanced at Bradley. “In his capacity as chief constable? He fully supports me, warrant and all. Or do you mean privately?”
“Yes, I do.”
Purbright grinned. “He thinks I’m a cad.”
Chapter Eleven
Two cars were needed for what Mrs Moldham-Clegg was to call the quite unwarrantable foray by the Flaxborough police. In the first were Purbright and Bradley and two detectives, Wilkinson and Harper. Three uniformed constables sat in the second, looking stiff and self-conscious.
Having passed slowly in procession through the secondary entrance to the Hall, the ungated driveway reserved for tradesmen, the two cars drew to a halt on the patch of gravel before the house at a discreet distance from its shabby front door.
The seven policemen climbed out and assembled in a group. Those in uniform at once donned helmets, each by a similar procedure of holding his helmet like a basin before his lowered head, as if about to bathe a scalp wound, then tipping both head and helmet up and back in unison.
Purbright could be seen talking and pointing, in the manner of the official guide to some stately home. Heads and helmets bobbed now and again in acknowledgement of his instructions. He paused. There were questions. Then the group split into ones and twos. Several began to make their way towards the sides and back of the house. One man in uniform pulled from his pocket a tape-measure the size of a tea cake. Harper had a camera; he glanced up at the sky and licked a finger.
Purbright and Bradley approached the front door. Today it looked to be closed.
“In London,” said Bradley, “one of the indications for which you instinctively look on occasions like this is the bottle of milk on the doorstep. I presume it would not be appropriate here.”
“Not at the front door,” Purbright agreed. “For signs and portents, one would approach the back.”
He gave a knock with the immaculately polished brass ring.
Bradley peered at it admiringly. They waited, Purbright knocked again.
As upon his former visit, response came not from within the house but from behind them. It was Bradley who first heard the chop of hooves into gravel. He glanced back and at once tugged Purbright’s sleeve. Looming over them was a horse that appeared to Bradley to be as big as a London bus. And perched atop the great beast, distant but obviously secure and undismayed, was a little woman with a weather-beaten face and a hat like a coal heaver’s.
“Good afternoon, Mrs Moldham-Clegg.” Purbright raised his own, less flamboyant, hat. Bare-headed Bradley made a neat bow and looked the horse in the eye, which was huge, moist, brown and incredibly gentle.
“Good afternoon,” said Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Her voice was quite firm, but it seemed to be reaching them from another county. Bradley glanced round the porch for possibly sanctuary should the horse decide to be assertive.
“Is Colonel Moldham at home?” inquired Purbright.
“Why do you wish to see him?”
Counter-questions in this tone and at this altitude had, Purbright well knew, thwarted inquiries at Moldham Hall since the Conquest. He did not make the mistake of attempting self-justification.
“If he is not at home, ma’am, I think you may do just as well. At this stage, anyway.”
The woman made no move to dismount. She stared down coldly. “You are...?”
Purbright regarded the landscape with mild affability and recited, to no one in particular: “My name is Purbright. Detective Inspector Purbright. I am making inquiries into matters concerning the death of a Mr Francis Dean O’Dwyer and believe that you may be able to help me with those inquiries.”
“Last time,” Mrs Moldham-Clegg said, incautiously, “it was something to do with a policeman having been assaulted.”
“So it was,” Purbright agreed, still staring into the distance. He became aware of someone approaching from the right. It was the old odd-jobs man. Benton halted a few yards off and stood waiting.
It was Inspector Bradley who fractured the ice in which the whole scene seemed threatened to become set.