Bradley peered obligingly at the floor in the direction indicated. So did Purbright and Love.
“The locker, matey,” whispered Crutchy. “Go on, broach it. It ain’t locked.”
Bradley pulled at the door of the bedside locker. It opened easily. He glanced up at Anderson for further instruction.
A skeletal finger pointed to a newspaper-wrapped parcel of curious shape that had been stuffed diagonally into the lower compartment of the cupboard.
“Unship it, matey,” the old man invited.
Bradley drew out the parcel and held it on his lap. Anderson signalled that he might take off the wrapping.
Awkwardly, Bradley removed the first of several sheets of the News of the World. The headline, I stripped for Katie Selassie, leered incongruously from the parcel’s broader end.
Soon there was a pile of newsprint on the bed. As Bradley untucked the final sheet, Anderson glanced anxiously at the door and then—with something like pride—gazed upon the emerging object.
It was a wooden leg.
Bradley and Purbright immediately expressed admiration. The sergeant actually patted the deputy limb and remarked upon its robust construction.
“It’s been round the Horn a time or two, has that,” declared Mr Anderson, with forgiveable licence. (He actually had lost his leg by dipping it, while drunk, in a shrimp copper off Flaxborough haven.)
Bradley offered his contribution to the general good feeling and mutual confidence. He grinned at Crutchy. “So you’re not beached, after all, shipmate, whatever old Gilly Gully thinks.”
A momentary cloud of suspicion passed over Anderson’s face. Purbright prayed that his colleague’s dive into maritime metaphor had not done too much damage. He handed the old man his Guinness back.
“Cheers, shipmates!” declared Crutchy, once more as warmly disposed as if they were forecastle mutineers who had set wicked Captain Kiss-me-quick Wellbeloved adrift in the longboat.
He nudged Purbright and spoke close.
“They think they’ve done me out of Whippy’s things. Did you know that, skip?”
“I didn’t, no. How’s that, then?”
“You knew he was no sooner in harbour than sold up, didn’t you? Every stitch and spar. In the saleroom. You knew that?”
“Aye, I knew that.”
The old man cleared his throat. It sounded more as if he were cutting it. “Pretended all his gear belonged to the council, on account of him not being spliced. That’s what they said. So a lawyer took it away and put it up and we never saw it no more. What do you think of that? The pitcher an’ all—took that away to the sale. Proud o’ that pitcher, was Whippy. Aye, b’God he was, poor old sod.”
As if by mutual consent, there ensued a moment’s silence in memory of the late artist.
Then Anderson slowly compressed one of his black, cavernous eyes into a terrible wink.
He took from Bradley—to the evident relief of the London inspector—the wooden leg he had been nursing, and set it before him on the bed.
“Now, then,” he said, “what d’you reckon we’ve got on deck now, eh?”
The old man looked at each of his audience in turn, then took firm hold of the narrow cylindrical part of the leg in both hands. He applied a twisting pressure. The leg emitted a succession of thin squeals at first, then, as the unscrewing of its constituents became easier and more rapid, accepted partition in silence.
From the disclosed cavity, Anderson drew a narrow roll of paper. Released, it partly unfurled. He smoothed it flat on the bedclothes.
“Know what this ’ere is?”
They shook their heads, unwilling to detract from the long pleasure of his apocalypse.
“That’s Whippy Arnold’s will, that is. His last will and testimonal. And it’s down here—all signed and witnessed proper and on the line that Whippy’s cargo comes to me. His pitcher, his ornument, his chopper, his golf things and his grog glasses. Ar, an’ another thing...”—the old man pointed to a small piece of paper, pinned to the larger document—“See what that is?”
Purbright bent forward and scrutinized the appended paper. It was a receipt for thirty-two pence, paid by Mr F. Arnold for “materials, cottage picture“, to the Social Services Department. The form, which appeared to have been torn off a pad, was signed and dated February 4, 1977.
“If we wants to keep what we makes in the workship, we has to pay,” explained Mr Anderson. “We gets one of these tickets from Mrs Besker.”
“Mrs Besker?”
“She’s Theruppy.”
“I see.” Purbright turned to Bradley and said softly: “So much for the council’s appropriation of the Arnold masterpiece. It looks as if they owe the old boy four hundred quid.”
Though the aside could not have reached him, the old boy looked on with an expression of gleeful approbation.
Bradley spoke to him.
“Tell me, Mr Anderson: why was it, when you had this proof of Mr Arnold’s having made over his property to you, that you let the authorities take the stuff off to an auction sale?”
The sailorman rubbed his chin and regarded Bradley out of the corner of his eye. “You tell me, mester,” he suggested.
Bradley pretended to think hard. “No good,” he said at last. “I can’t.”
“Nor can I,” added Purbright. He tugged the sleeve of Sergeant Love, who had been trying to get a tune out of the hollow leg shank by blowing across the hole. Love at once put it down.
“Hark, then,” said Anderson to the company at large. “Ain’t no sense in raising sail when some other bugger’s ready to take you in tow, right?”
“Right,” said Purbright.
The old man nodded. “Well, then.” He gave no sign of providing a key to his parable.
Purbright waited a moment, then said: “You mean you would have put the things into a sale yourself if the council hadn’t done so?”
Anderson smirked sapiently. “Pitchers ain’t my line, skip. Nor’s ornuments. An’ I ain’t likely to risk putting me old peg there into a golfing ’ole, am I?”
For a moment Purbright debated within himself whether he should risk losing the quarry by offering a more blatant bait. There was all the time in the world. He decided to take a chance.
“Fetched a lot of money, I believe,” he said, as casually as he could.
The old man wrinkled his nose. “Thought it would.”
Bradley, sensing that a point of delicate balance had been reached, kept quiet. He stared at Love with bland commiseration, like a fellow traveller in a very slow lift.
“What, fetch a lot?” probed Purbright, a fraction less casually.