“Aye.” A few seconds passed. “Lot of interest in that pitcher.”
“A large number of people interested, you mean?”
The lean old cheeks puffed rebuttal. “Didn’t need to be. Not if the right ones was there.”
“Ah,” said Purbright. He winked. “And I should think you had a fair idea of who the right ones were.”
Anderson grinned and made a rapid chewing motion. Bradley, fearful of impending expectoration, drew back a little, but the chewing proved only to be the prelude to a further confidence.
“Wrote to ’em.”
Purbright raised his brows. “Ah, of course—the gentleman in London.” He made no mention of the gentleman’s present condition.
“Aye, ’im,” said Anderson, somewhat sourly.
“And...?”
There was a pause. Purbright waited for the outcome of a struggle between the old man’s wiliness and his desire for attention. Discretion lost.
“Wrote to ’er an’ all.” A leer. “That one was nonnymus, though.”
“Naturally,” said Purbright. He considered. “I suppose you know it was she who bid highest?”
The leer broadened.
“Stands to reason, don’t it?”
Bradley broke the silence. “That London gentleman,” he said, “was very disappointed that he didn’t get your friend’s picture.”
A short, rasping laugh from the old sailorman.
“Why,” Bradley asked, “did you send him off that night to call on Dr Gule?”
This time the amusement of Mr Anderson was so extreme that deep drowsiness soon supervened. Slowly he sank into the bank of pillow, eyes shut and mouth open. Purbright called the nurse.
“The sergeant,” he explained, “will be staying here until we can arrange for another officer to keep Mr Anderson company. The doctor thinks Mr Anderson will be fit to go back to his own room tomorrow.”
The girl seemed a little hesitant. “The new instructions,” she said, “are that he’s to have no more sedation.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
The nurse nodded and gave the inspectors a little smile as they prepared to leave. She looked, Purbright thought, much happier than when they had arrived.
Chapter Sixteen
The impounded legacy of Crunchy Anderson was set out on the desk in Purbright’s office. It was Tuesday morning. Purbright and Bradley sat staring at the two hacked golf balls, the railway dining-car tumbler, the floral soap dish, the meat mincer and the Cottage at the End of Life’s Lane.
The decanter stoppers had been eliminated from the inquiry; it having been ascertained that a dealer—the Miss Teatime who had been for a while in the bidding for lot thirty-four—had inadvertently replaced them in the wrong tray during view day, thus rendering the parent decanters (which early in the sale happened to be knocked down to her without much opposition) stopperless and hence remarkably cheap.
The mincer could now be regarded in proper perspective, thanks to the inquisitiveness of Sergeant Love. He had learned from one of the older residents of Twilight Close that this useful machine had been harboured by Whippy for neither sentimental nor speculative reason but simply as an auxiliary to dentures that he contemptuously termed his “parish choppers”.
There was a third person in the office. Sergeant Malley was seated near the window. On a small table before him lay an old leather-bound newspaper file, open. Slowly and with much interest Malley reviewed its columns. However carefully he separated and turned the tall, yellowed pages, dust drifted up from them. Every few minutes he snorted gently or rubbed his nose on the shiny blue serge of his sleeve.
Purbright looked across. “How are the researches, Bill?”
Malley grunted. “You’d never believe how many flower shows there were in 1921.”
“Well, there were flowers to be shown in those days.”
“Are you sure we’ve got the right year? I shouldn’t care to carry many of these back and forth to the Citizen office.”
“Mr Chubb is the authority, not me. He said it was the year his father came back from India.”
Bradley made a suggestion. “Might it save time to concentrate first on the births and deaths column? There’s usually the local equivalent of a sort of court circular.”
Malley raised a finger in acknowledgement of the guest’s good sense and began turning pages more swiftly.
In less than five minutes an exclamation rose from the archives.
“Here we are. Coming of Age. May 27. Moldham, Veronica Mary.”
Purbright and Bradley came to stand by Malley’s shoulder. He searched the next five pages of the same issue, then turned to the sixth.
The Flaxborough Citizen certainly had done justice to the occasion. The story extended over three columns, nearly a whole one of which carried the names of everyone present. And there were five pictures.
The deep bank of headlines was nothing if not explicit.
MISS VERONICA MARY MOLDHAM ATTAINS MAJORITY
INTERESTING EVENT NEAR FLAXBOROUGH
CELEBRATION BY WELL-KNOWN LOCAL FAMILY
VILLAGERS PAY RESPECTS TO DAUGHTER OF POPULAR SQUIRE
PERSONALITIES OF FARM AND FIELD “CAPTURED” THROUGH OUR LENS!
The photographs, though faded, were sharply enough in focus and had been so faithfully rendered by the old flat-bed press that every face was identifiable.
Veronica appeared in three of the pictures. At that age she was a dark-eyed brunette whose assumption of the then-fashionable shoulder droop and breastlessness was more than offset by alert, sensually speculative eyes and voluptuous mouth.
“Bit of a thruster in those days,” Purbright remarked airily to Bradley, who said he wouldn’t be surprised.
The first picture showed the girl standing by a horse in the company of a young man wearing a blazer and a friendly, if decidedly inane smile.
“Who’s the Wodehouse character?” inquired Bradley.
The caption was consulted. “Of course; it’s her brother,” exclaimed Malley. “Old Moldy. Good Lord.” He stared at the picture a moment longer in silence and shook his head.
In another photograph, Veronica was seated in an open carriage with the foolish-looking young man and an elderly couple. She held a parasol and appeared to be finding the occasion something of a lark. Her parents clearly did not. They gazed sideways at the camera with the solemn regality of a pair of Romanovs.
“That, I suppose, is Whippy Arnold.” Purbright pointed to the coachman. They saw a man in his early twenties, wearing livery that included a top hat, set very squarely on his small, neat-looking head. His face, half turned towards the camera, had a sharp handsomeness. He wore sideboards, black and razored very straight, almost down to the angle of his jaw.