Purbright recognized that Mr Chubb was in that frame of mind which would prove obstructive, perhaps even dictatorial, in the face of novelty or radicalism. Loyalties—the more difficult to identify because they were ancient and private loyalties—had been stirred and were now at work behind those courteous, ascetic features.
“I shall not put Mrs Moldham-Clegg to the bother of coming into town again, of course, sir.”
The chief constable nodded and wrinkled his nose. “Quite.”
“I shall give her time to recover, then have a word with her at home.”
Mr Chubb blew gently through pouted lips while he stared out of the window into the middle distance. The inspector watched and waited for him to try something in the nature of discouragement. At the moment when he saw Mr Chubb about to speak, he broke the silence himself instead.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I have been forgetting the matter you’re most concerned about. The hospital people told me a little while ago that Sergeant Love is making a good recovery from that attack.”
“Ah... Oh, splendid,” declared Mr Chubb. He looked, the inspector thought, slightly winded, but he soon recovered from the reminder that inspectors of police, even in Flaxborough, are expected to put crime before social obligation to the County.
“There must be no effort spared to find that fellow,” he said sternly. “I don’t want you to feel inhibited in your investigations, you know, Mr Purbright. People like the Moldhams are very understanding if they’re approached properly.”
He nodded pleasantly and walked to the door like a host.
“Mind you,” Mr Chubb murmured as Purbright passed him into the corridor, “Nicky is getting on a bit. Wouldn’t be nice to press her too hard.”
“Nicky?”
“Short for Veronica. Mrs Moldham-Clegg.”
“I see, sir.”
“And please see that my best wishes for his recovery go to Sergeant Love, won’t you.”
Purbright made his way to the CID room. It compared with Mr Chubb’s office not as a poor relation with a rich, but rather as a railway waiting-room might offer contrast with an abbot’s private study. It had recently been painted what Mr Chubb’s wife termed “a cheerful, sunny colour” and the more rickety chairs had been replaced with plastic indestructibles, but the long, heavy wooden table, pocked with cigarette burns, still occupied most of its area and, together with a massive, black-leaded cast-iron fireplace that never contained a fire, kept faith with the days of the lock-up and the drunkards’ cart. It was the kind of room in which men are disinclined to take off their overcoats. Beneath the fume of the cheerful new paint there lingered the smells of tea-soaked biscuits and of metal polish.
“Those prints. They’ve got a result.”
A sheet of paper was handed to Purbright by PC Braine, whose fat, purse-like face and short sight gave him a quite extraordinary resemblance to a spectacled toad. Purbright thanked him and sat down. Braine went over to where Detective Pook stood drinking a mug of tea. “Villain from the Smoke, apparently,” said Braine. Pook stared irritably into the steam from his drink. “Fancy that.”
Detective Harper was in the room. Also PC Wilkinson and Patrolman Brevitt. All looked as if they were on their way to somewhere else.
A little self-consciously, the inspector donned a pair of gold-rimmed reading glasses, recently acquired. He felt like the tutor of an adult education class.
Voices were raised outside. The door opened. Harper, who was standing facing it from the other side of the room, made noises of boisterous surprise.
The arrival was Sergeant Love. He grinned apologetically.
Purbright looked pleased to see him.
“An appropriately-timed revival, Sid. I have just learned the name of your suspected assailant.”
Love took a seat opposite the inspector and assumed an attentive expression.
“He is a London gentleman,” Purbright began, “whose name when last sentenced was Dean Francis O’Dwyer. He is otherwise variously known as Charles Chubb,” (there were appreciative whinneys for this piece of lèse-majesté) “Victor Henry Scoggins, Victor Charles Priest and ‘Slopey’ Cavendish.”
“Which one hit you, sergeant?” interjected Wilkinson, who was inclined to regard any assembly of more than three of his colleagues as an occasion for waggishness.
Love’s face glowed with the pleasure of notoriety as he tenderly touched the back of his neck. “All of them, by the feel of it.” It was, as he told his young lady afterwards, his bonest mot for months.
For a moment Purbright regarded him anxiously. Then he resumed his summary of Mr O’Dwyer’s record.
“Last known address was in Finchley, North London. Age forty-seven. Married. Also several partners, believed bigamously acquired but never the subject of proceedings. Sent to borstal in 1948 for breaking and entering, theft and causing actual bodily harm. Convictions as an adult include four of violence, three of breaking and entering and eight of theft. His attempted larceny of a chalice was treated as sacrilege, for which he received two years.”
“It sounds,” commented Detective Constable Harper, infected by Wilkinson’s levity, “as if the sergeant was laid out by a real professional.”
Purbright had been reading ahead quickly and silently. He shook his head. “Habitual, perhaps, but not terribly successful, it seems. Slick but careless. Small takings, usually recovered. Not worth all that prison, one might have thought.”
“What about the violence, though, sir?” asked the patrolman, Brevitt.
“Four cases are listed, as I said. And quite gratuitious violence, by all accounts. So whatever we may think of Mr O’Dwyer as a master criminal, he obviously is a dangerous fellow with an unpredictable temper.”
The inspector played a moment with his new glasses.
“I shall ask London to collect him for questioning if he does surface there, of course. There is a chance, though, that he has not yet left Flaxborough.”
There were glances of surprise. Pook took his cue. “The inspector’s talking about a car we’re checking on,” he explained. “It was parked overnight on the Northway Estate and nobody round there knows who it belongs to, but what we do know is that PC Phillips saw somebody get into a very similar car outside the saleroom yesterday, that somebody being the character we’re after. Right, sir?”
The inspector confirmed that such, indeed, was the case.
“The general instruction at the moment,” he said, “is that every officer on duty should be watchful for this man, whatever his name, and prepared for him to be violent, despite his appearance, which I can vouch for being amiable to a point of simple-mindedness. Mr Braine—run off some copies of the official description, will you, and see to their distribution.”