On the front passenger seat was a rolled-up raincoat. It was a very pale mushroom colour; in better light, it would look practically white. Purbright scrutinized this coat from as many angles as he could by pressing his face against the glass and shielding off reflections with his hands. From one position he succeeded in spotting a tuck of some darker material. Something—possibly a thin scarf or silk square—had been rolled within the coat.
He rejoined Maddox, whom he thanked and again adjured to make instant report of any sign of his guest’s intention to depart. Then he set off for the other end of town and Heston Lane.
How deeply grieved was Mrs Meadow by her husband’s death, Purbright found difficult at first sight to decide. What was certain was that he encountered a woman monumentally put out.
His condolences were received with a formality just short of indifference. He had put no more than three questions before she shook her head impatiently.
“I’m sorry, inspector, but if you really must know these things, you will have to ask someone else. Perhaps my husband’s solicitor could find time to help you.”
“I doubt if that would meet the case, Mrs Meadow. You must believe me when I say that I am trying to spare you as much distress and inconvenience as I can. But there are some questions—they will not take long, I promise you—which you alone can answer.”
Grudgingly, she relaxed slightly the attitude of preparing to get up from her chair.
“I asked you a moment ago,” Purbright resumed, “where the doctor was yesterday between, say, five o’clock and six, when he went into surgery.”
“He was here, naturally. We always have tea served at four-thirty.”
“Did he not go out at any time during that hour?”
“No.”
“And was there no one else in the house, apart from yourself?”
“Only the maid.”
“Elizabeth Loder?”
She looked at him narrowly.
“I don’t see why you should know her name... Oh, the business down the road, of course. I hope nothing’s going to be made of that, by the way. Not on top of everything else. The girl wasn’t hurt, you know.”
“No,” said Purbright. “She wasn’t.” He thought for a moment, then asked: “Did anyone call on the doctor yesterday afternoon?”
“I don’t think so. He was across at the office for most of the afternoon. Until about half-past four. No, I’m sure no one called.”
“So he had no contact with anyone other than you or Miss Loder from four-thirty until he left the house at six.”
“Ten to six,” she corrected. “The patients begin to be seen at six, but my husband always went over ten or fifteen minutes beforehand.”
“Might he have had a caller during that time?”
“Yesterday evening, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“It’s possible... But really, inspector. I don’t get the drift of all this.”
Purbright delved for what might serve as a plausible explanation.
“I’m sorry. The fact is that we believe that the man who attacked Miss Loder might have been hanging round the house or the surgery earlier in the day.”
“Miss Loder...? Oh, you mean Elizabeth. But surely you’re not taking up all this time and asking me all these odd questions because of that? It was a very trivial incident.”
“There have been other attacks, Mrs Meadow.”
“There might have been, but that doesn’t mean my house should be flooded with policemen. Especially at a time like this. Tell me, does Mr Chubb know you’re here?”
“The Chief Constable is aware that inquiries are being made,” Purbright said, stiffly.
Mrs Meadow gave a short nod. “I think I shall have to have a word with him.”
“Very good. But if I might take advantage of your forbearance for one moment more, Mrs Meadow, I should like just to be a little clearer about the period we were discussing. Can you suggest—and I assure you that this is important—anyone at all who may have visited the doctor between ten minutes to six yesterday evening and six o’clock when the surgery opened?”
Despite her expression of bleak resentment, she did appear to give the question thought.
After a while, she said: “There is one possibility, although I’m sure it is irrelevant. My husband had been writing an article for professional publication. He finished it yesterday. Apparently it made reference to the effects of some drug or other, and I believe Dr Meadow intended to show the article to the representative of a firm—one of the leading pharmaceutical firms—for which he had been doing research. He may—and I say may—have seen this man before surgery. It was a period he set aside for dealing with travellers and people like that. So that his patients would not be inconvenienced, you understand.”
She stood up.
“That is all I can tell you, inspector. And now you must please excuse me. Elizabeth will see you out.”
She picked up a little ornamental handbell and, somewhat to the inspector’s embarrassment, shook it resolutely.
Purbright waited until the girl was about to open the front. door before he spoke to her.
“Hang on a minute, Elizabeth. Just a couple of quick questions about what happened to you yesterday.”
She looked at him nervously, then glanced back down the hall.
“I don’t know that I ought, really...she says I’m not to make any fuss about it.”
“I shan’t keep you a second.”
“But the policeman who came—he wrote everything down, I told it all to him.” She kept one slim, brown hand on the door catch.
“The car the man was hiding behind—I don’t think you described that, did you?”
“I didn’t notice it, really.”
“Not the colour, even?”
“I think it was a sort of greyish colour.” Again she looked past him, towards the room containing Mrs Meadow and her bell.
“I see. Make? Number? No good?”
She shook her head.
“Never mind. Now the man. His face was covered. In something brown, you said. Something patterned? Or not.”
“Patterned, I think.”
“And his coat. You said white. Are you sure?”
“Yes, white. It was thin and sort of smooth.”
“Have you ever seen a continental raincoat, Elizabeth? The sort they wear in Germany, Scandinavia, places like that?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“The letters. Now I want you to think very carefully. When you picked them up again, are you sure they were all there?”
“Please—I’ll have to be getting back...” She turned her face and began opening the door, but not quickly enough to hide sudden flushed cheeks.
Purbright touched her arm.
“How many were missing, Elizabeth? It’s very important that I know.”