‘That’s very interesting, madam. Thank you for your help.’ He returned to his headquarters and retailed the interview. ‘I can’t see there’s much in it, sir,’ he said. ‘We had a report on the Saltacres case, of course, but I can’t see any real tie-up. The Saltacres case was never brought in as murder. They are not even certain which day the girl was drowned, and it seems open to doubt whether anybody was with her at the time, anyway.’
‘Well, we must still have a shot at finding out where Palgrave went that Friday night. Once we know that, we really can get weaving. Until we know it we are only groping in the dark. If only we could find a motive for his death we might get somewhere, too, but I can’t believe, from your report, that this woman has supplied it. The girl died months and months ago.’
‘No, I don’t think she has helped, sir, but it was worth a try.’
‘Did you happen to ask her whether she had been lent one of the copies of the novel?’
‘No, sir. Judging by what the schoolmaster chap told me, I didn’t think it important. Besides, she only knew Palgrave through this girl picking him up on a holiday beach. I got the impression that she’d (Mrs Kirby, I mean) that she’d seen very little, if anything, of him once the holiday was over. After all, they live a good way apart and wouldn’t have very much in common, anyway. As you will see when I’ve typed out my report, sir, I asked her point blank if Palgrave had visited her that Friday night. She looked astonished and said he had not. Besides, he’s got a car, sir, and his landlady’s got a garage. It’s quite a way from Finchley to Chelsea. He would have driven to her flat, sir, if he’d gone there at all, not walked.’
‘So what about trains and buses? It could be confirmed that he left on foot, but suppose he used public transport? If Mrs Kirby was lying, and he did go to Chelsea that evening, he may well have preferred a bus rather than take his car across London. Of course we’ve tried that line, but it might be as well to have another go.’
‘A chap of Palgrave’s age would have taken his car, sir, and chanced finding somewhere to park at the other end. We know he didn’t take a taxi. We’ve sorted that out. Anyway, the impression I got was that Mrs. Kirby was telling the truth and that she’d seen little or nothing of Palgrave since the holiday.’
‘Well, ring her up and find out whether she has a copy of his book. If she has, ask whether he brought it to her himself or sent it by post. Rattle her a bit, if you can. Something might come out. When you’ve done that, we’ll go over my interviews with Palgrave’s agents and publishers. I don’t see any use I can make of what they told me, but perhaps you can make some suggestions.’
Miranda, it transpired, had received a photo copy of Lost Parenthesis by post, together with a request that she would keep it safely and return it if Palgrave asked for it back. She said she had begun to read it when it arrived, thought the early chapters were pretentious and not very interesting and that she had then turned to the last couple of pages and promised herself a full study of the book later on, as Palgrave seemed in no hurry to have her copy back. Asked if she knew where any other copies were likely to have gone, she suggested that one might have been lent to the Lowsons.
‘We met them on holiday. Colin was once engaged to Morag,’ Miranda said, and gave the sergeant the Lowsons’ new address to which they had moved when they left London soon after the Saltacres holiday.
‘Right up there?’ said Pinhurst, when he heard where they were living. ‘Oh, well, that puts them right off the map so far as our enquiry is concerned. I’ll tell you what, though. We’ve got his own carbon copy among his other stuff. I’m going to plough through it again and then you can have a go. You’ll understand why when I tell you about my interviews with Peterheads and Kent and Weald.’
The offices of Peterhead and Peterhead were in a turning off the Strand, and Pinhurst had gone to them before he tackled Kent and Weald. The agents were father and son and it was the younger partner who was interviewed.
He produced the top copy which Palgrave had sent them and also the letter which had accompanied the typescript. In it Palgrave stated that the book had taken longer to write than he had anticipated, but that here it was at last. There was also a copy of the letter they had sent back to him, promising to read the book, to which they had been looking forward, and to let him have their opinion of it if, for any reason (‘as it is only your second novel’) they thought it unsuitable for offer to Kent and Weald.
Then there was another letter:
‘Please do not proceed with Lost Parenthesis until you hear from me again. Checking the carbon copy, I have come to the conclusion that my description of some of the chief characters may be libellous.’
Pinhurst was intrigued and asked whether, in the agent’s opinion, there was any substance in Palgrave’s fears. He was assured that in the opinion of the agents there was, on the surface, no substance in them at all, unless the author had had some specific persons in mind and, even so, it was very doubtful indeed whether any of the statements in the book were actionable.
‘After we had written to him in answer to his letter when he sent us the book, we got his second letter asking us not to send the work to Kent and Weald. We tried to telephone him, but he was at school during our office hours, so we wrote another letter. I suppose that, by the time it was delivered, he was dead. We don’t know what to do about the book now. We are not prepared to ignore what must be regarded as the author’s last wishes, so we are holding on to the script in case he left any posthumous papers which can solve our problem. Possibly his next-of-kin may give us permission to go ahead with the book.’ The prospective publishers had even less to say. They had been rung up by Peterheads with the information that the author wanted to withdraw his book and had been surprised and rather regretful. They had lost money (‘as we expect to do on a first book, Detective-Inspector’) but they thought Mr Palgrave had talent. They had been given the title of his second book and a short synopsis of the plot, both sent in earlier by the author.
‘No sense in pursuing any more of these sidelines,’ said Pinhurst, ‘until we’ve found out where he went after he left the school on that Friday afternoon. I detest these chase-ups. Just a lot of dead ends to follow and dead wood to get rid of and, ten to one, no dice in the end. Oh, well, let’s get back to the landlady and that old nosey parker next door, and then we’ll have another go at your Mrs Kirby. I think she is our best bet, because if there is a tie-up between the death of the St John girl and Palgrave being given a lethal dose of arsenic, well, she’s the only person, apart from her husband, who seems to have known both parties.’
‘There are also the Lowsons, sir.’
‘Yes, if they still lived in London, but Mrs Kirby gave you a Lancashire address.’
‘People don’t always stay put in their homes, sir.’
‘Oh, well, if we get nothing in these parts, we must have a go at the Lowsons. Didn’t Mrs Kirby tell you that Lowson is a doctor, though? Doctors don’t gallivant all over the place when they’ve got their own practice. Palgrave was poisoned in London, not in Lancashire.’
‘Cherchez la femme, sir? And, according to Mrs Kirby, Dr Lowson sold his practice after he lost his father, and is engaged in research.’
CHAPTER 17
A DEAD MAN SPEAKS
‘My fancies, fly before ye;
Be ye my fiction – but her story.’