“A yacht?” Purbright feared the account was getting out of hand.
“Well, one of those whopping great cruiser things that are moored up beyond Henderson’s Mill.”
“Ah.”
“He used to be a Methodist. Nowadays he always wears a sort of banker’s hat,” said Love. “That could be because of his missus, though. They reckon she’s mad keen on status.”
“In that case, Mrs Hatch is not going to be very pleased when she hears what her husband has been up to. I take it that nobody suggests she was there last night?”
The sergeant shrugged.
“On the other hand,” Purbright said, “we mustn’t rule out collusion. I understand orgies score quite highly in the status game. Perhaps Mrs Hatch thought it would be nice to have one.”
“Gruesome,” said the sergeant, who had heard the word used a lot the previous evening by a young woman at the Badminton club.
“Go and have a tactful word with Hatch, will you, Sid. See if you can find what actually did happen.”
“He’ll tell lies.”
“Not a doubt of it. But as long as they are reasonable lies, we can ask no more of him.”
“Shall I try and find out who the girls were? They might be under age.” Love’s tone suggested hope rather than misgiving.
“They were probably a couple of totties from his club. You won’t get much change there.”
Love went cheerfully to the door. Delicacy of inquiries never bothered him. He had something of the asbestine self-confidence of the Children in the Fiery Furnace.
Before getting on with more important matters, Purbright remained a little longer in private speculation.
Two questions in particular intrigued him.
Whose was the car that had been so fortunately placed as a source of illumination?
And what would happen to him if Hatch—a man Purbright knew to have in his nature that element of vengefulness common to most dedicated makers of money—found out?
Chapter Seven
When Edmund Amis arrived at “Primrose Mount” soon after ten o’clock, he was surprised to find his employer grumpy and preoccupied. Hatch was generally a cheerful, even jocund, day-opener, having discovered many years before that nothing makes people more nervous, and therefore commercially vulnerable, in the morning than somebody else’s high spirits. Today, though, he looked as if he had slept late and was determined to get the rest of the day at a cut rate.
“First thing I want you to do,” he said to Amis, “is to get on to these people by phone and ask them to send someone over. Someone who matters; not a messenger boy.” He handed Amis the card Baxter had given him before a hasty and not altogether happy departure by taxi three hours earlier.
“Mackintosh-Brooke?” Amis sounded as if the name was familiar to him in some discreditable way.
“That’s right.”
Hatch regarded him steadily, prepared to quell objection. Amis was a university man—Hatch (“I’ll pay for the best”) had insisted on that—and he formed opinions by much more complicated and devious processes than did ordinary people. It was nice to own such a clever piece of machinery as Amis. He possessed admirable manners. Partly because of these, and partly by virtue of highly developed business discernment,
Amis impressed his employer’s friends and intimidated his enemies. So long as Hatch felt on form, which was almost all the time, he allowed himself neither to feel inferior to his secretary nor to show that sense of inferiority by refusing to defer to Amis’s judgment. Today, though, he felt shagged. And no bloody jumped-up college boy, with or without a string of letters after his name, was going to tell him how he ought to spend his money.
Amis nodded briskly. “Will do.” Not the least of his natural gifts was a sense of when to keep his views to himself.
For a moment Hatch looked bewildered. Then he scowled and sat down to read his mail, which Amis had brought over from the club.
The room that Mrs Hatch called the study was in fact an office. Conceived by its builder in the 1920s as a billiards room, it was spacious and more plain in design than the rest of the house. The walls were a pale sage green, with gilt sconces set at intervals at head height. A long, leather upholstered settee, originally installed for the benefit of billiards spectators, remained on its platform against one wall. Hatch called it his petitioners’ bench. Callers, other than people of obvious importance or known usefulness, were liable to be directed to sit there until Hatch, long delayed by inexpressibly vital affairs, should sweep in and eye them on his way to his desk like a busy vet glancing at the day’s quota of charity cases.
When Sergeant Love arrived at half-past ten, he was not disposed of in this way. Secretary Amis invited him to make himself comfortable in the family sitting-room and asked him if he would like a cup of coffee. Love said that he would, thanks very much, and hoped that it would be made with milk, but not with a skin on that stuck to the top lip and then slopped down the chin when you took the cup away.
Hatch, not yet recovered from the alarms and excursions of the night, greeted the sergeant less affably than he normally would have done, but was careful not to appear apprehensive.
“I’m afraid,” said Love, “that we’ve received a complaint, sir. Regarding these premises.”
This message he delivered with the brightest air imaginable, as if it were the intimation of a lottery win.
“Really? I’m sorry to hear that, officer. Just what sort of a complaint?”
“A member of the public—a lady, sir” (Hatch nodded gravely: a lady, yes, he’d heard of such people) “has complained of certain behaviour which she alleges was being committed on your first floor last night. She considers it to have been indecent, as a matter of fact, and I wondered if you’d care to make some observation, sir.”
For a long time, Hatch regarded Love with a mixture of thoughtfulness and mild amusement which the sergeant later acknowledged to be altogether devoid of guilt. Then he grinned openly.
“Whoever this lady is,” he said, “either she’s pulling your leg or else she’s one of those unfortunate souls who get delusions about sex.”
“Sex?” countered Love, feeling rather cunning. He had said nothing about sex.
“You used the word indecent, sergeant. Is there some other sort of indecency, then? A non-sexy kind?”
No, said Love, perhaps there wasn’t. But the lady wasn’t one to have delusions. He could vouch for her being respectable and level-headed.
“In that case,” said Hatch, “it’s clear that she must have made a mistake.”
“There have been other reports, sir.”
“Reports of what? Look here, sergeant, how can I answer your questions if I don’t know what you’re talking about? Who’s supposed to have done what?”