“Oh, I agree, sir. I fancy Mrs Hatch was overwrought. It would be understandable in the circumstances.”
There was a knock at the door. Sergeant Love entered.
“We’ve arrested a bloke who was trying to hide in a cupboard along the corridor there, sir,” said Love to Purbright. “He’d got an axe with him, but he wasn’t violent or anything.”
“I see.” There was in Purbright’s voice a rise that invited elucidation.
“He’s got nothing on except boots and a kind of dog’s skin thing.” Blandly, the sergeant added: “He says he missed his bus.”
“What could be more natural?” Purbright turned to Mr Chubb. “This must be one of the raiding party we’ve been hearing about tonight. The object seems to have been to sabotage the banquet. Quite a deal of liquor was taken out of store and given away.”
Love had further information to offer. “Brevitt says he’s seen the bloke before. He’s one of the attendants in that amusement park at Brocklestone.”
“Crispin’s amusement park,” remarked Purbright in an aside to the chief constable.
“And some of the girls, the waitresses, say that they recognised fellows from the same place,” Love said. “That’s how they were so good at jumping around from table to table, the girls said—they were from the dodgem cars.”
“All right, sergeant. You’d better take a statement from this man. We particularly want to know who recruited him and gave the instructions. If he’s forthcoming don’t bother to charge him with anything; we can do without complications of that kind at the moment.”
Not long after the sergeant’s departure, there was another knock on the door, a timid double tap. Purbright called “Come in” but without effect. A few moments later, the knock was repeated. The inspector rose and opened the door himself.
Standing outside was the chastened Detective Constable Burke. It was not he who caught Purbright’s eye, however, but a figure in scarlet robe and hat—the presentment (a trifle grubby and rumpled, but splendid still) of one who had suffered an even more notable fall from grace.
Burke stiffly introduced Cardinal Wolsey’s reincarnation.
“Joseph Tudor, sir. Alias Turidu.”
Purbright motioned Tudor inside. Burke he dismissed not unkindly with instructions to see if Sergeant Love could find him something useful to do.
Beneath the red prelate’s hat, two sleepy but wary eyes shifted in shadow as Tudor looked from Purbright to Chubb and back again. His jowls, swollen now with resentment and incipient hangover, were the shape and colour of aubergines. At even intervals, the nose flexed in a sharp, questing sniff.
Purbright announced his and Chubb’s identities and asked to see Tudor’s passport. Without a word Tudor groped amidst the folds of his too-long robe.
After examining the passport, Purbright said that there appeared to be some discrepancy between that document and the records of the United States immigration authorities. Would Mr Tudor care to say whether he was, as a matter of verifiable fact, an American or an Italian citizen?
Mr Tudor replied in a brusque, gravelly, not-well-pleased voice, which he seemed to produce as a special favour and on a very short lease. He was, he affirmed, a citizen of the United States and couldn’t British cops read their own goddam language?
Mr Chubb said he thought there was no call for Mr Tudor—if such indeed was his name—to adopt that kind of tone.
Mr Tudor grunted and extended a hand to receive back the passport. The interview, he seemed to have decided, was over.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the inspector, “but I must ask you to bear with us for a while longer. The inquiries respecting your passport will be made with the least possible delay.”
There was a sound like a leaking steam valve. It was prolonged for several seconds before blooming into “Santa Maria!”—most devoutly delivered between clenched teeth.
“Yes, sir,” Purbright acknowledged. He went on: “While you are here, I have a number of other questions I wish to put to you, Mr Tudor. And in fairness I ought to point out that these questions are part of the investigation we are making into the death a few hours ago of the owner of this club.”
Tudor, utterly sober now, balled a podgy fist and held it against his temple. His eyes were upturned in self-accusatory exasperation. Mr Chubb, noting with disapproval the drink-inflamed whites thus displayed, was impressed nevertheless with their owner’s performance. A murderer, surely, would react to mention of his crime with pretence of shock or ignorance or even disbelief. He would not behave as though he had just remembered leaving a tap running.
“The guy got hit, then, huh?” Mr Tudor shook his head, but he looked more annoyed than regretful.
Purbright was watching him closely. “He did, indeed.”
Again Mr Tudor gave his head a shake. He noisily sucked a bit of banquet out of a tooth and began to nibble it.
“Too bad,” he said.
“Why have you come to England?” Purbright asked, after waiting a while.
Mr Tudor shrugged. “Maybe I go for this Middle Ages stuff.” He found another tooth to suck. “And maybe I do some business here.” Again he shrugged. It was quite an accomplishment with him.
“The East Anglian olive crop?” inquired Purbright.
British sarcasm was not to Mr Tudor’s taste. He gave the inspector a smile that looked as if a dentist had lifted his lip with a probe.
“I gather you do not wish to tell me the real reason for your presence in Flaxborough,” Purbright said.
Tudor did another lip lift, this time for Mr Chubb’s benefit. “He gathers, this guy.”
“Where are you staying, sir?” Purbright’s tone was as pleasant as ever.
“This Roebuck Arms joint—your village inn, I guess.”
“An officer will drive you there, sir, so that you may collect what things you need before he takes you on.”
“On? On where?”
“To the village lock-up, sir, as one might say.”
Tudor’s face darkened so rapidly and to such degree that the sight of it was like watching a great bruise develop. Mr Chubb took advantage of the man’s deprivation of speech to emphasise, somewhat prosaically, the seriousness of passport irregularities in the view of the British Home Office.
“I want my lawyer,” growled Mr Tudor as soon as he was able. He banged the desk with his fist. “And get my consul, but quick.”
The chief constable assured him that such matters would be attended to by the appropriate officer at police headquarters as soon as Mr Tudor took up temporary residence.
Purbright mentioned to Mr Chubb that American consular affairs, so far as Flaxborough was concerned, were in the hands of Mr Brisson, the shipping agent. “He’s the Italian consul as well, as a matter of fact,” he thought it right to add.