To Mr Tudor, the inspector said: “I imagine your own attorney would understand if you sought advice from a local man on this occasion, would he not?”
The thumb that had slipped safety catches on behalf of the late Mr Capone, pulled piano wire into the truculent tracheae of half the henchmen of the late Mr O’Banion, and, in more recent, peaceable years, counted off enough hundred-dollar bills into presidential campaign laundries to buy respectability for the duration of its owner’s twilight years—this thumb now jerked in the direction of Inspector Purbright.
“He imagines! Gathering ain’t enough, so now he imagines! He talks so pretty I could cry!”
When, divested of his cardinalship and in the close custody of a marvellously alert Detective Burke, Mr Tudor had departed, the chief constable gave Purbright a worried stare.
“And do you still mean to say, Mr Purbright, that you rule out that dreadful fellow as the murderer of poor Hatch?”
“Without hestitation, sir,” said the inspector, cheerfully.
Chapter Nineteen
Somewhat to the surprise of the duty seregeat, it was not a lawyer whom Mr Tudor required to be brought to his cell the following morning, but a lady.
The sergeant consulted Purbright, who was intrigued. Yes, he said, let him see the lady in question—if she would come, of course; that was up to her.
“But this Miss Teatime, sir—she’s nothing to do with solicitors, as far as I know.”
“Which is much to her credit. No, don’t worry, sergeant; she can appear in the time-honoured, and quite legitimate, role of Prisoner’s Friend. Send a car for her.”
Purbright’s surmise that Miss Teatime might have a little friendship left over for the Prosecutor as well proved correct. He had completed all but one of his planned interviews at the Floradora Club, when he was told that Miss Teatime had come out from town and would like a word with him.
The inspector was occupying the same office, but he had moved from the late proprietor’s desk, the pretentious acreage of which he disliked, to a smaller one on the other side of the room.
Miss Teatime entered in as eager and genial a manner as if she were the sole beneficiary arriving for the reading of a will.
“I do hope,” she said, sitting in the chair that Purbright had fetched for her, “that I have done nothing improper in respect of public funds by soliciting another lift in one of your nice police cars. They are most comfortable and they smell of pine forests.”
Purbright said he was glad that it had been possible to oblige her in so small a matter. He trusted she had found her friend Mr Tudor well and that she had been able to give him such advice as he required.
Miss Teatime’s mouth retained her smile, but at the corner appeared a little twist of astuteness, of good-natured reproof.
“Come, inspector, you must have seen enough of Mr Tudor by now to realise that he is a very odious gentleman indeed, and vicious.”
“You conveyed a somewhat different impression the other day,” Purbright said drily.
“That was before he saw fit to presume upon mutual acquaintance in order to try and involve me in his squalid activities. If there is one thing I learned from my mother’s side of the family (all those dreadful marquesses) it is to abhor presumption on acquaintance.”
The inspector inclined his head in agreement. “I must admit I was surprised when he asked to see you, Miss Teatime. You must have been most embarrassed.”
“It was his request that was embarrassing, Mr Purbright. He wishes me to intercede on his behalf, in order—as I think he expressed it—to prevent your ‘pinning a rap on him’. Have I got that right? Pinning a rap? It sounds like some sort of makeshift costume, but I think I am worldly enough to know that he was probably referring to an impending criminal charge.”
“A murder charge, in point of fact.”
Miss Teatime shook her head. “I feared as much.”
After a short silence, she said: “To be quite candid, Mr Purbright, and with the greatest reluctance, I have to record my conviction that Mr Tudor has not killed anybody for some little while.”
“Why, do you suppose, should the man be so reluctant to explain his presence in Flaxborough if what you believe is true?”
She smiled. “You may perhaps have noticed, inspector, that the bigger a scoundrel a man is, the more zealously he proclaims some mystical or high-sounding abstraction or other.”
The inspector considered. “Patriotism? Confidentiality? Biological detergents? That sort of thing?”
“Precisely. The catchword of which Mr Tudor is especially enamoured is Honour. That is the concept, I understand, that is traditionally employed to dignify the goings-on of Mediterranean assassins, womanisers and generals who like locking people up. In his particular case, I fancy the word connotes secretiveness.”
“Do you know why he’s here?”
“I believe I do, inspector.”
“And are you going to tell me?”
Miss Teatime opened her reticule and took out cheroots and matches. “For what it is worth,” she said.
Purbright looked about the desk top for an ashtray. There was none in sight. He pulled open the shallow drawer before him.
“You will be unable,” said Miss Teatime, “to obtain any confirmation from Mr Tudor, but my belief is that he came to Flaxborough not to commit a crime but to prevent one of his minor associates from doing so.”
Purbright ceased rummaging in the drawer. He looked at her with suddenly sharpened attention.
“He spoke of family troubles, you see,” Miss Teatime explained. “My understanding is that ‘family’ is a term used very broadly in Mr Tudor’s sense. It probably embraces all those co-religionists of similar occupation but not necessarily of like eminence.”
“Fellow olive oil importers?” suggested the inspector.
Miss Teatime smiled. “We are a little behind the times, inspector—or, rather, Mr Tudor imagines we are. The current pretension in his circle is to banking interests and something they call real estate.”
She lit her small cigar, blew out the match and sat holding it like an exhibit. Purbright renewed his search of the drawer and came across a small tin box. He took off the lid. The box contained a number of tiny, semi-transparent rectangles. He tipped these out upon a sheet of paper and set the empty tin before Miss Teatime.
“Did Tudor know the identity of this associate you think he wished to restrain?”
“I am sure he did not. But he was confident that if such a person had arrived here, he would recognise him.”
Purbright ruminatively shifted the little rectangles about with the point of a pencil. They had rounded corners and one face of each was shinier than its reverse.