The constable regarded him earnestly, cleared his throat and took breath.
“Well, sir,” he began, “as you’ll have gathered, it’s about stamps.”
Chapter Twenty
Purbright passed on the the chief constable and edited version of Cordwell’s lecture, and was pleasantly surprised by Mr Chubb’s familiarity with terms that might otherwise have made the interview hard going. Oh, yes, Mr Chubb assured him, he knew what a transposed vignette was; he once had spotted one himself. It was in a packet of approvals that had come his way when he was at school, and he had sold it to another boy for five shillings. He didn’t dare think what such a stamp would be worth today.
“Enough to make it a readily negotiable piece of property, apparently,” said Purbright, “to say nothing of a convenient international investment for anyone who wishes to salt away some questionably acquired cash.”
Mr Chubb took his point, but thought it a great shame that even so wholesome and instructive a schoolboys’ hobby as stamp-collecting should be made to serve the ends of criminals.
Into which mood of reflection upon human perversity, Purbright chose to toss a startling announcement.
“I was speaking over the transatlantic telephone at four o’clock this afternoon to a Captain Michael West, of the New York police.”
Mr Chubb at first looked politely querulous, as if he were not quite sure where New York was. Then he peered at Purbright with sharper attention, almost alarm.
“New York, America?
“That New York, yes, sir.”
“I trust you had some very good reason, Mr Purbright. Authorisation for things like that is terribly difficult to obtain, even in advance. Retrospectively...good heavens!”
Purbright thought he had not seen the chief constable look so concerned since the last hard-pad outbreak.
“It was not a very lengthy call, sir. There seemed no better way to get quick and accurate answers to certain vital questions. And West is a most charming and intelligent man. He once visited Flaxborough.”
This mitigating circumstance earned a pleasant “Oh, really?” from Mr Chubb.
“The Interpol people put me on to him,” the inspector explained. “It was to his station—precinct house, I think is the New York term—that the letter purporting to prophesy our murder was sent. He had kept the letter itself on file, of course, but it was mainly the envelope I wanted to talk about. Fortunately, it hadn’t been thrown away. He was able to turn both up straight away.”
Purbright placed before Mr Chubb the envelope that had so intrigued Constable Cordwell.
“Captain West and I made what might be called a comparison by description. We found enough points of similarity to suggest very strongly indeed that both envelopes—and both letters—had a common authorship, certainly a common source.
“The dimensions of the envelopes checked exactly. Postmarks were identical. Same district, same time. The ink and style of addressing were more difficult to compare in the circumstances, but we could spot no obvious discrepancy. The stamps were of different denominations, but they belonged to the same new commemorative issue.
“Now, sir; perhaps we can consider the letters. The first is a warning to the police—the American police, who reasonably might be expected to pass the warning on—that a Mafia-style murder is planned to take place in Flaxborough. No names are offered, only the location.
“The second letter is very different. It is a threat to a specific person, and it is addressed to that person direct. Subsequently, the man who gets the letter, and, again as one might expect, reports it to us, is found murdered.
“As I say, sir, the letters seem utterly different in intention. One, an informer’s tip-off; the other, a death sentence. Each, though, has a ring of authenticity. And because they turn up at different times in the hands of unrelated and widely separated people, each seems to reinforce the credibility of the other.
“But only so long”—Purbright spoke more slowly and deliberately—“as the letters remain three thousand miles apart and are not examined jointly for signs of their having been concocted by the same writer. And why, after all, should they not so remain?”
The chief constable hoped very much that the question was rhetorical, because he could not have answered it to save his life. He suspected that Purbright, in some subtle way, was getting his own back for the rebuke over the telephone call.
“Why, indeed,” murmured Mr Chubb, forcing a smile.
“You will, of course, have raced ahead and deduced the conclusions that Captain West and I reached,” said Purbright, “but I shall outline them nonetheless, if you don’t object, sir.”
Mr Chubb magnanimously waved him on.
“We agreed at once that the two letters constituted a cleverly trailed red herring, the object of which was persuasively to lay advance blame for an intended murder upon some actual but amorphous criminal organisation. The would-be murderer, we decided, was almost certain to be someone in this country, not in America—someone who knew enough about his victim’s business activities to realise that they rendered him liable to extortion.
“But how had the letters come to be mailed in a city on the other side of the Atlantic? Captain West inclined to the idea of an accomplice, but wasn’t happy about the peculiar way in which the letter to the American police had been addressed. Wouldn’t a collaborator in New York have taken the trouble to specify at least the street and district?”
“Good point,” said the chief constable, who had been trying to think if this West could have been the rather likeable American he had chatted to a dozen or more years ago during some official visit or other. An unveiling, was it? Nice chap. Rose grower.
A knock at the door presaged the entry of Sergeant Love. He was accompanied by a small, wiry man, with a large bald head. The head was sun-tanned to the colour of pumpkin rind and very shiny. It was like some cherished and regularly rubbed-up domestic utensil.
“Here’s Doctor Fergusson, sir,” the sergeant announced.
Some brisk hand-shaking ensued. The police surgeon was an energetic mover who seemed perpetually to be desirous of embarking upon a journey.
“I asked Doctor Fergusson along to make an official examination,” Purbright explained to Mr Chubb. He turned to Love. “All right, sergeant, you may fetch Mr Amis now. I think he’s in the lounge next to that roulette wheel place.”
“Ay-ay-ay-ay...” This sound of Scottish restlessness came from Dr Fergusson, who had stepped to the window and was staring out, as upon a train timetable in the sky.
Two minutes went by.
Mr Chubb leaned close to Purbright and spoke very softly. “Examination? I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.” He kept his eyes on Fergusson’s back, where the doctor’s hands were engaged in a small, impatient wrestling match.