The inspector’s reply was just as quietly delivered. “Sorry, sir; I should have explained. The odds are that...”
Dr Fergusson wheeled round suddenly from the window. He was glaring at his watch. “Look here,” he said, “I don’t want to mess up your routine or anything, but I do happen to have left something pretty urgent to do in town. Could you let me have half an hour?” He was already at the door, pulling it open. “No, twenty minutes. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. All right?”
The last two words reached them faintly through the closing door. Mr Chubb looked much displeased and said he really thought Fergusson was the limit. What had he come for, anyway? Purbright told him. He added his opinion that half an hour’s delay would make no material difference.
Another minute elapsed without further sign of Love or his charge.
Purbright did some re-arranging of things on the desk top. He smiled reflectively. “We were rather lucky, you know, sir,” he said, “in turning up such extraordinarily quick workers as those New York people. I put our question of whether there was a firm of stamp dealers in their locality whose name began with the letters O, X and O, and in less than two hours they rang back having not only traced the firm but most perceptively interviewed one of its principals.”
When Edmund Amis arrived, he entered the office in advance of Love and without knocking. He was wearing a lightweight tweed suit, the cut and quality of which the chief constable immediately noticed and approved. His manner was confident, his air of recognition friendly. With a very white handkerchief, he touched his mouth and chin. “I hope I haven’t kept you, gentlemen; I was taking some tea.” The mouth was—Purbright discovered the word tuck-shop in his mind and worked from that—chubby. A chubby mouth, boy-like. Yet the flesh round and under the jaw was as flaccid as a middle-aged matron’s.
Purbright introduced the chief constable. Amis nodded, accepted a chair and pulled up enough neatly creased trouser leg to reveal socks in pale blue silk crochet. He glanced with polite interest at Love’s manipulation of buttons on a tape recorder.
“Let us,” said Purbright, “come straight to the point, Mr Amis—or to a point, rather. Some rather odd features have come to light in the records of this club’s finances. I must ask you first of all if you have any knowledge of them.”
“If you mean by ‘odd’ dishonest, the answer is no.”
“Oh, I do not wish to strain the word at this stage beyond its meaning of unusual, unexpected—interesting, if you like.”
“I think you are going to have to give me a specific example, inspector.”
“Very well.” Purbright referred to a set of figures in the file before him. “On 18 February this year, a cheque was issued in favour of Oxo—presumably the beef extract manufacturers.” He looked up. “Correct?”
“If what you have there is a record of the cheque counterfoils, that is your answer, I suppose. I can scarcely be expected to recall from memory one single cheque out of all that go to our suppliers.”
“The amount,” said Purbright, “is £775. That would buy rather a lot of beef cubes, wouldn’t it, sir?”
After a brief ensuing silence, the small explosion of laughter from Amis sounded spontaneous and curiously guileless. Mr Chubb, who had retired to stand in the background, stared at him and wondered.
“It would, indeed,” said Amis, most amiably. “We shall have to see what is on the invoice. Someone’s slipped up, obviously.”
The inspector referred again to his list. “It would appear that the club was out of beef cubes again by 30 May. The supply that was ordered on that occasion cost £1120.”
Amis did not laugh a second time. He ran a finger slowly along his plump jaw-line and stared thoughtfully into the middle distance. He turned to Purbright and indicated his folio. “Have a look at the invoice. As you say, there is something odd about this.”
The inspector gazed back, levelly. “No invoice has been found, Mr Amis. And no receipt. Indeed, during the past fourteen months a total of nearly £4000 is indicated by these ‘Oxo’ counterfoils, yet not one invoice or receipt appears to exist.”
Amis pondered. The others watched him. He undeniably was taking his time, yet seemed somehow not to be playing for time. At last, he shrugged. “I’m sorry, inspector, but I really can’t imagine what he’d been doing.”
“He?” echoed Purbright at once. “Whom do you mean by ‘he’?”
Amis’s eyes widened. “Poor old Hatch. Who else?” He leaned forward. “Now, look, inspector, Hatch liked to refer to me as his private secretary. In fact, I was his hired help, that’s all. One thing I certainly was not, and that was the company secretary.”
“But you did handle cheques.”
“As an office boy might be said to handle cheques. Hatch expected all his employees to muck in, as he rather disgustingly put it.”
“It was not uncommon, I understand, sir, for you to take a batch of cheques for signature before all the details had been filled in, and for you then to complete them in your own time. Am I right?”
“That did happen occasionally. Mr Hatch’s movements were pretty unpredictable. One had to catch him when one could.”
Hatch, catch, batch flitted ridiculously through Purbright’s brain. He said: “From this point, Mr Amis, I am going to have to ask you questions of a more searching nature. It is your right to have advice as to how to answer them—if, indeed, you wish to answer them at all. Do you want your solicitor to be present?”
Amis was silent a moment. Then a faint, pouting smile, a smirk of mock contrition. “Oh, dear,” he said, very quietly; and again, “Oh, dear.”
Purbright waited.
Amis sniffed, suddenly resolute. “No, I think we can dispense with solicitors. The man who would really have had need of one is out of the picture now. But I’ve a fair idea what sort of thing you’ve dug up. And you possibly think I should have guessed earlier, and done something about it. That’s your drift, isn’t it?”
There was in the easy posture, the good-naturedly chiding tone of the man, that essence of assured superiority which the unwary so often mistake for friendliness.
“Not at all,” Purbright replied. “You are in no danger of being charged with collusion, Mr Amis.”
“Well, thank goodness for that. I mean, I shouldn’t be altogether flabbergasted if you were to tell me that there had been tax fiddles here, or even something a bit close to the wind where the play and the girls are concerned. You follow? I mean to say, that sort of malarky does go on in clubs. But don’t worry, Hatch was too sharp to give me any hints, let alone make me a partner in crime. Do you know why he gave me this job, inspector? Simply because he thought it would be rather posh to have a private secretary. So he installed one. Just as he put that ridiculous swimming pool in his garden. I feel I have a sort of kinship with that pool. We’re both status symbols.”