Flaxborough Chronicles - Hopjoy Was Here Part 7

"I'm terribly sorry, but there it is. We'll not keep it longer than is absolutely necessary."

"But what's the car to do with...with all this?"

"Perhaps nothing, Mr Periam. It's just that policemen have no choice in the matter of leaving stones unturned."

Doreen impatiently stabbed a piece of chicken. "You won't find Brian in the boot, if that's what you're getting at."

Purbright looked at her and sighed. "You know, Mrs Periam, I hate to be solemn at meal times, but I feel it's only proper to tell you-as I told your husband this morning-that we are quite seriously concerned with the possibility that Mr Hopjoy's disappearance will prove permanent."

The admonition produced no reaction beyond a quick little shake of the head. "He'll turn up: don't you worry." If this girl had been consciously party to a crime, Purbright reflected, it was clearly of no use hoping that she would be harrowed into acknowledging it.

When he arrived back at the police station, Purbright found his desk neatly stacked with Sergeant Love's gleanings from 14 Beatrice Avenue. He sought Love out.

"Righto, Sid; astound me."

Love looked doubtfully at the pile of papers. "I collected everything I could find. There's nothing very exciting, though."

"Never mind. Let's have a look."

The sergeant picked up the first few sheets. "Letters to Periam. Either he didn't get many or he didn't keep them. There's nothing recent."

Three of the letters appeared to be from female relatives. They offered condolence on the death of Periam's mother. 'She was a beautiful soul,' ran one, written in a wavery but florid hand, 'and I know that no one can ever take her place. But, Gordon dear, you must not let your grief be a door closed against all other affection. Dear Mackie-and I'm sure you won't mind me mentioning her at this time-has been so patient and loyal, and what could never be so long as your duty lay with your poor mother is now quite possible and right.' The signature was 'Auntie B'.

A fourth letter was from a solicitor and enumerated final details of the administration of Mrs Periam's will. The other two were formal acknowledgements of a transfer of deeds and a small quant.i.ty of stock.

"This," said Love, handing over a second, thicker sheaf, "is just shop stuff-you know, his tobacco business."

Purbright glanced quickly through the invoices, delivery notes and receipts, and put them aside. Love picked up his next selection. "Periam again. Certificates, doc.u.ments and all that."

"You should have been an archivist, Sid." The sergeant, suspecting an ironic indecency, grinned to show his broadness of mind.

The third batch of papers was unproductive of anything more exciting than a faded copy of Mrs Periam's marriage lines, her son's birth certificate, and, crispest and most blackly inked of all, that of her death. There were several bank statements, showing Periam's credit standing at around 2,500; a couple of insurance policies; National Health Insurance cards, one in the name of Joan Peters, the shop a.s.sistant; some rates receipts and a card of members.h.i.+p of the Flaxborough Chamber of Trade.

Finally in the Periam collection came a miscellany topped by two years' back numbers of Healthy Living and a number of pamphlets on muscle development 'in the privacy of your own bedroom'. There were some scrolls commemorative of Gordon Halcyon Periam's achievements as pupil and teacher in the Carlton Road Methodist Sunday School. A small alb.u.m of photographs seemed a typical record of family life in back gardens and beach huts; Purbright noticed the consistent role of the young Periam to be that of a frowning, slightly agape custodian of his mother's arm. An exceptional snapshot, marred by faulty development, showed him at the age of fifteen or sixteen, looking defensively at the camera in the company of a fat girl pouting at an ice cream cornet. Even in this picture, however, a segment efface in the top left corner indicated the fond and watchful presence of the late Mrs Periam.

Love licked a finger. "Now for Hopjoy," he announced. "I didn't have such a job rooting these out. They were all stuffed into this writing case thing. I found it under his bed."

"By the way, what did you make of that big bedroom at the back; I can't imagine who uses it."

Love shook his head. "n.o.body does. It was the old lady's."

Purbright looked up from his examination of the writing case. "But it's cluttered up with all manner of things. Shoes, gewgaws, medicine bottles, hair nets. I noticed the bed was still made up, too. A bit odd, isn't it?"

"I saw a film once," said Love, his face brightening, "where a bloke kept a room like that for years after his mother was supposed to have been buried. She was in the wardrobe, actually, all shrivelled, and he used to plonk her down in a chair at teatime and talk to her. It turned out that..."

"Did you take a peek into the wardrobe, Sid?"

Love looked a little ashamed of himself. "I did, as a matter of fact. Just in the course of things. There were some dresses in it. And a sort of basket thing."

"Basket thing?" Purbright frowned, suddenly interested.

"That's right." The sergeant sketched in the air with his hands. "I should think it was one of those old contraptions dressmakers used to use."

"I'm quite sure you're wrong, Sid. Never mind for now, though. Let's see what Mr Hopjoy left us."

The Hopjoy bequest was not calculated to bring much joy to beneficiaries. It consisted, almost exclusively, of bills and accompanying letters that ranged in tone from elaborate politeness to vulgar exasperation.

Purbright mentally awarded top marks to the essay contributed by the manager of the Neptune.

My dear Mr Hopjoy (it began expansively), I need hardly tell you how delighted I was to renew the acquaintance, in the person of your charming wife, of a lady I had mistakenly supposed to have married into a family on the other side of the county. I cannot say what gave me that erroneous impression: the man is almost unknown to me, save by repute as a choleric and well-muscled individual. You will, I am sure, apologize to Mrs Hopjoy for whatever trace of bewilderment I may stupidly have shown on being introduced to her (or re-introduced, should I say?) May I take this opportunity also to congratulate you upon your new union. The former Mrs Hopjoy-if I might make so bold as to offer comment-seemed possessed of a disconcertingly changeable personality; there were times when I had difficulty in persuading myself that she was the same woman. Now that a more settled marital relations.h.i.+p seems happily in prospect, I may, no doubt, look forward to the satisfactory adjustment of the incidental matter of your account.

Yours ever to serve, P. BARRACLOUGH.

'Adjustment', it appeared, involved the sum of 268 14s.

To an even larger debt a letter from Mr J. O'Conlon made regretful reference. In this case, social overtones were absent. Mr O'Conlon merely expressed the hope that his client would avoid trouble for all concerned (including, especially, himself) by sending along his cheque for 421 at any time convenient to him within the following forty-eight hours.

"Bookmaking," Purbright observed to Sergeant Love, "must be looking up. I wouldn't have thought Joe O'Conlon had enough padding to let anyone have that much credit."

Turning to the next sheet, Purbright raised his brows in mild astonishment. "George Tozer, gentlemen's hairdresser," he read out. "To goods, 11 15s. 4d. A remittance will oblige or I'm sorry no more of same can be supplied."

Love puffed out his schoolboy-pink cheeks. "A proper lad, that Hopjoy. And on tick, too..."

"You feel that makes his excesses the more reprehensible?"

"I wouldn't know about that, but I reckon they don't call old Tozer the poor man's friend for nothing."

"You're sure you're not confusing the merchant with his merchandise?" Purbright put the barber's reckoning aside and picked up a letter from the Happy Motoring Finance Company. "Ah, the car...I was wondering when we'd come to that."

"In the matter of your outstanding instalments, which now amount to 242 16s.," the letter ran, "I am directed to refer to your personal letter to Sir Harry Palmer, in which you say that the nature of certain confidential work undertaken by you for H.M. Government requires you to foster a false appearance of impecuniosity. I regret that the Chairman must decline your invitation to seek confirmation of your position from the Minister of State, as this would be outside the scope of our Company practice. Accordingly, I must inform you that unless your instalment payments are brought up to date within fourteen days we shall be obliged to take appropriate action."

Purbright regarded the letter in silence for a while. Then he looked quickly through the rest of the contents of the writing case. Beneath the bills lay an unsuggestive miscellany of theatre programmes, hotel and resort brochures, a London restaurant guide, a couple of wine and food lists, maps, a jeweller's catalogue and the maintenance booklet for the Armstrong. Then came a wad of blank, thin paper sheets of the kind Purbright had seen in the hands of Ross, and finally a cheap writing pad from which the top sheet or two had been torn.

Purbright flicked through the pages of the pad. They enclosed nothing. He leaned back, staring out of the window and gently tapping the pad against the edge of the desk.

"I don't know," he said slowly, "how Mr Hopjoy rated as a counter-espionage agent, but if he applied to his job only half the talent he showed for fornication and insolvency I'd say Russia's had it."

Love glanced at the inspector a little dubiously.

"Oh, don't worry, Sid. The fellow obviously made no secret of what he was up to. He even traded on it. I don't see why we should behave like old ladies pretending they can't smell the drains. Which reminds me...wasn't Warlock coming in today some time?"

"About four," Love said. "He sounded jolly bouncy over the phone."

"He's probably run across some little t.i.tbit like a fingernail or a kidney. Incidentally, I don't see anything among this lot that gives colour to Hopjoy's pose as a commercial traveller."

"That's all there was at the house. Perhaps he had an office somewhere,"

Purbright shook his head. "None of the chemists in the town remembers his calling. No, I think he just couldn't be bothered to keep up that part of it; who was to care, anyway?"

The sergeant watched in silence as Purbright closed and fastened the writing case and pushed it and Periam's belongings to the back of the desk. Then, "It's funny, you know," he said hesitantly, "but what with one thing and another-all that money trouble and everything-you might almost say that getting done must have come to that bloke as a happy release." He swallowed. "If you see what I mean."

There was no flippancy in Purbright's voice when he replied: "I do see what you mean, Sid. I do indeed."

Chapter Ten.

Sergeant Warlock blossomed into Purbright's office like the Man from the Prudential. He carried a briefcase and a squat, black wooden box with a handle.

"Now then, squire." The luggage was placed in precise symmetry on the desk top. Warlock's hands, thus released, flew into joyful union and vigorously rubbed each other. "How's tricks?"

Purbright conceded that tricks were merely so-so.

His visitor, after taking two turns round the room, in order, Purbright supposed, to dissipate some of the momentum of his arrival, poised himself by the briefcase and flicked it open. He looked zestfully at the inspector. "Nicest little job I've had in years. Absolutely fascinating..." His glance went down to the papers he was drawing from the case. "I hardly know where to begin."

"By sitting down, perhaps?" suggested Purbright unhopefully. Warlock chuckled and seemed to grow two inches taller there and then. He spread pages of typescript on the desk and rapidly reviewed the underlined sub-headings.

"Ah, well; we might as well start with the bath, eh? You were quite right about that. It was melted paraffin wax that had been brushed over the chipped parts and the metal plug seating. There were still traces of it, although I'd say the whole caboodle had been sluiced out afterwards with water from the hot tap. And the chain was still thickly waxed. Your lad saw that, didn't he? Now then, what else...Oh, yes; spots of corrosion on both taps. Splashes, probably. Slight discolouration of vitreous enamel consistent with submersion in fairly highly concentrated sulphuric acid. Acid traces on bathroom floor..."

Warlock's finger moved slowly down the page. "Wax on bath corresponded with solid deposit in basin in dining-room sideboard..." He looked up. "Queer slip, that: leaving the thing about. Never mind, that's not my pigeon." He read on. "No distinguishable fingerprints on basin, d.a.m.n it-still, it would have been asking a bit much."

"Drains," announced Warlock after a brief pause. "We didn't do too badly with drains." While still keeping his eyes on the report, he felt for the black box and slipped its catch. "a.n.a.lysis of contents of drain trap established presence of unusual quant.i.ties of fat and carbon compounds, possibly of animal derivation, also distinct calcium traces...you're with me there, I suppose, squire?"

Purbright nodded. "The late Mr Hopjoy, I presume." He received an approving beam from the expert.

"Mind you, you mustn't get the idea that anything like actual identification is possible from this sort of thing. It's all a bit tentative."

"Oh, quite."

"But circ.u.mstantially impressive, all the same." Warlock sounded eager to please. "Naturally, there'd been some dilution of what went into the drain trap. Fat and acid tests were absolutely conclusive, though. I'm only sorry there wasn't anything exciting in the solid line-plastic b.u.t.tons, gold teeth fillings-you know."

"Pity."

Warlock lifted back the lid of his box. He drew a test tube from a small rack at the back of it. "This has flummoxed us, I admit. It had caught in that little grill thing under the plug."

Purbright turned the tube round in his hand. Within it he saw a knotted loop of whitish, translucent fibre. He held it to the light. "Animal, vegetable or mineral?"

"Oh, mineral," said Warlock. "Almost certainly nylon."

"Out of a nailbrush, perhaps?"

"Too long. Anyway, it wouldn't be joined up like that. It's not out of a brush of any kind. n.o.body at the lab. had a clue."

"Are you worried about it?"

Warlock scowled indignantly and whisked the tube out of Purbright's grasp. "Of course I'm worried about it. We haven't been foxed by anything in this line since the Retford fly-paper case. Do you know, we spent two months making inquiries at jewellers about that cuff-link in old Mrs Hargreaves's duodenum. In the end we traced it to the b.l.o.o.d.y surgeon who did the autopsy."

He put the test tube back in its rack. "Oh, we'll get some joy out of this, don't you worry. I'm sending it off to the top bods in the artificial fibre industry. I expect they'll check it with their gauge records or something."

"It may be quite unconnected with the case, of course," ventured Purbright, who was beginning to find Warlock's forensic rhapsody a trifle wearing.

"Five pounds to a gnat's navel it has absolutely nothing to do with it, squire. Elimination, though...that's what counts with us, elimination." He looked again at his report. "Now then; where were we? Ah, bloodstains..."

There were six sites of staining. The bathroom floor had been spotted. The wall splashes had proved, as expected, positive. Blood accounted for the mark on the razor blade found in the bathroom cabinet. Then there was the hammer head. Finally, careful search had disclosed a few smears on the stair carpet and on the concrete floor of the garage.

The last two had lent themselves admirably to the process of elimination. They were not of human origin. All the others were, and they belonged to the same common 'O' group.

"I don't quite see how the razor blade fits in," said Purbright. "It's hardly likely to have been used as a weapon. I mean you don't fell a bloke with a hammer and then cut his throat: that would be sheer ostentation. Anyway, we should have found more mess, surely?"

Warlock watched him with the secretly gleeful air of a conjuror whose audience falls for diversion while the best part of his trick is in preparation.

"I told you, didn't I, that this case is absolutely marvellous?" His eyes gleamed. "Now then; what do you think of this?"

Purbright picked up the large photograph that had been slid triumphantly before him.

It appeared to be of a huge, round butcher's block on to which a handful of canes had been carelessly tossed. The canes were partly embedded in a thick, tarry substance, spread irregularly over the surface of the block. They stuck out, some straight, some curving, at varying angles.

"This one's been pulled up even farther." Warlock tossed down a second photograph. The canes had become long, segmented stovepipes, jutting from some sort of dune, coa.r.s.ely granular in texture. Purbright was reminded of surrealist seash.o.r.e paintings.

"The hammer head," announced Warlock.

"Ah, yes."

Warlock waited. "Of course, you see what's wrong."

The inspector held the second enlargement at arm's length and squinted judiciously. "To be perfectly honest..."

Impatiently, scornfully almost, Warlock leaned over and jabbed his finger at the stovepipes. "No crus.h.i.+ng. No skin. No follicles."

The triple negation sounded like a maximum sentence without possibility of appeal. Purbright nodded meekly. "You're perfectly right, of course. Not a follicle in sight."

Warlock sighed and took up a relatively relaxed pose behind Purbright's chair. He pointed, more gently this time, at the prints.

"You see, squire, it's reasonable to expect that hairs are going to stick to a hammer when it's used to bash somebody's head in. But they get squeezed between two hard surfaces-steel and bone-for a fraction of a second before the skull gives way. So naturally they ought to show damage. These don't.

"Another thing: the hairs, or some of them, are bound to come out, roots and all. Plus the odd bit of skin, of course. But in this case...well, you can see for yourself."