Coffin Scarcely Used

Love opened his mouth, shut it, and then blurted: “Look—I know it sounds corney, but what about blackmail?”

“Oh, Sid!” Purbright gave him an upward glance of sad remonstrance.

“Yes, but why not? These adverts, could be a sort of reminder that another instalment of hush money is due. Look at the sort of people who reply—or pretend to be replying. They’re all well known and well off, too. Gwill owned a newspaper. He could easily have found out things about them that they would be scared of seeing in print. We know that Gwill was careful to handle the adverts, and the box replies himself. It could be that the people paying him had been told to enclose a letter explaining the money in case an envelope went astray or got opened by one of the office staff by mistake.”

Purbright had listened attentively. “Attractive,” he conceded. “A neat idea. But it doesn’t tie up with certain facts. In the first place, Gwill had been dead a couple of days, and known by the whole town to be dead, when these letters were sent off. Instead of posting their eight quidses, these people would have been celebrating the closing of the account.”

“Only if they knew who was blackmailing them,” said Love. “We can’t be sure that they did. In fact the whole beauty of the box reply system would have been the concealment of the black-mailer’s identity.”

Purbright rubbed his cheek. “That’s perfectly true,” he said; then, with a frown, “But why all this appointment nonsense? There could be no point in it once the money had passed over. Even as a blind for anyone who might open the letter by mistake it’s unnecessarily elaborate.”

Dampened by this objection, Love decided against putting forward his final and most entrancing theory. Drugs, he calculated, was not the suggestion the inspector was waiting to hear.

Chapter Eleven

The account of the curious end of the proprietor of the Flaxborough Citizen that had been allowed to appear in his own publication was presented with none of the air of repressed delirium that had characterized earlier revelations in the national Press. But it was fulsome enough in its own way.

Once the Citizen had made it clear that the occasion was one it ‘regretted to announce’ and that the victim was the ‘well-known public figure’ who had enjoyed the privilege of being a ‘principal in the town’s leading printing and publishing concern’, it treated his corpse pretty well like that of anyone else.

The inquest was reported in detail and, as if to compensate for the dullness of its formalities and its inconclusiveness, followed up by Inspector Purbright’s intriguing request for information. This was enough to have most readers speculating happily on what had been going on and, indeed, on what was Up.

Purbright, for lack of anything better to do, took a copy of the paper along to the office of the Chief Constable. Mr Chubb had, as it turned out, read it already, and was now interested to know if some obliging witness had come forward to prove that the whole affair was just an unfortunate misunderstanding.

“You do see, don’t you, my boy,” he explained in his thin, cultured voice, dried up with calming important citizens and lecturing Flaxborough Historical Association on Bronze Age burial, “that the sooner this business is cleared up the better. There is doubtless some quite simple explanation which eludes us. On reflection, I find it incredible that poor old Gwill would have been mixed up in anything, well, untoward.”

“I fully appreciate that, sir,” said Purbright. “None of us cares for discredit to be hanging over the town.” Chubb nodded his approval of this sentiment. “On the other hand, sir, it is my duty to advise you that the inquiries we have made into the matter so far have all tended to strengthen the case for supposing Mr Gwill to have been murdered.”

The Chief Constable looked pained, then raised his brows in invitation to Purbright to elaborate this distasteful theme.

Purbright spread out a couple of sheets of paper on which he had jotted notes. Unhurriedly, he glanced over the main headings, read some of the paragraphs to himself, and then looked up to Chubb, who, on the inspector’s entry, had levitated as usual while inviting his visitor to a chair and now leaned gracefully athwart a tall filing cabinet in one corner.

“It appears,” Purbright began, “that contrary to our earlier supposition, Gwill was not alone in his house on the night of his death. Mr Gloss has since admitted that he was actually in the company of Mr Gwill until quite late. He has further alleged that Doctor Rupert Hillyard was with him also.

“His story was that while he and Doctor Hillyard were talking to Gwill, the telephone rang and Gwill answered it. In response to the call—and Mr Gloss says he couldn’t gather who made it or what was said—Gwill is supposed to have hurried out of the house and not returned. If all this is true, the likelihood of a calculated attack on Gwill, or rather of some sort of trap laid for him, becomes very strong.”

Chubb shifted his position slightly to stare out of the window. “Mr Gloss has acted rather foolishly in not coming forward at once with these facts. And I must say I’m surprised at Hillyard’s reticence. He’s said nothing to you, has he?”

“I haven’t questioned him yet, sir.”

“All the same, the man surely must have realized something was wrong and that it was his duty to come along and give us what information he could. Of course”—Chubb turned to Purbright and smiled gently—“Hillyard’s rather an odd chap in some ways. He’s not always quite himself.” And with this indulgent interpretation, the Chief Constable’s gaze went back to the sycamore against the further wall of the station courtyard.

Purbright continued. “A witness has also been found who saw a van being driven out along Heston Lane late on Monday night and watched it return. Her description suggests that it was Mr Jonas Bradlaw’s van. It seems very likely, in my opinion, that all three of them were there that night, and not just two.”

“Why should Mr Gloss not have mentioned Mr Bradlaw’s presence, in that case?”

“I don’t know, sir. One explanation could be that Mr Bradlaw and the doctor knew that they had been seen on their way to the house on foot but relied on no one having noticed Mr Bradlaw, who would have been pretty well concealed inside his van. It also happens that Mr Bradlaw went to some pains to establish an alibi for that time.”

“A false one, you mean?”

“It could very well be false.”