The inspector listened attentively to the story of the shadowing of Alderman Leadbitter. He drew towards him a pad of paper, an ashtray and a cup half-full of cold, grey coffee.
“Now, Sid; let’s have that list you copied from the board on the landing.”
At Love’s direction, he marked out three columns and began filling them with the members and letters in the sergeant’s notebook. Then he pulled from a file the table he had compiled earlier of names, specifications and times coined in the answers to the advertisements in the
“By the way,” said Love, “did you find who collected those box replies?”
Purbright nodded. “A young fellow from Gloss’s office. Lintz told me. I cornered the lad this afternoon, as a matter of fact, and he said his boss had sent him with the ticket—the counterfoil that’s issued when anyone places an advert—to pick up any letters under that number.”
“That would leave Gloss with something to explain, then.”
“He made no bones about it. He said the ticket had been amongst Gwill’s papers that he, as his solicitor, had been sorting out, and that he thought he’d better see if there was anything urgent about the business.”
“Had he the letters there?”
“Oh yes. All opened. He was most obliging. Showed them to me and asked me what I thought they could mean. The money was there, too.”
“Could he explain that?”
Purbright sighed. “My dear Sid, you should know by now that we’ve got everything out of that gentleman that he’ll part with until we can use the rack.”
He put the two lists side by side and began comparing them. His pencil point wavered from one column to another, pounced on a number or a set of initials, then moved beneath a name an address, a date. Twenty minutes went by. Love got up looked disconsolately out of the uncurtaind window at the blackness bloomed with a dim rejection of the room’s lamp-light upon rags of mist, and walked to the door. “I’ll see if Charlie can fix up a mug of something,” he said, and departed
Purbright’s manner of scrutinizig the pages before him became gradually more alert. Several details were now underlined. He passed his tongue over his dry upper lip and reached for the coffee cup. Absentmindedly he sipped its chilled, forbidding residue.
When Love came back with two steaming mugs, he motioned him to his side and pointed to one of the entries he had marked.
“This is interesting. Edward Leadbitter, you notice, wrote asking to see an antique pewter tankard...”
“A pewter antique tankard.”
“Eh? All right, then, a pewter antique tankard; and he specified eight-fifteen this evening. Now then”— Purbright moved his pencil over to the second sheet—“here’s the entry on that upstairs board of Hillyard’s. First of all, the time. Eight-fifteen. That checks. Next, the figure two. You said it was the second cubicle from which you heard his voice. Now in the last column on the notice board are these five initials: E.L.P.A.T.”
Love scratched his chin.
“Edward...” Purbright prompted.
“Edward Leadbitter...Pewter...Of course, it’s that bloody tankard again.”
“Exactly.”
“But I still can’t see any sense in it,” protested Love. “The place hadn’t an antique in sight. No pewter, no furniture, nothing like that at all. It was like a clinic or part of a hospital, except that it was more comfortable. It was certainly no antique that jumped up at me when I switched the torch on.” Love looked more gleeful than dismayed at the memory of the moment of revelation before his flight.
“Never mind the Venusberg aspect. Who was the fellow you said you saw on the landing?”
“Stamper. Bert Stamper.”
“The farmer?”
“That’s the one, yes.”
Purbright looked down the names on his letter digest. “Here we are—he just put initials to his reply. H.S. And over here”—he waved his pencil over to the ‘Treatment Schedule’—“they appear against seven-thirty and cubicle three.”
“Three was the cubicle where I found the door unlocked.”
“And looked at what the policeman saw.”
Love blushed happily.
“You say you know the girl?”
“Professionally, yes. Mrs Shooter—Margaret Shooter, I believe it was. I was beat-bashing in those days and she was listed with a few others for entertaining sailors in the place in Broad Street.”
“Over by the harbour?”
“Yes. There used to be more knocking shops than telegraph poles down there at one time. That was before Holy Harry blew out all the red lamps and set the girls to sew surplices.”
Purbright looked pained. “Don’t come that hell’s kitchen stuff to me, Sid. You know perfectly well that the Flaxborough brand of vice was never anything but shabby amateurism. The house you’re talking about closed down weeks before we could get any real evidence. By Holy Harry, I suppose you mean the late and questionable Mr Carobleat?”
“That’s the boy.”
