time.”
“And Gwill?” said Purbright, casually. “Was Gwill worried?”
“Of course he was. Not as much as me, perhaps. I take these things very badly. But he was very upset, all the same.” Bradlaw brightened suddenly. “That’s why he did away with himself. Don’t you see now? He was driven to it.”
“Was Gloss driven to it, as well?”
Bradlaw frowned. “How do you mean? Roddy didn’t commit suicide. He was killed.”
“By whom?”
“By that devil, of course.” He stretched his arm towards the coffin. “In cold blood. That’s the sort he was.”
Purbright seemed suddenly to have remembered something. “Excuse me a minute,” he said to Bradlaw; then, beckoning to Love to follow, he walked to the door. The constable opened it. Inspector and sergeant stepped out into the yard.
A few moments later, Purbright returned alone. Facing Bradlaw once more, he produced his own notebook. “We work on a shift system, you see.” Bradlaw, bolder now, managed to smile for a second.
Purbright unscrewed his pen. “Right. Will you go on from what you were saying?”
“I suppose,” said Bradlaw in a lowered voice, “you’d like me to get round to the other business now?” He glanced at the coffin.
“It’s up to you.”
“Has Hillyard...?”
Purbright said nothing. Bradlaw stared at him doubtfully. Then, “Of course, he’s a sick man,” he said, with the air of breaking bad news. “You understand that. I could do nothing with him once he’d started.
“It was when Roddy was killed that he seemed to make up his mind. Up to then, we’d never even seen Barnaby. We didn’t know where to find him. The money had had to be addressed post-what-do-you-call-it at Shrewsbury. But Rupert managed to pump a girl he knows at the telephone exchange here. She found out where Barnaby had made some calls to Joan Carobleat. It was a public kiosk and we guessed he must live nearby.
“Rupert got hold of a map and I agreed to take him over in the van. I thought the idea was to find Barnaby and to frighten him into letting us alone. I was in such a state I was ready to try anything.”
Bradlaw paused and shivered. “Look, can’t we go somewhere else? This place is freezing.”
Purbright stretched the arm with which he had been writing. “It is on the bleak side,” he conceded. “Try and hang on until the sergeant gets back, though, can you? He’ll not be long.”
“It’s hard to think in here, that’s all,” Bradlaw grumbled. “Still, if you say so...”
“Did you find Barnaby’s place?”
“Oh, we found it all right. But he wasn’t there. I tried to persuade Rupert to leave well alone. Instead of that, he started prowling round the place and found a window that was open a bit. He climbed in and let me in through the back door. It was then that I realized what he was up to. As I passed him, I spotted that drug case of his sticking out of his pocket. It gave me a shock, I can tell you.”
“You both went into the cottage, then?”
Bradlaw nodded. Then he looked sharply at the inspector. “I haven’t said it was a cottage, have I?”
“No; that’s true,” said Purbright quietly.
Bradlaw let this pass, but his manner became perceptibly more careful. “Rupert put the case down on a bench in the kitchen and took a syringe out of it. There were some tiny bottles there as well and he broke the top off one of them. Then he filled the syringe from it and went stalking round the place, looking into cupboards. After a bit, he came back to the kitchen table and squirted what was in the syringe into some milk that was standing there ‘That’ll have to do,’ he said, and I said, ‘You’re not trying to poison him, are you?’ and he said no, it was a drug to make Barnaby sleepy and less likely to go for us. I wasn’t sure he was telling the truth, but I didn’t argue.
“We went out through the front door and walked back to where we’d left the van under some trees. It was dark by then and we knew we’d be able to tell when Barnaby turned up because we’d see the lights of his car. I don’t know how long we were sitting there. It was bloody cold and I tried two or three times to get Rupert to give up, but he wouldn’t take any notice.
“I was just about asleep when a car passed us and drew up lower down. We waited until he’d driven in and then we followed. There was a light in the cottage and we crept round the back. Through the window we saw Barnaby walking about the kitchen and doing something with the stove. There was a saucepan on it. That seemed to make Rupert quite excited and several times he said: ‘He’s bitten; the bastard’s bitten!‘ After a while, we saw Barnaby pour some of what was in the saucepan into a plate and the rest into a beaker. He sat at the table with his back to us.
“About ten minutes later, he got up and went out of the kitchen. He came and went once or twice after that, but the last time he walked in he was looking queer. He kept feeling out for things and rocked about a bit. Rupert laughed when he saw, and I was afraid Barnaby would hear, but he didn’t. He tried to sit down at the table again, but he seemed to miss the chair and flopped down out of sight. We went right up to the window and looked through, and he was there on the floor, flat out.”
Purbright licked his finger and flicked back another leaf of his notebook. At that moment, there was a knock at the mortuary door and the constable opened it to admit Love.
The inspector turned to him. “You managed?” Love nodded. To Bradlaw, Purbright said: “We might as well get this finished now, don’t you think? Tell me if you’d rather carry on over at the office, though.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Bradlaw. “There’s not much more to tell. I just want you to know I wasn’t to blame for what happened next. Honest to God, I wasn’t.” He spoke pleadingly, but with an undertone of weariness.
“All right, Nab. Take your time.”
