The expression of sardonic jubilation faded from Larch’s face as if he had been knifed from behind. He slipped slowly from the desk, drew himself erect and gave Purbright an agonized stare. “You know that? You’re...you’re sure that’s what happened?”
“I’m virtually certain that Biggadyke was murdered. If you want to know why, I’ll tell you.”
Larch nodded absently. “Yes...yes, of course you must tell me.” His normally aggressive sibilants were now weak: the whispered evidence of a rather pathetic oral deformity. Purbright described his interview with Leaper. When he had finished, Larch walked round to his chair and sat down. He looked tired, and spoke with obvious effort.
“Mr Purbright: I’ve a favour to ask of you. It’s that you stay on here a little longer.”
“That may be difficult. After this week, impossible. Why do you ask?” Purbright had the curious feeling that he was delivering the lines of a bad play.
“Because I don’t trust myself to be able to find out the truth of this thing. You see, I am personally involved, though not in the way Hessledine seems to have thought.”
Larch’s glance fell slightly as he went on: “You won’t know this, Mr Purbright, but Biggadyke was what I believe they call a close friend of my wife’s. I happen to have learned that they’d arranged to meet that Tuesday night when he was killed. She was to have gone to his caravan. There was nothing to stop her going. I was away from home. And I understand she’s pretty punctillious about that sort of appointment.” The small twisted smile lasted only an instant. “You see, of course, what I’m afraid of. That Hilda knew what was going to happen. That...somehow or other, she’d...had a hand in it.”
Meeting his eyes, Purbright said quietly: “You know, you’re talking absolute nonsense.”
“Am I?” Larch brought his fist crashing down on the desk. “Am I, Mr Purbright? Then why in God’s name wasn’t she there when that thing went off? Why isn’t she dead too?”
Chapter Sixteen
If the sight of Purbright and Larch entering his office together and apparently in amity surprised Mr Kebble he did not show it. But nor did he say anything about the interesting discovery he had just made, which, in the absence of the man he called Old Acid-guts, he would spontaneously have announced.
Purbright, however, went straight to that very point. “The Chief Inspector and I,” he said, “are very interested in Celia, Mr Kebble. One might almost say we have high hopes of her.”
The editor glanced up at each of the policemen in turn, like a plump poodle flanked by a pair of Afghan hounds. “Celia,” he muttered. “Ah, yes...”
“Any luck?” Purbright was looking down at the open newspaper file. He caught sight of a column headed in black Gothic type.
Kebble pursed his lips and began moving a stubby, nicotine-stained finger down the page. Larch and Purbright peered at the point where it came at last to a reluctant stop.
They read: ‘July 1st, suddenly: Celia Grope, aged 20 years’.
Kebble broke the silence. “That’s the only Celia I’ve been able to find. Mind you, I’m not...” His voice tailed off unhappily as he looked up at the graven solemnity of the chief inspector’s face.
“We can’t let personal feelings worry us now, Mr Kebble,” said Larch, sententiously. “You mustn’t get the idea that you’ve let someone down, or anything of that sort.” He turned to Purbright. “I suppose you won’t have heard about that business?” He nodded towards the year-old newspaper.
“She was knocked down by a car, wasn’t she?”
“She was. And you can guess the name of the driver.”
“Biggadyke.” Purbright saw no reason to point out that he was not guessing.
Larch nodded and stared past him as if looking at a now familiar ghost that he had given up trying to exorcise. “We did our best with a manslaughter charge—that was before the new Act, of course—but it didn’t stick. He was very lucky.”
“Luckier than Celia.”
Larch flicked at him his cold, sad glance. “As you say, Mr Purbright: luckier than Celia.”
“And what,” Mr Kebble put in, “are you going to do now?” He was beginning to find oppressive the towering proximity of the two men carrying on their conversation over his head.
“Will Grope still be over at the cinema?” Larch asked him.
“He should be.”
Kebble watched the policemen go. Larch’s purposeful stride took him first to the door. He looked, the editor reflected, like an executioner. Following at a stroll, Purbright turned and smiled. “Thanks for the coffee, Mr Kebble.”
The editor smiled weakly and raised his hand. Then his attention was caught by Leaper holding aloft a book and gesticulating. “Oh, Mr Purbright!” he called. The inspector came back to the counter.
“I forgot to tell you,” said Kebble, handing him the book, “that Leonard’s tracked the other half of that quotation.”
“Has he now.” Purbright beamed at the youth. “Smart work, Mr Leaper; smart work indeed!” He nearly added ’The Commissioner shall hear of this’ but refrained on catching an agonized look from Kebble and the murmured warning: “No praise, old chap. Like firewater to an Indian. Queer lad.”
The foyer of the cinema was empty. Shafts of sunlight, aswarm with dancing dust motes, slanted from the side windows upon the plastic stucco and struck back a chilly, colour-drained gleam. Where they fell across the carpet, the golden patches were scabbed with innumerable lozenges of blackened, trodden-in chewing gum. There was a smell of ashtrays and vitiated deodorant. Above the whine of a distant vacuum cleaner rose occasionally the cackle of ladies making discoveries under seats.
