It was evident from Mr Chubb’s expression that he couldn’t.
“What I mean is that she looks almost frumpish—unfashionable clothes, no make-up, dreadful hair style—yet underneath she seems to be continually flexing and shuffling. She gives a most disconcerting impression of...well, appetite.”
“She doesn’t sound a very nice young woman. She
“Younger than her husband, certainly. I find it hard to understand why she dropped Hopjoy—very much the .accomplished buck, by all accounts—in favour of a man like Periam.”
“Women,” stated Mr Chubb, “are unpredictable.”
Purbright recognized that the Chief Constable had received as much confusing information as he could stomach at one session. He picked up the report and photographs. “Is there anything more at the moment, sir?”
“I don’t think so. We shall just have to carry on ploughing our furrow, you know. See what turns up.”
“Very well, sir.” Purbright walked to the door.
“Oh, by the way, Mr Purbright...” Mr Chubb disengaged himself from the mantelpiece and meticulously slipped his finger-ends into his jacket pockets. “I had a chat with Major Ross this morning. I suppose he and Mr Pumphrey are trained to take a rather less mundane view of these affairs. Of course, they do operate in a wider sphere than ours. I have the impression that they readily conceive of possibilities which you and I might dismiss as excessively dramatic...”
“Yes, sir?”
Mr Chubb traced a pattern on the carpet with one well-shined toecap. “Yes, well I think I ought to tell you that Major Ross and his colleague don’t share your opinion that Periam is the man responsible. In their parlance, he is described as ‘cleared’, and they are looking much farther afield.”
“I don’t think we should take exception to that, sir. I’m glad of any assistance they can give.”
“Oh, quite so. I’m sure you don’t regard their co-operation ungenerously. No, that isn’t what I’m anxious about. It’s simply that outsiders tend to underestimate our people, Mr Purbright—in the country districts particularly. We don’t want these gentlemen running into any unpleasantness, do we? After all, they are our guests, in a sense.”
Purbright nodded. “I’ll do my best to look after them.”
Mr Chubb achieved a smile. “I thought I’d better mention it. Major Ross did say something about making a few inquiries in Mumblesby, as a matter of fact.”
“Merry Mumblesby,” said Purbright, reflectively. He opened the door.
Chapter Eleven
“Ingenious,” Ross said. He lifted the narrow rectangle of paper aloft with his pipe stem, held it in draped balance a moment, then withdrew the pipe sharply. The paper side-slipped twice and floated to rest on the table by Pumphrey’s elbow.
“Chubb was perfectly correct, you see. It
Pumphrey peered at the paper earnestly, pulling his right ear lobe as if it put him in circuit with an electronic scanner. “Five shillings each way Needlework Hurst Park 4.30 Peter Piper” he read in an unpunctuated monotone.
“Pre-selected pseudonymic code: impossible to break. We needn’t waste time on it.” Ross held out his hand.
“Hold on a minute...” Pumphrey’s ear became tauter, redder. He muttered the message again to himself, then tapped the paper. “Needlework,” he said with emphasis and looked up.
“Name of the horse. I’ve checked. It’s running in the 4.30 all right.” Ross spoke mechanically. His attention was held by the bright, blood-flooded lobe of Pumphrey’s ear. He pictured the fearful rending tongs fashioned by that Cracow goldsmith whom fate, and an ungrateful party secretariat, had made their first victim; ‘unfeatured’ was the word that had been sardonically entered in his prison hospital record.
“Yes, but needlework...examine it association-wise. Needle...sewing...thimble...Thimble Bay.”
Interest glimmered in Ross’s eye, but only briefly. He shook his head. “Attractive, Harry, but just that fraction too obvious. No, what matters is that our friends’ main communication channels are being confirmed. It’s our immediate job to follow them. I’ll say this for F.7: he left some pretty positive leads.”
Pumphrey watched Ross place the betting slip in his briefcase. “I’ve sent a screening requisition on Anderson, of course.”
“Anderson? Oh, old dot and carry one. Good. Chubb’s fellows have him tabbed simply as a bookie’s runner, but I expected that. They probably think nuclear disarmament’s another name for the Oxford Movement.” Ross looked at the ivory and zirconium face of his wristwatch. “Just nice time,” he observed, “to pay Mrs Bernadette Croll a call before Farmer Croll homeward plods from his turnip patch or whatever. Coming along for the drive?”
Mumblesby was a hamlet of fourteen houses, a decrepit church and a ruined water mill. Its founders seemed to have tucked it quite deliberately into a green fold of the hills so that no one else should find it. Even today, when a main road to the coast ran within a quarter of a mile of its crumbling gables and rat-ridden thatch, Mumblesby still crouched in its valley unseen and unsought.
Speeding silently away from Mumblesby was a huge Bentley with a prow of gunmetal, whose pilot, Ross, remarked to his companion: “About another four minutes should do it.” But the car, painstakingly misdirected by humorous rustics, continued to sail through the high, greenish-white foam of cow parsley and past banks empurpled with campion before a signpost confirmed Pumphrey’s suspicion that they were about to re-enter the out-skirts of Flaxborough.
