it? You’d better count them again.”
But not all Mr Blossom’s homely humour, developed over long years of stonewalling the complaints of milched motorists, could alter the fact that where four carboys had stood there were now only three. So he stared awhile at the empty space, bent to retrieve a small object that shone in the shadow of the next caged and straw-pillowed bottle, and put through a telephone call to the police.
There the matter rested until Inspectdr Purbright’s request for a check on all local garages, wholesale chemists and factories for news of missing sulphuric acid struck a chord in the memory of the clerk who had filed the peculiar little item from South Circuit.
Purbright found Mr Blossom an affable informant, graced with that air of sincerity and solicitude characteristic of the habitual inflator of invoices.
“It was the queerest thing,” said Mr Blossom. “I mean, we’ve had stuff disappear before. It goes on all the time, as a matter of fact. Between ourselves, I don’t make much of it. Put it down as wastage—sort of evaporation, you know. But a bloody great thing like that... Dangerous too. And it’s not as if you could flog it.” A good foot shorter than the policeman, he stood with his head tilted sharply upward like a bespectacled mole.
“Have you any idea of how it could have been taken?”
“Oh, in a car or on a truck, I suppose. People are always in and out of a place like this. We don’t watch everybody all the time. Some poor barmy sod probably took a fancy to the thing and heaved it into his boot when no one was looking.” He spread his hands and smiled forgiveness.
“They’re pretty heavy, though, aren’t they?”
“About a hundredweight apiece. A fairly strong bloke could manage one on his own.”
“When you talk of people being in and out, you mean customers, I suppose.”
“That’s right. They just bring their cars into the yard there or back them into the shop. Some of them might want to help themselves to the air line, or a grease gun. We don’t bother so long as they’re not in the way.”
“Free and easy.”
Mr Blossom shrugged. “Why not? You can’t run a garage like a jewellers.”
“You feel that this thing must have been pinched during the daytime?”
“I really haven’t thought about it. As I said, I expect some idiot whipped it on the spur of the moment. He wouldn’t do that at night, would he? In the dark, I mean.”
Purbright walked to the corner of the L-shaped yard, looked round it, and returned. Mr Blossom forestalled comment. “Oh, yes, it’s open to the street. There’s nothing to stop anybody coming this far at any time if they wanted to.”
“Or if they knew these carboys were kept here and happened to want one.”
Mr Blossom slightly relaxed his smile to signify regret of the world’s waywardness and blinked. Purbright saw the set of pale blue concentric circles dissolve from the thick, upturned lenses and then spread back, more watery than before.
“Do you happen to keep a list of your customers, Mr Blossom?”
“We do, yes.”
“I wonder if I might take a quick look at it.”
Mr Blossom turned and led the way across the shop and up an open wooden staircase to his office. He pulled out the drawer of a small box file and graciously stepped aside.
The names were in alphabetical order. Purbright saw that Hopjoy’s card had a little scarlet disc gummed neatly to the upper left-hand corner. There were a few others similarly decorated. The name Periam was not listed.
“May I ask what the red circles mean?”
Mr Blossom peered innocently at the open file. “Oh, it’s just a sort of private mark we use in the accounting system...”
“Bad payers?”
“Well...” Mr Blossom spread his hands. “Oh, by the way...” He unlocked and opened the top drawer of his desk and handed Purbright a heavy cigarette lighter. “Found it on the scene of the crime. None of my chaps had lost it.”
Purbright turned the lighter over in his hand. It looked expensively durable and efficient but bore neither decoration nor brand name. “Might be helpful. Thanks.” He slipped the lighter into his pocket and pencilled a note of receipt.
“By the way, I notice you’ve done work on a car belonging to a man called Hopjoy, of Beatrice Avenue. Does he always bring it in himself?”
“The Armstrong, you mean. No, not always. A friend of his drives as well. The servicing’s not done in his name, though.”
“What’s the friend called?”
Mr Blossom wrinkled his helpful nose. “Perry, I think...no, Periam. He keeps a cigarette shop.”
But doesn’t smoke, Purbright added to himself. “All right, Mr Blossom. We’ll let you know if your magnum turns up.”
Not to be outdone in jocularity, Mr Blossom sang out in rasping baritone: “And if one green bottle should accidentally fall...” and wrung Purbright’s hand like an old friend.
Back at police headquarters, the inspector found Ross and Pumphrey awaiting him. The Chief Constable, faced with a bewildering variety of requests for information about a one-legged snooker player, a barber, a farmer, and a Scandinavian pig slaughterer, had gravely assured his questioners that “Mr Purbright handles all that sort of
