you more about it.”
“Have you got the name?”
“It’s a lady called Mrs Palgrove.”
“Good lord,” said Malley, “it isn’t!”
He went along at once to Inspector Purbright’s office.
“Guess who’s been found down a well.”
Purbright looked up wearily from a file that was beginning to show signs of long and fruitless perusal. “Some bloody charity organizer, I expect. That would be all I needed.”
For a moment Malley gaped, as at a miraculously speaking statue. Then his expression was restored to plump, bland normality, tinged with disappointment. “Oh, so you’ve heard already.”
“Heard? Heard what?”
“This business about a woman in a well. It’s Mrs Palgrove. ‘Pally’ Palgrove’s missus. Brompton Gardens.”
“Good God!”
“Well, when you said...”
“That?—no—I was just being...Here, you’re sure about this?” Purbright was on his feet.
“We’ve only had a phone report up to now. It seems right, though. A couple of the lads have gone to the house.”
The inspector pulled his coat straight and picked up a packet of cigarettes from the desk. “I think we’d better join them. I’ll want Sergeant Love as well. See if he’s in the canteen, will you, Bill?”
Purbright drove the car. It was one of a pair reserved for journeys within the borough boundaries. Both were black, stately, and second-hand. The upholstery was real leather. Grey silk blinds with fringes could be drawn down over the rear windows. The highly burnished radiator of each car was surmounted by a temperature gauge like a little monument. Among the Flaxborough policemen the cars were known as The Widows. Purbright had chosen the one less favoured by the chief constable; its smell of Yorkshire terrier was not so strong.
Sergeant Love occupied the passenger seat next to Purbright. Sergeant Malley filled the back.
The inspector said to Love: “You’d better tell Bill here about the names you got yesterday from Dawsons. He’s already seen the letter that was sent round.”
Love spoke over the back of his seat. “I asked them who’d been buying that kind of writing paper—you know, that grey stuff. They could only think of three people. One was Mrs Palgrove.”
“Oh, aye?” Malley was scraping out the bowl of his pipe with an enormous clasp knife. He blew through the pipe experimentally, then pulled away the stem and held it up to one eye.
“Well, then?” urged Love, a little irritably. He did not like wasting dramatic announcements on people who messed about with pipes all the time.
“Very interesting,” Malley said.
Love faced forward again. For a while he stared through the windscreen without speaking.
“It could be,” Purbright said to him, “that you’ve put us on to something important, Sid.”
Love glowed.
The car pursued its slow, dignified course up Heston Lane. It looked rather like a straggler from a funeral procession that had been cut off at traffic lights. Indeed, as it turned at last into the driveway of Dunroamin, a woman in the house opposite called upstairs to her bed-ridden mother: “It’s right about Mrs Palgrove, then. The undertaker’s just come.”
Purbright parked the car near the main door of the house. He rang the bell. After a fairly long interval it was answered by a squat, middle-aged woman. Although she wore an apron, she had kept on her hat. It gave her the air of a helper prepared for flight at the first sign of fresh disaster. And she clearly regarded the appearance of the three policemen as just that.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got to get along home now.” She began to unfasten the apron.
“You will be Mrs...?”
“George. Mrs George. I help here. But I’ll have to be getting back.”
“I see. We shan’t keep you long, Mrs George. There are just a couple of things I’d like to ask you, though.”
They were now inside the entrance hall. Love looked around approvingly and rocked a little on his heels to test the elasticity of the carpet. Catching Malley’s eye, he raised his brows and pouted; Love was a great fancier of house interiors.
The woman opened a closet door and hung the apron inside.
“Was it you who telephoned us this morning, Mrs George?”
She nodded.
“Then I wonder if you’d mind telling me exactly what you found when you arrived. You’d come to help with the housework, had you?”
“That’s right. I come every day and give a hand. This morning the bus was a bit late but even so I don’t think it was quite nine o’clock when I got here. I went round to the kitchen door expecting it to be open as usual...”
“Open?”
