“I am not pulling your leg,” added Mr Hive, with a touch of gravity that she allowed herself to find impressive. “The fact is that I undertook a certain commission that brought me to Flaxborough. My inquiries are complete. My client is satisfied.” He spread his hands. “So now the bill.”
“And a night off, by the sound of it.”
“Exactly. At what time will you be free?”
“Well, I can’t, actually. Not tonight.” She looked thoughtfully at the finger end she had withdrawn from her nose, then nibbled it. “It’s my day off tomorrow, though. If you’re still here, I mean.”
“Nothing,” declared Mr Hive warmly, “will be allowed to take me anywhere else!”
He drank and composed peacefully until closing time. The account, completed at last, was a copious document that ran to four pages of small writing. He decided it would do very nicely. There were lots of
The man Purbright saw standing in the doorway of the lounge of Dunroamin was not quite as tall as himself. His hair, though crisp and glossily black still, had receded a good deal. The face was flushed and fleshy, the eyes quick-moving. He wore what the inspector took to be an expensive suit; it was just on the grey side of black and it hung comfortably yet without spareness; the cloth had a soft-hard look, a sort of sleek durability. Under the open jacket, a white shirt—aggressively white—and narrow, tasteful tie—aggressively tasteful. The man’s consciously erect bearing and his mannerism of occasionally thrusting back his shoulders could not quite disguise the build-up of fat that paunched over the trouser band and breastily plumped the shirt.
“Mr Palgrove...” Purbright rose from the chair in which he had been sitting and moved towards the door but rather aside of it: he did not want to seem to be inviting the man into his own room. Palgrove nodded to him, then to Love, and slowly came further in.
“I’m afraid this is rather a sad home-coming for you, sir.”
Again Palgrove nodded, his face blank. He looked about him at the floor, at the chairs, then sat in one, well forward with his hands on his knees. He had not forgotten to give his trousers a high, crease-preserving hitch.
Purbright resumed his own seat so that Palgrove should not feel that he was being questioned from a perhaps intimidating angle.
“You’ve heard from the officer what has happened, I suppose, sir?”
“The gist of it, yes. No details.”
The voice came to Purbright as something of a surprise. It was not exactly brisk, yet its slightly cockney curtness was in unexpected contrast to Palgrove’s expression of weary abstraction. The inspector reminded himself that the effects of emotional stress were never predictable: a boardroom tone was probably part of a determination not to break down.
“We are by no means sure yet how the accident happened, Mr Palgrove. It is not so much a question of how your wife came to slip into the water as why she was unable to extricate herself.”
“Poor old Henny was daft about those damned goldfish.” Again a staccato, matter-of-fact announcement.
“Was Mrs Palgrove in fairly normal health?”
“Nothing wrong so far as I know. Nothing serious.”
“I was thinking of heart trouble, Mr Palgrove. Or of anything that might have made her subject to blackouts.”
A slow headshake. “You think she could have passed out?”
“It does seem the only explanation. Who was her doctor?”
Palgrove thought for a moment. “Used to be old Hillyard. But that was a while back.”
“Doctor Hillyard has not been in practice for some years,” Purbright said. Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed Love’s smirk: it was, in fact, exactly ten years since the conviction and imprisonment of that luckless practitioner.
“No, I’m sorry; can’t tell you.”
“Never mind, sir. Now, about these goldfish—was it usual for Mrs Palgrove to go out and feed them at night?”
“Don’t know about feeding. She’d go and look at them at the oddest times. Show them off to anybody who called.”
“Do you happen to know if she was expecting a visitor last night?”
“No idea. Wouldn’t be surprised, though. She was on committees and things, you know. Those people are always in and out of each other’s houses.”
Palgrove had begun to glance around nervously. He stood. “Look, can I get you fellows a drink? Whiskey?”
Love, who thought that all liquor other than ginger wine tasted rather awful, declined. Purbright accepted.
He watched Palgrove let down the door of a cocktail cabinet. A light went on inside it, setting glasses and bottles a-glitter and frosting the outlines of birds engraved on the compartment’s mirror backing. At the same time, a mechanical tinkling started to form itself into a tune.
Palgrove, unscrewing the whiskey bottle, glanced to see Love’s round stare of admiration. “Hundred and eighty quid, this little number,” he said.
When drinks had been poured, Palgrove handed one to the inspector and carried his own to the fireplace, where he remained standing. He took several sips of the whiskey, licked his mouth carefully—appreciatively, too,
