“No, sir. I think brittle would be a better word. My impression is that you are now more inclined to consider the seriousness of your own position. For instance, you said at our first interview that your wife got so worked up about some things that she was in danger of going ‘over the top’, as you put it. You spoke of her abnormality of attitude, her excitability, her passion for letter-writing. But now you are taking some pains to present Mrs Palgrove as a fairly ordinary housewife with ordinary enthusiasms and lapses of temper. Is this because you have realized that your earlier picture was certain to be contradicted by other people?”
“I’ve not thought about what other people might say. Why should I? I’ve not done anything.”
Purbright leaned forward and picked up the gold-plated case from the chair arm where Palgrove had placed it beside his packet of cigarettes. “I shan’t deprive you of this longer than necessary, sir. The sergeant will give you a receipt.” He nodded to Love.
Palgrove watched with sullen resignation. He saw the inspector take a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfold it and hold it towards him.
“I’d like you to look at that letter, if you will, sir. Then perhaps we can talk about it.”
Slowly and with a deepening scowl, Palgrove read the letter through.
He shook his head. “What am I supposed to make of this?”
“We believe that it was written by your wife.”
“Why should you? It’s not even signed.”
“Whose typewriter is that over there, sir?”
“My wife’s.”
“Well, it was certainly typed on that machine. It seems reasonable to assume that it was she who typed it.”
“All right. You tell me what it means. It’s a string of rubbish as far as I’m concerned. Just rubbish.” Palgrove slid the letter dismissively into Purbright’s lap and picked up his cigarettes.
“Oh, come, sir. The implication is plain enough. I’m not saying that I believe it or disbelieve it. But you mustn’t pretend that you can’t understand what she’s getting at.”
“It’s bloody rubbish, man. I’m not going to waste time discussing it.” Anger, bewilderment, fright, all stood in Palgrove’s blood-boltered face. He hid it behind the hand-cupped lighting of a cigarette.
“Very well, sir.” Purbright carefully refolded the letter and put it, together with Palgrove’s case, into a large buff envelope. He stood.
“There’s just one other little matter I’d like to clear up. If you wouldn’t mind coming out with me to your car.”
Palgrove, hunched with ill grace, stumped doorward. Purbright followed him out, tweaking Love into tow.
The Aston Martin, splendidly a-gleam, stood on the drive near the side door. For a moment, possessive pride modified Palgrove’s air of exasperation. He stepped to one side and watched the inspector’s face.
Purbright opened the car door and slewed himself carefully into the driving seat. He glanced about him. Palgrove drew close and leaned on the door pillar.
“I’m looking,” Purbright said, “for your service record chart. You do keep something of that kind, sir?”
“Over there. Compartment on the left.”
Palgrove gazed gloomily at the inspector’s questing hand. He watched him open a folder, put a finger against an entry, peer at the instrument panel.
“According to the garage,” Purbright said at last, “your registered mileage yesterday afternoon was seven thousand, two hundred and four.” He glanced again at the facia. “Today, you have on the clock seven thousand, two hundred and twenty-five.” He shifted aside a little and turned his head. “Would you care to check that, sir?”
Palgrove said nothing. He did not move.
“I make it twenty-one miles since the car was serviced yesterday. And Leicester is—what, eighty miles from here? A return trip of a hundred and sixty?”
Palgrove shrugged and stepped away from the car. The inspector got out.
“Don’t you think, sir, that it might be as well if you called your solicitor before we do any more talking?”
Chapter Eleven
From a barmaid’s bed rose Mr Hive. He went to the window and gently, with one finger, parted the flowered cotton curtains, already bright with sun. Below him in Eastgate the morning citizens passed and met and hailed and gossiped in their twos and threes. Shop boys, smarmy haired to start the day, punted forth blinds with long poles. Crates of vegetables, rows of loaves on wide wooden trays, square anonymous cartons, beef flanks and bacon flitches, were ferried into doorways from parked farm trucks and high-roofed vans. A girl in a white coat too big for her stretched tip-toe from the top of a stool to clean the window of her grocer employer; she scrubbed away with short, vigorous arms while the grocer, a dim image behind the glass, kept supervisory watch upon her legs. A few women with shopping bags moved purposefully from window to window, pricing, judging, rejecting. Two old men in long, shroud-like overcoats inclined together to examine a piece of newspaper. A crying child’s face, wet scarlet disc with a big hole in the middle, appeared and disappeared amongst the legs and baskets.
Mr Hive let the curtain close. He poured out half a glass of water from the carafe on the marble-topped washstand and stood drinking it in small sips with his eyes closed as if it were acrid medicine. With his free hand he reached round and scratched the small of his back, the hem of his long nightshirt rising and falling.
He heard behind him the shift and re-settling of a warm-nested body, a sniff and a sigh and a yawn. He glanced over his shoulder. Above a ridge of bedclothes, rumpled hair and one interested eye.
“Morty...”
