Charity Ends At Home

“My love?”

“Those women with titles you were telling me about...Did they wear nighties or pyjamas?”

“I think you may take it that nightdresses are favoured by the aristocracy as a rule. The exception I always remember was a Lady Beryl somebody-or-other from Winchester way—we managed to scrape her in at the tail-end of the 1935 season—and she, believe it or not, insisted on going to bed in a polo jersey.”

“I’ll bet that tickled!”

Mr Hive shrugged good-naturedly. “Every profession has its little irritations. I’ve been very lucky. There was only one thing I was always particular about: I wouldn’t take a client while she had a cold.”

“What, like dentists won’t?”

“It may sound a rather trivial prejudice, but I think I owe my very good health to it.” Hive glanced aside at the dressing-table mirror and straightened his stance. Part of his paunch went somewhere else.

Another rustle from the bed. “Jewels...Did they wear lots of jewels, Morty?”

Still looking at the mirror, Mr Hive preened with arched fingers his wavy, silver-grey hair. “I have awakened in the night, dear girl, with enough emeralds up my nose to pay the entire hotel staff double wages for a year!”

The humped bedclothes reared, subsided and squirmed into another shape. Hair and eye disappeared. As from afar off, a muffled giggle.

Mr Hive considered for a moment more his own reflection. He pouted, put down the almost empty glass, held a finger tip to his wrist, nodded judiciously, gave his nightshirt a hitch, and marched, like a monk to matins, back to bed.

In the street below, an ageing, box-like saloon car was being steered by a fat policeman past the parked vans and lorries. Flaxborough’s ancient coroner glared and champed in the seat beside him. The policeman, in consideration for the life of a hypothetical child, rammed two hundred and twenty pounds against the brake pedal. “Sorry, sir, but I did tell you to sit behind.” The car moved forward again. Mr Amblesby, indestructible, clawed himself back on to his seat.

Already assembled in the little court-room when Malley and the coroner arrived were Inspector Purbright, Sergeant Love, Doctor Fergusson, Mr Justin Scorpe and Mr Scorpe’s client, Mr Palgrove. Also present—but only just, for he seemed to be loitering peripherally and without concern—was the chief constable. Mr Chubb very seldom attended inquests, but Purbright had hinted to him that in the circumstances of this one it would be as well for him to show the flag.

Last to put in an appearance was the chief reporter of the Flaxborough Citizen. Mr Prile looked as if he had been roused from a twenty years’ sleep especially for the occasion. As he sat down behind the ricketty table reserved for the Press, dust puffed from creases and crevices in his raincoat.

Sergeant Malley shepherded the proceedings along as smartly as the tetchy obtuseness of Mr Amblesby would allow. The convention was observed of letting the doctor give his evidence first “so that you can get away”, as Malley invariably explained—rather as though he was offering a sporting chance to a fugitive.

Fergusson read rapidly from his post mortem report an elaboration of what he had told Purbright over the telephone. He was emphatic about the sound state of Mrs Palgrove’s health that the examination had revealed and described in considerable detail the bruises on the legs and abdomen.

“Would everything you have found, doctor,” Purbright asked, “be consistent with this woman’s having been held forcibly by her ankles—held upside down, that is?”

“Yes. Rather in the way one tips up a wheelbarrow to empty it.”

Mr Scorpe looked with heavy scorn over the top of his spectacles at no one in particular. “Is Dr Fergusson here as a medical witness or as a gardening expert?”

“I see no harm in offering an illustration in language that people can understand,” retorted the doctor. He added, before Purbright could head him off: “But of course I am not a member of the legal profession.”

The coroner turned upon him his agate eye; dentures clacked menacingly.

“Thank you, doctor,” said Purbright. Fergusson stacked his papers, rose and started to make his way out. Malley leaned to Mr Amblesby’s long, whiskery ear. “The doctor’s fee, sir...” The old man remained hunched in stubborn immobility. He watched the door close behind Fergusson and craftily smiled to himself. “Eh?” he said.

Palgrove, looking pale, delivered his brief, formal evidence of identification, then Sergeant Malley quietly laid a typewritten slip on the table before the coroner. Mr Amblesby lowered his gaze.

“I now adjourn this inquiry sine die...to enable the police to...to make further investigations.”

All but Mr Amblesby rose. He stared at them suspiciously for several seconds. Malley touched his arm. “You said you wanted some sausage on the way back, sir; I’ll stop at Spain’s if you come along now.” Grudgingly, the old man stood up. Malley ushered him out.

“I do believe he’s got even worse,” said Mr Chubb. It was five minutes later and the chief constable and Purbright were on their own in the room.

“You think so, sir?”

“Well, don’t you, Mr Purbright? You see more of him than I do.”

“Malley says he’s a wonderful old gentleman for his age.”

“Does he, indeed? I must say I admire the way Mr Malley seems to manage him.”

“Oh, like a mother, sir. I don’t know what would happen to poor old Mr Amblesby if it weren’t for the sergeant.”

The chief constable pondered Malley’s devotion, then dismissed the subject with a satisfied nod. “Now, then, Mr Purbright,” he said briskly, “what have you got to tell me about this unfortunate lady from Brompton Gardens?”