The pear-shaped man around whom the little shop in Station Road appeared to have been built showed not the slightest surprise at being visited by a police inspector. This betokened neither ease of conscience nor long practice of dissimulation. He would have remained just as unperturbed if Purbright had been an armed robber, or the Pope, or a lady without any clothes. The truth was that the man was so bulky and his premises so small that the demonstration of any emotion whatsoever on his part would, one felt, have been as rash an act as firing a pistol under an Alpine snow pack.
“I am interested in certain photographs,” Purbright announced after introducing himself.
“Photographs?” The word was blown back to him over the counter on the man’s next suspiration, a whisper carried by a steady breeze. Purbright felt the breeze cease: the man was breathing in. “Never handle...” blew across before the wind dropped once more, “...that sort of thing.”
The next two breaths arrived empty. Then came, “You should know better...” followed by the final instalment, “...than to ask.”
Purbright frowned indignantly, but before he could frame a suitable retort the trans-counter wind sprang up again.
“Here...” Something flopped in front of him. “Best I can do.”
The inspector glanced down at a young woman of highly unlikely mammary development who ogled him from the cover of
“We seem to be at cross purposes,” he said sternly to the pear-shaped man. “The inquiries I am making concern an order for three photographic prints that was placed with a Nottingham firm by somebody who gave this address.”
“What kind...of prints?”
“Not this kind, certainly.” Purbright handed back
“Don’t think...Dover’s his real...name, mind... Seen him about...sometimes, but...” The man shook his head gingerly. Purbright felt the tremor of even this small action transmitted through the counter.
“Why should he have given this address?”
“Accommodation...address. Pays...so much a week.”
“He gets letters, then, does he?”
The man seemed not to consider this question worth sending a special airborne reply, so Purbright followed it with: “Anything in for him at the moment?”
The man felt, without looking, under the counter and drew up an envelope. He hesitated for the space of three breaths, then passed it to the inspector.
Purbright opened the envelope. He pulled out two sheets of paper, folded together.
“Here, do you...”
Purbright unfolded the sheets, began to read.
“...think you ought...”
Purbright moved the paper to catch a better light.
“...to do that?”
After a while, the inspector looked up. “Do you know a man called Mortimer Hive?”
A negative grunt.
Purbright replaced the sheets of paper in the envelope, which he then put in his pocket.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I shall explain to Mr Dover when I see him that this letter was taken away on my responsibility. If he comes in before I can do so, you’d better refer him to me.”
He nodded aflably and departed.
In the secretarial office of the Flaxborough and Eastern Counties Charities Alliance, Mr Hive was making gloomy pilgrimage from one to another of the pictures on the walls. He held in his hand a teacup, from which he took occasional sips, abstractedly and without zest. For a long while he halted before the representation of the child on the steps of the public house. The child’s face bore some resemblance to that of the barmaid in the Three Crowns. Mr Hive sighed and passed on to contemplation of the starving greyhound.
The voice of Miss Teatime, fond but firm, came from behind him. “You really must stop feeling sorry for yourself, Mortimer. There is no need for you to go back to London. It is your own decision entirely.”
“I was made to promise,” said Hive, pettishly.
“Nonsense. Your commission is over. How can this person now order you out of the town? He sounds like one of those American sheriffs whose ponies are so disgracefully misused.”
“I promised, just the same.” He squinted closely at the greyhound’s eye. “In return for an accommodation.”
“You could have asked me to cash a cheque,” said Miss Teatime, reprovingly but not with eagerness. She added, more brightly: “Or perhaps Mr Purbright would have been able to oblige.”
Mr Hive pulled out his presentation watch. “I am not going to see him,” he declared.
“Mortimer! We have gone into this already. I have given Mr Purbright an undertaking and I do not care to dishonour it. You must at least see what he wants.”
“Really, Lucy—a policeman...” He moved on to the belaboured donkey picture, as if to identify himself with the victim of blackboard’s oppression.
