Charity Ends At Home

“Mr Purbright is not a policeman in our sense of the word. He is a most charming man and, as I hope and believe, a tactful and realistic one. He has already contributed to my favourite charity.”

“I’ll bet he doesn’t know about Uncle Macnamara,” Hive said to the donkey. With his teacup he pledged the beast’s health, or what remained of it.

“There is no reason why he should interest himself in our good treasurer. He is far too busy trying to find what happened to poor Mrs Palgrove to worry about charity registration formalities. And Mr Purbright, I might add, is not insensible to the attraction of a quid pro quo.”

Hive turned to face the room. He was frowning. “Mrs Palgrove...Which Mrs Palgrove?”

“The Mrs Palgrove, naturally.”

“Is her husband called Leonard? Owns a factory, or something?”

Miss Teatime nodded. “She was drowned, you know. Did you not read about it in the newspapers?”

“How very extraordinary,” said Mr Hive. He came and sat down. “Leonard happens to be my co-respondent —or was going to be, rather.”

“The Case?”

“Yes.”

“Well, well,” said Miss Teatime, “what a small world it is!”

“No wonder he wants to see me. This policeman of yours.”

“You must be nice to him, mind.”

“I haven’t said that I would stay.”

She smiled. “But you will?”

Mr Hive brushed the velvet collar of his long, narrow-waisted, mushroom-coloured overcoat and wriggled his shoulders a little to square its fit. He paused, then carefully unbuttoned the coat, removed it and hung it meticulously on the back of a chair.

“Very well. Just to be sociable.”

He sat down. Miss Teatime fished the whiskey bottle out of the biscuit barrel and beckoned him to hand her his cup.

In Nottingham, it was raining.

Sergeant Love had had the sort of fuss made of him at the city’s police headquarters that is usually reserved for a mislaid child. A chair; hot, sweet tea; cheery questions about his home football team; a piece of paper pencilled with directions in big, clear writing. He had been quite sorry to leave. His hosts, had he but known, were still wondering anxiously if they should have let him leave. But Sergeant Love did not know this: he was not consciously aware that he remained favoured at the age of thirty-six with the face of a clean and equable-natured schoolboy of fourteen.

Despite the rain, for which he had come quite unprepared, Love did not take a taxi to the photographic store. This was partly because he regarded taxi-riding as an extravagance of a slightly sinful sort, like creme de menthe and carpeted water-closets; partly because he enjoyed looking into shop windows. The walk took him a quarter of an hour and soaked his shoulders, shoes and trouser legs, yet he could have wished it twice as long. It was only when he entered the store to be greeted with “Now, son; what can I do for you?” that his euphoria trickled away with the water from his turned-up collar. As sternly as he could, he corrected the man’s underestimate of his age and station and asked to be taken to the manager.

Mr Jobling was middle-aged and well aware that showing surprise at the youthfulness of policemen was a classic symptom of impending senility, so he kept his thoughts to himself and busily co-operated. He caused to be paraded in turn before the sergeant all three members of the staff who could reasonably be hoped to recollect anything at all about the mysterious Mr Dover and his photographic requirements.

The first, an overseer with serene eyes and a white-fuzzed dome, proved to have an equally abbot-like desire to assist the visiting traveller. It was more than matched, however, by his seraphic blankness of memory. As this man wandered off, apologizing, Love was reminded of a monastic retreat he once had visited in pursuance of some indecent exposure inquiries.

Next came the man from the process department who had recognized Mrs Palgrove’s portrait. He was small and craggy-faced and looked shrewd and alert. No, he had not handled the other batch on the order, but recalled that about that number of copies—twenty, had the sergeant said?—had been run off the week before. He hadn’t noticed the print they’d been taken from. The job had been one of Morgan’s, he thought.

Morgan, Mr Jobling explained to Love, was an employee who had just started a two weeks’ holiday in Italy. “Lucky chap,” said Love, and all agreed.

That left Miss Jacinda Evanson, counter assistant.

Love smiled at Miss Evanson as soon as she came into Mr Jobling’s little office. Nice, he said to himself. Dinky. She smiled back before lowering her eyes. Love didn’t know which he liked better—the smile or the intimation of modesty. In respect for the latter, he postponed indefinitely a certain piece of self-indulgence that the sight of a pretty girl usually induced: he did not mentally ping Miss Evanson’s suspender. He did, however, continue to watch with pleasure the delicately featured oval of her face, her little-sister shoulders, and hair like a bouquet of gleaming black dahlias.

“Oh, rather,” said Miss Evanson. “I remember him all right. I didn’t like him. He was very bossy.”

Swine, murmured an interior, pugilistic, Love. “And that’s why you remember him, is it?”

“Well, not only that. I remember him because of the picture, partly.”

“The picture of the lady?”

“No, the other one. It wasn’t a proper photograph, you see. Just a picture cut out of a magazine or something. And I said, well that one won’t copy very well, and he said why, and I said, well it’s not a proper photograph, look, you can see it’s what we call a half-tone reproduction and it won’t copy, not really clear. And then