Harper realized that, in spite of her denials, Mrs Shooter was not going to block his questioning altogether. He saw that she was interested. She was also apprehensive. She wanted to learn how much he knew and what use might, if the police had their way, be made of it. Yet part of her attitude, he told himself, was genuine bewilderment.
“Do you,” he asked her, “know a girl or a woman called Jane?”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Friend of yours?”
“Maybe.”
He glanced quickly at a list given him earlier that morning by Inspector Purbright. “Japanese Antique Newel, Ebony,” he intoned softly. Mabs Shooter looked in mock despair at the ceiling.
“And what about Joan and Sal? How are they getting along these days?”
The woman said nothing.
“Superior Antique Lampstand,” murmured Harper dreamily. He put the list back in his pocket.
“How long have you and your friends been patients of Dr Hillyard’s?”
“Quite a while. I have, at any rate. I don’t know what friends you’re talking about.”
“I think you do, you know, Mrs Shooter. In fact, I think you know perfectly well what this is all about. You do, don’t you?” Harper’s tone was that mixture of It’s-All-Up and No-One-Will-Hurt-You-If-You-Tell that policemen use when hard evidence seems to have run out and they would give a day’s pay for a nice straight confession.
“Look,” he said, leaning towards her and extending the fingers of his left hand as if in readiness to mark off five irrefutable and urgent reasons for her co-operation, “I’m going to be absolutely frank with you, Mrs Shooter. And what’s more”—he raised his eyebrows—“I’ll tell you right at the start, and with no ifs and buts, that whatever you care to tell me you’ll be in the clear all the way. We’ll hang nothing whatever on you personally so long as you play the game with us.”
“You’d have your work cut out,” she retorted softly. “I know the law.”
“Of course you do. And you know we’re only interested in the people who run these things. The tight lads who draw their eight quid a customer and sit back nice and safe and respectable while...”
“Eight quid!” He had struck fire. “Eight quid! Don’t give me that, son!” She laughed stridently, her eyes questioning and angry.
Harper glanced round the tidy, austerely furnished room. “I don’t suppose you’re making a fortune, me duck,” he said.
The colloquialism pleased her, though she didn’t know why. “Not exactly,” she said.
“I’m not kidding you about the eight quid,” said the detective. “We stopped some letters. Not that you need let that go any further.”
“Letters to the doctor, you mean?”
“He’d get his share. They took a long way round, though. All very hush-hush. You’d be surprised. But there’s not much we don’t know now.” Harper leaned back and searched for a cigarette. “One thing’s definite. You’re going to need to change your doctor.”
“You aren’t really going to knock old Hilly-billy off, are you?” she asked earnestly.
“Hilly-billy?”
“Hillyard.”
He paused in bringing up the match he had just struck. “You should know better than to ask that,” he reproved. Then he lit the cigarette and added: “As it happens, the warrant’s out now.”
The woman digested this information. She looked straight at Harper. “Who the hell tipped you off about me? That’s what I want to know. We never even used the front door—me and the girls, I mean. And there wasn’t any names mentioned. Not ever.”
“You were unlucky. Somebody recognized you. A policeman, believe it or not.”
Mrs Shooter swallowed, as though trying to push down the tide of colour that had risen round her plump throat. “Not...not a bloke with a torch? Do you mean that wasn’t old Bert? Oh, for crying out...” She jumped to her feet and glared down at Harper.
“Bert?” repeated Harper, unruffled.
She tossed her head. “Yes, a pot-bellied old bastard. A regular. One of the life-of-the-party ones. I don’t know his proper name. There was never no names. Just appointments, and initials, sort of.”
Harper sighed and handed her his cigarette case. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”
She accepted a light and blew smoke to the yellowed ceiling of the little room. After a few moments’ silence, she shrugged and pulled the dressing-gown more closely around her.
“That would be”—she picked a shred of tobacco from the tip of her tongue and regarded it vacantly—“about three—no, four—years ago, I suppose. One afternoon a fellow walked in here and said wouldn’t I like a decent regular job instead of what I was doing and how he could fix it because he was on the council and thought it wasn’t really my fault but the district I lived in. You know the gaff. I was green, considering, mind. And could he gab? Well, you must have known him yourself, I expect. Carobleat. You did? Yes...Councillor Godalmighty Harry Carobleat. That’s who it was. Anyway, the next thing...”
Mrs Popplewell, the only Flaxborough magistrate who could be found willing that morning to preside over the brief formalities of a special court, sat in Purbright’s office and looked with secret excitement at the charge sheet. The prisoner, she had been told by the station sergeant, would be brought in very shortly: at eleven, the inspector had said. It was now nearly five minutes past, but Mrs Popplewell had nothing in particular to do before a luncheon of business and professional women two hours hence, so she remained contentedly fingering her big green beads
