them.
‘If she went away she’d have taken half her wardrobe,’ he said. ‘I know women. On the other hand if she’s pushing up twenty tons of premix she wouldn’t need more than what she’s got on.’
Eva’s wardrobe was found to be well stocked. Even Wilt had to admit that she hadn’t taken much with her.
‘What was she wearing when you last saw her?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Lemon loungers.’ said Wilt.
‘Lemon what?’
‘Pyjamas,’ said Wilt, adding to the list of incriminating evidence against him. The Inspector made a note of the fact in his pocketbook.
‘In bed, was she?’
‘No,’ said Wilt. ‘Round at the Pringsheims.’
The Pringsheims? And who might they be?’
‘The Americans I told you about who live in Rossiter Grove.’
‘You haven’t mentioned any Americans to me.’ said the Inspector.
‘I’m sorry. I thought I had. I’m getting muddled. She went away with them.’
‘Oh did she? And I suppose we’ll find they’re missing too?’
‘Almost certainly,’ said Wilt. ‘I mean if she was going away with them they must have gone too and if she isn’t with them I can’t imagine where she has got to.’
‘I can,’ said the Inspector looking with distasteful interest at a stain on a sheet one of the detectives had found in the dirty linen basket. By the time they left the house the incriminating evidence consisted of the sheet, an old dressing-gown cord that had found its way mysteriously into the attic, a chopper that Wilt had once used to open a tin of red lead, and a hypodermic syringe which Eva had got from the vet for watering cacti very precisely during her Indoor Plant phase. There was also a bottle of tablets with no label on it.
‘How the hell would I know what they are?’ Wilt asked when confronted with the bottle. ‘Probably aspirins. And anyway it’s full’
‘Put it with the other exhibits,’ said the Inspector. Wilt looked at the box.
‘For God’s sake, what do you think I did with her? Poisoned her, strangled her, hacked her to bits with a chopper and injected her with Biofood?’
‘What’s Biofood?’ asked Inspector Flint with sudden interest.
‘It’s stuff you feed plants with,’ said Wilt. ‘The bottle’s on the windowsill.’
The Inspector added the bottle of Biofood to the box. ‘We know what you did with her, Mr Wilt,’ he said. ‘It’s how that interests us now.’
They went out to the police car and drove round to the Pringsheims’ house in Rossiter Grove. ‘You just sit in the car with the constable here while I go and see if they’re in,’ said Inspector Flint and went to the front door. Wilt sat and watched while he rang the bell. He rang again. He hammered on the doorknocker and finally he walked round through the gate marked Tradesman’s Entrance to the kitchen door. A minute later he was back and fumbling with the car radio.
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head all right, Wilt,’ he snapped. ‘They’ve gone away. The place is a bloody shambles. Looks like they’ve had an orgy. Take him out.’
The two detectives bundled Wilt, no longer Mr Wilt but plain Wilt and conscious of the fact, out of the car while the Inspector called Fenland Constabulary and spoke with sinister urgency about warrants and sending something that sounded like the D brigade up. Wilt stood in the driveway of 12 Rossiter Grove and wondered what the hell was happening to him. The order of things on which he had come to depend was disintegrating
