almost admitted she was dead. Then he got away again.’
‘Teeth, eh? That’s interesting. I’ll have to pursue that line of questioning. It maybe his weak link.’
‘Good luck on you,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I’m off to bed.’
‘Teeth?’ said Wit. ‘We’re not going through that again are we? I thought we’d exhausted that topic. The last bloke wanted to know if Eva had them in the past tense. I told him she did and…’
‘Wilt,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘I am not interested in whether or not Mrs Wilt had teeth. I presume she must have done. What I want to know is if she still has them. Present tense.’
‘I imagine she must have,’ said Wilt patiently. ‘You’d better ask her when you find her.’
‘And when we find her will she be in a position to tell us?’
‘How the hell should I know? All I can say is that if for some quite inexplicable reason she’s lost all her teeth there’ll be the devil to pay. I’ll never hear the end of it. She’s got a mania for cleaning the things and sticking bits of dental floss down the loo. You’ve got no idea the number of times I’ve thought I’d got worms.’
Inspector Flint sighed. Whatever success Sergeant Yates had had with teeth, it was certainly eluding him. He switched to other matters.
‘Let’s go over what happened at the Pringsheims’ party again,’ he said.
‘Let’s not,’ said Wilt who had so far managed to avoid mentioning his contretemps with the doll in the bathroom. ‘I’ve told you five times already and it’s wearing a bit thin. Besides it was a filthy party. A lot of trendy intellectuals boosting their paltry egos.’
‘Would you say you were an introverted sort of man, Wilt? A solitary type of person?’
Wilt considered the question seriously. It was certainly more to the point than teeth.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said finally. ‘I’m fairly quiet but I’m gregarious too. You have to be to cope with the classes, I teach.’
‘But you don’t like parties?’
‘I don’t like parties like the Pringsheims’, no.’
‘Their sexual behaviour outrages you? Fills you with disgust?’
‘Their sexual behaviour? I don’t know why you pick on that. Everything about them disgusts me. All that crap about Women’s Lib for one thing when all it means to someone like Mrs Pringsheim is that she can go around behaving like a bitch on heat while her husband spends the day slaving over a hot test tube and comes home to cook supper, wash up and is lucky if he’s got enough energy to wank himself off before going to sleep. Now if we’re talking about real Women’s Lib that’s another matter. I’ve got nothing against…’
‘Let’s just hold it there,’ said the Inspector. ‘Now two things you said interest me. One, wives behaving like bitches on heat. Two, this business of you wanking yourself off.’
‘Me?’ said Wilt indignantly. ‘I wasn’t talking about myself.’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘So you don’t masturbate?’
‘Now look here, Inspector. You’re prying into areas of my private life which don’t concern you. If you want to know about masturbation read the Kinsey Report. Don’t ask me.’
Inspector Flint restrained himself with difficulty. He tried another tack. ‘So when
