‘Are you suggesting that Dr and Mrs Pringsheim were murdered by your wife?’ be asked. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No,’ said Wilt, ‘I am not. All I’m saying is that when Eva does things she does them wholeheartedly. When she cleans the house she cleans it. Let me tell you about the Harpic. She’s got this thing about germs…’
‘Mr Wilt,’ said Dr Pittman hastily. ‘I am not interested in what Mrs Wilt does with the Harpic. I have come here to understand you. Now then, do you make a habit of copulating with a plastic doll? Is this a regular occurrence?’
‘Regular?’ said Wilt. ‘Do you mean a normal occurrence or a recurring one? Now your notion of what constitutes a normal occurrence may differ from mine…’
‘I mean, do you do it often?’ interrupted Dr Pittman.
‘Do it?’ said Wilt. ‘I don’t do it at all.’
‘But I understood you to have placed particular emphasis on the fact that this doll had a vagina?’
‘Emphasis? I didn’t have to emphasize the fact. The beastly thing was plainly visible.’
‘You find vaginas beastly?’ said Dr Pittman stalking his prey into the more familiar territory of sexual aberration.
‘Taken out of context, yes,’ said Wilt sidestepping, ‘and with plastic ones you can leave them in context and I still find them nauseating.’
By the time Dr Pittman had finished the interview he was uncertain what to think. He got up wearily and made for the door.
‘You’ve forgotten your hat, doctor,’ said Wilt holding it out to him. ‘Pardon my asking but do you have them specially made for you?’
‘Well?’ said Inspector Flint when Dr Pittman came into his office. ‘What’s the verdict?’
‘Verdict? That man should be put away for life.’
‘You mean he’s a homicidal maniac?’
‘I mean, that no matter how he killed her Mrs Wilt must have been thankful to go. Twelve years married to that man…Good God, it doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Well, that doesn’t get us much forrader,’ said the Inspector, when the psychiatrist had left having expressed the opinion that while Wilt had the mind of an intellectual jackrabbit he couldn’t in all honesty say that he was criminally insane. ‘We’ll just have to see what turns up tomorrow.’
Chapter 15
What turned up on Friday was seen not only by Inspector Flint, Sergeant Yates, twelve other policemen, Barney and half a dozen construction workers, but several hundred Tech students standing on the steps of the Science block, most of the staff and by all eight members of the CNAA visitation committee who had a particularly good view from the windows of the mock hotel lounge used by the Catering Department to train waiters and to entertain distinguished guests. Dr Mayfield did his best to distract their attention.
‘We have structured the foundation course to maximize student interest,’ he told Professor Baxendale, who headed the committee, but the professor was not to be diverted. His interest was maximized by what was being unstructured from the foundations of the new Admin block.
‘How absolutely appalling.’ he muttered as Judy protruded from the hole. Contrary to Wilt’s hopes and expectations she had not burst. The liquid concrete had sealed her in too
