‘Are you mad?’ she yelled. ‘My Henry wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s gentle and kind and he doesn’t know anyone in Government.’
Inspector Flint tried to calm her down. ‘I know that, Mrs Wilt, believe me I do, but Scotland Yard have evidence he was in the district when the Shadow Minister disappeared and they want to question him.’
For once in her life Eva resorted to logic. ‘And how many thousands of other people were around wherever it was?’
‘Herefordshire,’ said the Inspector involuntarily.
Eva’s eyes bulged in her head and her face turned purple. ‘Herefordshire? Herefordshire? You’re crazy. He doesn’t know anyone in Herefordshire. He’s never been there. We always go to the Lake District for our summer holidays.’
Flint raised the palms of his hands in submission. Wilt’s inconsequential answers were evidently infectious. ‘I’m sure you do,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. All I’m saying–’
‘Is that Henry is wanted by Scotland Yard for the murder of a Shadow Minister. And you call that all?’
‘I didn’t say he was wanted by Scotland Yard for murder. They just want him to help them with their inquiries.’
‘And we all know what that means, don’t we just.’
The Inspector struggled to get some sense into the tirade. And as ever with the Wilts he failed.
In the central concourse of the mental hospital Wilt, who had spent half an hour searching for a way out, had failed too. All the doors were locked and, dressed as he was, he had been accosted by four genuinely insane patients two of whom protested they weren’t depressives and didn’t intend to have electric shock therapy again. Another two sidled up to him clearly under the influence of some very strong anti-psychotic medication and giggled rather alarmingly.
Wilt hurried on, unnerved by these encounters and by the atmosphere, and cursing the peculiar way he was dressed. Through a window he could see an area of lawn with patients wandering about or sitting on benches in the sun and beyond them a high wire fence. If he could only find his way out there he’d feel a lot better. But before he could make his way into the open air, Eva shot out of the Waiting Room and hurried towards him.
‘We’re going home, Henry. Now come along. I’m not listening to any more nonsense from that dreadful Inspector,’ she ordered. For once Wilt was in no mood to argue. He’d had quite enough of the dim distracted figures around him and the oppressive atmosphere of the mental hospital. He followed her through the main door and towards their car which was parked outside on the gravel, but before they reached it a series of screams echoed through the building.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Eva demanded of a small and evidently demented man who was scurrying past, panic-stricken.
‘There’s a girl in there with breasts that move from one side to the other like the clappers!’ he yelled as he ran past.
Eva knew who that girl was. With a silent curse she turned and pushed her way into the hospital through the crush of patients trying to escape the awful sight of scurrying bosoms. Emmeline’s rat Freddy, encouraged by the effect it was having and at the same time alarmed by the shrieks, was up to its old tricks with a vigour it had never shown before. The sight of a third pubescent breast apparently changing from right to left and back again at a rate of knots was too much even for heavily sedated mental patients. They had been faintly aware that they were not at all well but this was altogether too much.
