Pettigrew did not wait to talk to Manktelow or to Mallett, or to anyone else. He felt suddenly in urgent need of fresh air, and made his way straight out of the building. Once beyond the doors, he halted, irresolute. Eleanor, he suddenly remembered, had decided to come to London to join Hester Greenway, who was making one of her very rare descents on the metropolis on some obscure expedition. Had he arranged to meet Eleanor, and if so, where and when? Feeling thoroughly stupid, he dawdled there, his mind a complete blank, while homing barristers, witnesses and solicitors’ clerks, swirled past him.
“Well, Frank! Thank goodness you waited for us- I thought we were never going to get out of that place.”
Pettigrew turned to see his wife coming towards him, accompanied by a weatherbeaten woman who could only be Hester Greenway.
“Where do you come from?” he asked in surprise.
“From the public gallery in the Court, of course. Do you mean to say you never saw us?”
“No,” said Pettigrew rather shaken. “I didn’t.” As a good witness should, he had turned towards the bench to give his evidence. The public gallery, in any event, was the last place to which a man of his training would think of giving his attention. “You never told me you were coming,” he added reproachfully.
“I didn’t know I was. It was Hester’s idea. Oh, that reminds me-”
She introduced her husband to Hester in due form.
“I thought you put up a jolly good show,” said Hester, shaking Pettigrew’s hand warmly. “I wanted to clap, but Ellie said I’d only put you off. Do tell me one thing, though. Did the pony bolt with you?”
“It did,” said Pettigrew. “How did you know?” To his great surprise, he found himself thinking that he was going to like Miss Greenway very much.
“Well, for one thing, those Gorman ponies always will if you give them half a chance. Mind you, I don’t blame you for not telling the judge, when he was asking all those silly questions, but I think he ought to have guessed that was why you didn’t stop to look at the body.”
“It’s not the only thing he ought to have guessed,” remarked Eleanor.
Hester smiled at Eleanor, and Eleanor smiled at Hester. It was the kind of smile that passes between people of superior intelligence in the presence of a deplorably ignorant third party.
“Well?” said Pettigrew. “What ought he to have guessed?”
“That Mrs. Gorman was going to have a baby, of course. It was obvious. We spotted it the moment we saw her.”
“It wasn’t only the judge, it was the whole lot of you,” observed Hester. “ ‘My lord, this has taken me entirely by surprise’.” She gave a very passable imitation of Manktelow’s manner. “I never saw a crowd of men look so silly. Two of them detectives, too! Mr. Parkinson!” she called out, suddenly. “Don’t go, Mr. Parkinson. I’ve something I wanted to ask you.”
Inspector Parkinson, with Mallett by his side, was just leaving the Law Courts. He stopped and took off his hat to Hester.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you here, Miss Greenway,” he said.
“Never mind what you were expecting. It’s what Edna Gorman’s expecting that we were talking about. Didn’t either you or Mr. Mallett guess?”
“To tell you the truth, ma’am, we hadn’t given it a thought. And now, if you’ll excuse us-”
“Of course I won’t excuse you. There are dozens of things I want to hear about, and so does Mrs. Pettigrew. Mr. Pettigrew, isn’t there somewhere near here where we can get some tea? I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m simply dying for a cup.”
“It’s very kind of you, Miss Greenway, but I really ought to be getting along.”
“Well, if you must, Inspector, I suppose you must. But I thought you told me the other day that you wanted one of Jeannie’s puppies…?”
So it was that to his great surprise Pettigrew found himself playing host to a party of five in a Fleet Street teashop. It was a somewhat constrained party at first, but once he had persuaded Mallett that he bore him no malice the atmosphere became friendly enough.
“The first thing I want to know is,” said Hester Greenway, as soon as the cups had been poured out, “When are you prosecuting that odious creature Joliffe?”
“What do you suggest he should be prosecuted for, ma’am?” asked the Inspector cautiously.
“Good gracious, I don’t know. That’s your business, not mine. Making a fool of the coroner, I suppose.”
“I’m afraid that’s not an offence known to the law, ma’am.”
“But he must have done something!”
“I can’t help thinking Miss Greenway is right,” Pettigrew put in. “I’m deplorably rusty in these matters, but might I suggest that our old friend, a Common Law Misdemeanour-”
“Against the Peace of our Sovereign Lady the Queen, her Crown and Dignity.” Mallett rolled the phrase lovingly round his tongue.
“Exactly. There must have been something like this before at some time.”
“Rather over a hundred years ago, sir,” said Parkinson. “You’ll have heard of the Resurrection men, no doubt.”
“Then you have considered a prosecution?” said Pettigrew.
“It was not a matter for me to consider, sir. I reported the matter to the Chief Constable and he took the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions. And the decision was-not to prosecute.”
“Why on earth not?” asked Hester.
“I rather think that some doubt was felt as to whether a conviction would be secured in such an unusual class of case.”
Something in the Inspector’s tone put Eleanor on enquiry. “Was that the only reason for not prosecuting him?” she asked. “Or was there something else?”
“Well, madam, now that you have raised the subject -this is in strict confidence, of course-there was at one time the possibility that Joliffe might be prosecuted on a graver charge.”
Inspector Parkinson’s face was brick red from the strain of endeavouring to combine civility with his sense of police propriety.
“You thought he’d murdered Jack?”
“Really, madam, I haven’t said that. It would be most improper of me-”
“He could have done it easily in a fit of temper, and then remembered that it wouldn’t pay him,” Eleanor went on, sublimely regardless of the Inspector’s embarrassment. “Or not murdered him-just manslaughtered him in his car by accident.”
“Jack Gorman wasn’t killed by Mr. Joliffe’s car,” Parkinson volunteered. “As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a car at all.”
“Steady on!” said Hester. “We all read what the doctor said at the inquest.”
“That doctor was a-” Parkinson hesitated, turned a darker shade of red and shut his mouth firmly. He opened it again to swallow down the last of his tea, and then with a mumbled apology left the teashop.
“Well! If he thinks he’s going to get a pup from me after that…” was Hester’s disgusted comment.
Pettigrew’s reaction to the Inspector’s disappearance was different. “Mr. Mallett,” he said, “when you were a Detective-Inspector did you discuss cases with members of the public?”
“I did not, sir.”
“Now that you are no longer in the force, do you feel at liberty to discuss this case with us?”
“I think so, sir, yes.”
“Then in that case, I think we should be grateful to Parkinson for taking himself off. I take it that everything he knows about this case, you know?”
Mallett hesitated. He was a modest man, but he had a high regard for truth.
“I think that would be an under-statement, sir,” he said.
“Excellent! That is all I need to know about Parkinson. Will you therefore please take another of those sugar cakes and give your mind to the following questions: When, where, why, how and by whom was Jack Gorman killed?”
Mallett demolished the cake in astonishingly quick time, brushed the crumbs out of his moustache and said, “When? Within fairly narrow limits, that presents no particular difficulty now. On this Saturday morning Jack Gorman must have left his wife early-”
