‘Well, we don’t quite know at the moment, sir. It may have no bearing at all on Mrs Tompkins’s death. Now then, sir, to get back to the events of yesterday morning. After your wife went into the sitting-room to lie down after lunch, you yourself didn’t actually go into the room, did you?’
‘Er – no,’ said Mr Tompkins uncomfortably. ‘I thought it better not to disturb her.’
‘Very right and proper, too!’ snapped Dover, who was getting thoroughly fed up with MacGregor. ‘Anything else, Sergeant?’
‘Just one more question, sir. Mr Tompkins, you left the shop at what time?’
‘About half past two.’
‘Did you . . .?’
‘That’s two questions already!’ exploded Dover. ‘What do you think this is, a bloody inquisition? I’m not having any of this third degree carry-on here, you know!’
‘It’s all right, Mr Dover,’ said Mr Tompkins, hastening to pour oil on waters that looked as though they’d be very troubled in a couple of minutes. ‘I don’t mind in the least. I’ve absolutely nothing to hide and I’m only too pleased to be of any help I can.’ He drew his puny frame up proudly. ‘I hope I know my duty as a responsible citizen.’
‘Oh well, get on with it, MacGregor!’ growled Dover and stalked over to the window. He stood stubbornly glaring down at the lorries rumbling past. Petulantly he prepared to dissociate himself from the whole unsavoury proceedings.
‘Mr Tompkins,’ – MacGregor got the little man’s attention back from its concentration on Dover’s sulky rear elevation – ‘after you left the house at half past two with Mrs Poltensky, did you return again before you returned in the company of Chief Inspector Dover and discovered the body?’
In spite of himself Dover swung round from his station by the window. ‘I’ll say one thing for you, MacGregor,’ he snarled, ‘you’re the most long-winded so and so I’ve ever come across in my entire bloody career!’
‘Mr Tompkins?’ MacGregor was having some difficulty in keeping his temper. One day, he promised himself, he’d belt the old fool round the ears. But not before witnesses.
‘No,’ said Mr Tompkins, commendably keeping his head when all around were losing theirs.
‘Then,’ pursued MacGregor, at last achieving his snide supplementary, ‘where were you?’
Mr Tompkins went quite white. He swallowed hard and looked in Dover’s direction. Dover turned round with a frown.
‘Come on, man,’ he said impatiently, ‘it’s not a state secret, for God’s sake! Tell him where you were and we’ll go and have a drink.’
‘I can’t,’ gasped Mr Tompkins from a dry throat.
Dover’s eyes popped. ‘Can’t or won’t?’ he demanded, forgetting that the recalcitrant witness was his newest and best friend.
‘I won’t,’ said Mr Tompkins stoutly.
And an hour and a quarter later Dover and MacGregor had to admit, to their great chagrin, that he wouldn’t.
Chief Inspector Dover did his nut. Far from speechless with fury he turned in a majesty of wrath on MacGregor, whose fault it all was anyhow. While the two policemen discussed their differences in increasingly lurid language and mounting decibels, Mr Tompkins slipped diffidently away to the peace and quiet of his own room. Nobody noticed his departure.
Dover was cross, very cross, with Mr Tompkins but he hadn’t abandoned him.
‘There’s some quite simple explanation,’ he bellowed at MacGregor who bowed his head to the storm and mentally composed yet another pithy note tendering his resignation to the Assistant Commissioner for Crime. ‘Blast your eyes, MacGregor, why can’t you leave well alone? Mountains out of bloody mole-hills, that’s what it is! Come on, we’ll have to go and interview this charwoman. Maybe she’ll be able to clear up your storm in a teacup.’
Mrs Poltensky, born and inbred in Thornwich, showed no surprise when she opened her door and found the two detective fellows from London, both breathing heavily, on the step. She lived little more than a stone’s throw from The Jolly Sailor, in a cottage next door but one to Charlie Chettle. The Poltensky- Chettle row of cottages had little gardens in front and were considered vastly superior to those on the other side of the main road which had none. Mrs Poltensky lived at No. 3, Willow View and was proud of it.
Mrs Poltensky installed her visitors in her front room. Apart from the kitchen, it was the only room on the ground floor, but all the Willow Viewers referred to it as their front room. She was a plump-faced woman with inquisitive brown eyes and a head full of paper curlers. She sat down opposite her interrogators, spread her knees wide apart and clamped two rough, red hands on them. She wiped her eyes on the edge of her apron and, as soon as this token salute to the recently departed had been made, got smartly down to business.
‘I’ve lost a good job there,’ she said, looking accusingly at Dover. ‘He won’t stay on in Thornwich, you know. Before the flowers have had time to wither on her grave, he’ll be showing us all a clean pair of heels. This post-mortem they’re all talking about – does that mean they’re going to cut her up? Ooh, what a horrible thought! I hope they’re going to bring her back here before they bury her. I’ve lost a good charring job and I don’t want to lose the laying out as well. Why, I’ve laid out practically all her family what have died in the last twenty years, all except her cousin Fred who went under a landslide up at the quarry. That happened in 1947 and they haven’t found him yet. Now, just you remind Arthur Tompkins that I’m expecting to lay her out. Be a crying shame to let somebody else get the job after all these years. I knew she’d never make old bones, you know,’ she explained quickly as Dover took a deep breath preparatory to stopping the flow. ‘Her sort never do.’
She dabbed her eyes again and Dover
