MacGregor wiped his fingers daintily on his spare pocket handkerchief and resumed the questioning.
‘You don’t know where Mrs Tompkins was going to get this baby from, do you, Mrs Poltensky?’
‘What baby?’
‘The illegitimate baby she was going to buy.’
‘Oh, well, I’ve got an idea something had gone wrong there, too. Funny how some people never seem to have any luck, isn’t it? Mind you, she never said anything to me about it – she was never one to admit she’d made a mistake, Winifred wasn’t. It was always somebody else’s fault if anything went wrong. Tuesday, the day before she passed on, she’d been very funny. Angry, you know, but keeping it all bottled up inside her. Picking on you for every little thing just to give herself an excuse to blow off steam. Childish, I call it, but I just got on with my work and waited for it to blow over. I don’t know what made me think it was connected with that baby business, I just did, that’s all.’
Dover finished up a processed cheese sandwich which seemed to have been overlooked. ‘What about yesterday?’ he asked. ‘Mr Tompkins says that after his wife had gone to lie down he himself never went into the sitting-room.’
Mrs Poltensky considered this carefully. ‘That’s right,’ she said at last, ‘no more he did. I went in to see she’d got everything she wanted and she said she’d got indigestion and wanted a glass of brandy. I told Mr Tompkins and he gave it to me and I took it back in to her. Then he went upstairs and I got on with what I was doing. When he came downstairs again I took another peep at her. She was fast asleep on the sofa in front of the fire. Then Mr Tompkins and me, we got our hats and coats on and went out of the shop together.’
‘Are you sure Mr Tompkins couldn’t have slipped into the room at any time?’
‘Of course I’m sure. I was doing the passage. He’d have had to climb over me to get to the sitting-room door. Besides,’ – Mrs Poltensky looked puzzled – ‘why should he? You’re not thinking he did her in, are you?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ said Dover with total assurance. ‘It’s just that we’ve got to make inquiries in a case like this. Some people have nasty minds, Mrs Poltensky.’ He glared angrily at MacGregor. ‘It’s as well to stop a lot of unfounded rumours and stupid suspicions before they start.’
‘Well, you won’t find anybody in Thornwich looking sideways at Arthur Tompkins,’ said Mrs Poltensky rather huffily. ‘There’s plenty that thinks he’s a bit of a cissy and there’s plenty that’s jealous of his money, but never a one that I’ve heard of who’d so much as whisper that he’d been a bad husband. I’m not saying as how it was all cakes and ale but, in their tin-pot way, I reckon they were as happy as most. Maybe things weren’t as wonderful as he thought they were going to be when he married her, but that’s an experience we’ve all had, isn’t it? And I dare say they didn’t see eye to eye over the money they won. But if Winifred had given him his head he’d have frittered away every penny of it – and deep down he knows he would. Expensive cars, a flat in London, a trip round the world – he was always on about something. Somebody had to say no, and Winifred Tompkins said it. With all her faults he could have done a lot worse than marry her. And he thought the world of her, really. There’s many a chap’d have given her a good clip across the jaw for some of the things she did and said, but he never so much as raised his voice to her. He waited on her hand and foot when she was feeling poorly, or said she was. It might have done them both a world of good if he’d stood up to her a bit more and I’m not saying it wouldn’t, but we’d probably all be better off if we weren’t what we are, wouldn’t we?’
‘Er – yes,’ said Dover rather inadequately. ‘I suppose we would.’
He seemed prepared to leave it at that, but MacGregor was determined to press on with his investigation, whatever injury it did to Dover’s finer feelings. He’d put up with the idiosyncrasies of the Chief Inspector for some considerable time now and, after much heart searching and simple cold feet at the very idea, he had decided that their uneasy tandem would have to be steered from behind. It was going to be hard work, pedalling Dover’s excessive and inert bulk up the hill of success, but MacGregor considered himself equal to the task. So far, he congratulated himself, he hadn’t done too badly. At least Dover hadn’t flatly refused to let him investigate the circumstances of Mrs Tompkins’s death or to pursue the line that, if it wasn’t suicide, Mr Tompkins was ex-officio the chief suspect. Usually the Chief Inspector’s mind worked with child-like simplicity along this very track and, when a woman met an unlawful end, he resolutely refused to look further than her husband for the culprit. Had it not been for the special relationship which existed between Dover and Mr Tompkins, the latter would have had a very rough time of it long before now. There was nothing Dover enjoyed more than a bout of bullying and Mr Tompkins, timid, self-effacing, anxious not to give trouble, was tailor-made for one of the Chief Inspector’s more brutal performances. But even
