There was a dreadful screech of brakes from the road outside but MacGregor ignored it and put his question loudly over the distant shouts and curses.
‘Mrs Poltensky,’ he began, making it all very formal and rather pompous, ‘as the Chief Inspector has told you, we are very anxious to clear up any suspicion about the way Mrs Tompkins met her death, especially in connection with her husband. Unfortunately Mr Tompkins refuses to tell us where he was yesterday afternoon. Now, we’re sure that there is some perfectly innocent explanation’ – you could practically see the guile dripping – ‘but Mr Tompkins’s reticence on this point is proving rather embarrassing. I wonder if you could help us?’
Mrs Poltensky regarded MacGregor doubtfully. With a slovenly lay-about like Dover she felt perfectly at home. After all, she’d married one of the same ilk, though being a Pole, he’d had a bit more surface glamour about him. MacGregor – young, pushing, beautifully dressed – was a horse of quite a different colour. As a little girl Mrs Poltensky had seen innumerable cart-horses struggling with heavy loads up Thornwich’s fiendish hill. She’d never seen a racehorse, except on the telly, and for her money you could keep ’em. Stupid, skinny things they were. Never done an honest day’s work in their lives, nor – by the look of him – had young hopeful here either. You’d only got to look at his hands to see that. Mrs Poltensky moved her gaze to Dover’s enormous fists. She nodded approvingly. Broken nails, dirt-begrimed, yes – that’s what a real man’s hands were like!
‘Mrs Poltensky?’ prompted MacGregor sharply.
Mrs Poltensky had forgotten the question. MacGregor repeated it. Mrs Poltensky scratched her chin.
‘Wednesday afternoon?’ she said to herself. ‘Now what is it he’s supposed to be doing Wednesday afternoons? I’ve given up trying to keep track of him,’ she told MacGregor. ‘He gets a new enthusiasm like other people get the colic, and it’s none of my business anyhow what he does with his spare time. Unless it’s like when he started breeding racing-pigeons and I had to do all the clearing up, and bury ’em when they kept dying off because he forgot to feed them. Now, let me think. There was playing with toy soldiers, but I think that was on a Friday and I’m sure he packed that in weeks ago. Then there was pistol-shooting but he did that out in the shed in the yard. Had it made sound-proof to stop the neighbours complaining. He had to do his own cleaning-up in there because I refused to set foot in the place and so did Mrs Tompkins. Anyhow, that particular hobby was at its height this time last year, so it’ll be dead and buried now. You don’t happen to know where he’d been, do you? That might jog my memory.’
MacGregor looked questioningly at Dover.
Dover gave a massive yawn. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I remember he did say something about having been doing some shopping.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs Poltensky, ‘that’d be Cumberley. Bearle closes Wednesdays, same as we do.’
‘That’s right,’ said Dover, ‘it was Cumberley. I remember him saying.’
‘But it couldn’t have been, sir,’ said MacGregor, sitting bolt upright and quivering like a gun dog. ‘If he’d come from Cumberley his car would have been pointing towards Bearle, wouldn’t it? But it wasn’t. It was pointing towards Cumberley, which means he’d come from Bearle or from the direction of Bearle, at any rate. I drove Dr Hawnt home in it last night and I remember quite distinctly. I didn’t have to turn round or anything. The car was pointing up the hill towards Dr Hawnt’s house and towards Cumberley. Now that means . . .’
‘All right, laddie,’ said Dover sourly, ‘you’ve made your point. One of these days you’ll cut yourself, you’re so bloody sharp.’
‘Bearle?’ said Mrs Poltensky who’d been pursuing her own line of thought. ‘Well now, if it’s Bearle, it could be one of a couple of things : Judo or French lessons. No, I’m telling a lie! He gave up Judo when he banged his head that time, and anyhow, that was on Mondays. No, Wednesday afternoon in Bearle, he’ll have been to a French lesson.’
‘A French lesson?’ said Dover. ‘What the hell does he want a French lesson for?’
‘To learn French, of course,’ said Mrs Poltensky, who had more common sense in her little finger than Dover and MacGregor had in their combined bodies. ‘The Riviera, that’s what he was always dreaming about. He’s got a box full of them little coloured pamphlets telling you all about how wonderful it is. A villa on the Mediterranean, that’s what he’d set his sights on, when it wasn’t a luxury flat in Paris. “You don’t want to go all gooey-eyed abut a bunch of blooming foreigners,” I said. “I know what I’m talking about,” I told him, “after all, I married one.
You take my word for it, once you get past all that fancy way of talking they’re just the same as the rest of us underneath, only more so.”’
‘Do you know where he went to in Bearle?’ asked MacGregor, flourishing pencil and notebook.
‘No, I do not,’ said Mrs Poltensky with a plummy chuckle. ‘I’m not likely to start learning French at my age. Anyhow, I only ever heard him mention it casual like. I didn’t pay no more notice to it than all the rest of his fads and fancies.’
‘But why should he keep it quiet?’ asked MacGregor with a puzzled frown. ‘Why wouldn’t he tell us where he was? There’s nothing to be ashamed of, is there?’
‘Ah, but you don’t know Thornwich, do you?’ said Mrs Poltensky. ‘You’ve got to realize that everything the Tompkinses do is news. Mrs
