Mademoiselle de Gascoigne cowered away from MacGregor, who was a good deal more intimidating than he realized.
‘Oh, come on, woman!’ barked MacGregor, showing that long association with a natural bully like Dover leaves its mark on the best of men. ‘Le bébé,’ he repeated in what he fondly hoped was Mademoiselle de Gascoigne’s native language. ‘Qui est la femme qui veut acheter le bébé d’Eleanor?’
Mademoiselle de Gascoigne flung her arms up in the air. ‘Je ne sais pas!’ she protested. ‘Why don’t you ask ’er?’
Abandoning the pouting and now near tearful teacher of the French language without more ado, MacGregor led a rapid descent down the stairs to tackle the fair Eleanor in her lair.
Eleanor was a glittering blonde whose eyes lit up like searchlights when MacGregor entered the kitchen where she was just making herself a cup of tea. It is only fair to record that a marked reduction in her enthusiasm took place when she spotted Dover for the first time.
‘Oh, my Gawd!’ she complained in deep disgust. ‘Coppers!’ Dover pushed his way into the kitchen and looked, as was his wont, for somewhere to sit down. The only chair was already being occupied by Eleanor and she didn’t look as though she was going to vacate it in Dover’s favour. With a disconsolate pout Dover perched himself uncomfortably on the edge of the kitchen table, his intention that this part of the investigations was going to be short and sharp, and strongly reinforced. He was beginning to get a little perturbed by MacGregor’s attitude. The lad was tearing into things like a bull at a gate. Dover had no objection to his underlings shouldering nine-tenths of the work, but it needed to be done with tact and to the greater glory of their Chief Inspector. Being dragged along in MacGregor’s wake was not a pleasant experience, nor was it one that Dover intended to repeat or to endure much longer. They had been rushing around from pillar to post like a couple of scalded cats and Dover was in grave danger of losing his bearings. First it had been Arthur Tompkins murdering his wife, and now it was black-market babies. What all this had to do with Thornwich’s poison-pen letters, Dover was blowed if he knew, but the whole affair had generated its own momentum and it was difficult to find an appropriate place at which to bawl halt. They hadn’t, thought Dover scowling resentfully at Eleanor, even had their dinner yet. It wasn’t right, not for a man in his state of health. Light duties, that was all he was supposed to be on. Even the doctor had said that and, God knows, that licensed butcher wasn’t one to err on the side of humanitarianism.
MacGregor had noted the protruding bottom lip and the lowering eyebrows. They were danger signs he had learnt not to ignore. ‘Will you ask the questions, sir,’ he asked tactfully, ‘or shall I?’
There were times when Dover really hated MacGregor. If he’d been at all sure of why they were invading this Eleanor girl’s kitchen he would have started shooting off some well-directed questions long before this, but the fact was that Dover’s powers of concentration were never at their best when he was hungry. And he was damned hungry now.
MacGregor was still waiting for an answer. Dover gave a deep, bad-tempered grunt and left him to make what he could of it.
‘Here,’ said Eleanor, ‘are you two going to be sitting here all night?’
‘We shan’t keep you more than a minute,’ said MacGregor with a shining smile which might have devastated Eleanor five minutes ago but produced no softening of her attitude now. ‘We understand that you were going to have a baby some time ago and that you decided to let somebody else have it.’
‘So?’ said Eleanor.
‘We would like to know a few more details about the – er – transaction.’
‘Ooh, hark at him!’ said Eleanor.
‘For instance,’ MacGregor went on, still keeping his smile, ‘to whom were you going to sell the baby?’
‘What baby?’ said Eleanor.
‘Your baby.’
‘I ain’t got no baby. You must be thinking about somebody else.’
‘But you were going to have a baby,’ persisted MacGregor.
‘Is that a crime?’ demanded Eleanor. ‘First I ever heard of it, if it is.’
‘For God’s sake!’ snarled Dover. ‘We shall be here all night at this rate! Now, listen you,’ – he directed his scowl at Eleanor – ‘I’m a very busy man and I don’t intend to sit here taking lip from a cheap little tart like you. Now, you can either answer the questions here and get it over with, or you can come down to the nick and answer them there. Suit yourself, but you’re going to answer ’em somewhere. And if you start trying to make things difficult for me, my girl, I’ll make things so hot for you that you’ll regret the day you were born. If I want to turn nasty, I can turn very nasty indeed!’
‘Yes,’ said Eleanor with a last flicker of insubordination, ‘I’ll bet you can. All right, all right!’ she added hastily as Dover showed signs of getting to his feet. ‘You win. Here, I shan’t get into trouble over this, shall I?’
‘Not if you co-operate,’ said Dover. ‘We’re not concerned with any minor misdemeanours which may lie outside the scope of our investigations. In other words, get on with it!’
Once she had decided to sing, Eleanor sang clearly and fluently. She had had, so she said, a gentleman friend who, taking advantage of her innocence and with seemingly sincere promises of future marriage, had got her in the family way. ‘And then,’ said
