‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Mrs Comersall piously. ‘Don’t you know? You’re supposed to be finding out who wrote these lousy poison-pen letters, aren’t you? I know most people think you’re just in Thornwich for a free fortnight’s holiday, but I told ’em, “You just don’t know the cops,” I said. “That’s just the usual way the lazy bastards” – saving your presence – “work. They’re not having a rest cure,” I said. “They just look as though they are.”’
Dover, blowing furiously down his nose, took this as an open declaration of war. And, of course, it was.
‘Never mind the poison-pen letters for the moment,’ he snarled. ‘We want to ask you a few questions about another little bit of business.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Mrs Comersall.
‘Do you know a girl called Eleanor Smith – lives in Bearle?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Comersall flatly. ‘Never heard of her.’
‘She knows you,’ pressed Dover.
Mrs Comersall shrugged her ample shoulders.
‘She says she knows you very well,’ insisted Dover.
Mrs Comersall looked at her wristlet watch and started to wind it up.
‘She says you paid her a pound a week for the best part of nine months,’ Dover went on.
Mrs Comersall laughed scornfully. ‘I should co-co!’ she chortled.
‘And offered her an additional fifty pounds for her baby when it was born.’
Mrs Comersall looked pityingly at Dover. ‘Somebody’s been pulling your leg, lad,’ she said kindly. ‘I shouldn’t have thought you were the type to believe everything some empty-headed little tart told you.’
‘Oh?’ said Dover, seeing his opening. ‘And who told you she was an empty-headed little tart?’
A flicker of annoyance crossed Mrs Comersall’s face. I must be getting old, she thought. ‘I was just guessing,’ she said aloud.
‘Very clever!’ sneered Dover. ‘Well, let’s see if you can guess a bit more. This girl, Eleanor Smith, says you were going to buy her baby off her. Now, I think we can assume that you didn’t want to adopt it yourself . . .’
‘You certainly can!’ said Mrs Comersall.
‘Right, well all I want to know is, who were you buying it for?’
Mrs Comersall looked Dover straight in the eye. ‘Drop dead!’ she said. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.’
‘It’s a criminal offence,’ blustered Dover. ‘You could go to prison for it.’
‘Could I?’ said Mrs Comersall. ‘You’d have to prove it first, wouldn’t you?’
‘We’ve got Eleanor Smith’s evidence.’
‘Her word against mine. Besides, what’s criminal about it? No law against it as far as I know, is there?’
Dover, suspecting – and quite rightly – that Mrs Comersall might know a good deal more about the law than he did, reverted hastily to an earlier question. ‘Who were you acting for?’
‘I’ve told you,’ repeated Mrs Comersall patiently, ‘I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about. Honest, I haven’t. Gross my heart and hope to die.’ Her eyes glittered amongst the creases of fat.
‘Oh well, if you’d sooner we carted you off to the nick and asked you the questions there . . .’ sighed Dover in the voice of one who’d done his best to be decent, and failed.
‘Look, love, you can ask me your questions where you like and how you like, but if I can’t answer them, I can’t, can I?’
‘It was Mrs Tompkins you were buying the baby for, wasn’t it?’ This was MacGregor putting his oar in where it wasn’t wanted. Dover was furious. Young Charles Edward was getting a damned sight too cocky by half.
If Dover’s reaction to MacGregor’s interference was predictable, Mrs Comersall’s wasn’t. For the first time in the entire fencing-match she was taken completely off her guard. Her eyes opened wide and her mouth dropped in sheer astonishment, doubling the number of her chins as it did so.
‘Mrs Tompkins?’ she repeated hoarsely. ‘Do you mean Winifred Tompkins at the grocer’s? Winifred Tompkins – the one who’s just killed herself?’
‘That’s right,’ said Dover, glaring fiercely at MacGregor and daring him to open his mouth again.
‘Well, I never!’ said Mrs Comersall, who still hadn’t got her breath back.
‘She was a friend of yours, was she?’ asked Dover.
Mrs Comersall looked at him in some astonishment. ‘Who, Winifred Tompkins? Oh yes, bosom friends we were, I don’t think! She’s lived practically next door but one to me for five years and not so much as a “good morning” have I ever had out of her. Of course I don’t go out much these days, but there’s nothing to stop her coming in here once in a while and having a bit of a chat, is there? After all, I could put quite a bit of trade their way if I had a mind to but, as I said to George, I’m not going crawling on my knees to a stuck-up piece like her and she needn’t expect me to. I can’t see that running a café’s any worse than keeping a mucky little grocer’s shop, either, if it comes to that.’
‘So you didn’t know she wanted to adopt a baby?’
‘Well, come to think of it there was a bit of talk, but that was ages ago. I did hear he wasn’t so keen on the idea and I couldn’t see her coping with a baby, I can tell you. I didn’t pay any attention to it. There’s always so much blooming gossip in this place – turn you dizzy if you tried to keep track of it all.’
MacGregor looked crestfallen. Even he could see that Mrs Comersall had been genuinely surprised at the mention of Winifred Tompkins’s name. He was so disappointed that he forgot about the wrath further intervention would certainly bring down on his head.
‘Are you sure you weren’t buying that baby for Mrs Tompkins?’ he asked.
Mrs Comersall recovered her poise immediately. ‘If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times,’ she said irately, ‘I wasn’t buying no baby for nobody!’
‘We know that Eleanor Smith was going to sell her baby if it hadn’t died,’ MacGregor pressed on, stubbornly flogging a horse that Dover knew had been dead
