Dover nodded his head again.
‘Well, when things quietened down again I started posting the letters. I always carried a few on me and whenever a favourable opportunity presented itself I slipped them into one of the post boxes. Too easy, really, because nobody ever suspected me. Well, it worked like a dream, everybody getting all upset and panicky and blaming everybody else. Lovely! Just what I wanted! I knew that sooner or later they’d call the police in, but I’d taken my precautions. They wouldn’t find any incriminating evidence within a hundred miles of me.’
Dover sighed and leaned wearily up against the wall. God, he’d caught a ripe one here, all right! Mr Tompkins watched him suspiciously.
‘Don’t try anything funny!’ he warned Dover. ‘One false move and I’ll let you have it.’
‘You’ve nothing to worry about from me,’ Dover assured him earnestly. ‘I won’t move a muscle, I promise you.’
Mr Tompkins sniffed. ‘You’d better not! I’ve killed once and I’ll kill again. I’ve got nothing to lose now.’
‘Your wife?’ asked Dover, his mouth suddenly becoming very dry.
‘Of course.’ Mr Tompkins frowned. ‘You needn’t waste your time trying to trick me into making a confession, you know. I’m only talking to you in here to give you the satisfaction of knowing all the details before it’s too late. Not that it’ll do you much good,’ he added and Dover broke out in a cold sweat. ‘Now, where was I? Oh yes, the murder of Mrs Tompkins. Of course I’d got the general plan worked out long ago. I had toyed with the idea of a shooting accident, me cleaning one of my guns, you know, but I think that one’s been done a bit too often, don’t you? In the end I settled for the gas fire. Simpler, really. And it’s the stupid sort of thing that happens every day. If it hadn’t been for you I might have made it just a simple accident – the light blowing out on the gas fire, somehow. Mind you, I had thought about a fake suicide but when you told me just how to do it, well I decided that was the best way after all.’
‘I told you?’ said Dover.
‘At The Jolly Sailor after the Poppy Gullimore fiasco,’ agreed Mr Tompkins. ‘Of course, at the time I just thought you were one of those stupid, bragging oafs who can’t keep their mouths shut after a couple of drinks.’ Mr Tompkins gave a wry little laugh. ‘I need hardly say that I underestimated you! Anyhow, I’d got to go through with it right away. I’d already set the poison- pen letters in motion and I knew she was fixing up something about that black-market baby – she didn’t tell me but I put two and two together. There was no time to lose so I decided on suicide for her. All your tips were most helpful and I flatter myself I did a pretty good job. I’d a bit of difficulty persuading her to take a bath on Wednesday morning, but otherwise everything went like clockwork. I was very lucky about that suicide note. I’d been saving that for months, just on the off-chance. It was part of a letter she’d been writing. I’d slammed a door – by sheer accident, of course – and made her jump, so she had to start a new sheet.’ Dover, swaying gently as the train roared and rattled on its heedless way, regarded Mr Tompkins sourly.
‘I knew she’d ask for a glass of brandy,’ Mr Tompkins went on, blithely unaware of the anguish and suffering his words were inflicting. ‘She always did. I’d got it all ready and waiting for her. With an overdose of sleeping pills mixed up in it, naturally.’
‘There was no trace of the sleeping pills in the glass,’ said Dover. ‘We had it analysed. There was only brandy.’
‘Oh, but I changed the glass,’ said Mr Tompkins brightly. ‘When we went into the shop together I’d smelled the gas long before you did. I thought you were never going to mention it.
Well, when at last you did, I rushed to the sitting-room door and told you it was locked.’ He smiled shyly. ‘It wasn’t, of course. I rushed round outside and broke into the room through the window. Then I pushed the suicide note under the body, and substituted the innocent brandy glass I’d been carrying around ail afternoon for the one Mrs Tompkins had drunk from. That’s all there was to do, really.’
Dover wrinkled his nose and wondered how much longer that young nit MacGregor was going to go on sitting on his backside before coming to find out what was the matter. Dover sighed. He decided to work on the principle that yack-yack was better than bang-bang. ‘But how did you turn the gas on in the first place?’ he asked wearily. ‘According to Mrs Poltensky, you never went near the sitting-room.’
‘No more I did,’ said Mr Tompkins proudly. ‘Don’t you remember I told you that just before the two of us, Mrs Poltensky and me, left the shop, I went back into the kitchen to get some stamps? Well, while I was in there I just turned all the gas off at the meter. Mrs Tompkins was fast asleep and, of course, she didn’t notice when the gas fire went out. Exactly one minute later I turned the main gas tap on again. That’s all there was to it.’
‘Ingenious,’ observed Dover bitterly.
‘But not ingenious enough,’ said Mr Tompkins with some regret. ‘You obviously spotted it or you wouldn’t be here now, would you?’
Dover managed a half-hearted smile. ‘No, I suppose I wouldn’t,
