‘It was your sergeant who first started putting the wind up me,’ mused Mr Tompkins. ‘He’s not a patch on you when it comes to playing the village idiot, is he? When he got on to all that baby buying business, I began to get really worried. I mean, he was heading straight for the core of the whole affair, wasn’t he? But you did a wonderful cover-up job, pretending you just couldn’t see what was staring you straight in the face. Oh, you fooled me all right! You must have been laughing yourself silly deep down inside. Of course, I can see now you were just biding your time, giving me enough rope to hang myself, eh? You’re a proper card, Mr Dover, you really are! I was a fool ever to think that I could outwit you, though, really, I think you’ve got to give me full marks for trying.’
‘Oh, I do,’ said Dover sincerely, ‘I do.’
Mr Tompkins looked pleased. ‘Coming from you that’s a real compliment, Mr Dover. Thank you!’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Dover, moving uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He nodded his head at the only seat available. ‘Do you think I might sit down?’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Mr Tompkins cunningly. ‘I don’t trust you. You just stay where you are. We shan’t be much longer. Anything else you’d like to know?’
Dover searched his memory frantically. ‘Why didn’t you want to tell us where you were on the Wednesday afternoon?’ he asked.
Mr Tompkins waved the gun about vaguely. ‘Oh, that was just a bit of over-elaboration,’ he explained. ‘I thought it would look more convincing if you found out about Louise de Gascoigne for yourselves. Anything else?’
Dover thought about scratching his head but decided that Mr Tompkins, who was really behaving in a most peculiar manner, might misinterpret this innocent gesture. ‘I’m not absolutely sure, you know,’ he said cautiously, ‘exactly why you had to kill your wife. It seems a bit drastic. Why didn’t you just leave her?’
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Mr Tompkins looking both surprised and shocked, ‘I couldn’t have done anything like that! She relied on me absolutely for everything, you know. What sort of a life would she have had if I’d just skipped off with all the money? The shame and humiliation would have killed her. How could she have faced all those people in Thornwich? Oh no, I may be selfish and a murderer, but I’m not cruel – nobody could ever accuse me of that! That’s partly why I had to start writing that second batch of poison-pen letters. Your sergeant really scared the pants off me when he started hinting that the whole of the poison-pen scheme was aimed at getting rid of Mrs Tompkins – I suppose you put him up to that, you cunning old fox! Naturally, I had to start writing a new lot of letters to scotch that idea. But I did it for Mrs Tompkins’s sake too, you know. I couldn’t have them all saying that she’d been writing all those disgusting letters. She was absolutely incapable of doing anything like that and it was up to me to clear her name and her memory. You do see that, don’t you?’
Dover nodded his head. He wasn’t really listening too carefully to what Mr Tompkins was saying. He was fully occupied wondering how long all this was going on, and how it was going to end.
‘It’s funny,’ Mr Tompkins went on, ‘but up to Friday night I was quite confident I’d got away with it. Over-confident, I suppose.’ He smiled wanly. ‘And then suddenly I just saw the whole thing in a flash : how you’d been playing with me like a cat playing with a mouse. All this comic blundering around and pretending to get tiddly and making believe you’d be my partner in a private detective agency – well, on Friday night I suddenly couldn’t see how I’d ever been taken in by it! I felt such a fool!’
‘So you decided to run for it?’
‘Yes. I’d got everything pre-planned of course, just in case. I worked out a new identity and even got myself a false passport – and that was dead easy, I don’t mind telling you. Somebody ought to do something about it – criminal it is! Still, I did a brilliant job, though I say it as shouldn’t. I defy anybody,’ pronounced Mr Tompkins truculently, ‘to connect me now with Arthur Tompkins of Thornwich! I’ve covered my tracks perfectly. I’ve . . . ’ His face fell suddenly. ‘But you found me, didn’t you?’
Dover cleared his throat modestly.
‘You found me or you wouldn’t be on this train. Oh dear’ – Mr Tompkins looked quite crestfallen – ‘I haven’t been as clever as I thought, have I?’ He sighed. ‘You’ve not left me much choice, have you? I’m not going to let you clap a pair of handcuffs on me and lead me off quietly, you do realize that, don’t you? I don’t suppose you’d call my family exactly distinguished, but we’ve always kept ourselves decent and I’m not going to be the first one to besmirch our good name. You do understand that, Mr Dover, don’t you? I’m very sorry for your sake, but there it is.’
‘Now, look here, old chap,’ said Dover in a hoarse but fatherly voice, ‘just take your time about this and think it over. There’s no hurry. If you pack it in quietly now, they can only give you life and, a chap like you, why you’d be out as free as a bird in eight or nine years, honest you would. You don’t want to go making things worse by killing me, now do you?’
‘Kill you?’ asked Mr Tompkins in great surprise. ‘What on earth made you think I was going to kill you? Oh well,’ he admitted ruefully, ‘I must confess that the thought did cross my mind, but there’s your sergeant, too, isn’t there? And then, if I shot
