Young hooligans! A taste of the birch, that’s what they need. It’s the only thing they understand.’
‘Was Constable Cochran a young hooligan?’
‘I thought they liked to be called police officers nowadays? A bit more of this modern tom-foolery! Constable was good enough in my father’s day and it ought to be good enough now. Well, Master Cochran didn’t try any of his monkey business under my roof, that I can tell you. I gave him no room for doubt on that score. “Guests,” I told him, “are not allowed to entertain visitors of the opposite sex in their rooms, fiancées or not.”’
‘Oh, he was engaged, was he?’ asked Dover, thus demonstrating that he didn’t call himself a detective for nothing.
‘So he informed me,’ said Mrs Jolliott darkly. ‘ Unofficially, he said, whatever that may mean. Though if I were that young flibberty-gibbet Sandra Jackson, I shouldn’t count on him making a decent woman out of me.’
Solemnly MacGregor made a note in his notebook. ‘Sandra Jackson. Fiancée?’
‘Had he had a dust up with her or anything?’ asked Dover.
Mrs Jolliott laughed without mirth. ‘Over what? The only thing that would upset young Cochran where a girl was concerned would be if she said no. And from what I know of Sandra Jackson that particular word wasn’t even in her limited vocabulary.’
‘So it wasn’t unrequited love?’ said Dover with an I-told-you-so look at MacGregor.
‘Lust,’ said Mrs Jolliott flatly, ‘is the word I should use, and unrequited it certainly wasn’t. If it had been the other way round, of course, there might, possibly, have been some reason. But he was the one who called the whole thing off, wasn’t he?’
Dover blinked. ‘Was he?’
‘Well, of course. It was me who had to phone her up and tell her, wasn’t it? Not that I minded doing that at all. It may be what young people do these days, but that doesn’t make it right, does it? Not but what it hadn’t already happened as far as those two were concerned right here in Wallerton, and not just the once either.
Still, that’s no excuse to go flaunting it round the countryside, is it? You’d think a girl would have more self-respect, wouldn’t you?’
Dover looked hopelessly at Mrs Jolliott and scratched his head as he wondered what the blazes she was yattering about.
‘You say he broke off his engagement to this girl?’
‘I didn’t say anything of the kind. Don’t you start putting words into my mouth.’
‘Then what did you say, for God’s sake?’
‘I don’t permit swearing in my house,’ said Mrs Jolliott, nodding at one of the many embroidered texts which decorated the walls. ‘“Take not the Lord’s name in vain,”’ she read aloud.
Dover took a deep breath.
‘What I said,’ Mrs Jolliott continued imperturbably, ‘was that he cancelled his holiday.’
‘His holiday? What holiday?’
‘He had a week’s leave starting last Monday week. Didn’t you know that? It was all fixed up that he should go away with this girl – this Sandra Jackson. They were hiring a car and going touring or something. Well, at the last minute he just called the whole thing off. He came back here on Sunday evening to supper – I only do a cold supper on Sundays – after he’d been down to the police station to tidy a few things up before he went on holiday. He came in, said he didn’t want any supper and would I phone up this Jackson girl and tell her the holiday was off. Well, I’d no objection to doing that, none at all.’ Mrs Jolliott’s mouth twisted into a faint smile and she flicked an invisible speak of dust off her apron.
Dover regarded her unhappily. ‘What happened then?’
‘He went to bed.’
‘He went to bed?’ repeated Dover desperately.
Mrs Jolliott nodded. ‘ For a week.’
‘For a week?’ squeaked Dover.
‘That’s what I said.’
‘But, what did he do?’
‘Nothing. He just went to bed on the Sunday night and stayed there for the whole week until he got up to go on duty yesterday morning.’
‘Was he ill?’
Mrs Jolliott shook her head. ‘He said he wasn’t. And he didn’t look ill to me, not physically that is. I can’t answer for his mental state.’
‘Didn’t you send for a doctor or anything?’
‘He told me not to. Not that I would have paid any heed to that if I’d thought he was really sick. I did ask Nurse Smithies to have a look at him, though. She’s my other regular lodger. I only have just the two. Two’s all I can manage on my own and what with the type of girl you get these days you’re better off without them. Especially when you’ve got a young unmarried man in the house. Better to work your own fingers to the bone than have any truck with young trollops like them. Most of them are foreigners, too, and they’re worse than the English when it comes to that sort of thing. Talk about service! The word’s got quite a different meaning these days!’
Dover fidgetted uncomfortably in his chair. At this rate they’d be here for a fortnight. Why couldn’t they just tell you what they knew, if anything, in a few well-chosen words and then wrap up? He looked with dislike at Mrs Jolliott. ‘What did this nurse woman think?’
‘Sulking, that was her diagnosis. And she was a District Nurse for forty years so if she doesn’t know what she’s talking about I’d like to know who does.’
‘It all sounds very peculiar,’ grumbled Dover.
‘It was very peculiar,’ agreed Mrs Jolliott. ‘Perhaps he just had a brain storm or something.’
‘And he didn’t tell you what was up with him?’
‘No, he didn’t. And it wasn’t for want of asking either. He said there was nothing the matter with him and he just wanted to be left alone. He wouldn’t see anybody. That girl came clamouring round, of course, wanting to know why he’d cancelled the holiday,
