Dover Goes to Pott

sigh of relief. ‘She come across to me just now when I was still on duty outside the front door and said she’d got some evidence. I tried to get her to make a statement to one of the C.I.D. men what’s swarming all over the house in there, but it’s you she insists on seeing. Even knew your name and rank, sir. Beats me how they do it. Never move from their own front parlours, some of ’em don’t, and yet they’ve only got to see you walking down the street and they’ve got it all off pat. They know more about you than your own mother does. Well now, sir, and what do you want me to do about this Mrs Withycombe, sir?’

Dover regarded the police constable sourly. ‘Where is the old hag?’

‘She’s right outside that door, sir,’ replied the constable loudly. ‘And, if I’m any judge of character, she’ll have her ear all but glued to that keyhole!’ He winked broadly at Dover. Dover scowled back at him, not approving of fraternization with the lower ranks. ‘Wheel her in!’ he growled.

Mrs Withycombe entered the kitchen as though penetrating a den of lions. Her eyes flicked rapidly round the room, accurately registering the location, condition, make and estimated H.P. cost of every piece of kitchen equipment.

Mrs Carruthers bridled instinctively and pushed her tea cup over the stained patch on the table. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she remarked with a distinct lack of hospitality.

Mrs Withycombe smiled from a great distance. ‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’ Her glance went darting off again. ‘I’ve often seen you knocking about of course.’

‘I’ll bet you have!’ Mrs Carruthers turned to Dover. ‘We’ve lived in the same road’, she informed him, somewhat to his surprise, ‘for six years and, to the best of my knowledge, it’s the first time we’ve ever spoken. Very neighbourly round here they are.’

‘We like to keep ourselves to ourselves at our house,’ said Mrs Withycombe primly. ‘I wouldn’t have dreamed of intruding now, but I thought it was my duty to tell the police what I know.’ She smoothed her white cotton gloves on her hands. Thus drawing attention to the fact that she was wearing them.

Young Mrs Carruthers seethed. ‘Well, you’d better take a seat then. Unless, that is, you think you might get your best coat dirty.’ She nodded at a vacant chair.

Mrs Withycombe forgave her with a thin smile and perched herself on the edge of the seat. She cleared her throat, politely raising her gloved hand to her mouth as she did so. The infants watched her with great interest. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been in somebody else’s house on the estate,’ she told Dover in a lady-like whisper. ‘Mr Withycombe and I, we don’t believe in intruding.’ She looked round the kitchen again. ‘It must be just the same as ours, I suppose, but somehow it looks quite different.’

‘Not so clean, I suppose?’ challenged Mrs Carruthers pugnaciously.

‘Well, not quite so tidy, shall we say,’ said Mrs Withycombe with another of her smug little smiles. ‘But, of course, we’ve only got the one girl and she’s away studying at the university. Children do make such a difference in a house, don’t they? Especially when there are so many of them. I thought you’d only got four.’

‘I’m looking after the others while their mothers are out,’ said Mrs Carruthers defiantly.

‘Oh?’ Mrs Withycombe gave a quasi-surprised laugh. ‘I didn’t realize we’d got a day nursery in the Close.’

‘You haven’t!’ snarled Mrs Carruthers. ‘I do it occasionally, just to oblige, so there’s no call for you to go poking your nose in where it’s not wanted.’

‘The Council’s very strict about licensing day nurseries,’ said Mrs Withycombe, still confiding her observations to Dover. ‘And quite right, too, in my opinion. Otherwise you’d have the most dreadful places springing up and ruining the tone of the neighbourhood, wouldn’t you?’

Mrs Carruthers took a deep breath but Dover had had enough. ‘Get on with it, MacGregor!’ he snarled. ‘We shall be here till midnight if you don’t get a move on.’

MacGregor opened his notebook and assumed a stern and competent air. ‘What, precisely, was it, madam, that you wanted to tell us?’

‘Withycombe with a y,’ she pointed out, watching the movement of MacGregor’s pencil with great satisfaction. She was a woman who liked to be taken seriously. ‘14 Birdsfoot- Trefoil Close — that’s the house with the new curtains and the yellow front door just opposite from poor Mrs Perking’s and one down. You can’t miss it. We’ve got leaded lights on all the front windows.’ She waited until MacGregor’s pencil came to a halt. ‘Profession —housewife. And my husband is George Albert Withycombe and he’s a foreman finisher at Wibbley’s.’

‘And how old are you?’ asked Dover, who could see that Mrs Withycombe needed cutting down to size.

Young Mrs Carruthers chuckled in a vulgar manner and passed Dover the packet of rusks.

‘Oh, I don’t think we need bother about that,’ said MacGregor quickly after a hurried look at Mrs Withycombe’s face. ‘Now, can we take it that you saw or heard something which may be relevant to our inquiries?’

‘Saw,’ confirmed Mrs Withycombe with a sharp jerk of her head. ‘Yesterday afternoon I just happened to be cleaning my front-room windows—the insides, of course. We have a man comes to do them outside.’

‘And you saw something at Mrs Perking’s house?’ prompted MacGregor patiently.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Withycombe resolutely, ‘I did.’

‘What was it?’

‘A man.’

‘Ooh!’ gurgled Mrs Carruthers, giving Dover a saucy wink. ‘It’s getting sexy!’

‘Perhaps’, MacGregor suggested with a slight diminution of kindly tolerance, ‘you would be good enough to give us some details. What time about was this?’

‘Well, that I don’t know exactly, not to the minute, that is. It was getting on for five, I should think, when I saw him walking along the road. I was thinking that before long I should have to be going to get Mr Withycombe’s tea—dinner, I should say—ready, so it must have been