‘I beg your pardon, madam. Well, one of my constables will accompany him upstairs to get his things and then we’ll be off.’ He nodded to Perking who got to his feet and began to slouch out of the room.
‘Can he have a shave before he goes?’ asked Mrs Stafford.
‘I don’t think we want to waste too much time, madam. He can have a shave at the station if he wants one. Taylor,’ he shouted out into the hall, ‘you go up with him! And just get a move on!’
There was a considerable amount of shuffling and pushing as Perking and Inspector Mansion got themselves out of the kitchen, leaving Dover and MacGregor behind. Glumly Dover sat himself down in a comfortable armchair by the fire while the sergeant, not quite knowing what to do, hovered uncertainly by the door.
Footsteps could be heard mounting the stairs and then thudding about in the room above the kitchen. Confused mumbles came from the men waiting in the hall. Footsteps coming down the stairs. More confused sound of low voices. The front door opened. The front door closed.
Mrs Stafford sat down abruptly in the chair her brother had just vacated.
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn him!’ she said with a viciousness that made even Dover blink. ‘I knew no good would ever come of it, I knew that right from the start. You’ll live to regret it, I told him, mark my words you’ll live to regret it. And,’ she added with a sour laugh, ‘he has. Perhaps he’ll listen to me next time.’ She looked across at MacGregor. ‘What happens now?’
‘They’ll bring him up before the magistrates in the morning and I imagine they’ll remand him for trial at the next assizes.’
She sighed. ‘Magistrates! Trial! Assizes! Thank God our mum isn’t alive to see it. It’d kill her. She’d die of the shame. What do we do about getting him a lawyer to defend him?’
‘Well, I imagine the magistrates’ll grant him legal aid and they’ll tell him what to do down at the station. You haven’t got a solicitor, I suppose.’
She shook her head.
‘Well, if he’s got the money, of course, he can . . . ’
‘Money? He hasn’t got two ha’pennies to rub together. That wasn’t a bad job, you know, at that travel agency and he got quite good money, considering. If he’d stayed on round here he’d have been in clover. If she’s going to marry you, I told him, she ought to put up with what you’ve had to put up with all your life. Course that was the end of it, me saying that I mean. It’s been his one ambition ever since he was a kid— to get out of Canal Bank Street.’ She sighed again. ‘Has either of you two fellows got a fag? He smoked my last and I don’t fancy going out to the corner shop this morning. Well, Canal Bank Street’s had the last laugh, hasn’t it? We’ve never been mixed up in a murder before. Ta, love!’ She took one of MacGregor’s cigarettes and drew the smoke deep down into her lungs. ‘Ever since he was a tiny kid! They’re not going to carry my coffin down Canal Bank Street, he used to say. He hated it here. He thought when he got into the grammar school that he was on his way, but he wasn’t good enough. Not to go to a university or anything. Some lads at sixteen would have cleared out and gone off on their own, but our kid didn’t have enough guts for that. He wouldn’t go into Wibbley’s, though. That he had made his mind up about. In the end he got this job in this travel agency. Told us that it was a real step up in the world. Our dad just couldn’t fathom it. It’s longer hours for less pay, he used to tell him, and you’ve no union at the back of you. He was all for the union, our dad was.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He died last year, you know. Only a few months after my mum. Neither of ’em was fifty. You just can’t understand it, can you? They’d been decent hard-working people all their lives and then they just go and die like that. Still,’ —she choked back a sob—‘I suppose it was all for the best, seeing what’s happened now.’
MacGregor made sympathetic noises but Dover evinced a more practical turn of mind. ‘Why don’t you make yourself a nice cup of tea,’ he suggested. ‘Do you good, a nice cup of tea would. I wouldn’t say no to one myself.’
‘I’ll bet you wouldn’t,’ retorted Mrs Stafford tartly and blew her nose. ‘Priests and coppers, our dad used to say, they’d share your last crust with you.’ She got up and filled the kettle at the sink.
But Dover didn’t want to stop her talking. ‘You reckon your brother made a mistake in marrying Cynthia Wibbley, do you?’
‘Well, what do you think? He’d hardly be accused of murdering her if he’d never met her, would he?’
‘How did he meet her exactly?’
‘Well, he joined this tennis club. Laugh? Our dad near ruptured himself when he heard. That was before he found out there was three guineas’ subscription to pay every year, of course.’
‘And Cynthia Wibbley was a member, too?’
‘Good grief, no! You just don’t understand, do you? The Wibbleys are like royalty round here, Cynthia might have gone along to present the prizes and graciously accept a bouquet but she wouldn’t ever play there. No, it was this other girl, Mildred Denny — she was the one our Jack was after. She’s some sort of poor relation of the Wibbleys but, of course, she was a cut above the rest of the tennis club and our Jack was really taken with her. I don’t think he’d ever thought of marrying his way out of Canal Bank Street before but when he found she’d taken a fancy
