MacGregor was still sending out distress signals.
Dover made an effort to pull himself together. ‘Who did your job before you came here?’
Miss Bloxwich gave a little start. She’d forgotten that the weird old grandpa model was still there. ‘Oh, a girl called Elsie Long. She’d been here since the year dot. Got into a rut, if you ask me. She was here even before Mr Perking came. They had a bigger staff then, you see. Then, when Mr Perking married Daniel Wibbley’s daughter, they moved the manager to another branch and gave him the job. Elsie Long was ever so bitter about it. Well, she’d forgotten more about this lark than John Perking’d know if he tried from now till the cows come home. She thought she ought to have been made manager, you see. She’d been here much longer than Perking had.’
‘But he got the job?’
‘Well, natch! He was Daniel Wibbley’s son-in-law, wasn’t he?’ She grinned. ‘Elsie Long made him pay for it, though. She could be a real devil when she put her mind to it.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘I dunno. Somewhere in Australia or somewhere.’
‘Australia?’
‘Her husband emigrated. That’s why she packed it in here.’
Bang went number two. Dover lost heart. He flapped his hand at MacGregor as an indication that the burden of interrogation had now been chucked into his lap.
‘Well now,’ said MacGregor briskly, ‘the day Mrs Perking was murdered—did you notice anything unusual about Mr Perking’s behaviour?’
Miss Bloxwich shook her head. ‘Not specially. He’d been ever so touchy for a week or so, actually. You never knew where you were with him. I told my dad, much more of this, I said, and I’ll jack it in. I’m getting pretty cheesed off with it here anyhow.’
‘Could you be a bit more precise?’ asked MacGregor. ‘What do you mean — touchy?’
‘Oh, I dunno. Touchy. You know, like he was all tense and sort of worried about something.’
‘And this was only in the last week or two?’
‘Well, he hasn’t ever been what you might call a little ray of sunshine, but he had got worse lately. Always niggling, you know. I said, for God’s sake, I said, we don’t get anybody coming in once in a blue moon — what difference does a few minutes make? He used to sit at that desk with his blooming watch in his hand . . . ’ She shrugged her shoulders.
‘And you’ve no idea what was worrying him?’
‘Not the faintest. It was all the same to me. I only work here, you know.’
‘Did he used to have any visitors?’
‘Here? I dunno. Sometimes he used to see some of the customers if there was something difficult they wanted. That wasn’t often. If they just wanted leaflets or to book on a tour I used to deal with them. It’s dead easy, you know.’
‘What about during your lunch hour?’ asked MacGregor shrewdly. He might have made quite a good detective if fate hadn’t entwined his destiny with Dover’s. ‘Mr Perking brought sandwiches, didn’t he? What about you? Did you have you lunch here in the office?’
‘Sometimes,’ admitted Miss Bloxwich exploring a cavity in her back teeth with the aid of a silvered fingernail. ‘Sometimes I’d go along to the caff and have a coke and a bun. It all depended.’
‘On what?’
Miss Bloxwich looked vacant. ‘I dunno.’
‘Could Mr Perking have been entertaining a friend — a lady, say — here in this office while you were out at lunch?’
Miss Bloxwich’s mouth gaped open. Then she let out an uninhibited shriek of mirth. ‘Don’t be filthy!’ she giggled. ‘Stuck up old Perking and a lady friend? In here? Course not! You cops haven’t half got sexy minds, haven’t you? Old Perking wouldn’t have the guts for one thing, and for another I’d have spotted something for sure. I’m not a kid, you know. Besides, he wasn’t a bit like that, I’ve been here six months and he’s never made a pass at me. And you can’t say I’m not attractive to men, can you?’ She fluttered her eyelids provocatively at MacGregor.
‘It all depends on the men,’ rumbled Dover nastily from his seat at the desk. ‘Let’s get back to Perking. Did he sit in this morgue all day or did he ever go out for a bit?’
Miss Bloxwich pulled a mocking face at MacGregor. ‘Oh, charming, I’m sure!’ She tossed an answer over her shoulder to Dover. ‘Course he went out sometimes. We both did. Not every day we didn’t but, whenever we needed to, we went. What else? Matter of fact, he went out that morning.’
‘What morning?’
‘The morning of the day he killed her, of course,’ said Miss Bloxwich impatiently. ‘Jesus, that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’
‘Here, just you watch your language!’ Dover warned her. ‘Beats me where you bleeding kids pick it all up from. Now, let’s get on with it! Just tell us as briefly as you can what Perking did that morning.’
Miss Bloxwich was not abashed. ‘What morning?’ she asked saucily.
Dover ground his teeth in fury.
‘Now, come along,’ said MacGregor quickly, ‘tell us what happened.’
‘Well, nothing happened.’ Miss Bloxwich was getting bored. ‘He got here at five to nine and I came along just afterwards. He’s got to get here first, see, because he’s got the keys. Well, he came in here and opened the letters and things and I pottered around out there. Then he came out and started griping about the window display and saying it was time we changed it. We’d got a whole lot of stuff about luxury cruises to the West Indies and he said he wanted that stuck in the window. I said who in Pott
