‘The whole damned thing blew down completely during the night,’ said Peter Bones sulkily. He watched indifferently as Dover attempted to fend off his only son with the end of a lighted cigarette. ‘Just my luck.’
Young Wayland, much disconcerted by this first encounter with sincere adult ill-will, retired under the television set to plot his revenge.
MacGregor was mulling things over, too. It was fairly obvious that Mrs Bones didn’t believe her husband because she thought he’d been upstairs that Wednesday evening having it off with the au pair girl. The point MacGregor was called on to decide was whether or not there was some even more sinister explanation for this absence from the dinner party. ‘How long do you think you were away altogether, sir?’
Peter Bones wriggled unhappily. ‘Twenty minutes?’ he suggested as though wondering how much he could get away with.
MacGregor proved he could turn the screws with the best of them. Well, he hadn’t served all those long weary years with Dover without picking up a few of the nastier tricks of a policeman’s trade. ‘Twenty minutes, sir?’ he repeated dubiously. ‘Oh, well, if that’s what you say . . .’ He made an entry in his notebook with all the solemnity of the Recording Angel writing in the Book of Life. ‘We can, of course, always check with Mr Bickerton.’
Peter Bones licked his lips. ‘It might have been a bit longer,’ he allowed reluctantly. ‘It’s hard to tell.’ He tried to regain his old devil-may-care attitude. ‘I did perhaps take my time a bit because I knew old Joe would be perfectly happy as long as he’d got plenty to drink. He’s not the world’s most sparkling conversationalist.’
‘And neither,’ said Mrs Bones with considerable emphasis, ‘is Alice!’
MacGregor closed his notebook. It seemed a good point at which to break off the interview. It was slightly unexpected and it left the victim to sweat things out on his own for a little. In addition to which, Dover was ready to go. Having eaten and drunk everything in sight, there was nothing to detain him, especially since he had finished smoking his cigarette and was thus completely at the mercy of the Bones children. Ignatia-Jane had taken over as gad-fly in chief and was currently exerting all her infant strength in an attempt to strangle Dover with a craftily thrown skipping rope.
MacGregor and Dover both stood up at the same time, with Ignatia-Jane taking a very painful tumble in the process, but their immediate escape was impeded by the arrival of a singularly unprepossessing girl.
‘I am returned,’ she announced to the room at large, slightly parting the curtain of mousy hair which covered her face. ‘I tek ze children, yes?’
It was Blanchette Foucher, the au pair girl. MacGregor stared incredulously at her. Was this the femme fatale who had lured Peter Bones away from his dinner party for a touch of the old slap and tickle? Thin, round-shouldered and – as far as one could see through all that terrible hair – stupid looking.
Nobody said anything as Blanchette, whose heavy breathing suggested that one could probably add adenoids to her other charms, slouched across to the fireplace and picked up the baby off its rug. She then collared Ignatia-Jane by the simple but effective expedient of hoisting the child bodily off her feet by the straps of her dungarees. ‘Où est Vaylant?‘ queried Blanchette in a voice that boded no good to the son of the house. She spotted him squatting down behind the settee. ‘Come ’ere, Vaylant! Queek!’
Wayland naturally ignored the summons and Blanchette, with an infuriated oath, bore down on him, managing to tuck both the other children under one arm. This left a hand free for Wayland. Blanchette swooped and grabbed.
‘Ugh!‘ A very Gallic scream pierced the air. ‘Cochon! Petit sale anglais! Ach, mais comme c’est dégoutant!’
The sound of a heavy French hand making contact with a bare English bottom rang satisfyingly through the room. The two smaller children, who had been tossed carelessly aside into the settee, joined their howls to those of their brother.
Mrs Bones was already speeding to the rescue. ‘What on earth’s going on?’ she demanded.
Wayland raised a tear-stained and scarlet face to his mother. ‘I was only having a wee-wee!’ he sobbed before Blanchette’s hand descended once more.
Naturally they cleaned Dover’s bowler hat out as well as they possibly could. They scrubbed it with hot soapy water, they rinsed it in a powerful germ-killing disinfectant, and they sweetened it with copious drops of Mrs Bones’s most expensive perfume. It was all in the mind, of course, but somehow Dover still didn’t fancy that hat, and when they finally got away from the Bones’s house, he carried it somewhat ostentatiously in his hand.
During the half-hour shambles which had followed the discovery of Wayland’s appalling revenge, MacGregor had endeavoured to question Mademoiselle Blanchette Foucher about the events of the fatal Wednesday evening, but it was rather like trying to fry a jelly. A very runny jelly, in effect, as the au pair girl was continually oozing away on the pretext of giving a hand in the purification ceremonies connected with Dover’s bowler hat. One of nature’s skivvies, she was patently unused to the sight of other people doing the work. And then, to cap it all, the stupid vache had not only forgotten all her English in the panic but couldn’t understand a word of MacGregor’s French either. In the end MacGregor decided to abandon the unequal struggle and return, if necessary, at some future date with an interpreter. If Mademoiselle Blanchette had been an attractive young woman, MacGregor might have persevered longer. But she wasn’t, so he didn’t. '
A light drizzle began to fall as Dover and MacGregor walked down the drive of Otterly House. Actually this was a vast improvement on the foul weather they had been experiencing earlier in the day, but Dover’s constitution was a delicate one and
