Dover, who had been all set to hobble indignantly away, wavered.
MacGregor smiled, partly in encouragement and partly at his own cleverness. ‘We might as well stay now that we’re here, mightn’t we, sir?’
7
The way to Dover’s co-operation lay through his stomach and he tackled this, his second afternoon tea of the day, with every appearance of benevolence and good-will. Mrs Talbot, presiding with matronly grace over the teapot, sensibly kept his plate well piled with goodies.
Raymond Talbot proved to be a pompous man, full of his own importance as the local representative of the Shire & Eastern Bank. He wielded, and everybody knew he wielded, power of life and death over several very substantial overdrafts in the district. Responsibilities like that impart a certain air to a man.
He took immediate charge of the interview. Naturally he would have preferred to deal with the senior of the two Scotland Yard detectives but, if Mr Talbot had one saving grace, it was that he was a realist. He soon appreciated that he wasn’t going to get much in the way of sensible answers out of a fellow whose mouth was stuffed successively with sardine sandwiches, ham sandwiches, egg and cress sandwiches, homemade sausage rolls and tipsy cake. And the way he clutched that bowler hat to him, balancing it precariously on what remained of his lap – that didn’t inspire much confidence either. Mr Talbot attributed this particular phenomenon to a deep-rooted sense of insecurity. Mr Talbot had not watched all those programmes about The Mind on the telly for nothing.
‘Of course, we’ve already had the local police round,’ said Mr Talbot as he passed the photograph of the dead girl across to his wife with a negative shake of his head. A non-customer of the Shire & Eastern Bank if ever he’d seen one. Probably – Mr Talbot didn’t feel he was really being unduly harsh in his judgement – a non-customer at every bank in the country. ‘We weren’t able to give them any assistance, I’m afraid. However, I understand that more positive information has since come in concerning the probable time of her demise, and concerning a possible connection on her part with this particular area of Frenchy Botham. Plum at The Laughing Dog, wasn’t it? Well, I wouldn’t have classified him as a fanciful man, I must admit, but I can’t help feeling he’s got hold of the wrong end of the stick on this occasion.’
‘Why is that, sir?’
Mr Talbot looked down his nose at MacGregor. If there was one thing that Mr Talbot disliked it was the way the lower orders threw their weight about these days. There was plenty of time for that sort of thing, Mr Talbot always maintained, when a man has reached a position of authority and standing in his chosen field. ‘Why is that?’ he repeated rather distantly. ‘Well, my dear chap, The Grove is hardly that sort of place, is it? Anonymous, pregnant, teenage girls’ – he corrected himself — ‘anonymous, pregnant, murdered teenage girls simply don’t, quite frankly, fit into an area where every single property would come on the market at not one penny less than forty thousand pounds. I think you gentlemen must take it from me that people who make that kind of investment in a community definitely don’t go around involving themselves in affairs of such a sordid and degrading nature. I shudder to think what would happen to the price of houses if they did. No, I suggest you have another word with Plum. He must have misunderstood.’
MacGregor thought it was about time he got Mr Talbot shunted back onto some more profitable line, but before he could do more than open his mouth the bank manager was holding forth yet again.
‘Mind you, I fully appreciate that you have to explore whatever avenues open up in front of you, however outlandish and improbable they may appear. That is why I am prepared to co-operate fully. Now then, it’s the evening of Wednesday the twelfth you’re interested in, I understand? That’s when you believe the girl was killed and therefore the period for which we unfortunate residents in The Grove are being asked to furnish an alibi. Right? Well, luckily, Mrs Talbot and I are in the ideal situation for doing precisely that. We were both at home and in each other’s company from half-past five onwards, when I returned from the Bank. I was a trifle earlier than usual because we were giving a small bridge party that evening. We had dinner at a slightly earlier hour, too. Our guests arrived between a quarter to seven and seven o’clock. They all came by car. From seven o’clock onwards, then, we were all continually together until about eleven o’clock when the party broke up. No one else called at the house during that time, and no one left it. You may have noticed as you came in that my front door is liberally supplied with locks and bolts. The back door is much the same, and so are all the windows. In addition I have a burglar alarm which is connected directly with Chapminster police station. This is because, as a bank manager, I am in an extremely vulnerable position. A number of my colleagues have, as you will know, been kidnapped and forced to open their own bank vaults to robbers. I have no intention of allowing that to happen to me and I take every precaution. This house has, with the full approval of my Head Office, been turned into what amounts to an impregnable fortress, and next week I am having the latest model
