‘You get nothing for nothing in this world,’ said Mr Wallace, nodding his head wisely. ‘I always say that.’
MacGregor remained looking at Mrs Wallace. ‘Did your daughter give any reason for leaving home?’
‘No. She just said she was going, and she went.’
‘Was there anybody else involved? A man, for instance?’
Mrs Wallace bridled. ‘Not as far as I know. Besides, our Pearl wasn’t that sort of girl. She’d much rather watch television.’
‘They told you that she was pregnant?’
‘They told me,’ agreed Mrs Wallace grimly, ‘but I don’t know as how I believed it.’ It was a statement that seemed to put an effective stop to that line of questioning.
MacGregor plodded on, though. He clarified a few dates and settled the odd minor detail. Then there didn’t seem to be much more he could do. Barring some really extraordinary development, the dead girl was definitely Pearl Wallace, only child of Mr and Mrs Wallace. She had left home and gone to work in Barford-in-the-Meadow as a waitress. About her recent history, her parents seemed to know even less than the police did. There hadn’t been a complete break, though. Mrs Wallace acknowledged that they knew the girl’s address and . . . .’
‘There was the card for my birthday.’
Mr Wallace nodded his head again. ‘And she rang up to wish us a Happy Christmas. She wasn’t ungrateful. No, people can say what they like, but that girl wasn’t ungrateful.’
Dover sank deeper into his chair. From not having wanted to come, he now as usual didn’t want to go. Well, not yet. Not when he’d just got comfortable. He was annoyed to see that that idiot MacGregor appeared to be running out of questions.
Dover cleared his throat and both Mr and Mrs Wallace glanced instinctively upwards to see if that crack in the ceiling had suddenly got worse. Dover waited impatiently until their attention was focused back on him. Naturally he didn’t like asking for afternoon tea just like that. This was a house of bereavement, after all. He cleared his throat once again and, unable to think of anything new, went trundling back over the same old ground. ‘Are you sure she didn’t have any reason for leaving home?’ Mrs Wallace expressed herself just as sure as she’d been the first time the question had been put.
Dover drew on his own extensive experience of family life. ‘There wasn’t a row or anything?’
‘No!’ Mrs Wallace wasn’t having any of that, thank you very much!
Mr Wallace, on the other hand, was anxious to be helpful. ‘Not a row, exactly,’ he said. ‘And not then, either, come to that.’ Dover blinked. ‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’ Mr Wallace looked apprehensively at Mrs Wallace, and then he looked at Dover. For the first time in his life he realized what it was really like to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. He wasn’t given time to work out the odds.
Dover who, during the entire course of this investigation, hadn’t yet been able to sink his fist into anybody’s face began to make some ominous rumbles and actually looked as though he might leap aggressively to his feet at any moment.
Mr Wallace quickly, and erroneously, decided that Nell probably wasn’t as cross as she looked.
‘Well, if you ask me,’ he said defensively, ‘our Pearl was never the same since she found out she was adopted. It seemed to upset her somehow. She didn’t say much but, if you ask me, things were never the same after that.’
12
Mr Wallace’s revelation seemed to have released some inner spring in Mrs Wallace. In spite of Dover’s unwillingness to act as an unpaid father confessor, he was more or less obliged to sit there while his hostess let it all come pouring out.
It appeared that Mr and Mrs Wallace, both veritable cat’s cradles of complexes and inhibitions, had been unable to have children, and, faced with the fecundity of their numerous friends and relations, had been bitterly ashamed of their failure to contribute to the population explosion. When, after many trials and tribulations, they had managed to adopt a baby girl, they had broken off all connection with their respective families and former life, and moved right away from Edgbaston to start again from scratch in Mottrell.
‘We made up our minds we were going to bring her up as our very own little girl,’ explained Mrs Wallace, beginning to get weepy. ‘That’s what makes it all so awful now, you see. All that time and trouble and money and sacrifices, all wasted. Eighteen years of it and all gone for nothing, as you might say. Why, we could have had a car or holidays abroad or anything. Here’ – she interrupted her lamentations to strike a more overtly practical note – ‘what was she doing in this place she was killed in, anyway?’
‘Frenchy Botham?’ said MacGregor. ‘We haven’t been able to find out yet. We were hoping you might be able to tell us.’
Mrs Wallace shook her head. ‘A village, is it? I’ve never heard of it.’
‘Me neither,’ said Mr Wallace.
Mrs Wallace resumed her story. ‘We never told her she was adopted, you see,’ she said as she folded and refolded the sodden handkerchief she was clutching. ‘That’s why we finished with all our relations. One of’em would have been sure to blab it all out sooner or later, and neither me nor Mr
