Order and decorum were, however, eventually restored and the question as to whether or not Mr Plum was a murderer was allowed to remain in abeyance. Dover lit up one of MacGregor’s cigarettes and exhorted a bemused Inspector Walters to stop sitting there like a constipated hen and get on with it.
Inspector Walters pulled himself together. ‘Oh, yes, the criminal records, sir!’ He scrabbled through his papers. ‘Well, as I was saying, Miss Henty-Harris has no previous form, which is not surprising, really, as old Sir Perceval would have turned her out of the house if she’d even thought about wandering off the straight and narrow. He was a right narrow-minded old devil, he was. God rest him, of course. Now, who’s next? Ah, yes, young Mr and Mrs Bones . . .’
‘Bloody little bastard!’ snarled Dover, proving that there were some things at least that he neither forgot nor forgave.
‘Mrs Bones, sir, has never been in any trouble with the Law but her husband, Peter Bones, has had three convictions for speeding. None of’em very serious and spread out, admittedly, over the last ten years, but infringements of the Law nonetheless.’
A lump of ash dropped off Dover’s cigarette and made its small contribution to the debris which graced the front of his waistcoat.
Inspector Walters went soldiering on. ‘Brigadier Gough. He’s the man, sir, who lives in the house next door to the one the girl’s body was found at. His wife is the religious lady, the one who wants to become a parson and . . .’
‘I know!’ snarled Dover, who didn’t care for being patronized. ‘Get on with it, for God’s sake!’
‘Well, Brigadier Gough is actually quite interesting, sir. He was fined pretty heavily a couple of years ago for failing to stop after being involved in a road traffic accident. He was in collision with a laundry van near a bus stop just outside Chapminster.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he hadn’t a snowball’s chance of getting away with it, sir. There were half a dozen eye-witnesses, three of whom took his number. When the case came to court he pleaded guilty and offered no excuses or explanations.’
Dover shifted impatiently in his chair. ‘Why don’t you get to the bloody point?’
‘Brigadier Gough’s a real stickler for law and order, sir. I believe there was once some question of him becoming a JP himself. In any case, he certainly isn’t a hit-and-run driver.’
‘So?’
‘He’d got somebody else in the car with him, sir. A young female, I understand. This information, being irrelevant, didn’t come out in open court, nor did the fact that his wife was away from home at the time. Demonstrating outside Lambeth Palace or chaining herself to the altar rails in York Minster or something.
Dover grasped the implications with gratifying speed. ‘I said right from the start that man was a womanizer! Lecherous old devil! Chasing around after kids young enough to be his daughters! Well, he’s gone a sight too far this time!’
‘I suppose,’ said MacGregor, who could also see the possibilities, ‘that Mrs Gough is away from home quite often?’
‘Quite frequently, I understand,’ agreed Inspector Walters. ‘So, what with one thing and another, it’s not surprising that the Brigadier’s eyes wander occasionally. I mean, who’d want to be married to the sort of woman that wants to be a bishop? Mind you,’ he added, selecting another of his sheets of paper, ‘Mrs Esmond Gough’s a pretty lively specimen, all things considered. She’s got more blooming form than a Derby winner!’ He looked across at Dover. ‘You don’t want me to read it all out, do you, sir?’
Dover had no doubts. ‘Not bloody likely!’
‘Actually it’s just a series of charges of breaches of the peace, causing an obstruction, insulting behaviour, one assaulting the police and resisting arrest, and one charge of indecent behaviour in St Jude’s Church, Hornfield Green, under the Ecclesiastical Court Jurisdiction Act, 1880.’ Inspector Walters rattled his list off. ‘You may remember that last one, sir? A couple of years ago. It created quite a stir at the time. Seems the vicar at this St Jude’s Church didn’t go much on the idea of lady parsons and was saying so from the pulpit when Mrs Esmond Gough and two or three of her supporters attacked him physically with their handbags. It was later claimed in their defence when the case came to trial that the subsequent debagging of the vicar on the sanctuary steps was entirely accidental.’
‘Has she ever been sent to prison?’ asked MacGregor, succumbing to pure vulgar curiosity.
Inspector Walters shook his head. ‘No. She’s never even been given a suspended sentence, if it comes to that. Just bound over and fines. I think the thing is they don’t want to make a martyr out of her. She’s a big enough damned nuisance without that.’
‘Silly cow!’ grunted Dover. ‘That the lot?’
‘Oh, no, sir! We’ve got several more suspects to deal with.’
‘In that case,’ said Dover, who prided himself on never missing a trick, ‘I think we’d better have another little drink. It’s thirsty work, talking.’ He pushed his glass impartially between his two juniors, indicating that he didn’t give a monkey’s which one of them bought the next round.
When things had settled down again and Dover had raised a purely conventional objection about the embarrassment of drinking alone, Inspector Walters moved on to the Talbots and MacGregor reminded Dover that Mr Talbot was the bank manager.
‘He goes in for seances, you know,’ said Inspector Walters disparagingly. ‘Table tapping and spirit voices. Ectoplasm, too, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s an open secret round here. We’ve known about the crazy goings-on for donkey’s years.’
‘Actually, we had
