‘Er – aren’t you going to charge Miss Henty-Harris with the murder, sir?’
‘You taken leave of your senses or something?’ enquired Dover with insulting mock concern. ‘It’s not her I’m after, you blockhead, it’s the other one!’
‘Sir?’
‘What’s-her-name!’ explained Dover with mounting exasperation. ‘That silly cow who wants to go poncing around in a dog-collar!’
‘Mrs Esmond Gough, sir?’ It was MacGregor who found his voice first. ‘She murdered Pearl Wallace? Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m bloody sure!’ snapped Dover. ‘Come on, get a bloody move on! We don’t want to be taking all night about it. I haven’t had my bloody supper yet.’ And, so saying, he marched off firmly and resolutely in the wrong direction.
The confrontation between Mrs Esmond Gough and Dover was something of a disappointment all round. Mrs Esmond Gough was obviously disconcerted to find that the connection between her and the dead girl had been traced by a mere male, while Dover, who not only didn’t mind but actually preferred thumping the truth out of weak and helpless females, was profoundly frustrated when his intended victim didn’t put up a fight. Brigadier Gough appeared to have been struck dumb and Inspector Walters wondered exhaustedly why the hell it all had to take so long.
Sergeant MacGregor was the worst sufferer, of course, and it took all his training and sense of discipline not to give way to a temper tantrum when it quickly became established that Dover, by whatever quirk of Fate, had indeed hit the jackpot. His opening statement – made from a deep armchair and with his feet stretched out towards the Goughs’ sitting room fire – had blown the lid clean off.
‘I’ve just come from the Isle of Man,’ was all Dover had said, or needed to say.
Mrs Esmond Gough’s noble face had turned to stone. ‘That,’ she commented bitterly to the room at large, ‘is what one gets for giving way to one’s better feelings. Damn!’ She looked angrily at Dover. ‘It was that photograph, wasn’t it?’
Dover nodded, and MacGregor wondered if he dared ask what photograph they were talking about. After all, it was his job to record the interview and if he didn’t know what they were talking . . .
‘I thought so,’ said Mrs Esmond Gough, giving a tight, affirmative toss of her head. ‘Good old Auntie Flo! I should never have been such a fool as to have sent it to her in the first place, but she’d been so kind to me and I knew she’d keep my secret to the grave.’
‘The secret that you’d given birth to an illegitimate child?’ asked MacGregor, risking Dover’s wrath in an effort to make sure that he had got the facts right.
‘Of course.’ Mrs Esmond Gough glanced at MacGregor as though he’d just crawled out from under an exceptionally slimy stone. ‘Oh, I know it’s not supposed to matter two hoots these days, but twenty years ago it was a very different story. Especially for somebody of my age and standing. I was twenty-six, you know, and a university graduate. Not the type of girl to whom such “mistakes” are easily forgiven. My father had married beneath him, you know, with the result that my mother was socially and financially a great deal better off than the remainder of her family. She never actually lost touch with them, but contact did tend to be rather spasmodic. When I found out I was pregnant the only thing to do was to go and hide myself away somewhere, have the child and then get it adopted. I didn’t fancy having a back street abortion and, in any case, I hadn’t the least idea how to go about getting one. Auntie Flo was wonderful. She sheltered me, made all the arrangements for everything – and I knew I could rely on her to keep her mouth shut. She even went along with the fact that I was using an assumed name. On reflection I think I might have picked something a little more imaginative than Jones, but it seemed nice and anonymous at the time.’
MacGregor couldn’t really believe that Dover had dozed off there in his comfy chair, but his eyes were closed and his breathing was suspiciously regular. ‘You were lying then when you told us that you were unable to have children?’
‘Naturally,’ said Mrs Esmond Gough indifferently. ‘I was trying to put you off the scent.’
‘And the child you gave birth to was Pearl Wallace, the dead girl?’
‘Presumably.’ Mrs Esmond Gough seemed to resent these questions much as she would have resented impertinence in a servant. ‘I certainly had a female child. Miss Wallace herself had no doubt that I was her mother.’
‘She called here to see you that Wednesday evening?’
Mrs Esmond Gough nodded. ‘She came round to the back door. She was that sort of person. I was, as I told you, in the kitchen painting the posters for our Rally.’
‘You asked her in?’
‘Of course. I didn’t have much choice. It was a simply filthy night and, anyhow, I assumed she was one of our helpers or a new recruit or something. She’d traced me through that photograph, you know. The one I’d sent Auntie Flo when I first started making a name for myself with my work. Who’d have thought the dear old thing would have kept it all these years – or that that dratted son of hers wouldn’t have thrown it away when she died.’
Dover stirred gently in his chair. ‘You’re the family celebrity,’ he pointed out sleepily. ‘A household name. I reckon that’s why he hung onto it. Besides,’ he added through one of his jaw-unhinging yawns, ‘it was in a silver frame.’
‘If I hadn’t been a household name,’ Mrs Esmond Gough commented tartly, ‘that girl would never have found me – and neither would you! She recognized me, you see, even though that photograph was taken donkey’s years ago. She knew her mother’s Christian name was Muriel
