‘My associate, Mavis Beauvis,’ said Mrs Hall gruffly. ‘We breed pedigree goats together.’ She indicated her two visitors with a hand which bore much evidence of honest toil. ‘And these are the chaps from Scotland Yard, dear! That one’s Detective Chief Inspector Dover and this is Detective Sergeant MacGregor.’ Mrs Hall, having taken a good hard look at Dover, very sensibly directed all her subsequent remarks to MacGregor. ‘You don’t mind if Mavis stays, do you? Just as a chaperone.’
MacGregor shook his head though privately he thought Mrs Hall could well have cooled the ardour of even the randiest male with one hand tied behind her back. Still, if she wanted a chaperone, she could have one. There were other aspects of her personality that he was finding much more puzzling. Like – was the woman psychic or something.
Mrs Hall cleared her throat. She was a busy woman and pedigree goats wait for no man. ‘Fire away, sergeant!’
MacGregor fired and the outcome was, information-wise, a lemon. Mrs Hall, astounding in her ability to answer questions almost before they were asked, had little to tell and nothing that Dover and MacGregor didn’t already know.
Mrs Hall was a keen member of the Dockwra Society and when the Annual General Meeting at Rankin’s Holiday Ranch had been announced had thought she might as well toddle along. ‘I felt I needed the break,’ she explained. ‘You can stomach just so much of pedigree goats, you know, and old Mavis here kindly volunteered to hold the fort while I took a couple of days off.’
Old Mavis smirked demurely. ‘I do feel it’s important that we don’t live in each other’s pockets the whole time,’ she simpered.
‘Oh, quite,’ said MacGregor. ‘Now, was Mr Knapper already there when you arrived at the Holiday Ranch?’
Mrs Hall nodded. ‘I was tail-end Charlie, if I remember correctly. Spot of muck in the carburettor, you know, and had to stop off at a garage to borrow their air-line to clear it.’
‘And you were allocated a bedroom in Bunkhouse number . . .’
Twelve. That was the hut we had our room for meetings in so, at night, I had the place to myself. I was the only female present, you see. It was jolly thoughtful of Mr Pettitt,’ she added seriously, ‘and I appreciate it. I’ve always been the sort of lass who likes to see the proprieties observed.’
‘Oh, quite,’ said MacGregor again before going on with the questions.
Mrs Hal! answered them all. No, she had never met the late Mr Knapper before and, if her audience would forgive her for speaking ill of the dead, she was jolly glad to be spared the possibility of ever meeting him again. Luckily no-one could accuse Mrs Hall of being a snob, but there was no getting away from the fact that Knapper was a very nasty little pleb.
‘Absolutely no breeding, you know. In fact, if he’d been a goat,’ declared Mrs Hall roundly, ‘I’d have had him parcelled up and in the deep freeze before you could say Tropic of Capricorn. There are some strains one doesn’t wish to perpetuate.’
‘I suppose,’ murmured MacGregor, ‘that you get all sorts interested in stamp collecting.’
Mrs Hall’s mouth twisted sourly. ‘Most of ’em are pretty decent,’ she allowed. ‘I just didn’t happen to take to Knapper.’
Since Knapper was not her type, Mrs Hall doubted if she’d so much as passed the time of day with him during the whole weekend. She was unable to tell MacGregor if Knapper had chummed up with anybody else much because, frankly, she’d had better things to do with her time than go mounting a round-the-clock watch on that jumped-up, snivelling little Yid.
‘Yid?’
For the first and only time, Mrs Hall looked taken aback. She bit her lip and muttered something about well, she wouldn’t be surprised. Then she pulled herself together and belted the ball back into MacGregor’s court by expressing the hope that the interrogation was now at an end. ‘Mavis and I ought really to be getting back. We’re up to our necks in goats at the moment.’
But MacGregor hadn’t finished.
No, said Mrs Hall with evident impatience, there had been no quarrels of any sort between anybody as far as she knew. The group only existed thanks to their shared interest and it would be a sad reflection on philatelists in general if a few of them couldn’t spend a weekend together without squabbling.
And no, she couldn’t recall whether she had left the Holiday Ranch on the Sunday morning before Mr Knapper or after. Probably before. ‘I didn’t hang around. As soon as I’d had breakfast and done my bit of packing, I was off. Far too much to do back here, don’t you know.’
‘We had to get that stuff off for Packets for Our Own Poor hadn’t we, dear?’ chirped up Mavis from her seat by the door. She turned to MacGregor, anxious that Mrs Hall’s philanthropy should not go unnoticed. ‘She’d collected such an enormous parcel of old clothes, you wouldn’t believe! I offered to help her bundle them all up but – oh, no! – she had to do it all herself. That’s her all over,’ concluded Mavis proudly. ‘Insists on seeing every job through from start to finish.’
‘Oh, do shut up, Mavis!’ It was no doubt humility which made Mrs Hall’s voice so sharp. ‘I don’t think that that was when I sent the POOP bundles off, anyhow.’
‘Oh, yes, it was, dear!’
Mrs Hall rode roughshod over the contradiction. ‘I do so much charity work,’ she told MacGregor loudly, ‘that it’s difficult to keep track. Always collecting for something. I can’t remember why it was I had to come rushing back that weekend and’ – she fixed Mavis with an icy glare – ‘neither can she!’
MacGregor kindly poured oil by saying that such extraneous details were of little interest to the police, and his kindness was reciprocated
