‘Oh?’
The young man was wearing a hand-knitted sweater with rather a large hole in it, Darbishire noticed. The sort of hole a wife would normally mend. But Mrs Gregson had a baby to take care of, so perhaps that explained it. His whole face was trying to form a shape of bland politeness, but the wariness seeped from every pore.
‘It’s just that my Mrs Gregson . . . your Mrs Gregson indeed . . . has a little boy, not a little girl, doesn’t she? That was what she said in her original statement. Not the sort of thing a mother gets wrong!’ Darbishire’s face formed a jovial grin around his shrewd eyes.
‘Ah.’ Mr Gregson looked momentarily confused himself, but his frown soon cleared. ‘They must have meant she was out with her sister’s little girl. They’re staying there too, with my parents-in-law. Linda, my wife, helps out when she can. Perhaps she took them both out.’
Darbishire nodded. ‘Mmm. That makes sense. Thank you.’
‘Not at all,’ Mr Gregson said with a smile of . . . was it relief?
‘May I come in, by the way?’ Darbishire asked. ‘I don’t want to keep everyone on the street awake.’
‘No,’ he responded sharply. ‘It’s just . . . I’m doing something for work. I’m a photographer. It’s all very delicate. Can’t disturb it. Sorry.’
Photographer. Hmm. Darbishire didn’t know that much about photography but perhaps it explained the pervasive, unpleasant smell emanating from somewhere in the background.
‘Oh dear,’ he said easily. ‘I’ll have to stay out here then. I wonder what the neighbours will say. Ha!’
Mr Gregson was intransigent. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you any further.’
Darbishire shook his head. ‘But I’m sure you can. When Mrs Gregson called me back, I had a few questions about the baby that night, the night of the murders. I asked if perhaps she had colic – like I say, I was getting my wires crossed – and your wife said she’d been sick with it for weeks, but she was getting better. She, you see. A little girl. Not a little boy, as my sergeant noted down the first time he spoke to you both. Named Francis. Is that correct?’
‘Sorry, what? Oh, yes – Francis. That might explain it. The different spellings.’
‘Mmm. But not the different pronouns.’ Darbishire’s face still smiled and his eyes were shrewder than ever.
‘I see what you mean. I don’t know what my wife was thinking.’
‘Nor do I, Mr Gregson. And my men and I have been talking to people up and down the street, as you know, and a few times we’ve mentioned the young woman with the colicky baby, and do you know what? Nobody’s seen that baby. Not a soul.’
‘We keep ourselves to ourselves. My wife hasn’t been well.’
‘Or heard it. A colicky baby that cries through the night?’
‘He doesn’t cry if we soothe him.’
‘So he’s a he now?’
‘He was always a he! My wife is confused! She misunderstood you. She hasn’t been sleeping.’
‘I did wonder about that,’ Darbishire said. Then his voice hardened. ‘About that baby. There’s no birth record of a Francis Gregson, or indeed Frances Gregson – I looked for both – in the last two years. Your wife is either in grave danger, or she never existed either. Which is it, Mr Gregson?’
‘Listen,’ Mr Gregson said, his face transformed, his body hunched with a new sense of urgency. ‘Everything she said was true, I swear it. Everything about what happened opposite. I was awake most of the night with her, and I saw it too. We don’t know who did it, and we’ve nothing to gain by lying. We just wanted to do our duty. Yes, she’s frightened. Frightened for her life. Do you blame her?’
Darbishire was unmoved. ‘Given how little she saw that’s of any real use to us, I rather do. If anything, she’s been wasting police time so far. Tell her I’d like to see her at the station in the morning. You too, sir. If you’re not there, there will be consequences. Goodnight, Mr Gregson. Sleep tight.’
He crossed the street to the western side, to his second elusive witness.
Number 42, a couple of doors down from 44 (the houses in the mews were numbered sequentially), was the London residence of a William Pinder, civil servant. Mr Pinder, who definitely existed, as confirmed by the War Office, had spoken to the police a couple of times, to assert that he was alone at home that night, having taken a sleeping draught, and he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing. Darbishire had a couple of supplementary questions to ask, but Mr Pinder, too, had recently been out when his officers had called by.
The inspector knocked without much hope but, to his surprise, the door was answered within a minute.
‘Yes?’ a female voice demanded through a tiny crack. Her cut-glass accent was apparent in one word. It reminded him: Mrs Gregson’s accent on the telephone had been posher than her husband’s just now. Should he read something into that? Or was he just being a snob?
‘Police, ma’am,’ Darbishire explained. ‘Would you mind . . . ?’
The woman opened the door by about a foot, to reveal that she was in her dressing gown and slippers, with her hair in curlers under a little pink net and a blanket over her shoulders.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Are you Mrs Pinder, by any chance?’
‘Marion Pinder, yes.’
‘I’m Detective Inspector Darbishire, CID. So sorry to disturb you. Is your husband in?’
She frowned. ‘No. He’s, er . . . no. He’s in the country.’
‘Not Shropshire, by any chance?’
She stared at him. ‘Surrey. He’s staying with his parents. What?’
She’d spotted the massively sceptical look on Darbishire’s face. But coincidences did happen. He gave her the benefit of the doubt.
‘Why isn’t he staying with you, if you don’t mind me asking? I mean, from what he’s already told us you share a home in Reigate with the children. He just stays here during the week for work, yes?’
Mrs Pinder scowled and pulled the blanket tighter around her. She, too, had no intention of inviting him in. Darbishire was a friendly man by nature and this aspect of the job didn’t always appeal to him: alienating bystanders in the interests of investigation. However, he was good at it.
‘Bill normally stays here,’ she agreed. ‘Sunday night to Thursday. But he’s not well. I’m just sorting out some things here.’
‘Is he infectious?’
‘No! Nothing like that. We just . . .’ Her face hardened. ‘We needed some time apart, if you must know. Or we did. Now I’m wondering . . .’ As her voice trailed off she looked lost and sad. Darbishire sensed she needed a solid shoulder to cry on, but it wouldn’t be his.
‘Can you ask him to get in touch with me? One of your neighbours claims to have heard a gunshot the night of the murders—’
‘Gunshot?’ She almost leaped out of her skin.
‘Yes, and unless it came from number forty-four, where we have no evidence of it, it must have come from this property, if it came from anywhere at all. The house in between is empty, you see.’
‘I know. But there wouldn’t have been a gunshot. We don’t even have a gun. My husband was fast asleep, as I said. He’s been finding it difficult to rest recently so he took a significant amount of sleeping powder. I know because he was very groggy when he spoke to me the next morning. He’d have slept through anything. Who said so, anyway? Was it those bastards from across the road?’ She flicked her eyes to the space beyond Darbishire’s shoulder. ‘Don’t believe a word they tell you.’