One framed a woman gazing furiously at a pair of drawers marred by an enormous black hand-print. Within another, low on the left of the picture, two dogs were unconcernedly copulating. The third contained the inevitable camera-ogling visage of the dwarfish woman with the thirty-degree squint.
Miss Teatime sat back, removed her glasses and tapped them pensively against her knee. “I would never have believed it,” she said, half to herself.
“Well,” said Gordon, “you’ve heard about industrial sabotage. Right?” He pointed at the prints, opened his mouth, shut it again, and began walking rapidly up and down. He stopped and pointed once more at the prints. “Right?”
“The lady with the very odd eyes,” Miss Teatime began.
“Agent,” snapped Gordon. “From P and Q probably. Or C and H. KGB even.”
Miss Teatime looked shocked. “The Russians?”
“Kleen-Gear Biological. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
Gordon was noticeably less crease-proof than he had seemed earlier. Miss Teatime patted his sleeve.
“I think you ought to sit down,” she said gently. “Come along. I have something to tell you which may come as a slight shock.”
He frowned, but followed her advice. There was something decidedly persuasive about this punctiliously mannered woman.
“That’s better,” she said. “Now, then; I do understand your reaction to these unfortunate setbacks, but I must tell you that you are quite wrong in your interpretation of them. You see, I happen to know the identity of the lady whose physical affliction has spoiled so much of your film. She is not an agent. And I am sure that her turning up here was an event quite uninfluenced by your business rivals.”
“Name. The name’s all I want. Injunction. Right?”
“The name,” said Miss Teatime, “is Mad Meg of Pennick. And there would be no point in applying for an injunction.”
Gordon stared at her. “You mean she’s a mental patient, or something?”
“She is dead. She committed suicide four years ago.”
“Good God!”
“Curiously enough,” added Miss Teatime, equably, “there was nothing wrong with poor Meg’s sight during life. That very unnerving squint which you may observe in these pictures was caused—according to medical evidence at the inquest—by the method she chose to kill herself.”
Miss Teatime leaned forward and spoke softly, after a glance at the still sleeping Sheila.
“Hanging.”
Her voice fell still further.
“In a chicken coop.”
Gordon began a fresh examination of the film stills, this time with horrified fascination.
Miss Teatime’s manner became suddenly brisker.
“You must not worry too much about your filming tomorrow,” she said. “This town has always been the focus for a good deal of paranormal phenomena. We know now how to cope with it.”
“You mean you can render this sort of thing non-repetitive?”
“I mean that I shall be happy to place our not inconsiderable field knowledge of the subject at the disposal of you and your colleagues. I propose to begin work on the site immediately. Tele-Radiation clearance should be complete by morning.”
“I’m not certain, Miss Teatime, that I can commit Dixon-Frome any further budgetwise.”
The finely delineated eyebrows arched a fraction.
“The Foundation, needless to say, does not solicit fees.”
“Oh, well, that’s fine. We’ll just play this one by ear, shall we?”
Miss Teatime rose and prepared to take her leave.
“Vibrations, as Sir Oliver Lodge used so often to remark to my father, are our only help and guide.”
She held out her hand.
“Of course, Sir Oliver did not live to see the benefits conferred upon scientific research by donations from industry.”
Chapter Eleven
Inspector Purbright inverviewed members of the staff of the Bride Street supermarket in the white-painted closet, furnished with chair, table and camp bed, that served to accommodate in their separate seasons travelling salesmen, ladies taken queer, and shoplifters. On the wall was a first-aid cabinet. He had peeped inside it and discovered a part roll of adhesive tape and the heel of a woman’s shoe.
The under-manager, whom the inspector decided to question first in deference to his seniority, turned out to be a pale but wiry youth of nineteen or twenty. He looked a pretty good box heaver. Henry Baxter was his name.
“When was it,” Purbright asked him, “that Mr Persimmon was last in the store? Take your time and try to be accurate.”
“Half-past eight on Wednesday,” Henry replied without hesitation.
“What, in the evening, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“But isn’t it half-day closing on a Wednesday?”
“Most places it is. Not here, though. We get our time off staggered. If,” Henry added, “there’s any going.”
“I see. So you were here with Mr Persimmon on Wednesday, were you? Until eight-thirty.”
“That’s right. Well, we had all the Lucillite packets to overstick, didn’t we?”
“Overstick?”,
“With those little labels. ‘New—Improved’.”
“Ah, you’d had new stock come in.”
“No. But the price had gone up again, hadn’t it?”
Purbright backed out of this conversational cul-de-sac and asked: “Did you notice anything about Mr Persimmon’s manner that evening? Anything unusual—strained, excited?”
“Not really. He was a bit mad at having to stay late, especially at such short notice, but it wasn’t the first time it had happened and in this trade you get used to being buggered about a bit by head office.”
“When you say short notice, do you mean he was only asked that day to stay behind?”
“Yeah. They rang up about three. Of course, there’s a special push on this week and next. They’ve got girls in space suits and God knows what all. Proper circus.”
“Did you leave together at half-past eight?”
“More or less. Except that I walked and he got in his car.”
“Did you suppose he would drive straight home?”
“No.”
“You didn’t—why?”
“Well, there was that phone call he made, wasn’t there?”
Henry Baxter’s mode of answering questions was curiously suggestive of a supposition on his part that the inspector had been a hidden observer of all his past life.