The neighbour looked him up and down and said:
“That wouldn’t surprise me, either.”
And she shut the door.
Number 33 Partney Avenue was a semi-detached villa with a bay window, behind one of the five panes of which was displayed a pink poster advertising the forthcoming performance of “The Gondoliers” by the Flaxborough Amateur Operatic Society.
A precisely circular flowerbed had been cut in the centre of the few square yards of closely-mown lawn. It contained eight wallflower plants and one standard rose bush.
The concrete approach to the built-on garage was marked in imitation of crazy-paving. On the garden gate was an enamelled notice. NO CANVASSERS.
A man and a woman who had entered Partney Avenue from Arnhem Crescent stopped before the gate and read the notice. They looked at each other and the man gave a very thin smile. He opened the gate.
The man and woman stood side by side before the front door, awaiting response to the man’s double ring. They looked patient, disciplined, impermeable—a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses, perhaps, anticipating with flinty pleasure an hour or two of apocalyptic interpretation upon Mrs Pentatuke’s doorstep.
Suddenly the door was open and Mrs Pentatuke was revealed, more than a little Jehovah-like herself.
She looked imperiously from one to the other.
“Well?”
The man said: “We are police officers, ma’am. My name is Harper, and this is Policewoman Bellweather. May we come in?”
Mrs Pentatuke’s frown deepened.
“I haven’t sent for the police.”
“No, ma’am. We’ve called. We think you might be able to help us in our inquiries into certain matters.”
Fill his bowels with hooks, prayed Mrs Pentatuke. O Belial, make her miscarry in a Woolworths.
Aloud, she demanded to see documents of authorization.
They were produced.
Coldly, Mrs Pentatuke ushered her visitors into the room containing the Gondoliers poster. It was not a large room. The settee and its matching pair of armchairs in mustard-coloured miracle Carfelon had the appearance of having arrived the previous day, on approval. The fitted carpet, super tough yet fibre-groomed to give the caress of real lambswool, also had an unused look. There was one picture, a reproduction of a portrait of Winston Churchill. It hung above the fireplace, which had been sealed with a laminated plastic panel before which stood a chrome-plated, two-bar electric heater. This was not, and possibly never had been, switched on.
“It will save time, if you agree,” Harper said to Mrs Pentatuke, “for my colleague to take a quick look round the house while I put a few questions to you here. Of course, you may accompany her if you would rather.”
“And if I forbid her to do anything of the kind?”
Harper looked regretful.
“Ah, as to that, madam, I’m afraid there’s the matter of the warrant. We don’t as a rule expect any trouble over these things. Not in a nice neighbourhood like this.”
Mrs Pentatuke compressed her lips in angry resignation. O Astoreth, lead her great cow foot into the hair oil that Lionel spilled on the bathroom floor this morning. Let her horrid head be wedged down the poo-box.
Policewoman Bellweather gave her a nervous little smile, bobbed apologetically, and went out of the room.
A long pause having failed to win Harper an invitation to sit down, he lowered himself to a chair-edge perch on miracle Carfelon and started to put his questions.
A quarter of an hour later, he had secured not a single admission from Mrs Pentatuke that promised to have relevance to the Persimmon murder, the abduction of Edna Hillyard, or the persecution of members of the anti-witchcraft committee. Her answers were curt—often a simple yes or no—but never evasive in a way that Harper could challenge. And she took so little time to deliver them that Harper was constantly being left unprepared with another question and had to look into his notebook like a schoolboy at a crib.
He was greatly relieved when Policewoman Bellweather came back into the room. She was holding a large translucent plastic box fitted with a lid. The box was thinly encrusted with crystals. It was steaming slightly.
Sadie Bellweather addressed Harper.
“I found this in the deep freeze cabinet in the kitchen,” she told him. She did not look at Mrs Pentatuke.
“Is that your property, madam?” Harper asked, trying to appear stern but at the same time scrupulously open-minded.
“And what in hell’s name,” retorted Mrs Pentatuke, “has that got to do with you?”
Harper signalled the policewoman to proceed.
She clutched the box to her bosom with one arm and levered off the lid. Out of the box she drew a bird, stiff as a Roman eagle but black-feathered and unmistakably domestic in origin.
“That your chicken, ma’am?” (In for a penny, in for a pound, reflected Harper, secretly nervous.)
“Of course it’s my chicken, you idiot.” Mrs Pentatuke made a grab for it.
“Cockerel,” corrected Policewoman Bellweather, who had been brought up on a farm.
“It’s for a dinner party tomorrow night,” said Mrs Pentatuke, “and I’ll thank you not to maul it about.”
Policewoman Bellweather carefully replaced the fowl, which she had been holding upright by the feet, like a feathered club. Next, she produced a small metal tray and handed it to Harper.
Harper gave a start, then peered cautiously at the tray’s contents before holding them out for Mrs Pentatuke’s inspection.
“These for dinner as well, are they? Starters, like?”
Mrs Pentatuke gazed, tight-lipped, at the frozen corpses of a shrew, two frogs, a mouse and another small creature less easy to identify because of its somewhat chewed condition.
“The cat brings them in from time to time,” she said, after consideration.
“Would you care to give me an explanation of why you have put these things into the refrigerator?” Harper asked. He ignored the policewoman’s whispered “deep freeze” and waited for Mrs Pentatuke to think up something convincing.
“I don’t consider I need give you anything of the kind.”
“As you wish, madam,” said Harper, handing back the miniature mortuary to Sadie Bellweather.
The third and last production from the box was a tiny notebook. The policewoman held it up between finger and thumb. It measured about two inches by an inch-and-a-half. Harper reached across and she put it in his hand.
Again the monotonously delivered question.
“This your property, madam?”