Sitting in deep abdominal distress Martin let his mind rumble on cassoulet de Toulouse and remembered with yearning the poularde en vessu he had first eaten in a modest hotel in the Ardeche.
Dalgleish's needs were at once simpler and more exacting. He merely craved simple English food properly cooked.
Mrs. Piggott was reputed to take trouble with her soups. This was true in so far as the packaged ingredients had been sufficiently well mixed to exclude lumps.
She had even experimented with flavours and today's mixture of tomato (orange) and oxtail (reddish brown), thick enough to support the spoon unaided, was as startling to the palate as to the eye. Soup had been followed by a couple of mutton chops nestling artistically against a mound of potato and flanked with tinned peas larger and shinier than any peas which had ever seen pod. They tasted of soya flour.
A green dye which bore little resemblance to the color of any known vegetable seeped from them and mingled disagreeably with the gravy. An apple and black-currant pie had followed in which neither of the fruits had met each other nor the pastry until they had been arranged on the plate by Mrs. Piggott's careful hand and liberally blanketed with synthetic custard.
Martin wrenched his mind from a contemplation of these culinary horrors and fixed it on the matter in hand.
"It's curious, sir, that Dr. Maxie should have fetched Mr. Hearne to help with the ladder. It's one that a strong man can manage on his own. The quickest way to the old stable block would have been down the back stairs. Instead of that, Maxie goes to find Hearne. It looks as if he wanted a witness to the finding of the body."
"That's possible, of course. Even if he didn't kill the girl he may have wanted a witness to whatever was to be found in that room. Besides that, he was in pyjamas and dressing-gown. Hardly the most convenient garb for climbing up ladders and through windows."
"Sam Bocock confirmed Dr. Maxie's story to some extent. Not that it means much until the time of death is established. Still, it does prove he was telling the truth on one point."
"Sam Bocock would confirm anything the Maxies said. That man would be a gift to the defending counsel. Apart from his natural gift for saying little while creating an impression of absolute and incorruptible veracity he honestly believes that the Maxies are innocent. You heard him.
They're good people up at the House.' A simple statement of truth. He would maintain it against the evidence of God Almighty at the Judgment Seat itself. The Old Bailey isn't likely to frighten him." ‹I thought him an honest witness, sir."
"Of course you did, Martin. I would have liked him better if he hadn't looked at me with that curious expression, half amused, half pitying, which I've noticed before on the faces of old country people.
You're a countryman yourself. No doubt you can explain it."
No doubt Martin could, but his was a nature in which discretion had long taken precedence of valour.
"He seemed a very musical old gentleman. That was a fine record-player he had. It looked funny seeing a hi-fi instrument in a cottage like that."
The player, with its surrounding racks of long-play records, had indeed struck an incongruous note in the cottage sittingroom where almost every other article was a legacy from the past. Bocock evidently shared the normal countryman's respect for fresh air. The two small windows were shut; showed, indeed, no signs of ever having been opened. The wallpaper bore the entwined and faded roses of another era. Hung in erratic profusion were the trophies and mementoes of the First World War, a posse of mounted cavalrymen, a small glass frame of medals, a luridly colored reproduction of King George V and his Queen. There were the family photographs, relations whom no casual observer could hope to identify.
Was the serious bewhiskered young man with his Edwardian bride Bocock's father or grandfather? Could he really have a personal memory of a family loyalty for these sepia groups of bowler-hatted countrymen in their Sunday best with their solid sloping-bosomed wives and daughters? Above the mantelpiece were the newer photographs. Stephen Maxie, proud on his first shaggy pony with an unmistakable but younger Bocock by his side. A pigtailed Deborah Maxie bending from the saddle to receive her rosette. For all its conglomeration of old and new, the room bore evidence of an old soldier's disciplined care of his personal chattels.
Bocock had welcomed them in with an easy dignity. He had been having his tea.
Although he lived alone he had the woman's habit of putting everything edible on the table at once, presumably to provide for any sudden whim of taste.
There had been a loaf of crusty bread, a pot of jam supporting its spoon, an ornate glass jar of sliced beetroot and one of spring onions, and a cucumber stuck precariously in a small jug. In the middle of the table a bowl of lettuce disputed with a large and obviously home-baked cake for pride of place.
Dalgleish had recalled that Bocock's daughter was married to a farmer in Nessingford and kept an eye on her father. The cake was probably a recent offering of filial duty. In addition to this bounty there was evidence by sight and smell that Bocock had just finished a meal of fried fish and chipped potatoes.
Dalgleish and Martin were ensconced in the heavy armchairs which flanked the fireplace - even on that warm July day there was a small fire burning, its faint incandescent flame hardly visible in a shaft of sunlight from the western window, and were offered cups of tea.
This done, Bocock obviously felt that the obligations of hospitality had been met and that it was the duty of his guests to announce their business. He carried on with his tea, snapping off pieces of bread with lean brown hands and casting them almost absent-mindedly into his mouth where they were chewed and turned in silent concentration. He volunteered no remarks of his own, answered Dalgleish's questions with a deliberation which gave the impression of lack of interest rather than any unwillingness to co-operate and he regarded both policemen with that frank amused appraisal which Dalgleish, his thighs prickled by the horsehair and his face sweating with the heat, found a little disconcerting and more than a little irritating.
The slow catechism had produced nothing new, nothing unexpected. Stephen Maxie had been at the cottage the previous evening. He had arrived during the nine o'clock news. Bocock couldn't say when he had left. It had been latish. Mr. Stephen would know. Very late? "Aye.
After eleven. Maybe later. Maybe a goodish bit later." Dalgleish remarked dryly that no doubt Mr. Bocock would remember more precisely when he had had time to think about it. Bocock admitted the force of this possibility. What had they talked about? "Listened to Beethoven mostly. Mr. Stephen wasn't much of a one for talking." Bocock spoke as if deploring his own volubility and the distressing garrulity of the world at large and of policemen in particular. Nothing else emerged. He had not noticed Sally at the fete except during the latish part of the afternoon when she gave the baby a ride in her arms on one of the horses, and about six o'clock when one of the Sunday school children's balloon had got caught in an elm and Mr. Stephen had fetched | the ladder to get it down. Sally had been with him then with her child in the pram.
Bocock remembered her holding the foot of the ladder. Apart from that he hadn't noticed her about. Yes, he had seen young Johnnie Wilcox. That was at ten to four or thereabouts. Sneaking away from the tea-tent he was with as suspicious-looking a bundle as Bocock had seen. No, he hadn't stopped the boy. Young Wilcox was a good enough lad. None of the boys liked helping with the teas. Bocock hadn't much cared for it in his young days. If Wilcox said he left the tent at four-thirty he was a bit out, that's all. That lad hadn't put in more than thirty minutes' work at the most. If the old man wondered why the police should be interested in Johnnie Wilcox and his peccadilloes he gave no sign. All Dalgleish's questions were answered with equal composure and apparent candour.