“You make it sound,” said Malley, “as if she admits all this—doping the fellow, I mean.”
“It surprised me, as well,” said Purbright. “But in fact her case isn’t all that bad. She’s obviously thought it out with some care. And they’ve managed to get Plant-Huntleigh for the defence.”
The chief constable regarded his inspector anxiously. “I don’t wish to seem to be questioning your methods, Mr Purbright, but confidences between prisoners and investigating officers always worry me a little. Confessions are not dependable, you know. Very unwise to rely on them.”
“How very true,” declared Purbright. “Had it not been for your clear recall of Gwill’s taste in spirits, I doubt if we could have moved Miss Lintz from the strong position of blank denial that she adopted at first.”
“And what does she say now?”
“She will rely, I think, on one of the oldest and most respectable defences in the world. The defence of her honour.”
The chief constable, Love and the coroner’s officer all stared, but only Malley offered comment. “Bloody hell,” he said, then gave a resolute suck at his empty pipe.
“She claims,” Purbright resumed, “that her great anxiety was that if ever she were to allow herself to be alone with Tring, he would be unable to restrain what she called the physical side of his nature.”
The implications were too much for Love, who rather vulgarly exclaimed: “What, in a rocket!”
“I, too, was sceptical,” said Purbright, addressing Mr Chubb, “but she quoted as precedent his having boasted a capability of being intimate (again, her expression, sir) with a motor-cycle passenger whilst actually riding the machine. This did tend to haunt the latter days of their relationship, according to her, and she took precautions accordingly. Hence the tablets, which a married acquaintance had assured her would have a temporarily emasculating effect upon any intending seducer.”
The chief constable considered, thin lips compressed, mild eyes directed at a point in mid-distance beyond the dusty window pane. “Just credible, perhaps,” he conceded. “But a pretty weird tale, Mr Purbright. I shall be very interested to see if she gets away with it.”
Malley addressed Purbright. “What did you make of that commercial traveller fellow who popped up at the last minute? Bollinger.”
“The mystery witness,” supplied Love, zestfully.
The inspector answered only after a pause. “I didn’t believe him.”
Mr Chubb looked alarmed. “Would you mind explaining that, Mr Purbright? As I understood the matter, this man Bollinger’s testimony was the first and only piece of direct evidence that Tring and the girl went into that thing together.”
“Oh, I believe that, sir. They were together. The girl doesn’t deny it. Whether Bollinger watched them as he says”—Purbright shrugged lightly—“is something else.”
“You do not suggest, I hope, that we are putting up a witness who will be discredited by the defence?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure he knows what he is doing. That is what I found disconcerting, as a matter of fact. There is a carefully concealed professionalism about the man. He made only one mistake, and that was a fairly trivial one. He had Tring addressing the girl as Bobby.”
“A perfectly natural abbreviation of Roberta.”
“Quite so, sir. But it so happens that her close friends invariably call her neither Roberta nor Bobby, but Bobo.”
The chief constable winced and murmured “Good Lord”. A moment later, he added: “Very easy to mis-hear with all that fairground row going on.”
“Very, sir. But what Bollinger claims to have done is overhear. And that I should have thought absolutely impossible in the circumstances.”
Mr Chubb consulted his watch. “Well, gentlemen, if there is nothing else you wish to ask me...” He allowed a count of five, then began to assemble hat, gloves and stick. “Time and Tide,” he said, with a smirk of wry amiability, “to say nothing of the Corporation Traffic Committee, wait for no man.”
The others prepared to depart.