“Yes, but really! The name of this set-up of yours—I ask you!” And she gave the sort of creamy laugh that she remembered as characteristic of a Girton tutor who had made her feel much ashamed of an essay of hers on Dickens the Great Reformer. “What’s the ‘Inc.’ for, anyway? I know Americans stick it after everything but I’ve no idea what it stands for.”
A little purr of good humour, then: “Strictly speaking, Incorporated. But we rather like to think”—another purr—“Incarnate.”
After a pause, Julia asked: “How did you come to know those things about us—about me and my husband?”
“Lunch, Mrs Harton... it will be so much more satisfactory. Have you any preferences?”
She pouted thoughtfully, then turned to look at the little china clock on the table beside her bed. When she spoke again, her “Very well, Mr Rothermere,” was terse and cool. She asked: “Do you know a restaurant in Spoongate called Fold’s?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Oh, please don’t sound enthusiastic on my account. The food is mediocre and the prices preposterous. My husband happens to have an account there, that’s all.”
“I must say I rather like your sense of fitness, Mrs Harton. Of occasion. We shall get along famously, never fear.”
“Twelve forty-five,” she said. “The head waiter will be able to point me out. Unless, of course, I don’t bother to pursue this nonsense any further.”
And she rang off.
Chapter Four
First fruit of the publicity accorded the Tring inquest by the East Midlands Evening Gazette fell into Inspector Purbright’s office in the shape of Miss Patricia Booker.
“I thought you ought to hear what she has to say,” said Sergeant Malley, to whom, as Coroner’s Officer, the girl had been referred from the inquiries counter downstairs.
In the fatherly shade of Bill Malley, Purbright saw a plump-faced girl of about sixteen, who nodded to him familiarly and then made a quick and manifestly unimpressed survey of the room. She sat in the chair brought forward for her by Malley.
“This accident at the fair,” she said, then was silent.
Purbright waited. Just as it began to seem that Patricia intended the verbless fragment to stand as a complete exposition, she added:
“Me and a friend was in Venus.”
“One of the cars,” Malley explained to the inspector. “On that roundabout thing. They’re all named after stars or planets or something.”
Patricia’s large, healthy eyes shone. “Twenty-eight times me and my friend’s been up. Fabulous. Venus is best. You know. Clean.”
“Clean?”
“Yeah, well, I mean some of them’s been thrown up in. You know.”
The inspector intimated that he did know, yessir.
Suddenly the girl was solemn.
“This fellow. The dead one. We saw him fall out.” She stared up over her shoulder at Malley, then at Purbright.
“Hurms is just in front of Venus,” she said. Purbright hoped the sergeant would not fuss over the mispronunciation, but all Malley said to him was: “That’s the one Tring was in. Hurms.”
“They’d been larking about,” said Patricia. “Inside the module. I mean you’re supposed to be strapped in, aren’t you? And it turns over, doesn’t it?” She fanned all ten fingers over her stomach, looked up at the ceiling and gasped dramatically.
“Tell the inspector what you mean by larking about.”
“Well, showing off, actually. You know. I think they must have spotted me and my friend.”
“There were two men in the car, were there?” Purbright felt it was time to get the narrative into some sort of shape.
“Yeah. Like I said.”
“Ah, yes.”
“One of them kept leaning right over like he was on a horse or something. Or his bike. Could have been. I mean they was in leathers. And he was drinking out of a bottle, wasn’t he? They both was taking drinks out of it but him specially. The other fellow never leaned about or nothing. He didn’t really let go of his seat, did he? Not that I could see, he didn’t. He wasn’t such a show-off as the first fellow, the one that fell out.”
There was a long pause. Malley prompted. “The door, Patricia. What was it you told me about the door?”
“Oh, yeah; the door. Well, that was funny. Just before all the modules started turning over and over, it came open. I could see it sort of flapping, couldn’t I? And I said to Di, hey Di, those blokes have got their door open. But she wouldn’t look because I think she was scared. And straight after that we started to turn over and I shut my eyes.”
“Were you scared, then?” Purbright asked.
“Me? No, shutting your eyes helps to make everything go dur-reamy,” and Patricia illustrated the condition there and then. She looked, the inspector thought, passably ecstatic.
“You didn’t see how—in what manner—the door of the module in front came to be open?”
“No. It just was. And then it wasn’t any more. I mean, that’s what was funny about it really.”
Malley saw Purbright’s understandable confusion. “What you’re telling us, Patricia, is that when you looked again, when you’d stopped turning over, the door of the car in front was fastened properly, like all the others. Is that right?”
She nodded. “Yeah, and there was just this one bloke sitting inside. Straight up, like nothing had happened.”
“Wait a minute, Patricia.” Purbright was frowning. “You said earlier that you saw Mr Tring—one of the two men in front of you—fall out.”
“Well, he must have, mustn’t he? I mean, there was two, then there was just one. He must have.”
“But you didn’t actually see it happen?”
A momentary sulkiness clouded her face. “I had my eyes shut, didn’t I?”
“Ah, yes, of course. I’d forgotten.”
Miss Booker understood and forgave. After all, the tall and easy-going and nicely mannered policeman was quite good looking for his age—almost dishy in a sort of way. She would be able to tell Di and Linda and Trish that she was glad to have accepted their dare because now she was an important witness and would get her name in the Flaxborough Citizen and perhaps even the Gazette. And that would be dur-reamy.
The inspector put a few more questions in a style more conversational than investigatory. Then Malley shepherded the girl away to the tiny office in the basement where, with frowns and wheezes and slow, one-fingered diligence, he would translate her story into a typed deposition.