‘Then why did you let him stay in your house?’ asked Jacket.
‘Well … I don’t know. I had intended to give Tooth notice to quit more than once, but whenever I began to get around to it … somehow or other he managed to put me off. He’d tell me a funny story – never a nice story, but so funny that I couldn’t help laughing. You know what I mean? He had a way with him, Mr Jacket. He must have. He sold Poise Weighing Machines. He told me, once, how he had sold a sixty-guinea weighing-machine to an old lady who had a sweet-shop in a little village – it was wicked, but I couldn’t help laughing. And then again, his success with the women…. But all the same, you didn’t ought to be allowed to get away with murder. I mean to say – he was her husband, wasn’t he? And a human being, too. And I mean to say – the fact remains, doesn’t it? She stabbed her husband to death with a pair of sharp scissors.’
‘All right,’ said Jacket. ‘But can we prove that Martha Tooth meant to do it, eh? Can we prove premeditation?’
‘I don’t know anything about all that, I’m afraid,’ said Mr Wainewright.
Jacket said: ‘They don’t hang you for murder without malice aforethought in a case of this sort. And incidentally, there isn’t any actual proof that Martha Tooth really did stab her pig of a husband, is there?’
Mr Wainewright was shocked. ‘She must have!’ he said. ‘Who else could have, if she didn’t?’
‘Anyone might have done it, my dear George. I might have done it. You might have done it. The charwoman might have done it. Did anyone see her do it?’
‘Well, no, I suppose not,’ said Mr Wainewright. ‘But the evidence! The evidence, Mr Jacket!’
‘Call me Jack, George old man.’
‘Jack,’ said Wainewright, shyly and with some reluctance.
‘But go on, George,’ said Jacket. ‘What evidence?’
‘The evidence, J-Jack. (Jack, sir, since you insist.)’
John Jacket felt a strange, perverse desire to provoke, to irritate this respectable little man. ‘Evidence,’ he said, ‘evidence! I spit on the evidence. A woman comes into a house; a woman goes out of a house. The man she visited is found, stuck like a pig – which he was – with a pair of long, sharp, paper-cutting scissors in his throat near the collar-bone. So what? So what, George? He was in the habit of smuggling women into his room. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, that’s true.’
‘Say, for example, this man Tooth had a woman in his room before his wife – this wretched Martha Tooth – turned up unexpectedly. Say, for example, he hides this hypothetical woman in a cupboard…. Was there a big cupboard, closet, or wardrobe in Tooth’s room?’
‘There is a big wardrobe,’ said Mr Wainewright, meditating.
‘Say, then, that Tooth, hearing his wife’s voice downstairs, hid his concubine in the wardrobe. The wife comes in. She talks to Tooth. She goes away. As the door closes, the enraged woman in the wardrobe comes out fighting, with a pair of scissors, and – jab! An overhand stroke with something like a stiletto, striking the soft part of your throat just where the big artery runs down. A child could do it. What?’
‘Possible, I dare say,’ said Mr Wainewright, tapping his foot in irritation, ‘but I don’t see the point. Mr Jacket – I’m sorry, I mean Jack. Jack, since you say I may call you Jack. If there had been any other lady in Tooth’s room I should have known it.’
‘How could you know?’ asked Jacket.
Mr Wainewright meditated, marking off points with his fingers: he was somewhat drunk. He said, laboriously: ‘In the first place, I have a respectable house. When my auntie died I converted it into little furnished flatlets. People can do as they like in my place, within reason, Mr Jacket. I mean to say Jack, Jack. By “within reason” I mean to say that people can have visitors … within reason, visitors. As the person responsible for the house, I was always on the spot – or nearly always. A person can’t be sure of anybody, and you don’t want your house to get a bad reputation. So I … to be frank, I listened to how many footsteps were going up to this floor or that floor. And as it happened my little room was next door to Tooth’s. And I can assure you that Mrs Tooth was the only visitor Tooth had that night. Mrs Madge, the lady who does the cleaning, let Mrs Tooth in. I passed her on the stairs – or rather, I stood aside to let her pass on the first-floor landing. I had seen Tooth only about two minutes before. He’d just got home from Bristol.’
‘Did he say anything?’ asked Jacket.
‘He … he was the same as usual. Full of jokes. He was telling me about some girl he met in Bristol, some girl who worked in baker’s shop. The, ah, the usual thing. Mrs Madge let Mrs Tooth in while he was talking to me. He said: “I wonder what the – the Aitch – she wants.” And he said that she had better come on up. He’d been drinking. I went down because, to be quite frank, I’d never seen Tooth’s wife, and wondered what kind of a woman she could be.’
‘And what kind of a woman was she, George?’
‘Not what I should have expected, Mr Jacket – I mean J-Jack. One of the plain, humble-looking kind. You wouldn’t have thought she’d have appealed to Tooth at alclass="underline" he went in for the barmaidish type, sir.’
‘You never can tell, George, old boy. After that you went up to your room, if I remember right.’
‘That’s right. My room was next door to Tooth’s. I mean, my sitting-room: I have a little suite,’ said Mr Wainewright, with pride.
‘Have a little drink,’ said Jacket, pushing a freshly-filled glass over to him.
‘I couldn’t, really.’
‘No arguments, George. By the by, remind me to let you have some theatre tickets. You and I’ll go to the first night of Greek Scandals next week. Drink up. Well, go on, George.’
‘Where was I? Oh yes. I had some accounts to do, you see, so I went to my sitting-room. And I could hear them talking.’
‘What were they saying, George?’
‘I couldn’t quite get what they were saying, Mr Jacket.’
‘But you tried?’
Mr Wainewright fidgeted and blushed. ‘I did try,’ he admitted. ‘But I only gathered that they were having a quarrel. Once Tooth shouted. He said “Go to the devil.” She started crying and he burst out laughing.’
‘A nice man, your friend Tooth, George.’
‘Yes, sir. I mean no, Mr Jacket – not at all nice.’
‘And then?’
‘About a quarter of an hour later, I should say, they stopped talking. They’d been raising their voices quite loud. I knocked on the wall, and they stopped. Then Tooth started coughing.’
‘Was that unusual?’
‘No, not at all unusual. He was a cigarette-smoker. In the morning, and at night, it was painful to listen to him, sir. And then his door opened and closed. I opened my door and looked out, and Mrs Tooth was going downstairs crying, and there was some blood on her hand. I asked her if she had hurt herself, and if she wanted some iodine or anything, and she said “No, no,” and ran downstairs and out of the house.’
‘She’d cut herself, it appears.’
‘That’s right, ah … J-Jack.’
‘That’s it, George. Call me Jack and I’ll call you George,’ said Jacket. ‘What made you go into Tooth’s room later on?’
Mr Wainewright said: ‘He always borrowed my evening paper. I nearly always used to hand it over to him when I’d done with it.’ He held up a copy of the Evening Extra, neatly folded. ‘When I got back from here – I come here just for one quiet drink every evening, and read the paper here as a rule, you see –I went to his door and knocked.’