Her hands fluttered to the cross on her bosom. "Did I? But of course they're Daniel's."
Walsh sighed. "Why did you tell us they weren't?"
The awful tears swam into her eyes and drizzled over her cheeks. "The devil whispers in my ear." Her fingers fumbled at her shirt buttons.
"Give me strength," muttered Walsh.
McLoughlin stood up abruptly and walked to a telephone in one corner. "Pull yourself together, Mrs. Thompson," he ordered sharply. "If you don't, I shall call for an ambulance and have you taken into hospital." She shrank into her chair as if he had slapped her.
Walsh frowned angrily at his Sergeant. "Are these the shoes Mr. Thompson was wearing when he disappeared?" he asked the woman gently.
She examined them closely. "No," she said.
"Are you sure? You told us the other day he had only one pair of brown shoes and he was wearing them the day he went."
Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. "Did I?" she gasped. "How very odd. I don't believe I was feeling quite well the last time you came. Daniel loved brown shoes. You can have a look in his cupboard if you like. He had pairs and pairs." She waved her hand at the table. "No, these are the ones Daniel gave to the tramp."
Walsh closed his eyes. His threadbare case against Diana was disintegrating. "What tramp?" he demanded.
"We didn't ask his name," she said. "He came to the door, begging. The shoes were on the stairs to go up and Daniel said he could have them."
"When was this?"
She produced the lace handkerchief and touched it to her eyes. "The day before he left. I remember it very clearly. Daniel was a saint, you know. In spite of all his troubles he had time for a poor beggarman."
Walsh took some papers from his briefcase and flicked through them. "You reported your husband missing on the night of the twenty-fifth of May," he said. "So this tramp came on the twenty-fourth."
"He must have done," she said through her tears.
"What time was it?"
She looked helpless. "Oh, I couldn't remember that. Some time during the day."
"Why was your husband at home during the day, Mrs. Thompson?" asked McLoughlin, looking at his diary. "The twenty-fourth was a Wednesday. Shouldn't he have been at work?"
She pouted. "His beastly business," she said viciously. "All his worries came from that. It wasn't his fault, you know. People expected too much of him. He stopped going in towards the end," she admitted lamely.
"Can you give me a description of this tramp?" asked Walsh.
"Oh, yes," she said. "He'll be able to help you, I'm sure. He was wearing a pair of pink trousers and an old brown hat." She thought back. "He was about sixty, I suppose, not much hair and he smelled terribly. He was very drunk." She paused, a thought suddenly occurring to her. "But you must have found him already," she said, "or why would you have the shoes?"
Walsh picked them up and turned them over. "You said your husband had no connection with the women at Streech Grange, yet one of them, Mrs. Goode, invested money in his business."
A shadow crossed her face. "I didn't know."
"Mrs. Goode claims to have met you," Walsh went on.
There was a long silence. "Possibly. I do recall talking to someone of that name three or four months ago in the street. Daniel told me she was a client." A glint sharpened in her eye. "Brassy blonde woman, over-dressed, with a come-hither look."
"Yes," said Walsh who found the description inept but entertaining.
"She rang me," said Mrs. Thompson, pursing her lips in disapproval, "wanting to know where Daniel was. I told her to mind her own business." She pinioned the Inspector with a basilisk's glare. "Did she have something to do with Daniel's disappearance?"
"We've been going through your husband's books," said McLoughlin glibly from his corner. "We noted the discrepancy. It puzzled us."
"I didn't know she was one of them." She held her handkerchief to dry eyes. "Now you tell me she invested money in his company?" The floodgates opened and this time her tears were of real distress. "How could he?" she sobbed. "How could he? Such terrible women."
Walsh looked at McLoughlin and stood up. "We'll be off now, Mrs. Thompson. Thank you for your help."
She tried without success to stem the flood.
"Have you thought about going away at all?" the younger man asked.
She gave a long shuddering sigh. "The Vicar's arranged a holiday," she said. "I'm going to a hotel by the seaside at the end of the week, just for a few days' rest. It won't do any good though, not without Daniel."
McLoughlin looked very thoughtful as he closed the door behind him.
Chief Inspector Walsh ground his teeth with fury as he jerked the clutch on his brand new Rover and promptly stalled. "What are you looking so damned cheerful about? We've just lost our only promising lead."
McLoughlin waited until the car was moving. "Who was in charge of the case at the beginning?"
"If you mean Thompson's disappearance, it was Staley."
"Did he do a thorough job? Did he check Mrs. Thompson?"
"Checked everything. I've been through the file."
"Does he know about our body?"
"He does."
"And it hasn't made him suspicious?"
"No. Her alibi's too good. She took Mr. T. to Winchester station where he boarded a train to London. Various people remember seeing him during the journey and one remembers seeing him on the platform at Waterloo. After dropping him off, Mrs. T. went straight to East Deller Church were she took part in a twenty-four-hour fast with other members of the congregation. The saintly Daniel was due to join her there at six o'clock on his return from London where, incidentally, he was supposed to be raising a loan to keep the business afloat. He never came back. At ten o'clock, the Vicar's wife took Mrs. T. home to Larkfield and waited with her while she telephoned office, friends and acquaintances. At nearly midnight, Mrs. Vicar rang the police and stayed with Mrs. T. who was by then quite hysterical, through the night and most of the following day. Daniel has not been since he got off the train in London."
"But her alibi's only good for the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth. Supposing he came back later?"
Walsh manoeuvred his way into the traffic on a roundabout. "Why would he, if he'd gone to the lengths of doing the bunk in the first place? Staley reckons he planned to kill two birds with one stone-get shot of the awful wife and duck out of the bankruptcy. He hopped into the bog at Waterloo, reversed his mac, stuck on a false moustache and went to ground with whatever he'd managed to stash away from the business. For what it's worth, Thompson's number two at the radiator firm said he wasn't in the least surprised Thompson legged it, he only wondered why it had taken him so long. According to him, Thompson had no balls and less bottle and from the moment things began to get dicey, he looked like running."
McLoughlin picked at a fingernail. "You must have thought he had a good reason for coming back, sir. Otherwise, how could Mrs. Goode have killed him?"
"Yes, well, Mrs. Goode's a damn sight more attractive than that silly bitch back there. I felt there was a good chance he staged his disappearance in order to throw in his lot with a blonde bombshell."
"But when he turned up on her doorstep, Mrs. Goode, who was down by ten thousand, found she didn't fancy him as much as she thought she did and stuck a knife into him?"
"Something like that."
McLoughlin laughed out loud. "Sorry, sir." He thought for a moment. "The Thompsons don't have any children, do they?"