‘I suppose that explains why he doesn’t start shouting for a lawyer,’ said Yates.
‘Of course it does. What does he want with a lawyer now? But pull him in a second time and he’ll have lawyers falling over themselves to help him. They’ll be squawking about police brutality and victimization. You won’t be able to hear yourself speak. His bloody lawyers will have a field day. First plastic dolls and then no bodies at all. He’ll get clean away.’
‘Anyone who can think that little lot up must be a madman,’ said the Sergeant.
‘Or a fucking genius,’ said Flint bitterly. ‘Christ what a case.’ He stubbed out a cigarette resentfully.
‘What do you want me to do? Have another go at him.’
‘No, I’ll do that. You go up to the Tech and chivvy his boss there into saying what he really thinks of Wilt. Get any little bit of dirt on the blighter you can. There’s got to be something in his past we can use.’
He went down the corridor and into the Interview Room. Wilt was sitting at the table making notes on the back of a statement form. Now that he was beginning to feel, if not at home in the Police Station, at least more at ease with his surroundings, his mind had turned to the problem of Eva’s disappearance. He had to admit that he had been worried by the bloodstains in the Pringsheims’ bathroom. To while away the time he had tried to formulate his thoughts on paper and he was still, at it when Inspector Flint came into the room and banged the door.
‘Right, so you’re a clever fellow, Wilt,’ he said, sitting down and pulling the paper towards him. ‘You can read and write and you’ve got a nice logical and inventive mind so let’s just see what you’ve written here. Who’s Ethel?’
‘Eva’s sister,’ said Wilt. ‘She’s married to a market gardener in Luton. Eva sometimes goes over there for a week.’
‘And “Blood in the bath”?’
‘Just wondering how it got there.’
‘And “Evidence of hurried departure”?’
‘I was simply putting down my thoughts about the state of the Pringsheims house, said Wilt.
‘You’re trying to be helpful?’
‘I’m here helping you with your enquiries. That’s the official term isn’t it?’
‘It may be the official term, Wilt, but in this case it doesn’t correspond with the facts.’
‘I don’t suppose it does very often,’ said Wilt. ‘It’s one of those expressions that covers a multitude of sins.’
‘And crimes.’
‘It also happens to ruin a man’s reputation,’ said Wilt. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing to mine by holding me here like this. It’s bad enough knowing I’m going to spend the rest of my life being pointed out as the man who dressed a plastic doll with a cunt up in his wife’s clothes and dropped it down a pile hole without everyone thinking I’m a bloody murderer as well.’
‘Where you’re going to spend the rest of your life nobody is going to care what you did with that plastic doll,’ said the Inspector.
Wilt seized on the admission.
‘Ah, so, you’ve found it at last,’ he said eagerly. ‘That’s fine. So now I’m free to go.’
‘Sit down and shut up,’ snarled the Inspector. ‘You’re not going anywhere and when you do it will be in a large black van. I haven’t finished with you yet. In fact I’m only just beginning.
‘Here we go again,’ said Wilt. ‘I just knew you’d want to start at the beginning again. You fellows have primary causes on the brain. Cause and effect, cause and effect. Which came first, the chicken or the egg…protoplasm or demiurge? I suppose this time it’s going to be what Eva said when we were dressing to go to the party.’
‘This time.’ said the Inspector, ‘I want you to tell me precisely why you stuck that damned doll down that hole.’
‘Now that is an interesting question.’ said Wilt, and stopped. It didn’t seem a good idea to try to explain to Inspector Flint in the present circumstances just what he had had in mind when he dropped the doll down the shaft. The Inspector didn’t look the sort of person who would understand at all readily that a husband could have fantasies of murdering his wife without actually putting them into effect. It would be better to wait for Eva to put in an appearance in the flesh before venturing into that uncharted territory of the wholly irrational. With Eva present Flint might sympathize with him. Without her he most certainly wouldn’t.
‘Let’s just say I wanted to get rid of the beastly thing,’ he said.
‘Let’s not say anything of the sort,’ said Flint. ‘Let’s just say you had an ulterior motive for putting it there.’
Wilt nodded. ‘I’ll go along with that,’ he said.
Inspector Flint nodded encouragingly. ‘I thought you might. Well, what was it?’
Wilt considered his words carefully. He was getting into deep waters.
‘Let’s just say it was by way of being a rehearsal.’
‘A rehearsal? What sort of rehearsal?’
Wilt thought for a moment.
‘Interesting word “rehearsal”,’ he said. ‘It comes from the old French, rehercer, meaning…’
‘To hell with where it comes from,’ said the Inspector, ‘I want to know where it ends up.’
‘Sounds a bit like a funeral too when you come to think of it.’ said Wilt, continuing his campaign of semantic attrition.
Inspector Flint hurled himself into the trap. ‘Funeral? ‘Whose funeral?’
‘Anyone’s’ said Wilt blithely. ‘Hearse, rehearse.’ You could say that’s what happens when you exhume a body. You rehearse it though I don’t suppose you fellows use hearses.’
‘For God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector. ‘Can’t you ever stick to the point? You said you were rehearsing something and I want to know what that something was.’
‘An idea, a mere idea,’ said Wilt, ‘one of those ephemera of mental fancy that flit like butterflies across the summer landscape of the mind blown by the breezes of association that come like sudden showers…I rather like that.’
‘I don’t,’ said the Inspector, looking at him bitterly. ‘What I want to know is what you were rehearsing. That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘I’ve told you. An idea,’
‘What sort of idea?’
‘Just an idea,’ said Wilt. ‘A mere…’
‘So help me God, Wilt,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘if you start on these fucking butterflies again I’ll break the unbroken habit of a lifetime and wring your bloody neck.’
‘I wasn’t going to mention butterflies this time,’ said Wilt reproachfully, ‘I was going to say that I had this idea for a book…’
‘A book’ snarled Inspector Flint. ‘What sort of book? A book of poetry or a crime story?’
‘A crime story.’ said Wilt, grateful for the suggestion.
‘I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘So you were going to write a thriller. Well now, just let me guess the outline of the plot. There’s this lecturer at the Tech and he has this wife he hates and he decides to murder her…’
‘Go on!’ said Wilt, ‘you’re doing very well so far.’