Wield glanced at his notebook. Mulgan was the acting manager, he saw. They were clearly touching the world of his ambitious dreams.
'So you don't carry many local business accounts?' he said, probing a little further, though for no particular reason.
'Oh yes,' said Mulgan, bridling again. 'Nearly all the local shops.'
'But from the estate?'
'One or two.'
Suddenly seeing a glimmer of a connection, Wield asked, 'Would those include the Eden Park Canning Plant?'
But he was disappointed.
Mulgan shook his head and fiddled impatiently with the blotter on his desk.
'How can I help you, Sergeant?' he asked.
'We're just going over the ground again, sir,' said Wield. 'Routine. Often things come to mind after a few days that get forgotten when everyone's shocked and upset to start with.'
There was a knock at the door and a young girl's head appeared.
'I'm sorry to interrupt,' she said. 'But Mrs Mulgan's here and would like a word.'
'What?' said Mulgan irritably. 'Oh very well, I'll come out. Excuse me.'
'No,' said Wield, getting up. 'You see your wife in here, it's all right. I'll just have a quick chat with any of your staff that aren't too busy.'
Outside the door he saw the girl talking to a thin-faced, rather defeated-looking woman who appeared a good ten years older than Mulgan.
'Thank you, dear,' she said in a fairly broad rural Derbyshire accent. 'You take care of yourself, won't you? I'll go in now, shall I?'
'Excuse me, Miss,' said Wield to the girl before she could move away. He introduced himself and discovered she was Mary Brighouse. She was not bad-looking with a good figure and big brown eyes which moistened as he began to talk about Brenda.
'You were good friends,' said Wield sympathetically.
'We didn't see much of each other outside,' said Mary. 'But I liked her a lot. I was so upset when we heard what had happened, I had to go home. I didn't come back in till Wednesday.'
Wield glanced at his notes from Pascoe's report. The girl had been no help at all and had broken down very early on during questioning. From the look of it, he doubted if he was going to get any further this time. He took her arm and gently led her as far to the back of the bank as they could go.
'That was Mrs Mulgan, was it?' he said lightly. 'Bit of a surprise after meeting your boss.
‘She’s very nice,' said the girl defensively.
'Yes, I'm sure she is,' said Wield. 'I only meant…’
'Yes. I know,' she helped him out. 'They were born in the same village.'
'But he's moved on while in a manner of speaking she hasn't, you mean?' said Wield. 'It's always sad, that.'
He was very good at gossip. A right old woman, Dalziel had called him once. Wield had smiled bleakly.
'Yes, and it's not just the job either,' Mary replied, eyes clear again, voice confidentially lowered.
'It never stops there,' agreed Wield without much idea what he was agreeing to.
'No. There's some men think a bit of power gives them all sorts of rights. And he's only acting, after all.'
'I know,' said Wield, suddenly with her. 'It can be very embarrassing, that kind of thing. I mean, what's a bit of a giggle at the office party can cause a lot of unpleasantness when it's out of place. Has it bothered you a lot?'
'Not really,' she said. 'Well, it wasn't really me, just sometimes he'd say something. It was more…'
Her eyes filled again.
The door of Mulgan's office opened and Wield had no time for sympathy now.
'You mean, it was more Brenda?'
'Oh yes,' she said with fast-fading coherence. 'I think he asked her out a couple of times and he was always calling her into the office or standing behind her, really close, like. She said that now she had an engagement ring, perhaps it would…' The memory was too much for her.
'Sergeant Wield!' called Mulgan.
'Blow your nose, love,' said Wield. 'Then go and wash your face. You're a good girl.'
He patted her on the arm and returned to the manager's office where he studied his digest of Pascoe's interview notes once more. He felt disappointed. The inspector hadn't got on to Mulgan's lech for Brenda, but his customary thoroughness had led him to check the acting manager's whereabouts between ten and midnight that night. He had been at home. Confirmed by his wife. Wield frowned.
'I hope you haven't been upsetting Miss Brighouse again,' said Mulgan. 'We've had to do without her for half the week already.'
'She seems a very sensitive sort of girl,' said Wield.
'Yes. Now what else can I do for you, Sergeant? We are extremely busy.'
'I'm sorry. I should have called outside banking hours,' said Wield.
'We do work then also,' said Mulgan acidly.
'I'm sure you do.'
Wield closed his notebook with a snap.
'I'll tell you what you can do for us, sir,' he said. 'Is it possible to check back and see what business Brenda dealt with that day, when she was at the counter, I mean?'
'It's possible. But why on earth should you want that?' wondered Mulgan.
Wield looked mysterious. It wasn't difficult. It was a mystery to him. But he wanted a bit of time to think things over.
Mulgan gave him more.
'I'd need to get authority from Head Office,' he said. 'It would mean revealing banking information, you see.'
'That's all right, sir. No rush. I'll call back later, if I may. Or if I don't get back in working hours, stick it in your briefcase and someone can pick it up from your home.'
He rose and took his leave before the man could raise an objection.
Outside in the car he tried to consider possible burgeonings of the seeds he had sown that morning, but all he could think of was the bittersweet tang of Mulgan's aftershave.
Chapter 12
Dr Pottle and the two linguists sat and listened to the tapes of the four telephone messages which had followed Pauline Stanhope's murder.
Pascoe had provided them with a typed transcript with the Hamlet references for good measure.
(A) Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come. (Act 5, Scene 1) (B) One may smile, and smile, and be a villain. (Act 1, Scene 3) (C) To be, or not to be, that is the question. (Act 3, Scene 1) (D) The time is out of joint: – 0 cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. (Act 1, Scene 3)
This was the order in which they had been received. Sammy Locke, the Evening Post news editor, felt that (A) and (D) came nearest to his memory of the voice which he had heard on the first two occasions. But which of the two (if there were two, they sounded very alike to Pascoe) it was, he couldn't say. Pascoe had not felt it necessary to pass this information on to the linguistic experts.
After the tape had been played for the fifth time, there was a long silence. Pottle lit another cigarette and scribbled some notes. Pascoe looked interrogatively at the linguists who were looking interrogatively at each other.
They were an ill-assorted pair. Dicky Gladmann was a small dapper man, fortyish, with bright blue eyes and demi-mutton-chop whiskers, dressed in an old tweed jacket with a red bandanna trailing from his breast pocket and a spoor of gravy running down his old something-or-other tie. The other, Drew Urquhart, was much younger. A small, round, rosy-cheeked face showed fitfully through a dark tangle of beard like a robin in a holly bush. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, he seemed to have little liking for his surroundings.
'Well, we'll see what we can do, shall we?' said Gladmann in a self-parodyingly fruity upper-class voice.
'I suppose so,' said Urquhart, broad Scots, not Glasgow but somewhere close.