“Was he on good terms with the model?”
Hatchett looked sulky and uncomfortable.
“I don’t know anything about that,” he muttered.
“You have never heard either of them mention the other?”
“Naow.”
“Nor noticed them speaking to each other?”
“Naow.”
“So you can tell us nothing about the model except that you disliked her intensely?”
Hatchett’s grey eyes narrowed in an extremely insolent smile.
“That doesn’t exactly make me out a murderer though, does it?”
“Not precisely.”
“I’d be one big boob to go talking about how I couldn’t stick her if I’d had anything to do with it, wouldn’t I?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You might be sharp enough to suppose that you would convey just that impression.”
The olive face turned a little paler.
“Here! You got no call to talk that way to me. What d’you want to pick on me for? I’ve been straight enough with you. I’ve given you a square deal right enough, haven’t I?”
“I sincerely hope so.”
“I reckon this country’s crook. You’ve all got a down on the new chum. It’s a blooming nark. Just because I said the girl Sonia made me tired, you got to get leery and make me out a liar. I reckon the wonderful London police don’t know they’re alive yet. You’ve as good as called me a murderer.”
“My dear Mr. Hatchett, may I suggest that if you go through life looking for insults, you may be comfortably assured of finding them. At no time during our conversation have I called you a murderer.”
“I gave you a square deal,” repeated Hatchett.
“I’m not absolutely assured of that. I think that a moment ago you deliberately withheld something. I mean, when I asked you if you could tell me anything about the model’s relationship with Mr. Pilgrim.”
Hatchett was silent. He moved his head slightly from side to side, and ostentatiously inhaled cigarette smoke.
“Very well,” said Alleyn. “That will do, I think.” But Hatchett did not get up.
“I don’t know where you get that idea,” he said.
“Don’t you? I need keep you no longer, Mr. Hatchett. We shall probably check your alibi, and I shall ask you to sign a written account of our conversation. That is all at the moment.”
Hatchett rose, hunched his shoulders and lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one. He was still rather pale.
“I got nothing in for Pilgrim,” he said. “I got no call to talk to dicks about my cobbers.”
“You prefer to surround them with a dubious atmosphere of uncertainty, and leave us to draw our own conclusions? You are doing Mr. Pilgrim no service by these rather transparent evasions.”
“Aw, talk English, can’t you!”
“Certainly. Good evening.”
“Pilgrim’s a straight sort of a bloke. Him do anything like that! It’s laughable.”
“Look here,” said Alleyn wearily. “Are you going to tell me what you know, or are you going away, or am I going to remove you? Upon my word, if we have many more dark allusions to Mr. Pilgrim’s purity, I shall feel like clapping both of you in jug.”
“By cripey!” cried Hatchett violently. “Aren’t I telling you it was nothing at all! And to show you it was nothing at all, I’ll bloody well tell you what it was. Now then.”
“Good!” said Alleyn. “Speak up!”
“It’s only that the girl Sonia was going to have a kid, and Pilgrim’s the father. So now what?”
CHAPTER X
Week-end of an Engaged Couple
In the silence that followed Watt Hatchett’s announcement Fox was heard to cough discreetly. Alleyn glanced quickly at him, and then contemplated Hatchett. Hatchett glared defiantly round the room rather as if he expected an instant arrest.
“How do you know this, Mr. Hatchett?” asked Alleyn.
“I’ve seen it in writing.”
“Where?”
“It’s like this. Me and Basil Pilgrim’s got the same kind of paint-smocks, see? When I first come I saw his new one and I thought it was a goody. It’s a sort of dark khaki stuff, made like a coat, with corking great big pockets. He told me where he got it, and I sent for one. When I got it, I hung it up with the others in the junk-room. That was last Tuesdee. On Wensdee morning I put it on, and I noticed at the time that his smock wasn’t there. He’d taken it up to the house for something, I suppose. Well, when we cleaned up at midday, I put me hand in one of me pockets and I felt a bit of paper. I took it out and had a look at it. Thought it might be the docket from the shop or something, see? When I got it opened up, I see it was a bit of a note scrawled on the back of a bill. It said, as near as I remember: ‘Congrats on the engagement, but what if I tell her she’s going to have a step-child? I’ll be in the studio to-night at ten. Advise you to come.’ Something like that it was. I may not have got it just the same as what it was, but that’s near enough. It was signed ‘S’.”
“What did you do with it?”
“Aw, cripey, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel so good about reading it. Gee, it was a fair cow, me reading it by mistake like that. I just went into the junk-room and I saw he’d put his smock back by then, so I shoved the blooming paper into his pocket. That evening I could see he was feeling pretty crook himself, so I guessed he’d read it.”
“I see.”
“Look, Mr. Alleyn, I’m sorry I went nasty just now. I’m like that. I go horribly crook, and the next minute I could knock me own block off for what I said. But look, you don’t want to think too much about this. Honest! That girl Sonia was easy. Look, she went round asking for it, dinkum she did. Soon as I saw that note I tipped she’d got hold of old Basil some time, and he’d just kind of thought, ‘Aw, what the hell’ and there you were. Look, he’s a decent old sport, dinkum he is. And now he’s got a real corking girl like Valmai Seacliff, it’d be a nark if he got in wrong. His old pot’s a wowser, too. That makes things worse. Look, Mr. Alleyn, I’d hate him to think I— ”
“All right, all right,” said Alleyn good-humouredly. “We’ll keep your name out of it if we can.”
“Good-oh, Mr. Alleyn. And, look, you won’t— ”
“I won’t clap the handcuffs on Mr. Pilgrim just yet.”
“Yeah, but— ”
“You buzz off. And if you’ll take a tip from an effete policeman, just think sometimes, before you label the people you meet! ‘No good’ or ‘standoffish,’ or — what is that splendid phrase? — ‘fair cows.’ Have you ever heard of an inferiority complex?”
“Naow.”
“Thank the Lord for that. All the same I fancy you suffer from one. Go slow. Think a bit more. Wait for people to like you and they will. And forgive me if you can, for prosing away like a Victorian uncle. Now, off you go.”
“Good-oh, Mr. Alleyn.”
Hatchett walked to the door. He opened it and then swung round.
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “Ta-ta for now.”
The door banged, and he was gone. Alleyn leant back in his chair and laughed very heartily.
“Cheeky young fellow, that,” said Fox. “Australian. I’ve come across some of them. Always think you’re looking down on them. Funny!”
“He’s an appalling specimen,” said Nigel from the corner. “Bumptious young larrikin. Even his beastly argot is bogus. Half-American, half-Cockney.”
“And pure Australian. The dialect is rapidly becoming Americanised.”
“A frightful youth. No wonder they sat on him. He ought to be told how revolting he is whenever he opens his mouth. Antipodean monster.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Alleyn. “He’s an awkward pup, but he might respond to reason in time. What do you make of this business of the note, Fox?”