‘No, no, farther along. 63. Mr McNaughton. He just lives for his garden. In it all day long, and mad on compost. Really, he’s quite a bore on the subject of compost-but I don’t suppose that’s what you want to talk about.’

‘Not exactly,’ said the inspector. ‘I only wondered if anyone-you or your wife, for instance-were out in your garden yesterday. After all, as you say, it does touch on the border of 19 and there’s just a chance that you might have seen something interesting yesterday-or heard something, perhaps?’

‘Midday, wasn’t it? When the murder happened I mean?’

‘The relevant times are between one o’clock and three o’clock.’

Bland shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t have seen much then. I was here. So was Valerie, but we’d be having lunch, you know, and our dining-room looks out on the roadside. We shouldn’t see anything that was going on in the garden.’

‘What time do you have your meal?’

‘One o’clock or thereabouts. Sometimes it’s one-thirty.’

‘And you didn’t go out in the garden at all afterwards?’

Bland shook his head.

‘Matter of fact,’ he said, ‘my wife always goes up to rest after lunch and, if things aren’t too busy, I take a bit of shuteye myself in that chair there. I must have left the house about-oh, I suppose a quarter to three, but unfortunately I didn’t go out in the garden at all.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Hardcastle with a sigh, ‘we have to ask everyone.’

‘Of course, of course. Wish I could be more helpful.’ 

‘Nice place you have here,’ said the inspector. ‘No money spared, if I may say so.’

Bland laughed jovially.

‘Ah well, we like things that are nice. My wife’s got a lot of taste. We had a bit of a windfall a year ago. My wife came into some money from an uncle of hers. She hadn’t seen him for twenty-five years. Quite a surprise it was! It made a bit of difference to us, I can tell you. We’ve been able to do ourselves well and we’re thinking of going on one of these cruises later in the year. Very educational they are, I believe. Greece and all that. A lot of professors on them lecturing. Well, of course, I’m a self-made man and I haven’t had much time for that sort of thing but I’d be interested. That chap who went and dug up Troy, he was a grocer, I believe. Very romantic. I must say I like going to foreign parts-not that I’ve done much of that-an occasional weekend in gay Paree, that’s all. I’ve toyed with the idea of selling up here and going to live in Spain or Portugal or even the West Indies. A lot of people are doing it. Saves income tax and all that. But my wife doesn’t fancy the idea.’

‘I’m fond of travel, but I wouldn’t care to live out of England,’ said Mrs Bland. ‘We’ve got all our friends here-and my sister lives here, and everybody knowsus. If we went abroad we’d be strangers. And then we’ve got a very good doctor here. He really understands my health. I shouldn’t careat all for a foreign doctor. I wouldn’t have any confidence in him.’

‘We’ll see,’ said Mr Bland cheerfully. ‘We’ll go on a cruise and you may fall in love with a Greek island.’

Mrs Bland looked as though that were very unlikely.

‘There’d be a proper English doctor aboard, I suppose,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Sure to be,’ said her husband.

He accompanied Hardcastle and Colin to the front door, repeating once more how sorry he was that he couldn’t help them.

‘Well,’ said Hardcastle. ‘What do you think of him?’

‘I wouldn’t care to let him build a house for me,’ said Colin. ‘But a crooked little builder isn’t what I’m after. I’m looking for a man who is dedicated. And as regards your murder case, you’ve got the wrong kind of murder. Now if Bland was to feed his wife arsenic or push her into the Aegean in order to inherit her money and marry a slap-up blonde-’

‘We’ll see about that when it happens,’ said Inspector Hardcastle. ‘In the meantime we’ve got to get on withthis murder.’

At No. 62, Wilbraham Crescent, Mrs Ramsay was saying to herself encouragingly, ‘Only two days now. Only two days.’

She pushed back some dank hair from her forehead. An almighty crash came from the kitchen. Mrs Ramsay felt very disinclined even to go and see what the crash portended. If only she could pretend that therehadn’t been a crash. Oh well-only two days. She stepped across the hall, flung the kitchen door open and said in a voice of far less belligerence than it would have held three weeks ago:

‘Nowwhat have you done?’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ said her son Bill. ‘We were just having a bit of a bowling match with these tins and somehow or other they rolled into the bottom of the china cupboard.’

‘We didn’t mean them to go into the bottom of the china cupboard,’ said his younger brother Ted agreeably.

‘Well, pick up those things and put them back in the cupboard and sweep up that broken china and put it in the bin.’

‘Oh, Mum, notnow.’

‘Yes, now.’

‘Ted can do it,’ said Bill.

‘I like that,’ said Ted. ‘Always putting on me. I won’t do it if you won’t.’

‘Bet you will.’

‘Bet I won’t.’

‘I’ll make you.’

‘Yahh!’

The boys closed in a fierce wrestling match. Ted was forced back against the kitchen table and a bowl of eggs rocked ominously.

‘Oh, get out of the kitchen!’ cried Mrs Ramsay. She pushed the two boys out of the kitchen door and shut it, and began to pick up tins and sweep up china.

‘Two days,’ she thought, ‘and they’ll be back at school! What a lovely, what a heavenly thought for a mother.’

She remembered vaguely some wicked remark by a woman columnist.

Only six happy days in the year for a woman. 

The first and the last days of the holidays. How true that was, thought Mrs Ramsay, sweeping up portions of her best dinner-service. With what pleasure, what joy, had she contemplated the return of her offspring a bare five weeks before! And now? ‘The day after tomorrow,’ she repeated to herself, ‘the day after tomorrow Bill and Ted will be back at school. I can hardly believe it. I can’t wait!’

How heavenly it had been five weeks ago when she met them at the station. Their tempestuous and affectionate welcome! The way they had rushed all over the house and garden. A special cake baked for tea. And now-what was she looking forward to now? A day of complete peace. No enormous meals to prepare, no incessant clearing up. She loved the boys-they were fine boys, no doubt of that. She was proud of them. But they were also exhausting. Their appetite, their vitality, thenoise they made.

At that moment, raucous cries arose. She turned her head in sharp alarm. It was all right. They had only gone out in the garden. That was better, there was far more room for them in the garden. They would probably annoy the neighbours. She hoped to goodness they would leave Mrs Hemming’s cats alone. Not, it must be confessed, for the sake of the cats, but because the wired enclosure surrounding Mrs Hemming’s garden was apt to tear their shorts. She cast a fleeting eye over the first-aid box which lay handy on the dresser. Not that she fussed unduly over the natural accidents of vigorous boyhood. In fact her first inevitable remark was: ‘Now haven’t I told you a hundred times, you arenot to bleed in the drawing-room! Come straight into the kitchen and bleed there, where I can wipe over the linoleum.’

A terrific yell from outside seemed to be cut off mid-way and was followed by a silence so profound that Mrs Ramsay felt a real feeling of alarm spring up in her breast. Really, that silence was most unnatural. She stood uncertainly, the dust-pan with broken china in her hand. The kitchen door opened and Bill stood there. He had an awed, ecstatic expression most unusual on his eleven-year-old face.

‘Mum,’ he said. ‘There’s a detective inspector here and another man with him.’