LITMIR.BIZ

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to astonishment, followed by obvious gratitude that here at last was someone who sympathised.

      “You’re telling me,” she vowed warmly. “Screamed the place down. Said rotten things about me. Yelled for cook to ring for the police, and told the policeman that I’d sold the baby and he was to search me for the money.”

      “Excitable woman,” observed Bony, but Betty Morse was no longer interested in him. The knife flashed, the peaches fell apart and their stones dropped into a pail at her feet. For only a tenth of every second did she look at what her hands were doing as she poured out her story of martyrdom to Alice, who energetically nodded and oh-ed and ah-ed, occasionally inserting a diversionary question and revealing to Bony that she had mastered the art of arriving via the roundabout.

      Thenceforth he was kept in his box to listen and watch with prolonged aversion the gleaming knife attacking the fruit with seemingly ever-increasing speed as Betty Morse became really warmed up. A boy came to empty peaches into her tray. A man came to remove the filled tins and make a note on her pad, and when there should have been a gallon of spilt blood there wasn’t a speck. Bony was forgotten, but was entranced.

      It came out that Mrs Delph’s cook knew more about the Delphs than they could possibly know about each other. The husband managed a very extensive practice. He was working himself to death, and only kept on his feet with the aid of whisky ‘planted’ in the garage. There was no reason to hide booze in the garage as there was plenty of it in the house. He was ‘a nice old thing’, although Bony was aware that Dr Delph was not turned forty. His wife was the daughter of a parson, had married ‘somewhat late in life’. Bony knew she wasn’t more than thirty-five. She was ‘stuck up’, a delicate type, was given to ‘turns’ to get her way with her husband. And, they didn’t sleep together. When she found she was going to have a baby, she sacked the cook four times in the one day, screamed at her husband, and moaned for a week.

      After that, Mrs Delph went on as before, going to cocktail parties and giving them, and to musical do’s where morons played five-fingered exercises on the piano. Although perfectly well, she insisted that Dr Nott call at the house once a week, and when he missed on two occasions she threatened her husband that she would drown herself, as no one cared what became of her.

      In view of the fact that Betty Morse had been employed by Mrs Delph for only ten days, the amount of background information she poured into Alice’s receptive ears was remarkable. Only once did she pause, when Alice adroitly spurred her to renewed efforts. Once Bony interjected, but wasn’t heard.

      Did Mrs Delph really love the baby? Of course she didn’t. She could only love Mrs Delph. Yes, cook fed the baby. Poor little devil! More nights than not cook had the baby’s cot in her own room. But didn’t Mrs Delph have anything to do with the child? Damn little. Only when there were visitors, then she’d wheel the cot into the lounge and ooze the loving mother stuff all over it. And the guests, too.

      And so it went on and on.

      Bony wanted to smoke and was defeated by the large and numerous notices ordering him to forget it. Looking at his watch, he saw it was afternoon tea time, and then felt on the verge of collapse from thirst. He learned that Mrs Delph’s eldest brother was the organist at a city church, that her second brother was being groomed to take over their father’s church when the ‘old bloke’ retired. The third brother was a doctor specialising in ‘psycho something’ down in Melbourne, and the only sister had married a jeweller and at the moment was in a home for inebriates. He learned, too, that Betty Morse had several boy friends, but wasn’t going to marry one of them. Men were essential in any girl’s life. He was hearing about the virtues and vices of these boy friends when he surrendered and retired to the taxi.

      “Are you married?” he asked the driver.

      “No ruddy fear,” replied the man, as though the very idea was an insult. Time was slain.

      “Shall I go in and break it up?” suggested the clairvoyant driver.

      “Better give her five minutes. My cousin may be difficult.”

      The driver sighed. Bony smoked. Ten minutes drifted before Alice appeared at the gate in the tall iron fence. She was looking cool, energised, and when she settled herself on the seat beside Bony she sighed with enormous satisfaction.

      “As a mark of my commendation, Alice, you shall have cream cakes with your tea this afternoon,” Bony told her, and she glanced swiftly at him, to confirm the pleasure she detected in his voice.

      Again in the car after refreshment, Bony said zestfully:

      “We shall now delve into the abduction of the next baby, which took place on November 29th, five weeks after the Delph baby vanished. The name of the parents is Bulford. He is the manager of a bank and they live over the bank chamber. They have been there six years.”

      “How long married?”

      “I don’t know yet. As they have two sons at boarding-school we will assume that the period covers several years.”

      “I was only wondering,” Alice claimed, a little abashed.

      “As I mentioned,” went on Bony, “the Bulfords live over the bank. They have a private entrance to a ground-floor hall. On November 29th the bank closed as usual at three-thirty, and, as often he did, the manager worked in the office until five-thirty.

      “At five-forty-five he had an appointment in the town, and, having locked the rear door to the bank, he went upstairs to wash. He knew his wife had left the building some time previously as he had heard the door of the private entrance being opened and closed, and on reaching the first-floor landing, where stood the baby’s cot, he assumed that his wife had taken the child with her. She had not. Between the time she left the building and he went upstairs to wash, the baby was stolen from its cot on the landing.”

      “No leads?” Alice asked.

      “None. Here we are to see the place for ourselves and to draw our own inferences and conclusions.”

      To reach the bank’s private entrance meant following a lane between the building and a high board fence, and whilst Alice pressed the doorbell, Bony needed to jump to see over the fence the rear part of unoccupied business premises. The doorbell could be heard ringing somewhere on the first floor. Alice, becoming impatient of delay because the lane was a sun trap, was about to ring again when from closer at hand a telephone shrilled.

      A full minute lapsed, when the door was opened by a man in his shirtsleeves, rimless glasses aiding tired hazel eyes having soft brown flecks, and a toothbrush moustache suiting his square face. On Bony announcing their names and business, he explained that his wife was dressing to go out, and that the telephone had delayed him in answering the bell.

      They were invited inside, passing the door to the rear of the bank chamber, and mounting carpeted stairs to be shown into a sitting-room. The manager withdrew to fetch his wife, and Alice began pricing the furniture, beginning with the carpet.

      Mrs Bulford was Alice McGorr’s opposite number: the brow high and narrow, the eyes small and dark, the chin a warning to any man having an ounce of experience. She greeted the callers frostily and, when seated, posed like Queen Victoria giving Gladstone a piece of her mind.

      “It was the most mystifying thing that ever happened, Inspector,” said precise Mr Bulford.

      “Allow me to deal with the matter, John,” objected his wife. “My husband, Inspector, was working in the parlour, the bank being closed for the day. After I left to keep an engagement, there was no one in the building except my husband, and had the child wakened and cried he couldn’t help but hear it.”

      “I heard nothing, not a sound.”

      “Please, John.”

      “Very well.” Bony cut in:

      “The private entrance was locked after you left that afternoon, and the rear door to a small yard at the back was also locked. The only windows left open were those fronting the street, and only by using a ladder could anyone have entered through

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