RUBY BANGED HER knee on the corner of a Canterbury magazine rack though, strangely, it did not move.
Blimmitation! That hurt.
Poynder interlocked his strong fingers.
The hands of a strangler, Ruby commented unhelpfully as she rubbed her knee.
‘And what did Edwina have to say about that unfortunate child?’ he enquired lazily.
He killed the boy, Ruby realised annoyingly because I wanted to reveal that theory to her.
‘I think you can guess.’ That was exactly what I was going to do, and I was playing for time to wind up the clockwork of my imagination.
‘I fear I cannot,’ he assured me smoothly.
Here goes, I thought and pulled a lever to set the cogs in motion.
‘Edwina was not unreceptive to your advances,’ I began and saw an eyebrow twitch.
Clearly that was not the impression that she had given him.
‘Then the girl was a fantasist,’ he told me, ‘for there were no advances to which she could respond.’
Deciding against a were/were not argument, I ploughed on. ‘Though she feigned reluctance.’
Poynder took an interest in his fingerplates and so I did. They were not as well manicured as they had been when I first met him, but were chewed so far back as to expose the flesh underneath. That, I conjectured, might make intricate tasks problematic. It would be difficult, for example, to pick up a needle.
Not that you have ever tried, Ruby mocked, for she knew that I was hopeless at that kind of thing. The tester I had begun as a kneeler cover when I was eight years old still lay in a drawer at Thetbury Hall with its inspirational message The Lod is my Shep embroidered upon it.
‘And what does any of this have to do with the Peers boy?’
‘He saw you together,’ I announced, and he blinked lazily.
‘Where?’
I could only have one guess at that and so I kept my answer vague.
‘In the basement.’
Poynder scrutinised his palms and I wondered if he had a long lifeline. I knew that I did not.
‘And he told you that in a séance, I suppose,’ he mocked.
‘He told his mother and,’ I added hastily in case he saw fit to silence Mrs Peers, ‘his uncle and aunt and two cousins.’
And Uncle Tom Cobbly and all, Ruby ridiculed my claim.
‘Quite an audience then,’ Poynder snorted.
‘Mungo was worried that you might both think he would cause a scandal,’ I continued, ‘and so he returned to reassure Edwina that he would be discreet, for he was a good-natured child.’
The doctor watched me coolly, fingertips touching again.
‘His mother believed that he was killed before he got here, but he found you both together again,’ I conjectured and was treated to a twisted smile.
‘Did he tell you this through a medium or did he rap on a table?’ he asked, quite reasonably, for we both knew that my claim was mere conjecture.
‘Either you thought that he could not be trusted or misinterpreted his words to mean that he had come to blackmail you,’ I postulated, ‘and so you took a knife and stabbed him.’
‘This is absurd.’ Poynder managed a chuckle but not to make it convincing.
I ploughed on. ‘Mungo, however, managed to run away. You followed, knife in hand, into the square and almost ran into Jacob Kaufman, the salt-block seller.’ I paused.
Go on, Hefty urged.
‘This presented you with something of a dilemma to put it mildly,’ I went on. ‘You could not kill him on the street while there were people in the gardens, but how could you explain being seen covered in blood, knife in hand, running after a dying boy?’
‘How indeed?’ he enquired. ‘I would appear to have been caught literally red-handed.’
‘I loathe you, Dr Poynder,’ I told him and he looked affronted.
My accusations of philandering and murder might be water off a doctor’s back, but to tell him that we were not going to be friends really hurt his feelings.
‘But,’ I continued, ‘I have to admire your cool-headedness. Somebody else, you decided, must have committed the crime, but there was nobody else around and so you invented the tale of a maniac who had killed your dog…’
‘Poor Sheba,’ he sighed with patent regret at his creature’s fate.
‘To explain why you and your kitchen were covered in blood,’ I postulated, my confidence building up steam. ‘This elusive lunatic – you would have us believe – having stabbed Mungo on the street, went in search of more victims only to find himself confronted by your pet.’
‘What an extraordinary tale,’ Poynder scoffed.
‘Almost as extraordinary as your claim that he threw away the knife he could have used to fend you off or even kill you when you went to investigate, thereby giving you the opportunity to pick it up and possibly use against him.’
Are you quite sure that sentence was long enough? Ruby asked as I replenished the air in my lungs.
‘He probably dropped the knife in panic,’ Poynder countered, an idea so preposterous that I did not trouble to refute it.
‘I thought at first that you acted kindly in speaking up for Kaufman,’ I said, ‘but then I realised that, if you had had to go in the witness box, your account might have met with more scrutiny than it would bear.’
Time for another refill, my alveoli clamoured.
‘Whereas your account bears no scrutiny whatsoever,’ he pointed out with considerable justification, but I had set my course and must sail it because I had gone too far to merely apologise and make a polite exit.
‘There is more,’ I assured him.
Is there? Ruby asked in surprise, for I could always rely on her to set my mind at unease.