'Why, of course. I was there when they got them.'
'When who got them?'
`At the fair. Phil and Laura and Uncle Lester and I all went to it. Uncle Lester said it was all silly, and didn't want to go, but, Laura used that sort of pitying way she has and he said, "All right, he'd go. He wouldn't ride on any of the swings or giddy-go-rounds or things, though."
`Phil started ragging Uncle Lester, and Uncle Lester got sort of red in the face, but he didn't say anything and then we got to a shooting-gallery where they have the rifles and things, and Uncle Lester spoke up sort of sharp, but not very loud, and said this was a man's game, and not for children, and did Phil want to try? And Phil did, but he wasn't very good. And then Uncle Lester just picked up a pistol instead of a rifle and shot off a whole row of pipes clear across the gallery so fast you couldn't count them; and then he put down the pistol and walked away without saying anything. So Phil didn't like that… I could see he didn't. And every booth we passed he began challenging Uncle Lester to all kinds of games, and Laura joined in too.’
'But about the dolls, Miss Bitton?' Hadley asked.
`Oh yes. It was Laura who won them; they're a pair. It was at throwing darts, and she was ever so good. And, you got prizes for it, and Laura got the highest prize for her score, and she said, "Look, Philip and Mary," and laughed. Because that's what the dolls have written on them, and, you see, Laura's middle name is Mary. Then Uncle Lester said he wouldn't have her keeping that trash; it was disgraceful-looking and of course I wanted them ever so badly. But Laura said no, she'd give them to Philip if Mary couldn't have them. And Phil did the meanest thing I ever knew, because he made the absurdest bow and said he would keep them.
`All the way back I kept teasing Phil to give them to me; and he made all sorts of ridiculous speeches that didn't mean anything, and looked at Laura, but he wouldn't give them to me. And that's how I remember them, because they remind me of Phil… You see, I even asked Bob to, see if he could get Phil to give them to me; I asked him the next day.. that was ages ago… when I called Bob on the telephone, because I always make him ring me up every day, or else I ring him up.'
She paused, her thin eyebrows raised again as she saw Hadley's face.
`You say,' the chief inspector observed, in a voice he tried to make' casual, `that you talk every day to Mr Dalrye on the telephone?'
Rampole started. He remembered now. Earlier in the evening Hadley had made a wild shot when he was building up a fake case against Laura Bitton in front of her husband. He had said that Dalrye had informed Sheila of Driscoll's proposed visit to the Tower at one o'clock, because Dalrye talked to her on the telephone that morning; and that, therefore anybody in the Bitton house could have known of the one-o'clock engagement. Hadley, thought it was a wild shot, and nothing more. But, Rampole remembered, Lester Bitton had shown no disposition to doubt it.