by Joyce Porter
‘Come along, you chaps!’ she rallied them. ‘Squat yourselves down and take a load off your minds!’
Dover, lumbering clumsily across the threshold of the sitting- room, stumbled slightly as he caught his foot in a small rug. He lurched forward, his hand automatically stretched out to help regain his balance, just as Colonel Bing bent down to release the poodle. Dover saw the straining expanse of Hunting Stewart, but not in time.
Colonel Bing straightened up smartly and cut through the chief inspector’s muttered apologies.
‘Just watch it, old chap!’ she warned him grimly. ‘Just watch it!’
Dover backed nervously away as far as he could, which was not more than three inches, and collapsed heavily into a chair. Colonel Bing, keeping a wary eye on Dover in case his bestial instincts got the better of him again, sat down too, and this left just enough room for Sergeant MacGregor to squeeze in. With his knees almost touching those of Colonel Bing, he managed to drag out his notebook and pencil and waited, hardly daring to breathe, for the revelations to begin.
‘Right,’ said Colonel Bing, ‘everybody settled? Well, I’ll kick off, shall I? Now, as I understand it, this is as far as you chaps have got: you know Juliet Rugg left the Counters’ house after lunch on Tuesday and then went down to the village to see her mother. Right? And then you know she caught the three-fifteen bus into Creedon. Right? But after that it’s a complete blank.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ objected Dover in a half-hearted attempt to regain control of the situation, ‘we’ve barely started our investigations.’
‘My source of intelligence’ – Colonel Bing crushed him without mercy – ‘is Police Constable Robson, on whose report your briefing was based this morning. The police, so far, have not traced that girl’s movements after the bus dropped her in Creedon.’
Colonel Bing’s emphatic statement of the facts brooked no argument, and Dover didn’t attempt any.
‘AH right,’ he said sulkily, ‘I suppose you saw her later than that?’
‘Indeed I did! Very much later! I saw her just before eleven o’clock on the Tuesday night!’
Dover sat up slightly. ‘You did, did you? Where was this?’
‘I’m telling this in my own way,’ said Colonel Bing flatly. She nodded to Sergeant MacGregor. ‘You take this down, young man, and stop me if I go too fast for you. Right?
‘Well, Georgie, that’s Miss McLintock – m, small c, capital l, t, n, t, o, c,k- got it? – Georgie and I went across on Tuesday evening to play bridge with the Freels – f, r, e, e, l, s. They’re a brother and sister, Amy and Basil – you can spell those all right, can you? -a brother and sister who live in the first house next to the lodge opposite. We arrived at about half-past seven and got back here at a quarter to, or maybe ten to eleven. Now, I’d had to leave the hell-hound here by himself because the Freels have got a cat, and naturally the poor brute wanted a breath of fresh air and a walk round the garden before heading for the pit. Georgie went in to make the cocoa and I stood outside with Peregrine, that’s the dog, while he had a sniff around. He’s rather a highly-strung beast and he doesn’t like being out by himself after dark.
‘Well, while we were both outside there in the garden, a car drew up at the entrance gates. They’re closed at nights, you know, because we’ve had a lot of trouble with courting couples driving in to do their snogging off the main road – damned disgusting but you know what they’re like these days. Well, naturally, having nothing else to look at, really, I moved across to the hedge and had a squint at the car. After a minute or two the passenger door opened and this girl, Juliet Rugg, got out, I expect you’ve had a description of her so you’ll know she was a pretty unmistakable figure. Disgustingly overweight for a girl of her age, but far too lazy and stupid to do anything about it! Anyhow, I could see quite clearly because the car had stopped directly under the lamp. She was giggling, as usual, and exchanged a bit of repartee, which I didn’t catch, thank God, with whoever was driving the car.
‘Then she went through the small gate in the big gates, which is always unlocked, and started walking up the drive in the direction of the Counters’ house.
‘Well, by now Peregrine had done what he was supposed to do and wanted to go back inside – hates the cold, that dog – so in we went. Just as I was closing the door I heard the car drive off down the road towards Earlam. So, you see, as late as about five to eleven on Tuesday night that girl was safe and sound, walking up the drive to get home.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover thoughtfully.
‘Useful bit of information, eh?’ demanded the colonel.
‘Hm,’ said Dover non-committally. ‘Did you notice anybody else about at that time?’
‘No, place was as quiet the grave.’
‘You didn’t get any glimpse of whoever was driving the car, Miss Bing?’
‘Don’t you call me “Miss”!’ she snapped belligerently. ‘You expect to be called “Chief Inspector”, don’t you? Well, I expect to be addressed as “Colonel” ! I did twenty-two years in the army and I’m entitled to be called by my rank, same as any other retired officer.’
Dover yielded happily to the ignoble temptation. ‘Which army was that?’ he asked politely. ‘The Salvation?’
Colonel Bing’s eyes bulged ominously for a moment, but then she let rip a guffaw of hearty laughter which made Sergeant MacGregor wince. She leaned across and slapped Dover playfully on the knee, leaving a bruise which lingered on long after the case was closed.
‘You naughty old devil!’ she howled, wiping away the tears of mirth with the back of a large, capable-looking hand. ‘It’s a damned good thing for you I’ve got a sense of humour!’ She turned to Sergeant MacGregor. ‘Does he always go on like this?’ she demanded. ‘He must be a riot to work with !’
Sergeant MacGregor gave one of his bleak little smiles and primly turned over the page of his notebook.
Dover repeated his original question, rather disappointed that she had taken his unkind and catty remark so well.
‘Did you see the driver of the car?’
‘No, not a glimpse.’
‘You don’t know if it was a man or a woman ?’
‘Knowing Juliet Rugg, I should say it was bloody well beyond the bounds of any probability that she was driving around late at night with a woman. That girl was man-mad, if you ask me!’
Dover lapsed into a moody silence. It looked impressive – the Great Detective mulling over his case – but all it meant was that he had run out of questions. Sergeant MacGregor decided to take it upon himself to ask the obvious one.
‘You didn’t by any chance, madam, get the number of the car, or its make or colour, or anything?’
Colonel Bing smirked triumphantly. ‘Indeed I did!’ she said happily. ‘It was a blue and cream 1957 Hillman Minx saloon, registration number UGK 823.’
Sergeant MacGregor looked up in surprise.
‘Thought that’d shake you, young man!’ she laughed happily. ‘However, I’m not an old Fanny for nothing, you know!’ Sergeant MacGregor gulped and tried, unsuccessfully, to stop the grin cracking across his face.
Colonel Bing was not amused, ‘That stands for First Aid and Nursing Yeomanry!’ she sniffed crossly. ‘We formed the nucleus of motor transport in the A.T.S. at the beginning of the war.’ She swung back to Dover. ‘Well, is there anything else you want to know?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Dover, jumping nervously as the poodle shot out from under his chair and rushed yelping hysterically out of the room.
Colonel Bing consulted her watch, a sensible man’s model which she wore with the face on the inside of her wrist. ‘That’ll be Georgie!’ she announced.
The poodle tore back into the room and leapt, panting with excitement, on to Dover’s knees. For a second they glared balefully into each other’s eyes, their noses not more than a couple of inches apart.
‘Here!’ said Dover, startled not only by the dog’s sudden appearance but by the undisguis
ed contempt which he read in its shrewd, calculating eyes. ‘Get off!’ He pushed it. Peregrine bit his hand. Dover screamed in anguish and the poodle looked smugly at his mistress.
‘Naughty Peregrine,’ she said without much interest.
‘That blasted dog’s bitten me!’ howled Dover, waving a hand decorated with Peregrine’s teeth-marks in the air,
‘Rubbish!’ said Colonel Bing. ‘It was only a nip and, anyhow, it is his chair.’
At that moment Miss McLintock appeared. Sergeant MacGregor rose politely half-way from his chair but found that further movement would land him in Colonel Bing’s lap, so he flopped back again. Dover now had the poodle firmly and growhngly ensconced on his knees and acknowledged his introduction to Miss McLintock by a curt and restrained nod.
Miss McLintock beamed at him. ‘Ah, I can see you’re a dog lover, too!’ she cooed. ‘Dear little Peregrine can always tell, can’t you, darling? I think dogs have an instinct about these things, don’t you?’
Dover raised his eyes to heaven.
‘Get everything, Georgie?’ demanded Colonel Bing.
‘Yes, I think so, dear,’ Miss McLintock answered placidly. She looked several years older than the colonel and had a pale, vague face with kindly, faded blue eyes. Her hair was almost white and crammed untidily into a hair-net. ‘I managed to get the new Ian Fleming at the library. You know, the one the Sunday paper critic called “a sadistic wallowing in pain and sex”. Are you a James Bond fan, Inspector?’
‘No, I’m not!’ snarled Dover, who hadn’t read a book right through for twenty years. He made a tentative move to get to his feet. Peregrine turned to look at him and bared his teeth.
Colonel Bing playfully wagged a reproving finger and continued her interrogation.
‘Did you get the stamps, Georgie?’
‘Yes, dear.’
‘And posted Tommy’s parcel?’
‘Yes, dear. The girl was most unpleasant about it. She didn’t want to register it because it rattled. I told her it was only that tube of toothpaste in its box but she started saying it was against the regulations or something. I was getting really flustered. I knew the parcel had to go off today and I knew you wanted it registered and I was trying to work out if I’d time to bring it back and repack it and there was a queue and everybody was fidgeting about and that young man, Boris What’s-his-name, was waiting just behind me – oh, it was so embarrassing!’
‘But you got it posted in the end, I trust?’
‘Oh yes, dear.’
‘And registered?’
‘And registered, dear.’
‘And what was this Boris man doing in the post office?’
‘He was posting a parcel too, dear. Poor young man, I felt so sorry for him. He looks so thin and haggard.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ snorted Colonel Bing. ‘He looks dissipated, that’s what he looks!’ She turned to Dover. ‘If it does turn out that somebody’s done away with Juliet Rugg, you want to put this chap at the top of your list, Inspector! He’d murder his own grandmother, soon as look at her!’
‘Oh, Bingo!’ protested Miss McLintock.
‘Don’t be a fool, Georgie!’ snapped the colonel. ‘His sort want booting back where they came from. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t a Communist spy or something.’ She addressed Dover again. ‘I’ll tell you something very odd about him,’ she said, reducing her voice to a deafening conspiratorial whisper. ‘Georgie here, she’s a schoolteacher. Taught French and German in a girls’ high school for thirty-eight years. All right, what happens? This Bogolepov fellow’s supposed to be a German. Well, Georgie’s a soft-hearted old idiot and one day she thinks she’ll make him feel at home and have a bit of a chat with him, in German. And what happens?’ Colonel Bing leaned forward to drive the point home. ‘Not only does he not understand a bloody word she says, but she couldn’t understand a bloody word he said either! Now, what do you make of that, eh?’
Miss McLintock gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, it wasn’t as bad as that, Bingo!’ she protested.
‘Rubbish!’ retorted Colonel Bing, ‘if the fellow’s a German, he ought to know the lingo! I’ve been out there, Georgie, you haven’t.’ She nodded curtly at Sergeant MacGregor’s notebook. ‘You’d better take his name down, young man. Boris Bogolepov – b, o, g, o, l, e, p, o, v – got it? He lives in the top house on this side, well, it’s a bungalow really, not a house. He’s some sort of refugee, you know, or so he says, God alone knows why they always finish up in this country!’
‘But, Bingo, the poor boy suffered terribly during the war. He was in a concentration camp! ’
‘So he says!’ repeated Colonel Bing darkly. ‘That’s what they all say! And whatever he may or may not have done during the war, I know what he’s doing now. Damn all! He’s been here, what? Two years? And never done a day’s work since he came. Where does he get his money from, that’s what I’d like to know!’
‘Well, I think he’s a very nice kind boy,’ retorted Miss McLintock firmly.
‘Kind!’ exploded the colonel. ‘You’re getting senile, Georgie!’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said her friend huffily, ‘but I happened to notice in the post office that he was sending quite a large parcel to one of those refugee organizations in London. And in my view, that is a kind action.’
‘Pooh!’ scoffed the colonel. ‘Pile of old clothes he didn’t want, I expect!’
Miss McLintock didn’t answer and there was a rather uncomfortable silence. With the quiet assurance of one who knows that she is right and doesn’t need to argue about it, Miss McLintock placidly opened her library book and began carefully turning over the pages one by one. The other three watched her and sought frantically for some new topic of conversation. Miss McLintock with a forgiving smile provided it.
‘Have you offered a glass of sherry to these gentlemen, dear?’ she asked sweetly.
‘Of course not, Georgie!’ Colonel Bing snubbed her friend. ‘You know they’re not allowed to drink on duty!’
Dover glared at her. He’d never been known to refuse a drink, even from the hands of a man he was on the point of arresting for murder. And at the moment he could do with one.
‘For God’s sake, Georgie,’ Colonel Bing spoke with exasperation, ‘stop turning over those blasted pages! You’re really getting quite neurotic about library books. If you must do it, why don’t you do it in the library?’
‘I didn’t have time, dear,’ said Miss McLintock mildly. She smiled cosily at Dover. ‘I have quite a thing about library books,’ she confided with a little giggle. ‘I always look through them very carefully. You’d be surprised at what people use as book-marks! I’ve got quite a little collection of things that I’ve found over the years —bus tickets, an old suspender, half a regimental tie, a hundred-franc note – that was very exciting. I’ve got them all in a box with a label giving the name of the book I found them in and the date. Of course, I don’t keep all the things I find, naturally. Pieces of bacon and things like that I have to throw away. And the pension book, naturally I sent that back. Oh, and the letters, all stamped and addressed, I always pop those in the pillar box for them. But everything else I keep in my little museum.’
Dover sighed. ‘Sounds a very interesting hobby,’ he commented impatiently. ‘But now, Colonel Bing, if you’d just call this dog off, I think it’s time we were on our way.’
‘Peregrine!’ bawled Colonel Bing in a voice which rattled the windows. ‘Get down, sir!’
The poodle regarded her with lazy insolence but, deliberately taking his time about it, eventually jumped down obediently from Dover’s lap.
Colonel Bing accompanied the police officers back to the drive, pausing only to demonstrate that the spot where the car had parked on Tuesday night was clearly visible from her garden. Dover peered grumpily across the bushes and then, with a speed of reaction which was far from typical of him, side-stepped neatly as Peregrine tried to spend a penny on his leg.
Colonel Bing lau
ghed heartily and even Sergeant MacGregor’s face twitched momentarily into a smirk. Chief Inspector Dover had very little sense of humour where his own dignity and importance were concerned. He stumped away snorting furiously down his nose.
‘The Two Fiddlers!’ he snarled viciously to Sergeant MacGregor as he slammed the car door. ‘And check up whether she’s got a licence for that blasted dog!’
Chapter Three
THE village of Earlam lay in a shallow hollow about two miles from Irlam Old Hall. It was a small, rather uninteresting place, containing one or two pleasant-looking houses, the pub in which Dover and MacGregor were quartered, two scruffy multi-purpose shops plastered with advertisements for cigarettes and detergents, and a house which the representative of Lloyds bank visited for one and a half hours each week. Standing back a little from the village proper was the church. Next door to it was a large empty vicarage and nowadays Earlam had to share its vicar with three other neighbouring parishes.
Mrs Rugg, the mother of the missing Juliet, lived in a council house. A small estate of them had been built at the north end of the village and while, architecturally, they were really no worse than the older houses lining the main street, for some unfair reason, they looked it. The raw red brick, the gaudy modernistic paintwork, the unmatured naked-looking gardens added up to a rather unattractive vista. Sergeant MacGregor edged the car carefully along the road which was littered with sheets of dirty old cardboard, battered toy motor-cars, dogs of dubious parentage and children. At the same time he searched among the welter of Balmorals and Sandringhams, Elms and Holly Views for Ingoldis- thorpe which was where, according to his notes, Juliet’s mother lived.
