by Joyce Porter
Dover reached for his bowler hat.
‘My dear Inspector, must you leave so soon? I was hoping you and your charming assistant would stay for lunch. I’ve got another bottle of whisky cooling in the fridge.’
‘I’m afraid we’ve got to get on, sir,’ said Dover with a dead-pan face.
‘Well, then, I can only wish you success in your work-I believe that is the right phrase. You must forgive me if I do not take your researches too seriously. I have seen five hundred people killed in a day and, after that, what does one Juliet Rugg more or less in the world matter?’
‘She matters in this country, sir,’ said Dover stiffly.
Bogolepov smiled charmingly and shook his head. ‘Ah, you English! We poor foreigners will never understand, will we?’
‘Apparently not, sir,’ said Dover.
Chapter Seven
‘’STREWTH!’ said Dover when they got outside. ‘Well, if I was his American cousin I’d get him certified pretty damned quick! Remind me to warn the Chief Constable to keep an eye on him.’
‘Do you think he was telling the truth, sir?’ asked MacGregor.
‘God only knows!’ replied Dover, shaking his head in despair. ‘I’ve heard enough bloody twaddle in the last thirty-six hours to do me for a lifetime. Anyhow, he’s right about one thing, if you’re a dipso and a junky, you aren’t likely to be chasing women as well-that’s for sure. Apart from the fact that his inclinations seem to lie in another direction.’
Sergeant MacGregor looked disappointed. ‘Do you think it’s a sex crime then, sir?’
‘Well, I’m damned if I can see what else it can be, can you? From what everybody says the only thing that girl had was sex.’
‘Then, we’re looking for a man?’
Dover wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. ‘I dunno we can go as far as that. Might be a woman. Jealousy, you know. And then there’s this blackmail business. That might be mixed up in it somewhere. But I’m not really bothered about who did it at the moment. I’d just like to know where the flaming body is! We still haven’t got a single line on that at all. I don’t understand it, you can’t just sweep a girl that size under the carpet, dead or alive. She must be somewhere, blast her!’
‘What are we going to do now, sir?’
Dover looked at Sergeant MacGregor in blank astonishment.
‘We’re going to go and see this Chubb-Smith fellow and his wife. What did you think we were going to do – go to Brighton for the week-end? You’ll never make a successful detective, Sergeant, if you can’t sort your priorities out. Once you get yourself bogged down under a lot of useless information, you’ll never be able to see the wood for the trees. Get yourself a working hypothesis, soon as you can, work out a plan and stick to it! It’s no good going round with an open mind like a vacuum cleaner because all you’ll finish up with is ’ Dover paused to work this one out ‘ . . . is fluff!’ he concluded triumphantly.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant MacGregor, poker-faced.
Michael Chubb-Smith was understandably embarrassed when he showed the two detectives into the drawing-room.
‘I’m afraid,’ he apologized, snatching up a couple of dusters and tucking an apron behind a cushion, ‘that the place is a bit upset.’ He trundled a carpet-sweeper rapidly out of the room. ‘I was just giving my wife a hand with the housework.’
Dover sniffed. ‘Very commendable,’ he said with a marked lack of approval. He held very strong views about husbands undertaking domestic chores and in his own house things were arranged differently. Michael Chubb-Smith hurriedly pulled the furniture back into its proper place.
‘I suppose your mother has told you about the conversation she had with me yesterday, sir?’
‘Well, yes, she has.’ Michael Chubb-Smith smiled hopefully. ‘I do hope there’ll be no need to mention all this little business to my wife, Inspector? It would only upset her and really the whole thing’s just a lot of fuss about nothing.’
‘Oh? You didn’t take Miss Rugg’s threats of exposure seriously, then?’
‘Well, in a way. She was quite capable of letting the cat out of the bag to Maxine all right. She was a spiteful little bitch in many ways, you know. What I meant was that my mother would have kept her mouth shut when it came to the point. She always makes a hell of a fuss about money, but she’d have paid up in the end. She always does.. We shall probably be moving from here soon, my wife and I. I shall be going in with my father-in-law; we may even be going abroad. Once we were out of the way Juliet would be stumped and she’d have to let it all drop. She wouldn’t have enough energy or intelligence to go on making threats long distance.’
‘You weren’t expecting to be blackmailed for the rest of your life, then?’
‘Good heavens, no, Inspector!’ Michael Chubb-Smith regarded his questioner with wide-eyed surprise. ‘She was only a village girl, you know. She just saw her chance of making a spot of extra cash and took it, that’s all. It was only a matter of a few measly quid. There was nothing sinister about it.’
‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘By the way, sir, can you tell me where you were round about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night?’
‘Oh, Maxine and I were both in bed. We didn’t see or hear anything.’
‘You and your wife share the same room, I take it?’
‘When I let him!’ came a drawling voice from the open doorway.
The three men turned round and MacGregor and Michael Chubb-Smith rose with alacrity to their feet. Dover contented himself with a vague grunt and a half-hearted attempt at rising a couple of inches from his chair.
‘This is my wife,’ said Michael Chubb-Smith. ‘Darling, these are the detectives from Scotland Yard.’
‘I can see that, darling, I’m not blind.’ Maxine Chubb-Smith, the cynosure of three pairs of interested masculine eyes, undulated across the room and propped herself on one arm in a reclining position on a chaise-longue upholstered in white leather.
She was a small, exquisitely shaped girl with large dark eyes which she directed with frank curiosity at Sergeant MacGregor. He gazed appreciatively back at her. In skin-tight scarlet matador pants and an extremely revealing, close-fitting black blouse, she was well worth the sergeant’s contemplation.
‘I was just telling Inspector Dover, darling, that we were in bed on Tuesday night at eleven. You remember, that was when Colonel Bing saw this girl walking up the drive.’
Maxine turned her head slowly and looked at him. ‘What a bloody liar you are, darling,’ she said in a bored, languid voice. ‘You know damned well I’d locked you out of the bedroom! For all I know you may have been out murdering this fat girl for hours.’ She turned back to smile bewitchingly at Sergeant MacGregor.
Michael Chubb-Smith blushed furiously and avoided Dover’s eyes.
‘Is this true, sir?’ asked the chief inspector in pained surprise.
‘I suppose so,’ muttered the young man.
‘I hope you realize, sir, that giving false information to the police is a very serious offence.’
‘Oh hell, what does it matter?’ Chubb-Smith shot an irate look at his wife who was now eyeing Sergeant MacGregor up and down with patent admiration. ‘Maxine and I had a bit of an argument. It’s nothing to do with anybody else.’
‘It wasn’t an argument, darling, it was an ultimatum,’ corrected his wife, not bothering to look at him.
‘Well, anyhow, it’s nothing to do with the police. And it makes no difference, Inspector, neither of us saw or heard anything which could be of the slightest help to you.’
‘You speak for yourself, darling’ – Maxine smiled sweetly at Sergeant MacGregor – ‘I saw something which might very well interest these gentlemen.’
‘Did you indeed, madam.’ Dover turned towards her. ‘Sergeant!’ he snapped. ‘I thought you were supposed to be taking notes!’
‘Oh, sorry, sir!’ Sergeant MacGregor flicked the pages over with a belated show of efficiency.
‘Sergeant?’ Maxine was d
isappointed. ‘Does that mean you’re not commissioned?’
‘Detective Sergeant MacGregor’s in the police, madam,’ retorted Dover on his subordinate’s behalf, ‘not the army. We work on an entirely different system.’
‘Oh,’ said Maxine, not really sure whether this did or did not make Charles Edward MacGregor more or less of an ‘other rank’ than she had thought.
‘Mrs Chubb-Smith!’ thundered Dover in an only partially successful attempt to win her attention. ‘Would you mind telling us what it was you saw on Tuesday night?’
Maxine looked without much interest at the chief inspector, whose temper was beginning to fray. ‘Well, I don’t know about that, darling,’ she said. ‘Daddy always warned me never to talk to the police without a solicitor. He always says that if people would only have enough sense to keep their mouths shut, they’d never be where they are today.’
Dover’s fists clenched and a rather frightening purple tinge spread inexorably over his face and neck. Maxine’s husband intervened before the inspector reached his never very high flash-point.
‘For God’s sake, Maxine,’ he pleaded, ‘tell them what you know and let’s get rid of them. They’ll be here for the rest of the day if you don’t. Your father wasn’t talking about this kind of thing.’
‘All right, darling,’ said his wife after staring at him with critical calculation for a few moments, ‘if you say so. I’m sure you’ve had more experience of these things than Daddy has. But just don’t blame me if things go wrong. I’m only telling them because you told me to.’
‘Telling us what, madam?’ demanded Dover through clenched teeth,
‘Only that I saw Eulalia Hoppold going to Boris’s bungalow at about ten o’clock on Tuesday night. She went along the bottom of our garden, at the back. Of course, she always does. She thinks people won’t see her that way.’
There was a moment’s silent anticlimax and Dover’s eyes rose heavenwards.
‘I see,’ he said with heavy patience. ‘You saw Miss Hoppold going to Mr Bogolepov’s house at ten o’clock on Tuesday night?’
‘Going secretly,’ Maxine pointed out.
‘But that’s all?’
‘That’s all I saw on Tuesday night,’ Maxine agreed amiably.
‘But you did see something else, later perhaps?’
Maxine rolled over on to her back, placed her arms behind her head and crossed one scarlet-cased leg over the other. She looked even better from this angle.
‘Yes, I did see something later. I saw Eulalia Hoppold coming back again from Boris’s, by the same route, at six o’clock on Wednesday morning.’
‘Oh, really, Maxine, don’t be childish! This isn’t a game! She’s just making it up, Inspector.’
‘Really, sir,’ said Dover, ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because she’s jealous, that’s what! She’s been making a play for Boris for months and he’s just not having any. He’s made that perfectly plain. Maxine just can’t accept the fact that he prefers Eulalia’s company to hers. She’s making the whole thing up out of spite!’
‘Oh, am I ?’ Maxine swung round on him, her eyes blazing with anger, ‘You’re such a damned fool that you can’t see what’s going on in front of your eyes! And how dare you say that I’m lying?’
‘Because you’ve never got up at six o’clock in your entire bloody life, that’s why! And our bedroom’s at the front, so you couldn’t possibly have seen Eulalia!’
Maxine replied with ice-cold dignity. ‘I got up to go to die bathroom,’ she stated, ‘and the bathroom is at the back of the house.’
Michael Chubb-Smith got up angrily and poured himself out a drink.
‘Are you implying, madam,’ asked Dover, ‘that Miss Hoppold and Mr Bogolepov spent the night together?’
‘Of course they did! It’s absolutely disgusting. She must be more than twice his age. And they’d had a fine old time, too. She was so exhausted she could hardly walk-filthy old cow-she looked as though she’d been pulled through a hedge backwards. And those great staring eyes! Ugh, it’s enough to make you sick.’
‘I see,’ said Dover, who didn’t by any means.
Half an hour later he was pounding wearily up the path to Boris Bogolepov’s front door once again. Neither Maxine Chubb- Smith nor her husband had been able to throw any more light on the disappearance of Juliet Rugg. Maxine knew of the girl’s existence, but was frankly surprised that Dover should even have expected her to have had any further connection with her. Dover toyed with the idea of giving Michael Chubb-Smith a really good grilling, and leaving him to sort out the consequences afterwards with his wife, but, masculine solidarity in these matters being what it is, he nobly restrained himself.
In any case the chief inspector felt he had got enough bits and pieces of useless information without going out of his way to collect any more. Michael Chubb-Smith would keep. No doubt the whole perishing lot of the Irlam Old Hall tenants would keep too, but Dover was only too well aware of the consequences of appearing to do nothing. Nasty, unsympathetic messages came shooting down from his superiors, and unkind remarks were made and old skeletons were taken out of dusty cupboards and rattled menacingly. But as long as Dover kept on interviewing people, however pointless and confusing it all was, nice full reports could be written (by Sergeant MacGregor) and everybody was kept more or less happy. Dover was, to put the matter bluntly, just filling in time until the body was found. As far as he could see, the only hope of solving Juliet Rugg’s disappearance lay in the clues which the discovery of her corpse would no doubt reveal. Everything was in such a glorious muddle that, unless a miracle of forensic medicine came to his aid, Dover was quite prepared to leave the whole damned case unsolved and get back to London as quickly as he could. For the moment, however, he would just have to plod doggedly on.
Boris Bogolepov was clearly not pleased to see him. The feeling was reciprocated.
As soon as the front door was opened Dover shoved his way in uninvited and thumped down the hall into the kitchen. He was not surprised to find Miss Eulalia Hoppold there. She closed the lid of the deep freeze into which she had been peering and smiled politely at the chief inspector.
‘Hullo, are you back again? I thought you’d finished with Boris. I was just looking around to see if the poor devil’s got anything for lunch.’ She grinned ruefully. ‘Apparently he hasn’t The cupboard’s bare.’ She turned to Bogolepov who was still dressed in his pyjama jacket. ‘Next time you invite me to lunch, my lad, just think on to get some food in, will you? I’ll pop across to my place and bring something back with me.’
‘You’ll stay here,’ said Dover firmly. ‘I’ve a few questions I want to put to the pair of you.’ He sat down at the kitchen table.
His two victims exchanged glances and then stared doubtfully at the chief inspector as he worked himself up into quite a passable state of righteous indignation about the iniquity of lying to the police. It was a subject about which he felt quite strongly. Lies meant more work for poor old Wilfred Dover who was already carrying more than his fair share of the burden.
‘Now,’ he snarled, having exhausted both himself and the theme, ‘let’s have the bloody truth this time! You’ – he waggled a fat, admonitory finger at Boris – ‘you told me that you spent Tuesday night here alone. And you’ – the finger waved at Eulalia – ‘you told me that you were alone in your house.’
There was a dramatice pause.
‘So what?’ said Boris, and shrugged his shoulders. The pyjama jacket rose alarmingly. Luckily Miss Hoppold’s eyes were riveted on Dover’s pouting countenance. She stared intently at the chief inspector with the air of one well versed in assessing the potential of animals of uncertain temper.
‘It’s no good, Boris,’ she said with decision. ‘We might as well come clean. Who told you?’ she asked Dover, still not moving her eyes from his in case he decided to spring.
Dover wrinkled his nose. ‘I am not at liberty to reveal my sources of information,�
�� he proclaimed pompously.
Eulalia snorted contemptuously and bared her gleaming white teeth in a humourless grin. ‘Such chivalry can only mean dear Maxine. Blast her eyes! Well, what do you want to know?’
‘Just the truth,’ said Dover.
‘By God !’ Boris flung himself on to a chair in disgust. ‘Just the truth, that is all he wants! “ ‘What is truth?’ asked jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.” ’
‘Oh shut up, Boris! There’s a good chap! All right, Inspector, Boris and I weren’t alone in our respective houses on Tuesday night. We were here, together.’
‘All night?’
‘AH night.’
‘Doing what?’
‘My dear Inspector’ – Eulalia’s tone bore little affection – ‘surely we don’t have to draw diagrams for you, do we? What in heaven’s name do you think we were doing?’
Dover was unperturbed. ‘Am I to take it that you were sleeping together, madam?’
‘Oh my God!’ said Boris sarcastically. ‘Let us call a spade a spade! We were copulating.’
‘ReaUy, sir.’ Dover turned to Boris who was pouring himself out another tumblerful of whisky. ‘That isn’t quite the story you gave me at our first interview, is it?’
Boris gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘No, I am afraid I led you softly up the garden path, my dear sir, but you must admit I did it rather well.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’ snapped Dover viciously. Boris looked steadily at him, his lips twitching into a faint smile. ‘Chivalry, my dear sir,’ he said grandly. ‘I was protecting the good name of a lady.’
Dover emitted a sceptical grunt and swung back again to Eulalia who was still avidly watching him. ‘And you, Miss Hoppold, why did you lie to me?’
‘Well, it’s not the sort of thing you shout from the house-tops, you know.’
‘A confidential interview with the police is hardly shouting from the house-tops.’
‘Well, I just didn’t want anybody to know about Boris and me. You see, I’m married, Inspector. My readers don’t know this because naturally it makes a better story if they think I do all my trips alone – you know, one helpless female surrounded by naked savages-but in actual fact my husband and I have always worked together. He takes all the photographs.
