by Joyce Porter
Miss Kettering smiled down at him. At least he hadn’t treated her like a potential murderess. ‘I really think I ought to go and do a little more work on my correspondence course. What with all the upheavals of the last day or so, I’ve been rather neglecting it.’
MacGregor, whose manners were really beyond reproach, got to his feet. He realized that he had upset Miss Kettering and he tried to make amends. ‘A correspondence course, Miss Kettering?’ he inquired pleasantly. ‘What is it you’re studying?’
‘Witchcraft,’ said Miss Kettering and, knowing she couldn’t better that, made her exit with dignity and style.
MacGregor shrugged his shoulders. You met all sorts in his profession. He sat down again and pulled out his notebook.
Dover’s face relaxed back into a peevish scowl. Couldn’t the blasted young whipper-snapper think about anything else but work? ‘What are you doing?’ he growled.
‘Just making a few notes, sir.’
‘I can see that, idiot! What about?’
With great forbearance MacGregor closed his notebook and prepared to explain the situation as simply as possible. ‘All the inhabitants of this hotel, sir, are suspects.’
‘This collection of old rag-bags? You must be potty!’
‘I agree that most of them don’t look very likely, sir, but – unlike the greater part of the village – they did have the opportunity.’
‘Wadderyermean – unlike the greater part of the village? I thought everybody in this dump from the cat upwards was a starter.’
MacGregor smiled rather smugly. ‘I’m afraid you must have missed what Superintendent Underbarrow was telling us, sir. You see, Chantry’s body was found in what we might call the disaster area proper – where the cliff broke away and the houses were destroyed. It seems reasonable to suppose that he was killed there, too. Well, now,’ – MacGregor leaned forward as he got into his stride – ‘assuming that the murder took place after the earthquake, the number of people who could have reached the scene of the crime is strictly limited.’
‘Why?’
‘The only means of access were blocked, sir. West Street had that great crevice across it, the one we came over, and East Street was barred by the collapse of the church steeple. That means that most people in the village couldn’t get to the disaster area for some considerable time. By when, of course. Chantry was dead. We can rule out any outsider being involved because, as you know, the main road was blocked, too. On the face of it, it looks as though the murderer must have come from this part of the village. That is, sir, from the area nearest to the disaster area and on this side of the two obstacles cutting off. . .’
‘Sounds a bit thin to me,’ said Dover sourly.
‘Well, we shall have to check, sir, but it looks a reasonable working hypothesis, I think.’
Dover lapsed into a moody contemplation of the fire. This investigation had got the mockers on it from the start, any moron could see that. He wondered morosely how soon he could decently chuck his hand in and get back to civilization and all the comforts of home. A couple of days? No, p’raps he’d better stretch it out a bit longer than that, otherwise they’d be dropping on him like a ton of bricks and accusing him of not trying again. Nobody knew better than Dover the importance of choosing the psychological moment for conceding defeat.
‘Of course, sir,’ – MacGregor had opened his notebook again – ‘I’m not really considering Mr Revel and the three old ladies very seriously, but Mr Lickes is a different proposition. There’s his wife too.’
Dover cleared his throat and MacGregor waited respectfully for the oracle to speak. ‘You taken the suitcases upstairs yet, laddie?’
‘No, sir. Should I do it now?’
' Might as well,’ said Dover through another enormous yawn. ‘I think I’ll come up with you and have an early night.’
‘You’re not going to wait for the cocoa and toast, sir?’
‘No.’ Dover dragged himself laboriously to his feet. ‘You can fetch it up to me and I’ll have it in bed.’
Three
‘What in the name of heaven’s going on here?’
Mr Lickes removed his eye from the keyhole in the dining-room door and looked up to see who it was standing in the hall. ‘Oh, Superintendent Underbarrow? Am I glad to see you!’
‘What’s happening?’ Superintendent Underbarrow closed the front door behind him and removed his cap. ‘You can hear the shouting right down at the drive gates.’
‘I think you may just be in time to prevent a lynching,’ – Mr Lickes bent down to his keyhole again – ‘if you hurry.’
‘A lynching?’ Superintendent Underbarrow regarded the prospect with equanimity. Well, you didn’t have lynchings in places like the Blenheim Towers Private Hotel, not at nine o’clock in the morning, you didn’t. ‘Who’s going to be lynched?’
Mr Lickes straightened up with a sigh. ‘That young police sergeant you brought up last night. It’s not his fault, of course, but Mrs Boyle is out for blood and she’s got past caring whose blood it is.’ He gestured helplessly at the dining-room door. ‘She’s flashing her table knife around in there in a very alarming manner. I’m afraid I cleared out when I saw things beginning to get nasty. Otherwise they’d have turned on me.’
‘Discretion is the better part of valour,’ observed Superintendent Underbarrow.
Mr Lickes performed a couple of half-hearted kicks. ‘Aren’t you going in there and break it up?’
‘In my experience some passions are actually inflamed by the sight of a police uniform. It’s all a question of timing.’
Mr Lickes nodded understandingly. ‘I dare say that young fellow knows how to look after himself. Well,’ – he indicated a couple of chairs – ‘we might as well make ourselves comfortable while we’re waiting.’
They sat down and listened for a few minutes to the uproar which was still coming unabated from the dining-room.
‘You still haven’t told me what’s up,’ said Superintendent Underbarrow.
Mr Lickes desisted from his efforts to lift himself and his chair off the ground. ‘I suppose it really started last night – when they saw their rooms.’
‘It’s Chief Inspector Dover and Sergeant MacGregor we’re talking about, is it?’
Mr Lickes nodded. ‘I knew that fat one was going to be a trouble-maker as soon as I saw him. You develop a sort of instinct .’
‘What did he do?’
‘Played merry hell when he found they were up on the top floor. You should have heard him! Well, I know those rooms are only converted attics but they’re none the worse for that. Besides, where else could I put him? All the rooms on the first floor are full.’
‘I did wonder about those stairs,’ mused Superintendent Underbarrow. ‘They’re none too well lit.’
‘They’re perfectly safe, if you’re careful.’
‘Steep, though,’ said Superintendent Underbarrow, ‘and narrow. Even I found ’em a bit awkward and I’m a jolly sight nippier than he is.’
‘It’s those two rooms on the second floor or a tent out on the lawn. I told him that.’
‘He’s a big man,’ Superintendent Underbarrow went on.
‘Clumsy. One slip and he’d break his bloody neck. I didn’t think he’d relish those stairs.’
Mr Lickes pushed his left fist desperately against the palm of his right hand. ‘It wasn’t only the stairs.’
‘No?’
‘Well, the stairs and the bathroom, really.’
‘Goon!’
‘The bathroom’s on the first floor.’
‘Ah!’
‘It was pure spite. I’m sure of that.’
‘Really?’
‘Five times last night.’
‘Never!’
‘And he woke the whole house up every time. Clumping up and down those stairs with his boots on, slamming doors, flushing the cistern as though it was Niagara Falls. Nobody got a wink of sleep all night.’
Superintendent Underbarro
w glanced thoughtfully at the dining-room door. ‘So that’s what they’re kicking up their fuss about?’
‘You can hardly blame them, can you? Mrs Boyle’s a martyr to insomnia at the best of times. I knew we’d be in for the mother and father of all rows this morning.’
Superintendent Underbarrow tried to be helpful. ‘Maybe if you had a quiet word with him?’
The dining-room door burst open before Mr Lickes had time to reply and a dishevelled looking MacGregor came hurtling out. He was balancing a loaded breakfast tray in his hands.
‘Morning, sergeant!’ said Superintendent Underbarrow, relieved that things seemed to be working themselves out without his assistance.
MacGregor all but dropped his tray. ‘Oh, good morning, sir!’ He turned back and closed the dining-room door. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you this morning, sir.’
‘I thought I’d just pop in and take you on a conducted tour of the battlefield – you know – where the body was found. You’ve got all the photographs and plans, of course, but it’s a bit of a job deciding what’s what, even so.’
‘That’s extremely kind of you, sir.’ MacGregor glanced down in some embarrassment at the tray in his hands. ‘I’m not sure whether Chief Inspector Dover will be able to make it. As a matter of fact, he’s still – er – in bed.’
Superintendent Underbarrow kept his voice nicely neutral. ‘Is he?’
‘He’s not feeling very well,’ explained MacGregor, looking as awkward as he felt.
‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’
‘He thinks he may have caught a bit of a chill. Anyhow,’ – MacGregor took a firmer grip on his tray – ‘I’ll just run upstairs, sir, and see what he says.’
What Dover said, as he stretched out both hands to grab the tray, was regrettably predictable. ‘ ’Strewth, you’ve taken your bleeding time, haven’t you? I could die of starvation up here for all you care.’
MacGregor struggled to get his breath back and decided that it was no time to regale Dover with even a tactful account of the protest meeting in the dining-room. ‘Superintendent Underbarrow is downstairs, sir.’
The response arrived mixed with Rice Crispies. ‘Well, you bloody well see he stops there!’
‘He was going to show us where Chantry was found, sir.’
Dover pushed the remaining Rice Crispies on to his spoon with his finger. ‘Who’s Chantry?’
One day, MacGregor promised himself grimly, I’ll split the stinking old bastard’s skull wide open for him. ‘Walter Chantry is the man who was murdered, sir.’
Dover, well into his bacon and eggs, wasn’t interested. ‘Old Wheelbarrow can show you the sights,' he decided. ‘Just keep him out of my hair, that’s all.’
‘You’re going to stay in bed all day, sir?’
‘You’ve got to look after a cold,’ retorted Dover peevishly, ‘or it might turn into something serious. I should have thought even a fool like you would have known that.’
MacGregor began to edge towards the door. ‘Well, I’ll just carry on alone until you’re feeling better, shall I, sir?’
Dover paused in mid-mastication as all the warning bells began ringing. Give this toffee-nosed pup an inch and he finished up solving your blooming case for you! Dover had had trouble with this sort of thing in the past. He didn’t give a monkey’s whether the Sully Martin murderer was ever brought to book or not, but he was blowed if he was going to sit idly by while MacGregor sneaked in and garnered all the kudos. ‘Hold it!’ he rumbled.
MacGregor removed his hand from the door knob.
‘Don’t you go questioning anybody!’
MacGregor’s face fell. ‘But, sir . . .’
‘But nothing! I’ll do the interviewing, so you keep your greedy paws off!’
MacGregor tried to argue. In all police investigations, particularly murder ones, speed was essential. This was an elementary point which Dover had not yet grasped and it seemed unlikely now that he ever would.
‘Poppycock!’ he scoffed, covering his toast and most of the eiderdown with marmalade. ‘Make haste slowly, that’s my motto. And don’t start yapping about preserving clues and all that textbook tripe you’ve picked up! In this case there aren’t any bloody clues left. They wouldn’t have called us in if there had been. And now, push off! I don’t want to see your ugly mug again till you bring my lunch up at one o’clock sharp.’
‘Have you any message for Superintendent Underbarrow, sir?’ asked MacGregor, the prospect of a morning free from Dover’s company making him careless.
Dover had – but it was not one which a sergeant could very well pass on to a superintendent, however good natured.
MacGregor collected his oilskins and gum boots from his room and was half-way downstairs when he realized that the indignation meeting had moved from the dining-room to the entrance hall. Tactfully he withdrew into the shadows.
Mrs Boyle was still in good voice. ‘What’s wrong with givin’ the brute a chamber pot?’ she boomed at a cringing Mr Lickes. ‘Seems to me an admirable solution.’
Mr Lickes mumbled something.
‘I have a spare one in my leather trunk,’ thundered Mrs Boyle. ‘Don’t usually make a habit of lendin’ my personal possessions but, in this case, I’m prepared to make an exception. Tell your wife to come along and collect it later this mornin’.’
Mr Lickes’s dry lips trembled again.
Mrs Boyle drew herself up. Indignation was written in every generous curve. ‘Well, I hope you’re not suggestin’ that I should empty it, Lickes?’
Mr Lickes weakly shook his head.
‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Mrs Boyle regarded Mr Lickes severely. ‘If you and your wife are, as usual, too overworked to perform your proper duties, I can only propose that the emptyin’ of the utensil is entrusted to the brute’s manservant.’
Mr Lickes apparently whispered yet another objection but Mrs Boyle was already leading the way to the lounge.
She tossed her final remarks back over her shoulder. ‘I fail to see that the young man bein’ a policeman makes any difference. It is doubdess like the army. Officers’ batmen are themselves soldiers, are they not?’
Only when the Blenheim Towers guests had all dutifully followed Mrs Boyle and the lounge door was closed did MacGregor venture out of hiding. Mr Lickes saw him coming and fled to the sanctuary of the kitchen quarters.
‘Ready are you, sergeant?’ asked Superintendent Underbarrow, kindly refraining from comment.
MacGregor nodded his head.
‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it?’ Superintendent Underbarrow examined the scene of devastation which spread before and below them with a certain amount of gloomy satisfaction. ‘Worse than you expected, I’ll bet.’
‘Much worse, sir,’ agreed MacGregor, taking a step or two back from the slimy edge of the cliff and unfolding his map. ‘And there was a complete row of houses here?’
Superintendent Underbarrow pointed over to his left. ‘That’s where the Sally Gate was, remember? Then there was a pub, a couple of shops, four cottages and Wing Commander Pile’s house here on the comer of what used to be Sidle Alley.’
‘Sidle Alley?’ queried MacGregor, looking at his map again. ‘Oh, I see. It ran round the back there and down to the main road?’
‘That’s right. Luckily it was mostly barns and sheds and garages along there so we didn’t have any casualties. And then,’ – he gesticulated over to his right – ‘the damage gets progressively less as you get beyond Sidle Alley. Starting with Wing Commander Pile’s house here, the houses were only partially destroyed by the earthquake. The fronts, facing us, were still standing the morning after but, of course, they were in a very dangerous condition and the heavy rescue people had to knock them down. The people who lived in ’em made one hell of a fuss but there was nothing else you could do.’
‘And whereabouts was Chantry’s body found, sir?’ Superintendent Underbarrow led the way over towards the Sally Gate and, stepping over a make-shift rope ba
rrier, stood on the very edge of the drop. ‘Well, down there somewhere.’ MacGregor sighed. ‘That doesn’t look very helpful, sir.’
‘No. He could have been killed up here somewhere and just slipped down with all the rest of the debris, or he could have been chucked over the edge after he was dead by the murderer. I doubt if there’s any way of telling now.’
MacGregor watched a group of workmen who were busy trying to shore up the crumbling lip of the cliff to prevent further landslides. ‘The other people who were killed, sir, – were they in this part, too?’
‘All except one. They came from the pub and the two shops next door to it. Mind you, they were found in the ruins of their houses. Chantry’s body, of course, was more or less on top.’
‘That certainly makes it look as though he was killed after the earthquake,’ said MacGregor, folding up his map and putting it away in his pocket.
Superintendent Underbarrow looked surprised. ‘There’s no doubt about that, is there?’
‘We can’t afford to overlook any possibility, sir.’
‘But Chantry was out helping with the rescue work,’ objected Superintendent Underbarrow as he began to move away to the undamaged side of North Street. ‘Several people saw him.’
MacGregor picked his way carefully round a pile of planks and red warning lamps. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, sir. Now, say I killed Chantry before the earthquake and just left him lying around in a corner somewhere. Then the earthquake happens and I seize the opportunity to confuse the issue. It was pitch dark and everybody must have been very upset and bewildered. All I have to do is point out some distant figure and refer to him as Chantry. Next morning, with a bit of luck, there may be several people who think quite seriously that they really had seen Chantry.’
‘Well, it’s an idea,’ admitted Superintendent Underbarrow unwillingly, ‘but there’s his daughter’s evidence, too. She said quite definitely that Chantry didn’t leave the house until after the earthquake.’
MacGregor had an answer for that. ‘She may be mistaken – or lying.’
‘Lying? Why should she?’
