by Joyce Porter
Judging that Lord Crouch was probably even more of a jellyfish than his sister, Dover directed his gimlet eye – as yet unaffected by the booze – on that unfortunate nobleman.
‘You got an alibi for What’s-his-name’s murder?’ he demanded while coming up for air after a particularly lengthy guzzle.
‘I beg your pardon?’ spluttered Lord Crouch, stung for once in his life into a fairly prompt verbal reaction.
Dover reached for the bottle. ‘I’ve fancied you right from the start,’ he observed conversationally. ‘ The way I look at it, you’ve got the lot. Means, motive, opportunity. You’re tailor-made for it.’
‘Good heavens!’ Lady Priscilla stared in astonishment at her brother before turning to stare in even greater astonishment at Dover. ‘ Boys?’
‘He even looks guilty,’ grunted Dover.
This was quite true. Lord Crouch’s nervous system had finally conveyed the full implication of Dover’s remarks to his brain and his lordship’s face had gone a brick and painful red.
‘Oh, ’strewth, come on!’ urged Dover irritably. ‘Say something if it’s only goodbye!’
Lord Crouch did try but, before he was anywhere near actually getting anything out, Lady Priscilla had plunged headlong into the breach. She had a highly developed protective instinct where her brother was concerned. She knew his limitations and she wasn’t going to stand by and see him bullied, even by a member of the working class. ‘He didn’t do it!’ she said firmly.
‘Tell me the old, old story!’ chanted Dover, getting boisterous as the tonic wine began coursing through his veins.
‘Left here a’right!’ gasped Lord Crouch, making a supreme effort.
‘You see?’ Lady Priscilla smiled encouragingly at her brother. ‘Gary Marsh was perfectly all right when he left here.’
‘Well, of course he blooming well was!’ snorted Dover. ‘Nobody’s arguing the toss about that, are they? It’s what happened after he left that matters. When him and His Nibs here took that last fatal walk together to the railway station.’
‘But they didn’t!’ protested Lady Priscilla, not even waiting for the denial that was attempting to force its way out of Lord Crouch’s throat. ‘ Gary was alone when he left Beltour.’
Dover showed the generous side of his nature. ‘Prove it!’
Lady Priscilla hesitated. ‘But we don’t have to, do we?’ she questioned doubtfully. ‘ I thought the police were the ones who had to prove things.’
Dover had no intention of getting involved in a discussion on the workings of British Justice at that time of night. ‘What clothes was he wearing on Sunday evening?’
Lady Priscilla was nimble-witted only in comparison with her brother. ‘Clothes?’
‘Assuming he didn’t conduct his interview with Who’s-your-father stark naked, he must have worn some clothes, mustn’t he? Right, let’s have a look at ’em! One spot of mud and I’ll clap the bracelets on him here and now.’ Dover, flushed with invalid port, was beginning to enjoy himself. It wasn’t often that he got the opportunity of giving a couple of your blue-blooded aristocrats the old run around.
Lady Priscilla was consulting her brother. ‘ You were wearing your grey suit on Sunday, weren’t you, dear?’
Lord Crouch managed a confirmatory nod of his head.
‘I took it to the cleaners on Monday morning!’ whispered Lady Priscilla, her face going white.
Dover chuckled in a particularly nauseating way. ‘What about his boots?’
‘His boots?’ Lady Priscilla clutched her heart. ‘I always clean Boys’ shoes for him first thing in the morning, before breakfast. The public expect him to look wellgroomed, you see, and he’s so absent-minded that if I don’t …’ She realized that her voice was degenerating into a panicky gabble so she stopped herself and concentrated on a simple statement of the vital fact. ‘ There was absolutely no mud on them. That I swear.’
‘And a fat lot of good it’ll do you!’ sniffed Dover, fortifying himself with another draught of his elixir. ‘We’ll see what the lab’s got to say about it.’
Lady Priscilla rose from the dinner table with touching natural dignity. There might have been a tumbril waiting outside the door. ‘I will get the shoes for you immediately,’ she announced. ‘My brother and I have nothing to fear.’
It would have been a more impressive declaration if the sound of Lord Crouch’s teeth chattering had not been so loud.
A few seconds later Dover found himself clutching a pair of very large, hand-made, brown shoes which had been dumped, with praiseworthy restraint, in his lap. More was to follow. On the table in front of him, Lady Priscilla laid a small piece of paper.
‘That,’ she said in a voice dripping with icicles, ‘is the ticket for Boys’s grey suit. You can enquire at the cleaner’s if there was any mud on it.’
Dover’s podgy face creased in dismay. God only knows, he’d enough work already on his plate without … ’Strewth, couldn’t people take a joke? He downed the last dregs of his invalid wine and tried to stuff the shoes out of sight under the table. ‘ I reckon it’s about time I was turning in,’ he muttered. ‘I’ve had a hard day, you know, and’ – he made one of his revolting bids for sympathy – ‘I’m not feeling at all well.’
‘Don’t you wish to ask my brother any further questions?’
Dover was now intent only on sliding out from under. He tried a conciliatory tone. ‘Nothing that can’t wait till morning. He can make a statement to my sergeant.’
‘I would prefer to have this business settled tonight,’ said Lady Priscilla, the bit now firmly between her teeth. ‘ Boys won’t be able to sleep a wink if he goes to bed with all these vague accusations hanging over him. And neither shall I. It doesn’t matter to us if it takes all night.’
It mattered to Dover but, in the increasingly chilly circumstances, he thought it wiser not to say so. He’d just have to go through the motions and ask a few damn fool questions otherwise, he could tell from the look on Lady Priscilla’s face, there’d be ructions. The trouble was – and here Dover stirred up the dandruff as he scratched his head disconsolately – he couldn’t for the life of him think of any blasted questions to ask.
Lady Priscilla unwittingly gave him a few more moments grace. ‘You’ll need a pencil and some paper,’ she announced, and went off in search of them.
Lord Crouch and Dover eyed each other in mutual apprehension. Eventually, after a certain amount of jaw stretching and waggling, Lord Crouch spat it out.
‘Very forceful woman, my sister!’ he croaked, by way no doubt of apology. ‘When she’s roused.’
Forceful was not the word which sprang to Dover’s mind but then, his vocabulary was naturally a good deal cruder than Lord Crouch’s.
A writing pad was slapped on the table and a pencil all but poked out Dover’s left eye. Lady Priscilla had returned.
‘Oh, all right!’ grumbled Dover, gazing at the writing instruments as though he feared they might up and bite him. He sighed. ‘Well, what time did What’s-his-name arrive on whenever it was?’
‘About a quarter to six,’ said Lady Priscilla before the muscles of Lord Crouch’s mouth had even received the signal. ‘And he left at approximately twenty past.’
Dover blew unpleasantly down his nose and scratched aimlessly on his writing pad. ‘What happened after that?’
Lady Priscilla nobly yielded the floor to her brother. Lord Crouch thought long and deep. ‘Gary and I had our – er – interview in the Malplaquet Library, don’t you know. After he left, I went on working there. Accounts. Letters about bookings for coach parties. Hay for the zebras. That sort of thing.’
Dover passed a plump hand over a weary brow. ‘Until when?’
Lord Crouch wove his legs elaborately round the legs of his chair. ‘Oh, until about seven, I should think. Then I came up here. That’s about right, isn’t it, Prissy?’
‘You were just in time for supper, Boys,’ agreed Lady Priscilla, ‘so it would be a minu
te or so before seven when you came up.’
‘No alibi!’ grunted Dover. It was a hollow triumph. He wrote the two words down in large black capitals. After a moment’s hesitation, he drew a thick line underneath them.
Lord Crouch and Lady Priscilla watched the point of Dover’s pencil as though hypnotized by it.
‘Right!’ said Dover, almost cheerfully. ‘Well, that’s that! Time for beddy-byes!’ He kicked the brown shoes even further under the table and began to lever himself out of his chair.
‘Don’t you want Boys to sign his statement?’ There seemed to be no end to Lady Priscilla’s knowledge of police procedure.
Dover looked down at the writing pad and was inspired to make one of his better wriggles. ‘Got to be typed out first,’ he said.
Lady Priscilla still wasn’t satisfied. ‘Aren’t you going to ask Boys what he and Gary talked about?’ she asked, a faint frown creasing her well scrubbed forehead. ‘After all, it might be significant, mightn’t it?’
‘For God’s sake, Prissy!’ exploded Lord Crouch, startling everybody as the words burst out with practically no hesitation. ‘Why can’t you mind your own damned business? And,’ he added furiously as his vocal chords began seizing up again, ‘keep your blasted mouth shut?’
It was the sort of thing that most detectives go down on their knees at night and pray for – the spontaneous, careless outburst. Any investigator worth his salt would have been after it like a terrier after a rabbit. Why didn’t Lord Crouch wish to reveal the contents of his interview with the deceased? What guilty secret was he trying to hide? Was this the key destined to unlock the baffling mystery surrounding the death of Gary Marsh in Bluebell Wood?
Dover all but dislocated his jaw with an almighty yawn and wearily prepared to shoulder the burden that Lady Priscilla was forever foisting upon him. ‘All right,’ he said not even pretending that he gave a tinker’s curse one way or the other, ‘what did you talk about?’
The question was actually addressed to the ceiling but it was Lord Crouch who, after a few preliminary twitches and gulps, vouchsafed a reply. ‘Oh, nothing of any very great importance.’
For some reason, Dover recalled a line he had heard in countless television plays. Apart from its aptness in the present situation, its very familiarity might serve to reassure Lady Priscilla. ‘You had better,’ recited Dover solemnly, ‘let me be the judge of that, sir!’ He immediately regretted the ‘ sir’ but the courtesy slipped out before he could stop it.
A horrible gurgle bubbled up in Lord Crouch’s throat.
Oh, ’strewth, thought Dover crossly, this was going to take all blooming night. But, as frequently happened when the chief inspector was in danger of being driven beyond all endurance, inspiration came most unfairly to his aid. It was something those damn-fool Tiffins or somebody had said. ‘ Didn’t you talk about this motel thing you’re supposed to be opening?’
Lord Crouch grabbed with pathetic eagerness for the lifeline. ‘ Er – yes, that’s it! The – er – motel. Yes, we discussed the motel.’
It was an answer that might not have satisfied a backward child of two, but it delighted Dover. He could now retire to his well-earned rest with a clear conscience and this time it was going to take more than Lady Priscilla’s lah-di-dah blethering to stop him.
He got up from the table, a billow of grubby shirt escaping from the top of his trousers, and made a bee-line for the door. ‘Right, well, that’s settled that! Always a good idea to get these minor details cleared out of the way early on, eh?’
Lady Priscilla had recovered from her amazement and was on the point of shoving her aristocratic nose in again.
Dover struck first and struck hard. ‘I’ll have breakfast in bed in the morning,’ he told her firmly. ‘Nine o’clock sharp!’ He got the door open before issuing his final instructions. ‘And I don’t want disturbing before then, not for nobody and not for nothing!’
Chapter Eleven
‘The strain on the brain must be simply terrifying,’ said Lady Priscilla in an awed whisper. ‘And he had a most disturbed night. I doubt if the poor man got more than a wink of sleep.’
MacGregor, sitting uncomfortably at the kitchen table, regarded Lady Priscilla with genuine sympathy as she hovered by the cooker. She had, in fact, been hovering there for the best part of two hours, so anxious was she that Dover’s breakfast should be ready when the fatal hour of nine o’clock struck. In spite of her earlier anxieties about over-sleeping, she had had no worries on that score. Thanks to Dover’s innumerable visits to the bathroom during the previous night, nobody had been able to snatch much in the way of sleep and at six o’clock, as the overworked cistern had roared into life for the umpteenth time, Lady Priscilla had cut her losses and got up.
‘I hope he didn’t keep you awake,’ said MacGregor politely.
Lady Priscilla smiled a wan smile, indicating that any martyrdom which had been inflicted on her was accepted with a contrite heart. During the long and noisy watches of the night Lady Priscilla had had ample time to review her attitude to Dover and gradually she had come to feel thoroughly ashamed of the antagonism she had shown him at her own dinner table. After all, who was she – a mere aristocrat – to criticize any member of the proletariat? Whatever other shortcomings she may have had, Lady Priscilla knew her place. And, in this modern, egalitarian society, it was right at the bottom of the pecking order. Not that Lady Priscilla was complaining. Far from it. Why, when you took everything into account, she and Boys were jolly lucky not to be swinging from the nearest lamp-post!
The more she thought about it, the more appalled Lady Priscilla had become. How could she have spoken to Chief Inspector Dover like that? How had she even dared to think that she could teach him his job? Fool that she was, she had been guilty of judging solely by appearances. She had seen the boorish, loutish exterior and totally missed the heart of gold that was beating underneath. She had noted the unhealthy complexion and the neanderthal brow – but what about the keen intelligence buzzing away behind? There are none so blind, Lady Priscilla told herself severely, as those who won’t see!
‘Were you late going to bed last night?’ asked MacGregor, putting his watch to his ear to make sure it was still going.
‘Not particularly.’ Lady Priscilla stood back to admire the single plastic rose which she had found to adorn Dover’s breakfast tray and gave it a finishing poke. ‘Of course, it’s the intensity of the effort that counts, not the hours, isn’t it? What time is it now, sergeant?’
‘Five to.’
‘I think you’d better be making a move then.’
‘Me?’
‘The teapot is rather full so be careful not to spill it.
‘But, aren’t you taking it in to him?’ MacGregor tried, without being too rude about it, to push the tray back into Lady Priscilla’s hands.
Lady Priscilla shook her head in gentle reproof. ‘ You forget I am not a married woman, sergeant! It would hardly be proper for me to invade a man’s bedroom at this hour in the morning, would it?’
A short time later, as MacGregor stared fixedly at the view out of Dover’s bedroom window, he could at least congratulate himself that he had spared Lady Priscilla this. From the bed behind him came the most life-like imitation of feeding time in the pig sty.
‘That’s the second night in a row I’ve been on the trot!’ grumbled Dover through a mouth stuffed with food. ‘ It must be the air in this bloody place. And they’ve stuck the bog as far away as they possibly could.’
MacGregor spoke without turning his head. ‘What are the plans for today, sir? I was wondering if we shouldn’t …’
‘I reckon it was that wine muck they gave me.’ Dover tried, without much success, to salvage a blob of soft-boiled, free-range egg from the eiderdown. ‘ Like prussic acid swilling round in your gut. If you ask me, somebody ought to be prosecuted for it.’
‘I really do think you should at least visit the scene of the crime, sir.’
‘
I don’t know whether I shouldn’t have the doctor,’ said Dover glumly. ‘There’s such a thing as being too long suffering. And you get no thanks for it.’
Nobody could say that MacGregor gave up easily. ‘And I’ve made a list of one or two people in the village, sir, who were on fairly friendly terms with Marsh. They may be able to …’
‘Here!’ yelped Dover. ‘Take the tray!’
MacGregor swung round hopefully. ‘Are you getting up, sir?’
‘Not half!’ said Dover, already out of bed. ‘Gimme my overcoat!’ His voice rose in panic. ‘Quick, laddie!’
MacGregor had worked with Dover long enough to recognize an emergency when he saw one. Without a thought for personal hygiene he snatched up Dover’s overcoat with his bare hands and thoughtlessly shouted, ‘Come in!’ in answer to an inopportune tap on the door.
Lady Priscilla duly came in and got an eyeful of Dover’s elephantine hulk swathed only in his blue-striped, army surplus pyjamas. There were gasps of horror all round and Dover belatedly tried to preserve the decencies by grabbing his overcoat and holding it in front of him like a matador’s cape.
‘Good heavens!’ breathed Lady Priscilla weakly.
Dover’s reaction was more positive. ‘Why the hell can’t you knock, woman?’
MacGregor stepped neatly between them, just in case. ‘Did you want something, Lady Priscilla?’
‘Want something?’ Lady Priscilla managed to avert her eyes from a sight which would have reconciled most unmarried ladies to their solitary state and blinked bemusedly at MacGregor. ‘Oh, yes, the telephone! Somebody wants to speak to the chief inspector. They wouldn’t give a name.’
Dover had no time to spare for anonymous and – if past experience was anything to go by – probably abusive telephone calls. He had already delayed too long. Leaving MacGregor to cope with things, he set off with some urgency along the well-trodden path to the bathroom.
It was a quarter of an hour before he emerged. MacGregor was still standing patiently in the hall, holding the telephone.
