The door was opened by a dark-haired, sullen-faced woman in her middle thirties. She looked anxiously at her visitors. Dover flicked the brim of his bowler hat with the index finger of his right hand.
‘Good morning! Is Miss Eve Counter in? We’d like to have a word with her.’
‘I’m Eve Counter.’ The voice was low and pleasant but lacking in assurance. ‘Are you the detectives?’
‘Yes, miss. I’m Chief Inspector Dover and this is Detective Sergeant MacGregor. We’ve come down from Scotland Yard.’
‘Well, I think you’d better come inside then.’
She led them into a large airy drawing-room decorated in a restful pastel green. Dover and MacGregor sank into the depths of a couple of huge armchairs while Miss Counter perched herself on an upright chair placed in front of a writing-desk. Just as Dover was about to begin, she shot off her seat and grabbed a cigarette box from a small table.
‘Will you have a cigarette?’ she asked, thrusting the box at them.
Dover accepted, as he always did, but Sergeant MacGregor refused. There was an embarrassing little moment when the table-lighter wouldn’t work and MacGregor produced his, an elegant gold one, to the accompaniment of a shower of thanks and apologies from Miss Counter, who blushed slightly as she accepted a light from the tall, handsome sergeant.
Everything settled down again and Dover opened his mouth for the second time, when Miss Counter realized with another nervous start that there were no ash-trays. Once again she rushed round the room, apologizing for her forgetfulness.
Dover sighed. ‘Well, now, Miss Counter,’ he said at long last, ‘I understand that you reported the disappearance of Miss Rugg to the police?’
‘Yes, that’s right! I did. My father said I was making a lot of unnecessary fuss and that she’d turn up again, but when she hadn’t come back at lunch-time on Wednesday, I thought I’d better ring the police. It couldn’t do any harm, could it?’
‘When did you last see her?’
‘Just after lunch on Tuesday. It was her afternoon off and she usually used to get back about eleven. I’d gone to bed earlier and when I came down in the morning I found that the front door was still unlocked. Then I went into the kitchen and I saw that Juliet hadn’t made herself a hot drink when she came in, as she usually did. I thought it was a bit odd, but I got breakfast and took it in to my father. I asked him if Juliet had looked in last night to say good night to him and he said, no, she hadn’t. Well, I got on with my work but at about eleven o’clock I thought I’d just pop up and see if she was all right I went up to her room but she wasn’t there and the bed hadn’t been slept in.’
‘Was anything missing from her room – a suitcase, a change of clothing?’
‘No, not as far as I could see. Everything seemed to be there.’
‘I understood, Mis Counter,’ said Dover, ‘that Miss Rugg was employed here as a maid. Wasn’t she supposed to get up and get the breakfast and do the housework?’
Miss Counter stubbed her cigarette out in the ash-tray and automatically took another out of the box. Sergeant MacGregor proffered his lighter once again and Miss Counter inhaled a deep pull of smoke into her lungs. She murmured her thanks and Dover waited patiently for an answer to his question.
‘Juliet wasn’t exactly employed here as a housemaid, Inspector,’ she said, speaking rather quickly. ‘She’s really a kind of, er, companion to my father. He’s more or less confined to the house now, although he’s not bedridden by any means. He likes to have somebody to chat to and to fetch things for him and so on. He likes somebody fresh and young around him, and that was Juliet’s job – generally just to keep him amused. Usually we have a cook and a housemaid as well, but you know what it’s like trying to get servants these days, even foreign ones. At the moment we haven’t got anybody except a char who comes in to do the rough work a couple of days a week.’ She gave a wry little laugh. ‘While Juliet looks after my father, I have to turn to and look after the house.’
‘What time did you expect to see Miss Rugg, then, on the Wednesday morning?’
‘Well, she usually spent every morning in bed, so not much before midday, really. You see, my father stops in bed until lunchtime so there’s nothing much for Juliet to do. He doesn’t normally get to bed until round about midnight-he always watches the television until it closes down-so she’s kept up pretty late at night. If it hadn’t been for the unlocked door and no dirty cups and things in the kitchen, I shouldn’t have even thought of looking for her till about half-past twelve the next day.’
‘Do you know what she usually did on her afternoon off?’
‘No. I never asked her and she never told me.’
Dover gazed moodily at Miss Counter as though he were trying to picture her with a hempen rope round her neck.
‘How much was Miss Rugg paid as a companion to your father?’
Eve Counter frowned. ‘Ten pounds a week,’ she said shortly.
‘All found?’
‘All found.’
There was a pause while the chief inspector pondered over this interesting bit of information. He slumped back even deeper in his chair, his beady little eyes fixed unblinkingly on his hostess’s face.
‘Do you like Miss Rugg, madam?’ he asked in a mild conversational voice.
Eve Counter jumped slightly, then her chin went up.
‘No, Chief Inspector, I don’t! Not much, anyhow.’
Dover accepted the implied challenge in her answer.
‘Care to tell me why, madam?’
‘Well, we had absolutely nothing in common. I’m very much older than she is and, well, I come from a different class of society, I have
