Maggie blinked, then she was suddenly full awake. “Oh, Fell, what are they going to say to us? How on earth are we going to explain why we didn’t go to them immediately? Rud-fern and Gloria will have fled.”
Fell looked at the clock beside the bed. “It’s only six o’clock. We could lie and say we went to see Rudfern in the middle of the night.”
“Maybe we’ll just tell them we were too frightened to approach them in case they wouldn’t believe us,” said Maggie.
“We’ll try that. But we’ve got to go.”
Maggie wound her arms around him and kissed him, and his reaction was so passionate that it was another twenty minutes before they both crawled groggily out of bed.
After they were dressed and were hurrying down the stairs, Fell stopped abruptly and swung round. “Is it all right – about last night, I mean?”
“Oh, yes,
They stared at each other for a long moment, two ordinary people made in a brief moment extraordinary by the force of their love for each other.
They set the burglar alarm and went outside. It was a cool, windy day with great puffy clouds sailing across a blue sky.
At the police station, they were told that it was Inspector Dunwiddy’s day off. But when Fell started saying that he knew who had committed the train robbery and that the thieves might even now be getting away, the desk sergeant had them put into an interviewing room and phoned Dunwiddy.
When the inspector arrived, Fell told him rapidly everything they had found out from Rudfern. When he had finished, Dunwiddy said, “You pair wait right here. I’ll need a statement from you and I’ll need you to explain why you delayed coming here to tell me this.”
An hour dragged past. The day outside darkened and rain patterned against the window of the interviewing room.
At last Fell said, “I’m cold and this is ridiculous. Let’s go home. We can have a meal and be comfortable and wait for Dunwiddy there.”
“I think they might try to stop us going,” said Maggie.
“We’ll see.” He took Maggie’s hand and they walked out of the interviewing room and down a long corridor. When they got to the door leading out to the front area, Fell pressed the buzzer to release the door lock and they walked through.
“Where are you going?” demanded the desk sergeant.
“We’ll be at home,” said Fell. “Inspector Dunwiddy can find us there.”
“You were told to wait here.”
“We haven’t been charged and we’re not running away,” said Fell calmly. “You know where to find us.”
The phone on the desk rang before the sergeant could say anything further and so they just walked out.
“He’ll be so angry,” moaned Maggie.
“He’s angry with us anyway,” commented Fell airily. He stretched his arms up to the rainy sky and laughed. “I feel marvellous. Look at it this way. If it hadn’t been for us, he wouldn’t have found out anything at all.”
“Let’s hope he feels that way,” said Maggie, unlocking the car.
¦
But they grew increasingly nervous as the day dragged on with no sign of Dunwiddy. All Fell wanted to do was to take Maggie upstairs and make love to her again.
It was evening before the doorbell rang, making them both jump. A policeman and a policewoman stood on the step. “You’re to come with us to the station,” said the policeman.
He waited while they both got their coats, coats they had not worn all that dandelion summer. In the car, Fell asked, “What’s been going on?”
“The inspector will tell you,” said the policeman.
Maggie and Fell were ushered back into the interviewing room. They sat huddled in their coats. “You need a new coat,” said Fell, eyeing the shabby black number Maggie was wearing.
The door opened and Dunwiddy came in, followed by a detective and a policewoman. The policewoman put a tape in a machine on the wall, and Dunwiddy sat down and said, “Interview with Mr. Fellworth Dolphin and Miss Margaret Partlett beginning at” – he looked at his watch – “twenty-one hours fifty.”
Fell and Maggie sat down opposite Dunwiddy, who was flanked by his detective. The policewoman took a chair in the corner.
“Now,” said Dunwiddy, “begin at the beginning again.”
And so Fell did, repeating everything that Rudfern had told him, except for the bit about Andy Briggs.
When he had finished, Dunwiddy said, “Now will you explain why you delayed until early this morning to let us know this?”
“We were afraid,” lied Fell. “Rudfern was one of you. We had no real proof. We sat up all night wondering what to do. Look at it from our point of view. It was his word against ours.”
“You’re forgetting about Johnny Tremp. We pulled him in. We checked with the lottery people. He never won anything. He thought Gloria Lewis had shopped him and so he told us the lot. Rudfern is dead.”
“What!” exclaimed Maggie and Fell in unison.
“It appears that he shot himself with an old service revolver. We’re still investigating that in case his daughter shot him and made it look like suicide, but we’re pretty sure it is. He left a note saying he was sick of the whole thing. That’s all he said. ‘I’m sick of the whole thing’.”
Maggie took Fell’s hand in her own. She had turned quite white. An old service revolver could mean that the inspector shot himself with Andy Briggs’s gun, and if he had, then her fingerprints and Fell’s would be on it.
In a quavering voice, she said, “Your forensic men will find more than one set of fingerprints on it if his daughter shot him.”
Dunwiddy sighed. “A preliminary investigation shows there is only one set of prints on that gun.”
Colour flooded Maggie’s face.
“And where is Gloria Lewis?” she asked.
“Gone, thanks to you pair. We’re watching all the ports and airports. You could have charges laid against you for impeding the police in their inquiries.”
“What!” demanded Fell wrathfully. “You do that and we’ll go to the press about how it was us, on our own, who solved your case.”
“Are you threatening me?” roared Dunwiddy.
“Why not?” demanded Fell. “You were threatening us.”
“We’ll discuss this later,” said the inspector. “You will wait here until your statements are typed up. Then you will both sign them and hold yourself in readiness for further questioning. You are not to leave Buss.”
“Was any of the money recovered?” asked Fell.
“We found a lot of it in Johnny Tremp’s house. Of course, over the years, he had changed the notes. We also found a small quantity of Semtex.”
“What about Rudfern’s house?”
“Nothing there. If there ever was anything, then Gloria Lewis took it with her.”
Dunwiddy terminated the interview. Fell and Maggie were left alone. “Don’t say anything,” Fell whispered. “They might be listening.”
“Fell…,” began Maggie.
“What?”
She looked down and muttered, “Nothing.”
Fell studied her for a few moments, a smile curving his lips as he remembered the night before. Then he realized that even in the height of his passion, he had never mentioned love.
He looked around the dingy interviewing room. Then he pushed back his chair and got down on one knee.
He took Maggie’s hand in his. “Margaret Partlett,” he said. “I love you and want to marry you as soon as possible. What do you say?”
Maggie’s face as she looked at him seemed to be lit up from within. “Oh, yes,” she said. “I think I’ve loved you from the first moment I saw you.”
