‘No!’ said Mrs Rugg impatiently. ‘She thought Mrs Chubb- Smith would go on footing the bill!’
‘Mrs Chubb-Smith? What the devil has Mrs Chubb-Smith got to do with it?’
‘She was very good to our Juliet when the baby was coming, paid for her to go to a proper hospital and everything. ’Course, our Juliet counted on her going on helping after die kid was born but, naturally, she didn’t, like. Not, rnind you, that our Juliet is one to lose heart! She’s a trier, I will say that for her. Only on Tuesday she was saying that everything was going to be all right again. Who she was going to touch for a bit of the ready this time I don’t know. Mrs Chubb-Smith again, far as I could gather, but I don’t hardly think that can be right, do you? ’Course, she’d been very good to her before but. . . ’
‘Now, just a minute,’ roared Dover, ‘this Mrs Chubb-Smith-is she the one up at Irlam Old Hall?’
‘’Sright,’ agreed Mrs Rugg. ‘She’s the lah-di-dah old cow that runs the place.’
Dover breathed deeply through his nose. ‘And why should she help your daughter?’
Mrs Rugg smiled shrewdly. ‘Search me,’ she said, ‘p’raps she’s got more money than sense,’
‘And why did she stop helping after the baby was born?’
Mrs Rugg looked at Dover with a mixture of exasperation and pity. With an irritable gesture, she slammed her iron down on its stand. ‘I can see I’m going to have you two here all bloody day !’
she muttered crossly. She eyed the two policemen up and down. ‘And they say crime doesn’t pay!’ she snorted scornfully. ‘You’d better come outside and have a look at the kid. P’raps you’ll be able to answer yer own damn-fool questions then.’
The baby was fast asleep in its pram in the back garden. Dover and Sergeant MacGregor bent down cautiously to examine it. It looked like any other sleeping baby except, perhaps, for the fact that it was coal black.
‘Oh,’ said Dover in a somewhat inadequate comment.
Mrs Rugg stalked silently back to her ironing.
The two policemen trailed after her.
‘Have you got any questions?’ Dover hissed at MacGregor. ‘If you have, ask ’em and let’s get the hell out of here!’
‘Mrs Rugg,’ said the sergeant with a friendly smile designed to differentiate his technique from the surly, growling approach favoured by the chief inspector, ‘did Juliet have any boy-friends?’ Mrs Rugg slowly placed her hands on her hips. ‘Are you kidding?’ she demanded wearily. ‘How the hell do yer think she got that out there?’ She jerked her head in the direction of the garden. ‘By correspondence course?’
Sergeant MacGregor blushed in discomfort and Dover smirked. ‘I meant any special boy-friends,’ the sergeant tried again, ‘anybody she’d be likely to run away with, for example?’
Mrs Rugg laughed shortly. ‘If you’d seen our Juliet you wouldn’t talk about running away, sonnie! She could hardly walk a hundred yards without stopping for half an hour’s rest. Something the matter with her glands, the doctor said, but I used to tell her, if she didn’t spend so much time flat on her back she might lose a bit of weight. ’Course she’d got gentlemen friends, dozens of ’em, I shouldn’t wonder. Our Juliet was a great one for anything in trousers. She liked having a good time and you’re only young once, I always say.’
‘But you don’t know the names of any of them?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Rugg enigmatically, ‘I’ve got enough troubles of me own!’
Chapter Four
HALF an hour later Dover collapsed exhausted into one of the leather armchairs in Sir John Counter’s study and sulkily prepared himself to ask another lot of damn-fool questions about nothing.
Everybody was swamping him with information, every item of which, he was sure, would turn out to be a complete waste of time. All sixteen stone of Juliet Rugg would appear on the scene again at any moment and he, Dover, would thankfully catch the next train back to civilization. Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover of New Scotland Yard wasn’t, however, a complete fool. He was only pig-headed. So far he had managed to shut out a niggling doubt as to the correctness of his theory about Juliet Rugg’s disappearance. He still clung obstinately to his original views on the subject, but he was uneasily aware that none of the evidence, if you could call it that, which he had so far received gave him much support.
Juliet Rugg had been last seen at eleven o’clock at night, making her way, on foot, up the drive to the Counters’ house. But, she’d never arrived there. If she’d left the grounds of Irlam Old Hall – and, of course, she must have done – how had she managed it? She obviously wasn’t capable of walking far, certainly not the two miles into the village, and it wouldn’t have done any good if she had. All the buses had stopped hours ago and the last train from Creedon, which was another six miles away, left at 10.10 p.m. The railway staff were quite convinced that nobody of her description had left by any of the early morning trains the next day, and they would certainly not have overlooked a girl whose appearance was as bizarre as Juliet’s was.
That left a car as the only solution. But if the Hall gates were locked at night, presumably no car could get in or out of the grounds. Blast it-he’d have to check about those gates! Of course, she could have walked back to the road after Colonel Bing had gone inside again, but why should she? All the signs seemed to indicate that she’d had her evening out and was just going back, quite normally, home to bed. Oh dear, and then there was that black baby! Dover wondered fretfully if that was a clue to anything. He’d certainly have to look into this Mrs Chubb-Smith business, not that it wasn’t
