‘Then you think it’s murder, sir?’
Dover nodded. ‘Yes, my money’s on murder.’
‘But where’s the body?’
‘How the hell do I know? If I knew where the body was, why in God’s name should I be sitting here discussing with you what might have happened to her?’
‘The local police have had a pretty good look round the district, sir, and if she’s been taken further afield, we come up against this transport business, don’t we? And when you think of trying to get rid of a sixteen-stone corpse, well, the mind boggles a bit, doesn’t it?’
‘Yours might,’ commented Dover nastily, ‘personally, I can think of half a dozen ways.’ He was careful not to enumerate them. ‘Anyhow, we’ve got to have a theory to work on, otherwise we’ll be running round in circles. I’ve told you before, Sergeant, when you’re dealing with crime, ninety-nine times out of a hundred the obvious explanation is the right one. I don’t think this girl committed suicide and I’m damned well sure she’s not been kidnapped, and it doesn’t look as though she’s just run away. Therefore she must have been murdered, and we shall work from now on that assumption.’
As a piece of deductive reasoning this had more flaws in it than Sergeant MacGregor dared to contemplate, but he had learned from bitter experience that it was no good arguing when the chief inspector was in this frame of mind. All you could hope for was that the blundering old fool would, even by accident, uncover the true facts of the case in the course of his so-called investigations. Sergeant MacGregor fell into his favourite day-dream in which he composed his umpteenth letter to Higher Authority requesting a transfer. Before he had actually got it signed and posted he was brought down to reality by Dover demanding yet another cigarette.
‘What about motive, sir?’ he asked as he flicked his lighter.
‘Could be dozens,’ said Dover grandly. ‘She might have been insured and her mother’s croaked her for the money. Sir John might have done it in a fit of senile jealousy – that man struck me as being capable of anything, supercilious old devil. Or his daughter might have done it to stop the marriage.’
‘Yes.’ MacGregor sounded doubtful. ‘And then there’s this Mrs Chubb-Smith business.’
‘What Mrs Chubb-Smith business?’
‘Well, her subsidizing Juliet before the baby was born.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Dover vaguely. ‘Well, while we’re up here, I suppose we might as well go and have a word with her. Get moving!’
Chapter Five
MRS CHUBB-SMITH was a very good example of a midtwentieth-century decayed gentlewoman, though she would have been very offended at the decayed part. The fact that she was a greengrocer’s daughter, who getting on for thirty years before had had the incredible luck to marry into the minor aristocracy, had been buried in the sands of time under layers of carefully acquired gentility.
Her story had hot, however, had the happy ending which she had been led to expect. Her husband was the well-born master of Irlam Old Hall but that was all he was master of. There was no money. But he was an ingenious man, if not very business-like. He decided to convert the Old Hall into flats and to build a select number of residences in the grounds. People, he argued, were always wanting to live in the country, but they didn’t want the complete isolation from their own kind which such retirement often involved. He intended to keep his prices high and envisaged Irlam Old Hall becoming a little colony of nice people, ‘from our own class’.
It was, on the whole, a very good scheme, and it worked. Just before his death – his health had never been robust – the whole project had been completed. He, his wife and small son had moved into the largest of the new houses, the one now occupied by Sir John Counter, and all the flats plus the five other new houses and the two converted lodges were let to acceptable tenants on enormously long leases. Mr Chubb-Smith died happy in the knowledge that his widow and son were well-cared for. No one could blame him for not foreseeing all the consequences of the Second World War which broke out some twelve months later.
Mrs Chubb-Smith, in telling the story of her life and hard times, took nearly twenty minutes to reach the outbreak of the Second World War, and both Dover and Sergeant MacGregor were looking a bit glassy-eyed as she gabbled inexorably on.
She was very bitter, and long-winded, about the Second World War itself which she evidently regarded as a bit of personal spite directed against her by Almighty Providence. Her grievance was, briefly, that property values, especially in safe country areas, shot up to heights beyond the dreams of the late Mr Chubb-Smith. The leases of Mrs Chubb-Smith’s highly desirable houses and flats changed hands at fantastic profits, all of which unfortunately went into the pockets of the leaseholders. The current tenants were more than content to pay her the originally agreed rents which, though they had seemed pretty hefty in 1938, were ludicrously small by 1945, and pitifully minute now. And, of course, Mrs Chubb-Smith was still, as landlord, responsible for the upkeep of the property, and costs here had proved that the sky was not the limit.
‘Would you believe it,’ exclaimed Mrs Chubb-Smith, throwing up her hands in far from mock despair, ‘some of the leases won’t expire until 2037! And most of the others are nearly as bad. Of course, Michael and I had to get out of the house Sir John has now. Luckily we were able to make a little profit on that deal, but I had to pay a fantastic sum to buy back the lease of this place. It’s really been too ridiculous for words! And then, about a year ago, the first lease on one of the houses expired – the middle one on the other side. I
