Dover One

Sir John, whatever that may mean – but if I’d been Eve, I’d have booted her out of the place before you could say Gilbert and Ellice Islands. The girl was an immoral slut and that’s the long and short of it. She was whoring around with every available man in the district. When Eve told me she was going to report her disappearance to the police I told her not to be such a damned fool. “Be thankful you’ve got rid of her,” I said, “for God’s sake don’t go looking for her! What with black babies, green nail varnish and stiletto heels, you’re well shot of her! Never mind your father,” I told her, “he’s got his television and that’s more than enough at his age.” Disgusting old scoundrel he is, too. Of course, Eve’s too damned spineless to do anything about him. I’d have had him shut up in a home twenty years ago if I’d been in her shoes.’

‘Yes,’ said Dover sadly. He wished he could get hold of one of these taciturn witnesses some time, the sort that just said ‘yes’ and ‘no’. All the people in this case were too damned articulate for words.

‘Miss Hoppold,’ he went on, ‘we have reason to believe that Miss Rugg was safe and unharmed as late as eleven o’clock on Tuesday night.’

^Yes, so I’ve heard. Colonel Bing saw her, didn’t she?’

‘So she says,’ agreed Dover darkly. ‘Did you, by any chance?’

‘See her? Good God, no!’ Eulalia Hoppold gave a short laugh. ‘I’m always in bed by ten. Get used to keeping early hours in my line of business, you know.’

‘You’re alone in the house?’

‘Yes, and I was alone in bed too, if that’s going to be your next question.’

‘Yes,’ said Dover, ‘of course.’

‘What do the police think has happened?’ asked Miss Hoppold, her eyes boring deeply into Dover’s.

‘Well, it’s early days yet,’ said Dover, feeling he’d said it so many times before, ‘but it’s beginning to look as though she didn’t go off of her own free will.’

‘Hm,’ said Miss Hoppold, ‘and what does that leave?’

‘Murder, possibly.’

‘What about kidnapping? I’ve heard that mentioned as a possibility?’

‘In the police view,’ said Dover firmly, ‘kidnapping is quite out of the question.’

After leaving Miss Hoppold’s lair the natural thing would have been for Dover and MacGregor to call next door to see the young Chubb-Smith couple, but Dover still wasn’t in the mood to do what he thought his sergeant expected, however logical and obvious it might be. With his head sunk well down in his shoulders and his thoughts concentrated on his still tender stomach, Dover plodded on until he came to the bungalow occupied by the foreigner, Boris Bogolepov. He rammed his finger viciously into the doorbell and was furious to find that it was the sort which played a tinkling, insipid tune. Dover didn’t feel that this was a fitting herald of his menacing appearance on a prime suspect’s doorstep. Dover didn’t approve of foreigners, mainly on the irrefutable grounds that they were un-English, and he was looking forward to giving Boris Bogolepov, guilty or not, a rough old time just for the sheer hell of it.

After a few moments the door was opened by a strikingly handsome young man dressed in the top half only of a pair of pyjamas.

The young man had rather bright, staring eyes which peered desperately out of a drawn and haggard face. His dark hair was uncombed and his chin carried at least two days’ growth of beard. He didn’t look any too clean either, but there was no denying his attractiveness in a Byronic-beatnik way.

‘Ah, the Gestapo!’ he said with a slight Teutonic accent of the kind favoured by film stars when playing swinish German officers in war pictures. ‘Come in, gentlemen, but please leave your rubber truncheons in the hall. You will not need them. You have only to shout to me and I confess everything.’

He led the two detectives into the kitchen. ‘I am just consuming my breakfast,’ he said, sitting down at the table, ‘cornflakes and whisky. Perhaps you will join me?’

Dover scowled blackly. He suspected that he was having the mickey taken.

The kitchen looked just like you would expect from a man who breakfasted, half naked, at eleven o’clock in the morning off cornflakes and whisky. The garish cereal packet flaunted its free offers by the side of a three-quarters-full bottle of Black and White.

‘You wish to ask me questions about the disappearance of Miss Rugg? I can tell you all very quickly. I know nothing. Now you can go and interrogate somebody else.’

‘Where were you on Tuesday night at eleven o’clock?’ asked Dover curtly.

Bogolepov shrugged his shoulders. ‘Here.’

‘Alone?’

‘We are all alone, sir, in spite of your John Donne. Each man is an island.’

Much to Sergeant MacGregor’s relief Dover didn’t bother to ask who John Donne was, and not because he knew either. Charles Edward MacGregor eyed Boris Bogolepov curiously. The interest was mutual. The two equally attractive and handsome men examined each other critically. One had the charm of exuberant health, but his rival was equally fascinating with his air of sickness and neglect. Their instant antagonism and jealousy was ridiculous but it was almost tangible. The fat, middle-aged chief inspector didn’t, of course, enter into this masculine beauty contest.

‘Were you in bed?’ Dover plodded on.

‘I cannot remember. I may have been in this room. Does it matter?’

‘What nationality are you, sir?’

‘Oh, I am British, Inspector. So you will not be able to kick me about too much. Only naturalized, of course! I am not a dyed-through-the-wool Englishman.’

‘How long have you been in this country?’

‘I came here first in 1947. Before that I had been in the States for some months. And before that I had been in Germany.’

‘You were in Germany during the war?’

‘Yes’ – Bogolepov waved his index finger loosely in the air – ‘but not, my dear sir, as a soldier. I was in a concentration camp, as a prisoner, you understand.’