Dover One

me with compassion and sympathy. You know what Jews are like. They are a very emotional people. They felt obscurely guilty because they had not suffered as we in Europe had suffered. They felt that they had missed something! But they got bored with it, too. I was eighteen. They could not understand why, now it was all over, I did not settle down and became a regular, all-American boy. They tried hard but it just did not work. I embarrassed them. After six years in concentration camps, I embarrassed them. In the end I said I wanted to come to England – it was just to get out of an impossible situation. They were delighted. They made me an allowance and booked my ticket. I went to live in London. I was supposed to be a student. I did not need to work, which is lucky because there is nothing I can do. I made many friends, misfits like myself. I drank. I got arrested by the police. My cousin came rushing across the Atlantic Ocean and they put me in a home for a cure. It did not make any difference, but the next time I was arrested for something else, and so was my boy-friend. My cousin paid for psychiatric treatment. Then I started taking drugs. Did you guess I was a junky, Inspector? There is no degradation to which I have not sunk. But Cousin Reuben is always there. He always talks about me being sick, but he is a good man and he tries hard — the bloody fool!

‘And that is how I am living here in Irlam Old Hall. Cousin Reuben fixed it all up. I am well away from the evil company which was leading me astray in London, I am enjoying the fresh country air and, as a properly registered drug addict, I get not quite enough of the stuff to keep me going, under the National Health Service. Every Wednesday morning I go into Creedon and collect a litde white packet from the chemist. The Welfare State provides for everything, security from conception to the crematorium. Now I am all right. I do not drink more than a bottle of whisky a day and I have not got a single boy-friend. So, are you satisfied? Because if you are, you can clear out!’

Dover was still gazing moodily at Bogolepov. Talk, talk, talk, he thought crossly to himself, I must spend three-quarters of my life listening to other people yapping away. He sighed wearily once again.

‘Why have you told me all this, sir?’ He made no attempt to keep the exasperation out of his voice.

‘Just to prove to you, my dear Inspector, that if you are looking for the murderer of Juliet Rugg, it is no good looking at me. I no longer have enough interest in the human race even to kill one of them.’

‘What makes you think Juliet Rugg has been murdered?’ pounced Dover sharply. ‘We haven’t said she was.’

‘My dear Inspector, do not try to spring your little traps .on me! It is logical enough to suppose that Juliet Rugg may have been murdered, otherwise why are two such distinguished, high officers from New Scotland Yard spending so much time here at Irlam Old Hall? I was merely putting, as you say, two and two together, not confessing my guilt.’

Dover grunted. ‘When did you last see Juliet Rugg?’

‘I do not remember. I see her passing by sometimes, but I do not make a note of when. A man or a woman walks by. As long as they do not come near me, I can endure it. And Juliet Rugg, all that fat and bouncing flesh – it was revolting! Nature at her most nauseatingly generous! And such sagging, lifeless flesh it was too. She looked like an enormous Egyptian mummy-the body tightly wrapped in corsets and brassieres to stop the flesh disintegrating, and the face painted into a grotesque semblance of life, the green eye-shadow, the red lips, the pink cheeks, the black eyebrows, the hair stiffened into formalized designs. Only a resolute necrophile could have had any interest in her! And that is a little variation which, as yet, I have not tried.’

‘You weren’t on friendly terms with Miss Rugg, then?’

‘My dear Inspector, the thought of touching a woman, any woman, makes me physically sick! Apart from what we may call my early “training”, it is generally recognized by those who know about these things, that it is beyond the masculine capabilities to cope with both women and drink and drugs. I would have thought that you in your profession would have been aware of this. Of all men, I am the least likely to have lusted after that colossus of a girl. And I understand, from the gossip, that her attraction lay in the body alone, I do not think anyone loved her for the qualities of her mind. No, my dear Inspector, you will have to look somewhere else. I did not kill Juliet Rugg.’

‘Well, that’s very reassuring, sir, I must say,’ growled Dover, annoyed at being reduced to cheap sarcasm but using it none the less.

‘Ah, but I do not want you to think that I am not capable of destroying human life,’ Bogolepov went on in a mocking voice. ‘I have fought frail old men, old enough to be my grandfather, for a leaf of cabbage and I have tried to kill myself more than once. It is only that I would not be bothered with murder on such a trivial scale. One fat girl with red hair-there would be no satisfaction, no point in that. When I decide to deal with humanity, my dear sir, I shall use a machine-gun, or a bottle of prussic acid in the local reservoir. Murder does not interest me, but a massacre, to wipe out a whole village, a whole town – that is an idea which might attract me!’ He laughed, and with a defiant gesture