‘You weren’t expecting to be blackmailed for the rest of your life, then?’
‘Good heavens, no, Inspector!’ Michael Chubb-Smith regarded his questioner with wide-eyed surprise. ‘She was only a village girl, you know. She just saw her chance of making a spot of extra cash and took it, that’s all. It was only a matter of a few measly quid. There was nothing sinister about it.’
‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘By the way, sir, can you tell me where you were round about eleven o’clock on Tuesday night?’
‘Oh, Maxine and I were both in bed. We didn’t see or hear anything.’
‘You and your wife share the same room, I take it?’
‘When I let him!’ came a drawling voice from the open doorway.
The three men turned round and MacGregor and Michael Chubb-Smith rose with alacrity to their feet. Dover contented himself with a vague grunt and a half-hearted attempt at rising a couple of inches from his chair.
‘This is my wife,’ said Michael Chubb-Smith. ‘Darling, these are the detectives from Scotland Yard.’
‘I can see that, darling, I’m not blind.’ Maxine Chubb-Smith, the cynosure of three pairs of interested masculine eyes, undulated across the room and propped herself on one arm in a reclining position on a chaise-longue upholstered in white leather.
She was a small, exquisitely shaped girl with large dark eyes which she directed with frank curiosity at Sergeant MacGregor. He gazed appreciatively back at her. In skin-tight scarlet matador pants and an extremely revealing, close-fitting black blouse, she was well worth the sergeant’s contemplation.
‘I was just telling Inspector Dover, darling, that we were in bed on Tuesday night at eleven. You remember, that was when Colonel Bing saw this girl walking up the drive.’
Maxine turned her head slowly and looked at him. ‘What a bloody liar you are, darling,’ she said in a bored, languid voice. ‘You know damned well I’d locked you out of the bedroom! For all I know you may have been out murdering this fat girl for hours.’ She turned back to smile bewitchingly at Sergeant MacGregor.
Michael Chubb-Smith blushed furiously and avoided Dover’s eyes.
‘Is this true, sir?’ asked the chief inspector in pained surprise.
‘I suppose so,’ muttered the young man.
‘I hope you realize, sir, that giving false information to the police is a very serious offence.’
‘Oh hell, what does it matter?’ Chubb-Smith shot an irate look at his wife who was now eyeing Sergeant MacGregor up and down with patent admiration. ‘Maxine and I had a bit of an argument. It’s nothing to do with anybody else.’
‘It wasn’t an argument, darling, it was an ultimatum,’ corrected his wife, not bothering to look at him.
‘Well, anyhow, it’s nothing to do with the police. And it makes no difference, Inspector, neither of us saw or heard anything which could be of the slightest help to you.’
‘You speak for yourself, darling’ – Maxine smiled sweetly at Sergeant MacGregor – ‘I saw something which might very well interest these gentlemen.’
‘Did you indeed, madam.’ Dover turned towards her. ‘Sergeant!’ he snapped. ‘I thought you were supposed to be taking notes!’
‘Oh, sorry, sir!’ Sergeant MacGregor flicked the pages over with a belated show of efficiency.
‘Sergeant?’ Maxine was disappointed. ‘Does that mean you’re not commissioned?’
‘Detective Sergeant MacGregor’s in the police, madam,’ retorted Dover on his subordinate’s behalf, ‘not the army. We work on an entirely different system.’
‘Oh,’ said Maxine, not really sure whether this did or did not make Charles Edward MacGregor more or less of an ‘other rank’ than she had thought.
‘Mrs Chubb-Smith!’ thundered Dover in an only partially successful attempt to win her attention. ‘Would you mind telling us what it was you saw on Tuesday night?’
Maxine looked without much interest at the chief inspector, whose temper was beginning to fray. ‘Well, I don’t know about that, darling,’ she said. ‘Daddy always warned me never to talk to the police without a solicitor. He always says that if people would only have enough sense to keep their mouths shut, they’d never be where they are today.’
Dover’s fists clenched and a rather frightening purple tinge spread inexorably over his face and neck. Maxine’s husband intervened before the inspector reached his never very high flash-point.
‘For God’s sake, Maxine,’ he pleaded, ‘tell them what you know and let’s get rid of them. They’ll be here for the rest of the day if you don’t. Your father wasn’t talking about this kind of thing.’
‘All right, darling,’ said his wife after staring at him with critical calculation for a few moments, ‘if you say so. I’m sure you’ve had more experience of these things than Daddy has. But just don’t blame me if things go wrong. I’m only telling them because you told me to.’
‘Telling us what, madam?’ demanded Dover through clenched teeth,
‘Only that I saw Eulalia Hoppold going to Boris’s bungalow at about ten o’clock on Tuesday night. She went along the bottom of our garden, at the back. Of course, she always does. She thinks people won’t see her that way.’
There was a moment’s silent anticlimax and Dover’s eyes rose heavenwards.
‘I see,’ he said with heavy patience. ‘You saw Miss Hoppold going to Mr Bogolepov’s house at ten o’clock on Tuesday night?’
‘Going secretly,’ Maxine pointed out.
‘But that’s all?’
‘That’s all I saw on Tuesday night,’ Maxine agreed amiably.
‘But you did see something else, later perhaps?’
Maxine rolled over on to her back, placed her arms behind her head and crossed one scarlet-cased leg over the other. She looked even better from this angle.
‘Yes, I did see something later. I saw Eulalia Hoppold coming back again from Boris’s, by the same route, at six o’clock on Wednesday morning.’
‘Oh, really, Maxine, don’t be childish! This isn’t a game! She’s just making it up, Inspector.’
‘Really, sir,’ said Dover, ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Because she’s jealous, that’s what! She’s been making a play for Boris for months and he’s just not having any. He’s made that perfectly plain. Maxine just can’t accept the fact
