Dover was unperturbed. ‘Am I to take it that you were sleeping together, madam?’
‘Oh my God!’ said Boris sarcastically. ‘Let us call a spade a spade! We were copulating.’
‘ReaUy, sir.’ Dover turned to Boris who was pouring himself out another tumblerful of whisky. ‘That isn’t quite the story you gave me at our first interview, is it?’
Boris gave a short bark of a laugh. ‘No, I am afraid I led you softly up the garden path, my dear sir, but you must admit I did it rather well.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth?’ snapped Dover viciously. Boris looked steadily at him, his lips twitching into a faint smile. ‘Chivalry, my dear sir,’ he said grandly. ‘I was protecting the good name of a lady.’
Dover emitted a sceptical grunt and swung back again to Eulalia who was still avidly watching him. ‘And you, Miss Hoppold, why did you lie to me?’
‘Well, it’s not the sort of thing you shout from the house-tops, you know.’
‘A confidential interview with the police is hardly shouting from the house-tops.’
‘Well, I just didn’t want anybody to know about Boris and me. You see, I’m married, Inspector. My readers don’t know this because naturally it makes a better story if they think I do all my trips alone – you know, one helpless female surrounded by naked savages-but in actual fact my husband and I have always worked together. He takes all the photographs.
‘I’ve come up here to get some peace and quiet while I get my next book finished and my husband’s tied up in London making the arrangements for our next trip. There’s nothing serious between Boris and me, but I’d simply rather my husband remained in ignorance about it. What the eye doesn’t see, you know . . . ’
‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘And how long has this liaison between you and Mr Bogolepov been going on?’
‘Oh, month or so.’
‘And you’ve kept it completely secret?’
‘Well, we thought we had.’
‘Did Juliet Rugg know about it?’
Eulalia’s eyes opened wide and she exchanged a quick glance with Boris. ‘No, not as far as I know. Why should she?’
‘It’s very hard to keep a thing like this quiet, you know, madam,’ Dover pointed out patiently. ‘Neighbours can often put two and two together and arrive at the right answer. We’ve got every reason to believe that Juliet Rugg was not above a bit of gentle blackmail when she had the chance. You would appear to be an ideal victim. Did she ever try to blackmail you?’
‘No, she certainly didn’t!’ Eulalia’s jaw set in a pugnacious line. ‘Just what are you getting at, Inspector? Are you hinting that we’d something to do with Juliet Rugg’s disappearance?’
‘It’s a possibility, madam, isn’t it? It wouldn’t be the first time that a blackmailer’s been bumped off by one of his victims.’
‘And no doubt it will not be the last,’ Boris commented helpfully into his glass of whisky. ‘Do you want me to accompany you as I am, my dear sir, or will you permit me to put on a pair of trousers?’
‘Oh Boris, do for God’s sake shut up! This isn’t a parlour game.’
‘My dear Eulalia,’ said Boris solemnly, ‘I have never suggested it was.’
Eulalia turned impatiently to Dover. ‘Now, look here, Inspector, let’s just get this straight, Juliet Rugg did not know of my association with Boris and she was not blackmailing me. Why on earth should she? Apart from the fact that I should just have told her to go to hell, I think it extremely unlikely that she even knew I was married. Why, even Boris didn’t know at first.’
‘Nobody,’ Boris chimed in plaintively, ‘ever tells me anything.’
‘And I can assure you, Inspector,’ she continued after an irritated glance at Bogolepov, ‘that whatever has happened to Juliet Rugg, I had nothing to do with it at all.’
‘Nor,’ said Boris, finishing off his whisky, ‘had I.’
‘Well,’ said Dover, reaching for his bowler hat, ‘we shall have to look into all this a bit further. Are there any other parts of your earlier statements that you would like to revise – just in case somebody else knows a bit more than you think they do?’
Eulalia and Boris shook their heads. ‘No, my dear sir,’ said the German in a voice which was becoming slightly slurred, ‘now you have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God !’
‘Hm,’ said Dover sceptically, ‘I hope you’re right’
‘But there is one small point which you may have overlooked,’ Boris squinted carefully into his empty glass.
‘Really?’ asked Dover with heavy sarcasm.
‘Oh, yes. Don’t forget that both Eulalia and I now have an alibi.’
Chapter Eight
‘CHEEKY young bastard!’ commented Dover grumpily when they found themselves once more standing on the drive of Irlam Old Hall.
‘It was a rather fishy story, wasn’t it, sir?’ ventured Sergeant MacGregor. ‘I mean, it doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’
‘The truth rarely does,’ Dover observed with a deep sigh.
‘But what about all this drink and dope business, sir? You said . . . ’
‘Oh, never mind what I said!’ snapped Dover, who couldn’t stand people quoting his own words back at him. ‘We can’t stand here all day discussing things. Who’ve we got left to see up here?’
The sergeant was understandably somewhat flabbergasted at this apparent thirst for work on the part of his chief inspector. ‘But, it’s getting on for two o’clock, sir,’ he pointed out, ‘and we haven’t had any lunch yet.’
Dover thought this over for a moment. His stomach appeared to have settled down fairly well, but he squirmed slightly at the prospect of what lunch at The Two Fiddlers would do to it No, better not risk it.
‘You young coppers are all the same,’ he said blisteringly, ‘never thinking about anything else except your stomachs! If you wanted a regular nine to five job, my lad, you shouldn’t have joined
