And so here they were again, already chafing in their double harness and setting out with sinking hearts and mutual ill-will to solve the apparently unmysterious disappearance of Juliet Rugg.
A police car was waiting for them at Creedon Station. The police driver saluted smartly, opened the door, packed their cases in the boot and leapt athletically into his seat. He was alert and keen. Ten minutes later, at the end of their journey, he was wondering if his brother-in-law’s offer of a job in the slaughterhouse was still open.
Chief Inspector Dover was a nervous passenger and he didn’t care who knew it. A non-driver himself, he was none the less acutely sensitive to the hazards which beset the man at the wheel. Crouching tensely on the back seat he shared all his premonitions of impending danger with the unfortunate man who was actually driving the car. The endless stream of advice to look out for dogs, old ladies, young children, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, bicycles, learner drivers, blind corners and one-way streets, was relieved only by pungent post-mortems on previous risky manoeuvres which had already brought the three of them within kissing distance of the jaws of death.
By the grace of God, and in spite of Dover, the police driver, a man of fourteen years’ unblemished experience, got the car safely to the headquarters of the Creedshire Constabulary.
Dover heaved himself out of the back and lumbered off into the building without a word. MacGregor did the honours on his behalf.
‘Thank you very much, driver,’ he said with a winning smile.
The driver just looked at him, not trusting himself to speak, and turned away with trembling hands to unload the baggage.
Inside the police headquarters Dover was ushered rapidly into the presence of the Chief Constable. Mr Bartlett had prepared and practised a little speech of welcome, brief but covering rather neatly, he thought, all the essential points. When the two detectives were announced he glanced up distractedly from his desk. This had been rehearsed too. He was about to flash a frank, manly smile at them when his first actual sight of Dover literally took his breath away.
The chief inspector, purple in the face and with his bowler hat rammed well down over his ears, came into the room like a charging rhinoceros.
‘That bloody driver of yours isn’t fit to drive a toy scooter on a fairground roundabout!’ he roared.
The Chief Constable’s jaw dropped. Was this what the Assistant Commissioner had sent him? He gazed in helpless fascination at the figure which loomed, snorting furiously, above his desk.
Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover was a big man. His six-foot-two frame was draped, none too elegantly, in seventeen and a quarter stone of flabby flesh, an excessive proportion of which had settled round his middle. Well-cut clothing can, of course, do wonders to conceal such natural defects as the spread of middle age, but Dover bought his suits ready-made, and the one he was wearing at the moment had been purchased a long time ago. It was made of shiny blue serge. Round his thick, policeman’s neck he wore a blue-striped collar which was almost submerged in the folds of fat, and a thin, cheap tie was knotted under the lowest of his double chins. He wore a long, dark blue overcoat and stout black boots.
Over the whole of this unprepossessing ensemble there was, naturally enough, Dover’s face. It was large and flabby like the rest of him. Only the details – nose, mouth and eyes – seemed out of scale. They were so tiny as to be almost lost in the wide expanse of flesh. Dover had two small, mean, button-like eyes, a snub little nose and a sulky rosebud of a mouth. He looked like one of those pastry men that children make on baking day out of odd scraps, with currants for eyes – an uncooked pastry man, of course. His hair was thin and black and he had a small black moustache of the type that the late Adolf Hitler did so much to depopularize.
Mr Bartlett gulped and pulled himself together.
‘Chief Inspector Dover?’ he asked in the faint hope that it might be somebody else.
‘Yes,’ The hope died. ‘And this is Sergeant MacGregor.’
‘Well, I’m pleased to meet you both.’
Dover grunted derisively,
‘I just wanted to see you, Dover, to assure you that we’ll try and – er – give you every assistance we can. Naturally we all want to get this business cleared up as soon as possible . . . ’
‘Too right we do!’ said Dover bluntly, and stared sneeringly round the room.
‘Er, yes, well, I’ve arranged for my C.I.D. inspector to brief you and then I expect you’ll be wanting to get off and have a look at the scene of the crime, eh?’
‘What crime?’ demanded Dover. Don’t tell me you’ve actually found the body now?’
‘No, no – she’s still missing. I just meant where she lived and where she was last seen, and everything.’ The Chief Constable had had more than enough of this and was already ringing the bell for his inspector.
Unlike Mr Bartlett, the local C.I.D. inspector hadn’t bothered to prepare anything. He rummaged dejectedly among the mountain of files and odd sheets of loose paper which covered his desk.
‘Judy Rudd,’ he muttered, his attention momentarily caught by the sight of his football coupon. He put it carefully on one side and scrabbled around a bit more until he found the accompanying envelope. ‘Judy Rudd,’ he murmured again, ‘I’ve got the file on her here somewhere,’
Sergeant MacGregor cleared his throat. ‘I think the name
