Miss Freel shook her head triumphantly. ‘Nobody did,’ she said firmly. ‘I checked! Not one of the cars in Irlam Old Hall left here on the Wednesday. And no tradesmen’s vans or anything like that called either, because I checked that too.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover.
‘Bit of a facer, isn’t it?’ asked Miss Freel cheerfully. ‘But I’ve got one or two theories of my own which might interest you. They’ll probably strike you as a bit far-fetched at first, but they do give us a lead. Now, if we could all work together on this, I’m sure we’ll be able to get it solved in no time. I could be a sort of unofficial collaborator, you know, like the amateur detectives in the books, and you could . . . ’
‘No!’ Dover had finished his tea and saw no point in wasting any more of his time. Amateur middle-aged lady detectives! My God, the things he had to suffer! ‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ he said shortly, ‘but things don’t work like that in real life, you know. This is a job for the professionals,’ he smiled smugly. ‘We shall get to the bottom of it, never fear!’
‘But, Inspector, this book I was reading . . . ’
Dover raised a lordly hand with a gesture which he had used many times as a young constable on traffic duty. He could stop a London bus with it in those days and he stopped Miss Freel now.
‘No!’ he said again. ‘We really haven’t time to discuss wild theories at this stage, madam. Sergeant MacGregor and I have got a lot of work to do. Perhaps later on. . . ’ he concluded vaguely.
Miss Freel’s crestfallen face brightened a little. ‘Well, I’ll go on working on it independently,’ she suggested, ‘and if I get anything concrete I’ll let you know, eh? But I really think this book I was reading . . . ’
‘Yes, that’ll be fine, madam,’ said Dover, heading rapidly for the door. ‘Come on, Sergeant!’
Miss Freel followed them downstairs.
‘I don’t suppose you got much help from him?’ she said in a loud whisper, jerking her head at her brother’s portion of the house. ‘He wouldn’t notice a body if he fell over it. He cheats at bridge, too, you know, if you don’t watch him.’
‘Really?’ said Dover.
‘I suppose,’ Miss Freel whispered on, putting a restraining hand on Dover’s arm, ‘I suppose you know he was once a clergyman?’
‘Yes,’ said Dover, ‘he told us. Said he’d lost his faith or something.’
‘You didn’t believe that cock-and-bull story, did you?’
‘Why?’ asked Dover with slightly more interest. ‘Isn’t it true?’ Miss Freel sniffed scornfully. ‘Loss of faith, my eye! Choirboys ! That’s what his trouble was! Disgusting beast! Lucky not to finish up in prison. If Juliet Rugg had been a choirboy, now, you wouldn’t have had far to look for the guilty party, I can tell you.’ Miss Freel shook her head regretfully at this lost opportunity and reluctantly let her visitors out of the house.
Outside Dover took a long, deep breath. He was beginning to wonder how much more of this he could stand before qualifying for a strait-jacket himself. But, with Miss Freel’s fortifying tea resting peacefully inside him, he felt strong enough to tackle one more interview before calling it a day. Just one more, he promised himself, and then he was heading straight back to the hotel for a ‘quiet think’ before dinner.
He set off once more up the drive, every stone and weed of which he felt he now knew intimately. He’d have a word with the caretaker at the Hall and that was his lot for the day.
William Bondy was a refreshing change from some of the other people who lived at Irlam Old Hall. He was a well-made man, getting on for sixty but still bearing himself with the upright, alert carriage of the professional soldier. He’d spent nearly forty years in the army, progressing from boy’s service to regimental sergeant-major of a crack infantry regiment, and naturally such an experience had left its mark on him. He was a man of comparatively few words and he answered Dover’s questions clearly and intelligently.
He dismissed Juliet Rugg flatly as ‘white trash’.
‘She should never have been allowed to set foot inside the gates,’ he stated. ‘I told Mrs Chubb-Smith so on several occasions but, of course, I’ve given up expecting anything from her. She tried giving me the glad eye once or twice – Miss Rugg, I mean, not Mrs Chubb-Smith – but I told her I’d seen better specimens crawling out of the cracks in a Cairo whorehouse, and she seemed to take offence at the remark. Anyhow, she gave me a wide berth after that.
‘Tuesday night, sir? I was in here watching telly till about eleven and then I went to bed.’
‘What about closing the gates?’
‘I went out and closed them at about half-past nine – same as I always do this time of year. Then I came back here, locked the front door of the Hall and switched all the lights out, except the emergency ones on the stairs.’
‘So that any of the flat tenants who came in after that would have to knock you up?’
‘That’s right, sir, except they were all in anyhow. Most of ’em are pretty old and rickety and I don’t encourage ’em to go gadding about late at night.’
‘What about one of them leaving the Hall, say at eleven o’clock – would you have seen them?’
Sergeant-Major Bondy permitted himself a rich chuckle.
‘If you’re thinking that one of my tenants had a rendezvous with Juliet Rugg at any time, never mind in the middle of the night, you can put it straight out of your head right away, sir. In the first place, there’s not one of ’em that isn’t well past it, if you see what I mean, and in the second place, not only were all the doors locked and bolted,
