Then the two detectives, as unsmiling and menacing as when they arrived, took their leave.
The drive back was not enlivened by the fact that Dover was sulking. When he put himself to the trouble of bullying a possible suspect, he liked some concrete results for his efforts-a nice ‘voluntary’ confession, for example. He was extremely peeved that Gordon Pilley had, so to speak, let him down. Dover had heard, of course, of the Judges’ Rules, had probably even read them at some stage in his career, but his detailed knowledge of their contents had become a little blurred with the passage of time. He found that, on the whole, he managed quite well without them. There was trouble sometimes. Prisoners in the dock often started whining to the judge about tricks and promises and threats, and sometimes the judge believed them. This invariably enraged Dover but, philosophically, he took it as one of the occupational hazards of his chosen profession, like getting flat feet.
‘Bit of a dirty dog, our Gordon Pilley,’ said Sergeant MacGregor with a smirk. ‘Wife looked a bit of a shrew. I reckon she’ll half kill him if this comes out.’
‘In that case she’s probably swinging the hatchet now,’ observed Dover glumly, his eyes resting on the speedometer.
‘Why? You don’t think he’s up and confessed all, do you, sir?’ asked MacGregor in astonishment. ‘I thought he looked fly enough to cook up some cock-and-bull story to explain us away.’
‘Won’t do him any good,’ said the chief inspector with bleak relish. ‘She was listening at the door.’
The rest of Sunday passed uneventfully. Dover ‘thought’ all afternoon, flat on his back and snoring gently. Sergeant MacGregor was packed off on a lot of not very important missions, checking this and counterchecking that. Dover didn’t really mind very much how the sergeant occupied his time as long as he got out from under his, Dover’s, feet.
As far as Dover was concerned the whole case had ground to an unimpressive halt, if you could use such a phrase about an undertaking which had never got moving in the first place. It was obvious that Juliet Rugg was not a particularly nice girl. There were a number of rather woolly motives which, in the continuing absence of the body, didn’t amount to all that much. Sir John Counter might have murdered her because she was two-timing him with one of his social equals, though there was no evidence that she was. Eve Counter might have murdered her to stop her marrying her father. Michael Chubb-Smith and/or his mother might have done the girl in to put a stop to her blackmailing game- Maxine Chubb-Smith might have finished her off in a fit of wild jealousy. Gordon Pilley might have . . . Oh, what the hell, thought Dover crossly, if pigs could fly, anybody in the entire country could have done the dratted girl in! All he’d got so far was a lot of airy-fairy speculation. He hadn’t enough factual evidence to cover a sixpence. He’d no proof that Juliet was even dead, although, he told himself pompously, and not risking all that much, he’d stake his professional reputation that she was.
As the chief inspector slipped gently towards sleep he brooded uneasily on the case as a whole- He didn’t like these amateur jobs,
he thought fretfully. Give him a good professional crime every time. All you had to do then was sit back and wait for some disgruntled villain or other to start singing. Then, when you knew which one of them it was, you just dolled up the evidence a bit and made it point in the right direction. Easy as falling off a tree. ’Strewth, he’d give his right arm for an informer on this case. It wasn’t fair to expect him to go round searching for clues and making deductions and God knows what! He sighed deeply. Perhaps the body’d turn up tomorrow. Then they’d have something to go on . . . That’s what he wanted. A nice solid body . . . dripping . . . with . . . clues . . .
Monday morning came, as it always does if you wait long enough, but it didn’t bring the body of Juliet Rugg. Dover couldn’t understand it. He took her continuing disappearance as a personal insult, and Sergeant MacGregor had a very uncomfortable breakfast in consequence. However, Dover’s thwarted fury at least drove him to a bit more action and in sheer desperation he decided to interview all the tenants in the flats at Irlam Old Hall.
‘You’ve got to look as though you’re doing something,’ he explained to MacGregor, ‘and you never know, one of the old fools might have seen or heard something.’
‘Do you want me to come with you, sir?’ asked MacGregor, with his fingers crossed for luck.
Dover glanced balefully at him. ‘No,’ he decided, ‘you’d better go into Creedon and trace that girl’s movements on Tuesday afternoon. She may have met somebody somewhere. And you’d better check Pilley’s account of what they did, just in case the little rat’s trying to pull a fast one. Oh, and go and see his landlady, too. If he’s lying about the time he got back, he’s the man we’re after!’
‘But Colonel Bing saw the car drive away, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out.
‘I know what Colonel Bloody Bing saw!’ thundered Dover. ‘But he could have driven back again, couldn’t he? And how do we know Colonel Bing isn’t lying? Have you thought about that, eh?’
Sergeant MacGregor turned the other cheek. ‘No, sir,’ he admitted, and shrugged his shoulders slightly.
‘The whole flaming lot of ’em might be lying like troopers for all we know!’ Dover ranted on. ‘They’re all sitting up there on their backsides not doing a day’s work between the lot of ’em. They’ve all the time in the world to think up any kind of crooked tale, I wouldn’t trust any of
