‘I’ll give ’em six months,’ said Sir John to nobody in particular, ‘six months at the outside. And then that nubile young madam’ll be off with some fellow who’s got more of what she wants than that anaemic young husband of hers has-and she’ll take her father’s money with her, too.’ He sighed. ‘Wish I were ten years younger! I’d give her a run for her money, by God I would!’
‘Hm,’ said Dover, and turned round as he heard his name being called.
‘Chief Inspector! Chief Inspector!’
It was Amy Freel, waving frantically at him from her upstairs sitting-room. ‘I’ve go£ those books I was talking to you about, and I’ve written out a few notes on my theory which I’m sure will be very useful to you. Can you come up a minute?’
‘Go on, man!’ urged Sir John. ‘An invitation’s an invitation, wherever it comes from! You can’t afford to pick and choose at your age.’
Dover gave him a filthy look. ‘I’m not that desperate!’ he announced grimly. Raising his voice, he yelled back to Miss Freel, ‘I’m sorry, madam, I can’t spare the time now. Later perhaps.’
‘Oh dear,’ wailed Miss Freel, ‘well, just wait there and I’ll bring them down to you. We can have our little discussion when you’ve looked through them. Just wait there! I won’t be a minute!’
Dover didn’t stand on ceremony. Ramming his bowler hat firmly down over his eyes, he made an elephantine charge for the main gates. Sir John screamed encouragement at his retreating back.
The chief inspector pounded manfully down the drive. He reached the gates, his face scarlet with exertion.
‘Start up the motor!’ he bellowed.
The taxi was waiting for him on the main road. The one-man who found even Dover a pleasant change from the funeral mourners he habitually drove, gunned his massive 1928 Rolls-Royce engine into life. Dover grabbed the door handle and flung himself on to the capacious rear seat.
‘The Two Fiddlers,’ he gasped, adding, for once in his life, ‘and step on it!’
Chapter Ten
‘ALL right,’ said Dover, dragging in a great lungful of smoke from one of Sergeant MacGregor’s cigarettes, ‘let’s hear what you’ve been doing with yourself, my lad!’
They were sitting in Dover’s bedroom at The Two Fiddlers. The chief inspector, collarless, jacketless and shoeless, was sunk deep in the armchair with his feet propped up on the bed. Sergeant MacGregor, looking as always a credit to the Tailor and Cutter, sat near the window on a hard upright chair, his notebook on his knees. Each man had a pint of Long Herbert within easy reach.
Dover closed his eyes the better to concentrate.
If the old bastard starts snoring, Sergeant MacGregor promised himself grimly, so help me, I’ll croak him!
Dover opened one eye. ‘Well, come on, Sergeant,’ he growled crossly, ‘we don’t want to be here all night! I’ve had a hard day, if you haven’t.’
Sergeant MacGregor, who had got back ten minutes after The Two Fiddlers stopped serving dinner, apologized to his chief inspector, whose after-luncheon ‘quiet think’ had lasted peacefully till seven o’clock.
‘Sorry, sir. I was just wondering where to begin.’
‘Begin at the beginning,’ suggested Dover pompously, and, rather pleased with this neat bit of repartee, settled himself back even deeper in his chair.
‘Well, there’s still no sign of Juliet Rugg, sir, dead or alive. I think the local police have done about everything they can, short of searching every house in the country. They’ve sent out a call to all main-line railway stations and bus termini and they’ve even had a message put out on the B.B.C. They’ve organized search parties locally to check all the woods and waste ground where somebody might have dumped her, but they’ve found nothing at all.’
‘Rivers? Canals? Reservoirs?’
‘The local river’s only two feet deep, the nearest canal is over ten miles from Irlam Old Hall and you can’t approach it by road, and the nearest reservoir is twenty miles away. If somebody carted her off in a car or a van, then, of course, she might be anywhere, but I should have thought we’d have heard something by now. What it boils down to is this: nobody has seen or heard of her since Colonel Bing saw her on the drive at eleven o’clock on Tuesday night’
‘Since Colonel Bing says she saw her,’ corrected Dover. ‘Well, I think she’s dead!’
Sergeant MacGregor frowned. ‘But, there’s still the problem of the body, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘Sixteen stone of a problem! And it’s five days now—surely she’d be stinking to high heaven?’
‘Could be buried somewhere,’ said Dover vaguely.
‘But where, sir?’
‘How the hell do I know? Well, what else did you find out?’
‘I traced her movements in Creedon on the Tuesday afternoon and evening’ They’re pretty much what we knew already. She caught the three-fifteen bus from Earlam and got into Creedon at three forty-five. The bus conductor knows her and remembers her quite well. Nothing unusual. She booked a single ticket and I thought we’d got something there, but apparently she often did that, presumably when Mr Pilley was going to bring her back by car. Her first stop was at the newsagents where she bought a couple of magazines – tripey romantic stories about shop girls marrying Ruritanian princes, all told in strip cartoons. The shopkeeper showed me some of them, and from what we’ve heard, I’d say they were right up Juliet’s street.
‘Well, her next stop was the chemist’s. She must have spent at least half an hour there at the cosmetics counter. The two girls who serve there were at school with her, and from what I can gather they had a good old gossip while Juliet pawed over the pots of cream and what-have-you. Both girls say Juliet was just the same as usual. She told ’em a few hair-raising stories about what old
