Dover sniffed. ‘Does anybody else know about this letter?’
‘Only my daughter. I told her to get on the phone to you but luckily she’d seen your assistant just going into the Hall so she fetched him.’
‘Well, I don’t want you to mention it to anyone else – no one at all, do you understand?’
‘My dear Inspector’ – Sir John waved a gracious hand – ‘I shall be discretion itself. I shall be silent as the’ – he sniggered – ‘grave.’
‘Come on, Sergeant,’ growled Dover, ‘we shall have to get a move on. We’ve only got twenty-four hours before the money’s due to be collected!’
Eve Counter was waiting for them in the hall.
‘Could I speak to you for a moment, Inspector?’ she asked hesitantly.
‘I haven’t time to be bothered with you now!’ snapped Dover. ‘Oh well, what do you want?’
‘Is my father going to pay the ransom money?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I’m prepared to pay it. Five hundred pounds, wasn’t it, in old notes?’
Dover pushed his bowler hat slowly to the back of his head and stood, arms akimbo, staring at Eve Counter.
‘You’re prepared to pay five hundred pounds for Juliet Rugg?’ he asked in utter bewilderment. ‘What in God’s name for?’
‘It’s just that I don’t like to think of the girl being killed for a measly five hundred pounds.’
‘Very noble!’ sneered Dover. ‘Now, let’s have the real reason.’
Eve Counter flashed him an angry look and then shrugged her shoulders helplessly. ‘Oh well, I suppose you’ll find out some time, whatever happens. I don’t want Juliet to get frightened and start talking. She’s blackmailing me – oh, it’s only the odd pound here and there, I can well afford it. But, if she starts talking to real criminals like these kidnappers, just to save her own skin or buy them off or something – well, then I might find myself facing rather more exacting demands. Five hundred pounds might well be a bargain price in that case.’
‘And what,’ asked Dover grimly, ‘was she blackmailing you about?’
Eve Counter’s chin went up but she avoided looking at either Dover or the silent Sergeant MacGregor.
‘I had an affair,’ she said in a stiff voice. ‘He’s married, naturally. As a matter of fact, he’s my father’s doctor and, technically, I’m a patient of his too. You know what that means. If the medical authorities got wind of his – er – misconduct, he’d be thrown out. He’s no money and he wouldn’t be able to earn his living at anything else – not after all these years – and I, well’ – she swallowed hard-‘I haven’t got enough money to keep us both. Not while my father is still alive, that is.’
Sergeant MacGregor gazed at her sympathetically. She was very near to tears and very angry with herself for being so.
‘Is this liaison still going on?’ asked Dover.
‘No, we broke it off six months or more ago. We just couldn’t stand the strain. It all seemed so underhand and sordid. There didn’t seem to be any hope of our ever getting married and, of course, there was always the danger that the whole thing would come out one day and that would mean that Edward would be ruined, his career and everything. He’s got two children, you know,’ she added miserably, ‘we had to think of them too.’
‘And how did Juliet get on to it?’
‘She found some letters I’d kept. We hadn’t been as careful as I thought. I shouldn’t have kept Edward’s letters, I suppose, but I just couldn’t bring myself to burn them.’
‘All right,’ said Dover, making up his mind quickly, ‘how soon can you get the money?’
Eve Counter’s face brightened. ‘Right away,’ she said, ‘this morning, if you like. I can get it from the bank.’
‘Well, you’d better come into Creedon with us now. We’re not going to pay the ransom, mind you, it’d be against the law anyhow, but I’d sooner have the trap baited with the real thing. Now, come on – there’s no time to waste!’
There are certain people who really rise to a crisis and it can be fairly said that Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover of New Scotland Yard was one of them. At Christmas-time some children have the distressing habit of blowing up toy balloons to their fullest extent and then releasing them so that the air rushes out of the mouthpiece and the rapidly deflating balloon shoots around dementedly all over the place. This is how Dover habitually rose to a crisis, with the same undignified lack of control and pretty much the same kind of noise.
He reduced the police headquarters in Creedon to a gibbering, panic-stricken shambles within thirty seconds of his right boot crossing the threshold. His unfortunate habit of equating speed with noise produced a screaming pandemonium which the old building had not seen since the Relief of Mafeking when they brought the drunks in. Dover rampaged happily around, bawling his head off.
‘I want all your policewomen brought in!’ he yelled. ‘Right away! There’s no time to lose!’
‘But – ‘ began the local inspector.
Don’t argue!’ roared Dover. ‘Get ’em !’
By late afternoon some semblance of order had been achieved and Dover marshalled his troops for their battle briefing.
The kidnapper’s plan was quite an ingenious one as the local pessimists were delighted to point out. Wednesday was market- day and along with other establishments in the town the ladies’ convenience in the Market Square did a roaring trade. Convention being what it is, Dover had not been able to visit the place, but he had been given a pretty accurate description of what it was like by the Chief Constable’s secretary, an intelligent girl who also produced a rough plan of the layout.
The convenience was an underground one, approached by a steep flight of stone steps. Once inside the visitor found herself in a largish, white-tiled dungeon with three cubicles containing lavatories occupying half the available space. All the lavatories had the usual penny-in-the-slot machine fixed on the door. The rest of the furnishings need little description.
