The supervision which he tried to arrange outside the purely feminine domain of the underground convenience wasn’t, he was unhappily aware, very much better. The local police grudgingly agreed to provide an indequate number of police constables, also in plain clothes, to keep an unobtrusive eye on such inhabitants of Irlam Old Hall as might make their way into Creedon on the Wednesday. Gordon Pilley and Mrs Rugg were also included in the list of those whose movements were to be supervised.
Though, mind you,’ said Dover gloomily, ‘the odds are they’ll use some blasted woman that nobody’s ever seen before. I’d give six months’ pay to get my hands on the bastard who thought this one up!’
‘Where are we going to be stationed, sir?’ asked Sergeant MacGregor, wondering if Dover had overlooked this small point. He underestimated the chief inspector.
‘Here,’ said Dover, jabbing a fat finger at the map. ‘ “Miss Mathilda’s Tea Shoppe”-it’s right opposite the ladies’ convenience and we’ll be able to sit there all day, if needs be, without attracting too much attention. You’ll have to park the car as near as you can in one of the side streets, just in case we have to use it’ With an unerring instinct, fortified by long experience, Dover had picked out for himself the cushiest job in the whole operation. But even the prospect of sitting quietly all day in a Tea Shoppe didn’t lift the burden of gnawing anxiety which both he and Sergeant MacGregor were beginning to experience. If things went wrong, somebody’s head was going to roll, and Dover recognized resentfully that his neck was already stretched out on the block.
Chapter Eleven
DOVER didn’t get much sleep on the Tuesday night. In the quiet of his hotel room, tossing about irritably from one side to the other in bed, he began to think about things which he might have done better to have considered earlier. A telephone call from his superior in Scotland Yard, who had been alerted by the horrified Chief Constable as to what was going on, had not made Dover feel any easier about his hastily-conceived plan. An icy voice had informed him clearly where the responsibility lay in case there was any mishap (squarely on Dover’s shoulders, of course) and drew his attention to the fact, in case he had overlooked it, that the safety of the missing girl and of five hundred pounds in untraceable notes was a matter of not inconsiderable importance.
Dover’s mind shied uneasily back to the ransom letter itself’ He had been so astounded and infuriated by its arrival that he had without thinking assumed that it was genuine. Well, that was fair enough. Juliet Rugg’s life might be in danger and he had to take all possible precautions to protect her. If the whole thing turned out to be a hoax, nothing had been lost, except an incredibly large number of police man-hours.
There was nothing particularly significant about the note from a physical point of view. Both the envelope and the paper were mass-produced items which could be bought in every stationer’s shop from one end of the country to the other. The minor problem of the large, neatly printed, pencilled lettering had been solved – by Sergeant MacGregor unfortunately, but that couldn’t be helped. Whoever had written the note had used one of those celluloid stencils which are, again, on sale everywhere to people who want to do some neat lettering or sign-writing on a do-it- yourself basis. In this case they had been able to identify the actual make of the stencil used-a very small one which was combined with a ruler. Sergeant MacGregor possessed one himself and had recognized the shape of the letters.
It was, Dover acknowledged, a clever idea. Obviously the writer was well aware of police expertise in identifying handwriting or printing, however well disguised, and the stencil was plainly a good deal less troublesome than the more usual method of cutting words and letters out of old newspapers and sticking them on a sheet of paper. The police had reported that the pencil used was an ordinary HB one and asked if it was worth while trying to identify the actual make. Dover had said yes, just to be awkward. He didn’t really expect to get a lead that way.
There were no finger-prints on the letter, except those of Sir John and the ink impression which had indeed been made by Juliet Rugg’s right-hand index finger. It had been compared with the prints which were scattered all over her bedroom. The letter had however been sent up to the finger-print laboratories in Scotland Yard in case they could discover something which the much less experienced local men had missed. Dover hadn’t much hope of success on this score but he was never one to cut down work and trouble as long as it was somebody else’s.
At this stage in his ruminations he climbed resentfully out of bed and rummaged round in his suitcase until he found the crumpled packet of cigarettes which he carried in case of emergency. He lit one and climbed back into bed again, frowning as he sucked the acrid-tasting smoke into his lungs.
Well, it was obviously unlikely that the ransom letter was going to give him any
