‘Yes, but only those he was entitled to on prescription,’ Mr Simkins hastened to point out. ‘He was properly registered and all that. Well, I was wondering how to get a message to him – he’s not on the phone – when I saw Miss Rugg. I asked her if she’d pop in and tell him to come in on Friday instead of Wednesday as his prescription wouldn’t be ready until then. Of course I didn’t tell her what it was.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘Well, she just said, all right, she would.’
There was a pause while Dover summoned up enough courage to ask the vital question. He cleared his throat nervously.
‘And did Mr Bogolepov come in on Friday?’ he croaked casually.
Mr Simkins thought for a minute again. ‘Well, yes, now you mention it, he did. I remember handing the packet over to him. I always have it made up ready and I always serve him myself. It was Friday morning all right. No doubt about it. The supplier didn’t deliver it until quite late on Thursday afternoon anyhow, and I was beginning to wonder if it was ever coming.’
‘Did you say anything to him?’
‘Oh, I just apologized for the hold-up and he was quite nice about it, said he had to come into Creedon that day to post a parcel or something anyhow. He was quite pleasant about the whole thing.’
‘But why on earth,’ asked Sergeant MacGregor, ‘didn’t you tell us about this before?’
Mr Simkins looked surprised and even hurt. He produced the classic answer. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you never asked me.’
Dover and MacGregor climbed thoughtfully back into the waiting police car. Both were a little dazed.
‘We’ve got him, sir, haven’t we?’ asked MacGregor in breathless excitement. ‘I felt all along he was mixed up in it somewhere.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Dover with a deep sigh, ‘it certainly looks as though we’re on to something, at last. But, just sit tight a minute while we sort out what we have got.’
‘Well, first of all,’ MacGregor pointed out, ‘we’ve cleared up the green nail varnish. Eulalia Hoppold described Juliet as wearing green nail varnish. Now we know for certain she could only have seen the green nail varnish if she saw Juliet after her return to Irlam Old Hall on Tuesday night.’
‘Always remembering that even the fact that she did see her doesn’t make Eulalia guilty of murder,’ grumbled Dover.
‘No,’ agreed MacGregor, ‘but it’s significant that in spite of having been found out in one lie-about where she was that night – she is still persisting in another.’
Dover nodded his head. ‘Let’s have another cigarette, my lad,’ he said, and waited patiently while MacGregor dug out his case and lighter. ‘Now then,’ he went on, not going to be outdone in constructive analysis by a blooming sergeant, ‘if Eulalia Hoppold is concerned in any way in Juliet Rugg’s disappearance and death, then Boris Bogolepov is involved too, because they provide an alibi for each other. ’Strewth!’ said Dover crossly. ‘I wonder if they let us drag that alibi out of ’em deliberately? It made it seem much more effective than if they’d nearly broken their necks trying to tell us about it.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ agreed MacGregor. ‘In any case, it was a nice little ace to keep tucked up their sleeves.’
‘Mind you, Boris Bogolepov mucked things up a bit. He was so keen to impress us that his vices were dope and drink not women, so that we wouldn’t connect him up with Juliet, that it looked a bit odd when he had to claim he was Eulalia’s lover. Now, he’s lost out both ways. If Eulalia’s his girl-friend, so might Juliet have been, and there may be a motive there. And if he’s not interested in women, what the hell were he and Eulalia doing together all night?’
‘And, thanks to Mr Simkins, we can now tie Boris in with Juliet independently of his connection with Eulalia.’
‘We can, indeed,’ said Dover, ‘let’s try and reconstruct what happened. Simkins asks Juliet to call and give a message to Bogolepov when she gets back to Irlam Old Hall. She’s to tell him not to come into Creedon on the following, Wednesday, morning-his usual day-but to call on Friday because his dope is going to arrive late from the wholesalers or whoever’s supposed to send it to Simkins.’
‘And we know from Simkins that Bogolepov got the message because that week, instead of coming in on the Wednesday, he came, as requested, on the Friday!’ Sergeant MacGregor was getting quite excited.
‘Yes,’ said Dover sourly, ‘and we don’t only know it from Simkins either. Damn and blast it! We knew it right from the beginning if only’ – he sighed moodily – ‘we’d recognized its significance.’
‘I don’t follow you, sir,’ said MacGregor.
‘Well, get your blasted notebook out!’ snapped Dover. ‘It’s all in there! I should have thought you’d have picked it up when you were supposed to be studying all hours of the night. Remember when I interviewed Bogolepov the first time and we had to listen to all that drivel about what a rotten life he’d had ? Well, he told us then he was a dope addict and that he collected the stuff under the National Health once a week from Creedon. And, if my memory serves me correctly, he actually said he went in on Wednesday mornings.’
‘Yes, that’s right, sir,’ said MacGregor, hunting through the pages like fury. ‘Yes, I’ve got it here. We saw him on the Saturday morning, but we didn’t know that he’d collected the stuff on Friday that particular week.’
‘Oh yes, we did,’ said Dover flady, ‘Miss McLintock told us.’
‘Miss McLintock?’
‘Yes. When we were talking to Colonel Bing in her sitting-room on Friday morning, the day we arrived down here, Miss McLintock came in. Remember where she’d been?’
‘Oh, yes! She’d just got back from Creedon. All that rigmarole about library books and posting a parcel.’
‘That’s it,’ said Dover, ‘and you
