They managed to get one handcuff on Eulalia’s wrist and then Dover picked her up bodily, still kicking and biting and cursing, and carted her across the room. He dumped her heavily and unceremoniously on the floor beside Boris and clipped the handcuff to the other leg of the cooker,
‘Hell’s teeth!’ he exclaimed as he looked round the room, his bowler hat still resting squarely on his head. ‘What a mess!’
MacGregor mopped the blood off his face. ‘Whew!’ he said. ‘I never expected ’em to run amuck like that, did you, sir?’
‘No, and that’s not the only thing I didn’t expect either. What was it he said about the body? “You’re getting warm” or something, wasn’t it?’ Dover looked grimly round the room again. ‘Just have a look in that deep freeze thing, MacGregor,’ he said casually.
MacGregor threw his chief inspector an inquiring glance and then went obediently across to the deep freeze and opened the lid.
‘Seems to be full of food or something, sir,’ he said, pulling out a fair-sized, Cellophane-wrapped package.
He wiped some of the frost off one end of it and peered through the transparent paper. For a second he didn’t get it Then the significance of the object he was holding penetrated. It was a human arm, frozen solid and ending in five green-painted finger-nails.
‘Oh my God!’ he said in a horrified voice. ‘It’s . . . ’ His eyes bulged and he gulped ominously. Dropping the parcel on to the floor he stuffed his blood-bespattered handkerchief into his mouth and made an ignominious dash for the back door. From the pitch blackness outside came a distressing, choking sound. Detective Sergeant Charles Edward MacGregor was being sick in the garden,
Dover, sneering complacently to himself over the squeamishness of present-day policemen, strolled over to the deep freeze and pulled out another tidily wrapped bundle. It was large and round, like a football. His own stomach gave a sympathetic heave. He slammed the lid down and hurried, rather shakily but with an unerring instinct, across the room to one of the kitchen cupboards. Inside was Boris’s supply of whisky.
‘I reckon poor old MacGregor could do with a shot of this,’ he muttered as he poured out a tumblerful and then tossed it, with one tremendous gulp, down his own throat.
It was at this somewhat inopportune moment that Colonel Bing arrived.
‘Hello!’ she called inanely. ‘Anybody home?’
With Peregrine in her arms she stepped through the open back door into the kitchen.
‘I’ve come for Peregrine’s bone. He did so enjoy the last one, the greedy little . . . ’ her voice trailed off.
She gaped at Dover, still clutching his bottle of whisky, and stared in blank astonishment at the prostrate bodies handcuffed to the legs of the electric stove. Eulalia was cursing horribly and Boris had started to giggle feebly again. Finally her eyes wandered to the mess of plates and broken glass on the kitchen floor,
‘Dear God!’ she exclaimed, almost inaudibly. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
‘I’m just in the process of making an arrest,’ announced Dover loftily. ‘I think it would be as well if you didn’t stay here.’
Colonel Bing ignored him. ‘Eulalia!’ she cried. ‘What have they done to you?’
She dropped Peregrine and hurried across to her neighbour.
The dog, pausing only briefly to cock his leg up against one of the overturned chairs, headed straight for the grisly parcel MacGregor had dropped on the floor. He grabbed it and started proudly for the back door.
‘Hey!’ yelled Dover with visions of his evidence disappearing before his eyes. ‘Drop that, you filthy brute! ’
The chief inspector had never played Rugby in his life, but, with a valiant lunge, he got Peregrine round the back legs in a superb flying tackle. The poodle squealed in outrage, dropped his trophy and bit Dover.
Just as Sergeant MacGregor, his face tinged unpleasandy with an obscene yellow hue, appeared sheepishly in the doorway, the electric cooker suddenly began belching out an inordinate quantity of black, greasy smoke. Colonel Bing, Boris and Eulalia practically disappeared from view. The stew was burning.
‘For God’s sake,’ bawled Dover, still fighting it out with Peregrine on the floor, ‘why doesn’t somebody do something?’
MacGregor seized a towel and flung himself heroically at the oven door. He grabbed the casserole, burnt black and still smoking furiously, and rushed outside with it. Colonel Bing switched the cooker off and opened a window. Dover managed to struggle to his feet and Peregrine, his rear end a couple of inches ahead of Dover’s boot, fled to the safety of his mistress’s arms.
‘What on earth’s happening?’ demanded Colonel Bing, coughing, black-faced, dishevelled and not at all impressed by Scotland Yard’s detection methods.
‘Never you mind!’ rasped Dover. ‘None of your business.’
‘I’m a tax-payer,’ snapped Colonel Bing, ‘I have a right to know what’s going on.’
MacGregor staggered in again.
‘Sergeant,’ roared Dover hoarsely, ‘get this blasted woman out of here! And that damned dog too!’
While MacGregor, always a miracle of tact, was carrying out his instructions, Dover helped himself to another shot of whisky. It made him feel better, but not all that much.
After a bit the sergeant came back, somewhat unenthusiastically, into the kitchen.
‘She’s going to write to her M.P., sir,’ he said, squeamishly keeping his eyes away from the deep freeze, ‘and the Ministry of Defence.’
‘Silly old bitch,’ said Dover. He helped himself to yet another glass of whisky. ‘That foreign swine come round yet?’
‘I think so, sir.’
‘Good, Well, I’m going to have another little chat with Mr Bloody Bogolepov and see if I can get a bit more information out of him. The woman obviously isn’t going to say anything, but I think, with a little persuasion, I can make him open his mouth and sing.’
Dover flexed his muscles. They creaked a bit.
‘Now, you nip off and phone the local police in Creedon and tell ’em to send the lot over here pronto. Finger-print men, photographers, a doctor and the police wagon for these two. Oh, and they’d better get hold of a Home
