‘Where shall I phone from, sir?’ asked MacGregor.
‘How the hell do I know?’ snorted Dover crossly. ‘There isn’t one here. Try next door – no, better still, try the Hoppold woman’s house. She’s probably got one.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said MacGregor, and moved over to Eulalia who was still handcuffed to her leg of the cooker. MacGregor knelt down beside her. She kicked and screamed at him as he stretched out his hands towards her.
‘MacGregor,’ said Dover with diminishing patience, ‘are you attempting assault on that woman?’
MacGregor looked up, ‘Of course not, sir, I was just looking for her keys.’
‘Never mind about the blasted keys!’ The chief inspector’s control broke. ‘Kick the bloody door down if it isn’t open. And for God’s sake get a move on!’
When MacGregor returned half an hour later he found Boris, calm and relaxed, sitting up on one of the kitchen chairs. Most of the smoke had dispersed and Dover was just putting a hypodermic syringe back on the shelf.
‘Well, the bugger’s talked all right,’ he announced casually.
‘You haven’t doped him, have you, sir?’ asked the sergeant, unwilling to believe that even Dover would go quite so far.
‘I gave him a shot’ – Dover dusted his hands fastidiously on his handkerchief – ‘after he’d made a free and voluntary statement. Now both of us have got what we want.’
Chapter Fifteen
FRIDAY morning dawned at last, bright and sunny but distinctly chilly. The police were still hard at it in Bogolepov’s bungalow. Boris and Eulalia had been carted off – Eulalia protesting, fighting and screaming the whole way-in a police van and the experts had moved in. The Home Office pathologist had rushed through the night to get his hands on what promised to be the most interesting corpse of his entire, none too distinguished, medical career. With little whimpers of admiration for the surgery, ‘very good, very good indeed for an amateur,’ he lovingly unloaded the deep freeze. All the bits and pieces of Juliet, now frozen solid, had been neatly wrapped up in transparent paper. ‘Just like the supermarket,’ remarked one youthful uniformed policeman with a silly giggle.
By six o’clock everything was finished and Dover and MacGregor returned wearily to The Two Fiddlers for breakfast. Neither had much of an appetite.
A couple of hours later, rather haggard and drawn but washed and shaved, they were ushered into the Chief Constable’s office to make their final report.
‘Jolly good show, chaps!’ said Mr Bartlett, sounding and feeling just like Montgomery after Alamein. ‘I understand you’ve done a really fine bit of work. Well up to the traditions of the Yard, eh? Now, I’d like to have the whole story from you, step by step, just so that I can get the picture clear in my mind. I suppose you have got it completely tied up all right? Aren’t going to be any loose ends or’-he glanced doubtfully at Dover-‘or any repercussions?’
Dover shook his head. ‘There’ll be no slip-up on this one, sir,’ he promised smugly. ‘Bogolepov’s turning Queen’s Evidence, but we’ve got enough circumstantial evidence to put a rope round both their necks.’
‘It’s not capital murder, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out.
Dover frowned. ‘Blast it!’ he snorted in disgust. ‘No more it is. Pity.’
‘Well, never mind,’ said the Chief Constable encouragingly, ‘we’ve caught the murderers and that’s what really matters, isn’t it? Now come on, let’s have the whole story. My inspector just told me that you’d made the arrests but he didn’t give me any details.’
‘Well,’ said Dover, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes, ‘what happened was this. Boris Bogolepov and Eulalia Hoppold decided one fine day to murder Juliet Rugg.’ He opened his eyes suddenly. ‘They may try to wriggle out of it, but there’s no doubt the murder was premeditated. They’d planned out all the details months before they actually pulled the job.’ He shut his eyes again. ‘Now, Juliet Rugg’s regular afternoon off was Tuesday. Most weeks she used to clear off after lunch and not return to Irlam Old Hall until round about eleven at night. Usually she’d been out on the tiles with her current gentleman friend, Gordon Pilley. He used to drop her outside the main gates and she used to walk alone up the drive to the Counters’ house. Anybody at Irlam Old Hall could have found this out if they’d taken the trouble to keep their eyes open. Well, the plan was this. Eulalia was the one who was going to do the actual killing. I think she’s been the instigator all the way through. Bogolepov’s not a very forceful character, what with drink and drugs, but the Hoppold woman’s got nerves of steel, if you ask me. Now then, just before eleven o’clock she was going to go out and hide in the bushes at the bottom of Sir John’s garden. The drive bends round to the left there and, as Juliet walked along, for a brief moment she would be facing the exact spot where Eulalia was concealed, and only ten yards or so away. It would be very dark but Eulalia’s done a lot of hunting under much worse conditions and at that range she was hardly likely to miss.’
‘What about the noise?’ asked the Chief Constable, ‘had she got a silencer?’
‘Bow and arrow,’ said Dover laconically, ‘believe it or believe it not! She’d got several that she’d brought back as souvenirs from her travels. She’s a crack shot with ’em, too. Well, after Juliet had bitten the dust, Boris was to come out of his house and help load the body into Sir John’s wheel chair. Oh, I forgot to mention, Eulalia had got it out of the shed ready before she took up her position. She knew the wheels squeaked so she gave ’em a good oiling first We found a can of the oil that was used in her kitchen. Nothing very exciting, but corroborative evidence all the
