‘Well, first of all there was the green nail varnish,’ said Dover, making a mental note to write up the final report himself instead of leaving it to Sergeant MacGregor – just to keep things in perspective. ‘We found that Juliet couldn’t have been wearing green nail varnish until tea-time on the day she disappeared. Red nail varnish, yes-but not green. So when Eulalia Hoppold talked about Juliet having green nail varnish on we knew she must have seen her after the girl returned to Irlam Old Hall – as, of course she did, when she cut the body up.
‘But much more important was the slip Bogolepov made. The damned fool actually acted on the message that Juliet had brought from the chemist. Instead of going into Creedon to collect his drugs on the Wednesday, as he normally did, he waited and didn’t go in until the Friday. That was a bad mistake because, of course, it showed that he, too, had seen Juliet round about eleven o’clock on the Tuesday night. Obviously no junky would casually wait a couple of days before getting hold of his supplies.
Mind you, I reckon Boris was getting dope illegally somehow in any case, but when I challenged him about going into Creedon on the Friday he just hadn’t got any answer.’
‘And what about this kidnapping note to Sir John Counter?’
‘Oh, that was Eulalia and Boris being a bit too damned clever. It was meant, as I suspected at the time, just as a red herring. They’d no intention of collecting the money. Boris bundled up a parcel of Juliet’s clothes and sent them to a refugee organization in London. The ransom letter, addressed to Sir John’s bank, you remember, was inside. One of the helpers unpacking the parcels found it, handed it on to the woman in charge and, quite naturally, she posted it. The whole thing was planned to make us think that somebody in London had kidnapped Juliet because everybody at Irlam Old Hall could prove that they hadn’t been in London at the time the letter was posted. Unfortunately, they hadn’t realized that the finger-print was a complete give-away. It showed Juliet was already dead.
‘Well’ -Dover reached for his bowler hat- ‘if there’s nothing else we’ll be getting back to town, sir. I’ll let you have my report as soon as I can get it done. Might be useful to let some of your chaps have a look at it – just to give ’em some idea of how we tackle a job at the Yard, Meticulous attention to detail, you know, studying and restudying every tiny point and then the flash of inspiration . . . ’ Dover smiled complacently.
‘I still don’t understand quite,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘what the motive was. I mean, why did they bother to kill this perfectly harmless girl?’
Dover avoided MacGregor’s eye. ‘Well, I don’t know that you could call Juliet a perfectly harmless girl, sir,’ he said. ‘We know she’d been trying a bit of the old blackmail game on at least two other people at Irlam Old Hall. My guess is that she’d spotted that Bogolepov and Hoppold were having an affair and she started trying to put the pressure on there too. Unfortunately, La Hoppold wasn’t the one to submit to that sort of thing quietly – hence the murder.’
The Chief Constable didn’t look very satisfied. ‘Sounds a bit thin,’ he objected.
The fact that this was the opinion Dover himself had held only a few hours before didn’t make it any more palatable.
‘Well, there it is!’ he snapped impatiently. ‘You can take it or leave it! And anyhow, we don’t have to prove motive – not with the blooming body there in the deep freeze.’
‘I know we don’t have to prove motive,’ retorted Mr Bartlett testily, ‘but it makes a case more convincing if you do, doesn’t it? Besides, I’ve had quite a lot to do with dope addicts in my time and I’m blowed if I can remember one of them who was really hooked, as you say Bogolepov was, who ever bothered over much with women. And Miss Hoppold’s not exactly what you’d call a sex kitten, is she?’
Dover snorted crossly down his nose. He didn’t relish having all his own arguments tossed back at him like this, especially with Big-Ears MacGregor greedily drinking in every word.
‘I know it’s a bit unusual,’ he admitted grudgingly, ‘but there it is. Damn it, there’s no law about it, is there? Eulalia Hoppold was Bogolepov’s mistress and she didn’t want her husband to find out and she didn’t want to be blackmailed by Juliet’ That’s all there is to it.’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the Chief Constable doubtfully. He hesitated for a moment and then picked up a bright green envelope from his desk. ‘I got this this morning. Of course,’ he added hastily, ‘I’m not saying there’s anything in it, but perhaps you’d like to have a look at it – just to see what you think.’
With an irate sigh Dover took the envelope and removed several sheets of bright green paper. He raised his eyebrows pityingly at the Chief Constable and began to read.
The letter was written in purple ink and bore the address of Irlam Old Hall. It began in a neat, old-fashioned hand:
Dear Chief Constable,
I don’t think we have actually ever met but I know your cousin Nancy Sells very well so perhaps that will serve as an introduction (!).
I don’t know whether they’ve told you but a young girl called Juliet Rugg has been missing from Irlam Old Hall for over a week now. She worked for Sir John Counter, of whom you may have heard.
Naturally everybody is very worried about her and I myself have spent a long time trying to solve
