‘But you got it posted in the end, I trust?’
‘Oh yes, dear.’
‘And registered?’
‘And registered, dear.’
‘And what was this Boris man doing in the post office?’
‘He was posting a parcel too, dear. Poor young man, I felt so sorry for him. He looks so thin and haggard.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ snorted Colonel Bing. ‘He looks dissipated, that’s what he looks!’ She turned to Dover. ‘If it does turn out that somebody’s done away with Juliet Rugg, you want to put this chap at the top of your list, Inspector! He’d murder his own grandmother, soon as look at her!’
‘Oh, Bingo!’ protested Miss McLintock.
‘Don’t be a fool, Georgie!’ snapped the colonel. ‘His sort want booting back where they came from. Wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t a Communist spy or something.’ She addressed Dover again. ‘I’ll tell you something very odd about him,’ she said, reducing her voice to a deafening conspiratorial whisper. ‘Georgie here, she’s a schoolteacher. Taught French and German in a girls’ high school for thirty-eight years. All right, what happens? This Bogolepov fellow’s supposed to be a German. Well, Georgie’s a soft-hearted old idiot and one day she thinks she’ll make him feel at home and have a bit of a chat with him, in German. And what happens?’ Colonel Bing leaned forward to drive the point home. ‘Not only does he not understand a bloody word she says, but she couldn’t understand a bloody word he said either! Now, what do you make of that, eh?’
Miss McLintock gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘Oh, it wasn’t as bad as that, Bingo!’ she protested.
‘Rubbish!’ retorted Colonel Bing, ‘if the fellow’s a German, he ought to know the lingo! I’ve been out there, Georgie, you haven’t.’ She nodded curtly at Sergeant MacGregor’s notebook. ‘You’d better take his name down, young man. Boris Bogolepov – b, o, g, o, l, e, p, o, v – got it? He lives in the top house on this side, well, it’s a bungalow really, not a house. He’s some sort of refugee, you know, or so he says, God alone knows why they always finish up in this country!’
‘But, Bingo, the poor boy suffered terribly during the war. He was in a concentration camp! ’
‘So he says!’ repeated Colonel Bing darkly. ‘That’s what they all say! And whatever he may or may not have done during the war, I know what he’s doing now. Damn all! He’s been here, what? Two years? And never done a day’s work since he came. Where does he get his money from, that’s what I’d like to know!’
‘Well, I think he’s a very nice kind boy,’ retorted Miss McLintock firmly.
‘Kind!’ exploded the colonel. ‘You’re getting senile, Georgie!’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said her friend huffily, ‘but I happened to notice in the post office that he was sending quite a large parcel to one of those refugee organizations in London. And in my view, that is a kind action.’
‘Pooh!’ scoffed the colonel. ‘Pile of old clothes he didn’t want, I expect!’
Miss McLintock didn’t answer and there was a rather uncomfortable silence. With the quiet assurance of one who knows that she is right and doesn’t need to argue about it, Miss McLintock placidly opened her library book and began carefully turning over the pages one by one. The other three watched her and sought frantically for some new topic of conversation. Miss McLintock with a forgiving smile provided it.
‘Have you offered a glass of sherry to these gentlemen, dear?’ she asked sweetly.
‘Of course not, Georgie!’ Colonel Bing snubbed her friend. ‘You know they’re not allowed to drink on duty!’
Dover glared at her. He’d never been known to refuse a drink, even from the hands of a man he was on the point of arresting for murder. And at the moment he could do with one.
‘For God’s sake, Georgie,’ Colonel Bing spoke with exasperation, ‘stop turning over those blasted pages! You’re really getting quite neurotic about library books. If you must do it, why don’t you do it in the library?’
‘I didn’t have time, dear,’ said Miss McLintock mildly. She smiled cosily at Dover. ‘I have quite a thing about library books,’ she confided with a little giggle. ‘I always look through them very carefully. You’d be surprised at what people use as book-marks! I’ve got quite a little collection of things that I’ve found over the years —bus tickets, an old suspender, half a regimental tie, a hundred-franc note – that was very exciting. I’ve got them all in a box with a label giving the name of the book I found them in and the date. Of course, I don’t keep all the things I find, naturally. Pieces of bacon and things like that I have to throw away. And the pension book, naturally I sent that back. Oh, and the letters, all stamped and addressed, I always pop those in the pillar box for them. But everything else I keep in my little museum.’
Dover sighed. ‘Sounds a very interesting hobby,’ he commented impatiently. ‘But now, Colonel Bing, if you’d just call this dog off, I think it’s time we were on our way.’
‘Peregrine!’ bawled Colonel Bing in a voice which rattled the windows. ‘Get down, sir!’
The poodle regarded her with lazy insolence but, deliberately taking his time about it, eventually jumped down obediently from Dover’s lap.
Colonel Bing accompanied the police officers back to the drive, pausing only to demonstrate that the spot where the car had parked on Tuesday night was clearly visible from her garden. Dover peered grumpily across the bushes and then, with a speed of reaction which was far from typical of him, side-stepped neatly as Peregrine tried to spend a penny on his leg.
Colonel Bing laughed heartily and even Sergeant MacGregor’s face twitched momentarily into a smirk. Chief Inspector Dover had very little sense of humour where his own dignity and importance were concerned. He stumped away snorting furiously down his nose.
‘The Two Fiddlers!’ he snarled viciously to Sergeant MacGregor
