‘Well, really!’ exclaimed Dame Alice, and shuddered.
She and MacGregor sat in an embarrassed silence as Dover’s footsteps thudded across the hall. A door opened in the distance and closed. There was silence for the next five minutes.
‘He’s being rather a long time, isn’t he?’ asked Dame Alice at last in a voice stiff with fury but tinged with a modicum of anxiety.
‘He’s got a very delicate stomach,’ said MacGregor, wishing quite hard that the floor beneath his feet would open. ‘Perhaps I should . . .’
There was a sound of rushing waters.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Dame Alice faintly. ‘I think he’s coming.’
A few moments later Dover lumbered back into the room. ‘That’s better,’ he grunted as he collapsed back into his chair. He turned imperturbably to Dame Alice. ‘You were saying?’
Then there was Freda Comersall. Dame Alice had tried to get her café closed down on the grounds of hygiene. Freda had appeared to resent this interference with her sole means of livelihood and was reputed to have threatened to punch Dame Alice up the hooter. ‘Such a common woman,’ Dame Alice said. ‘And her café is frequented by a most undesirable type of man. Not the kind of people we want hanging around Thornwich at all hours of the day and night.’
Then there was Miss Tilley at the post office. Dame Alice had not only suggested that she tampered with the mail but had also offered the near expert opinion that old Mrs Tilley, bed-ridden these many years, would be better off in an old people’s home. Miss Tilley had reacted with surprising venom against these remarks.
Then there was Mrs Quince, landlady of The Jolly Sailor. Some trouble there about selling drinks to minors. It all turned out to be a storm in a tea-cup but Mrs Quince was reputed to have a jumbo-sized memory.
Then there was Mrs Belper, the butcher’s wife.
Then there was Mrs Poltensky, abandoned spouse of one of our gallant war-time Polish allies.
Then there was . . . The list was well-nigh endless. No detail was too trivial and no reference too obscure for Dame Alice. She spared neither herself nor her unwilling audience.
The church clock was striking three when at last Dover was in a position to direct an ill-tempered kick at Dame Alice’s hairy dog, but his heart wasn’t in it and he missed.
He spoke from the bottom of his soul as he hobbled down the drive and began the long limp home. ‘ ’Strewth!’ he said. ‘The things I do for England!’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed MacGregor, trying to keep it on a jocular note. ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’
Dover scowled crossly. He couldn’t stand people who always had to cap one Shakespearian quotation with another.
The dog gave a final snap – from a safe distance – at Dover’s heels and retreated, barking furiously, back to its lair behind the house.
‘Mind you,’ said Dover who found the going considerably easier downhill, ‘if you look at it one way, it was all very interesting.’
‘Was it, sir?’ said MacGregor, feeling that a new Dover was about to be revealed to him.
‘Yes,’ said Dover and indulged himself in a most unpleasant smirk. ‘The old cow was so busy telling us how many enemies she’d got, she didn’t seem to cotton on to what else she was telling us.’
‘No, sir,’ said MacGregor whose ability to follow a logical analysis had been somewhat impaired by the experiences of the last few hours.
‘They may hate her,’ said Dover, ‘but what about her feelings towards them, eh? She loathes their guts! She thinks they’re persecuting her and trying to run her out of the village. She thinks they’re all ganging up on her. She’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of Buckingham Palace against damn near every woman in Thornwich.’
‘Oh,’ said MacGregor as the light began to dawn, ‘I do see what you mean, sir. You mean she’s a sort of megalomaniac.’
‘Yes,’ said Dover vaguely, ‘something like chat.’
‘And you mean,’ crowed MacGregor as the penny dropped, ‘that she’s got a grudge against all the other women. Of course, sir! You’re right! You mean . . .’
‘I wish you’d stop telling me what I mean,’ snapped Dover. ‘What I mean is that Dame Alice What’s-her-name is as good a suspect as we’ve met yet for writing those poison-pen letters herself. Why, she’s tailor-made for it!’
MacGregor executed a smart mental about turn. He knew the Chief Inspector’s methods of old, and they were enough to make strong men tremble. The usual pattern consisted of a lengthy initial period of masterly inaction, followed by the taking of a violent dislike to one of the vaguely possible suspects. After that there was no holding him. His detective’s instinct, as he liked to call it, told him who the culprit was, and all subsequent evidence which didn’t confirm his usually quite unfounded suspicions, was chucked grandly out of the window, or swept surreptitiously under the carpet. It was a system which certainly produced results but not, unfortunately, those which were acceptable to a judge and jury. MacGregor congratulated himself on seeing the precipice of disaster just in time. Never mind all the clever stuff about Dame Alice unconsciously revealing her true self. All that had happened so far was that Dover had taken a dislike – justifiable, no doubt – to Dame Alice and was going to pin the poison-pen letters on her, or blow a blood vessel in the attempt.
‘Yes,’ said Dover, chuckling gleefully and quite unaware that he had already lost his assistant’s support, ‘it all fits. Do you remember how keen she was to impress us with the fact that the poison-pen writer was a real smart alec, eh? Now, that sort of bragging’s typical! Straight out of a case-book. She’s a ruddy psychopath, that’s what she is,’ said Dover, prepared to chuck psychological jargon around as glibly and ignorantly as the next man. ‘She was nearly breaking her neck to
