‘Have you got a fag?’ asked Dover.
‘In here, sir?’ MacGregor sniffed the air doubtfully. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’
‘Well, you go out in the corridor,’ said Dover sourly, ‘when you strike the match. If we don’t get an explosion I’ll have a cigarette.’
MacGregor looked at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. With a resigned shrug of his shoulders MacGregor did as he was told. There was no explosion.
Dover dragged the cigarette smoke into his lungs and coughed.
‘’Strewth,’ he remarked, ‘you aren’t half buying some muck these days.’
‘What’s been going on, sir?’ asked MacGregor, restraining an almost overwhelming desire to ram Dover’s dentures down his throat.
‘Mrs Tompkins has croaked herself,’ said Dover in a bored voice.
‘Suicide, sir?’
‘Looks like it. The door was locked on the inside, and from the look of the tap on the gas fire it couldn’t have been turned on by accident.’
‘Oh dear,’ said MacGregor, feeling the remark rather inadequate, but what else could you say? ‘Has it anything to do with these poison-pen letters, sir?’
Dover wrinkled his nose. ‘Might have. Mr Tompkins says she’s been getting very upset about them. She got another one this morning. You’d better collect it later on for the file.’ He flicked the ash off his cigarette on to the kitchen floor. ‘She seems to have been a pretty neurotic type from what I’ve heard.’ He looked round the kitchen with a sniff of disparagement. ‘Fancy living in a slum like this with a hundred and seventy thousand quid in the bank!’
It was a long wait before Dr Hawnt came tottering out of the sitting-room. It was Dover who took charge of the proceedings.
‘Well, doctor,’ he said when they’d got Dr Hawnt balanced on another chair in the kitchen, ‘is she dead?’
Dr Hawnt’s face expressed a horrified astonishment. ‘Gracious heavens!’ he squeaked. ‘I didn’t think there was any doubt about it!’ He made a feeble effort to get to his feet. ‘I’d better go and have another look.’
‘Oh, sit down!’ snapped Dover irately. ‘Of course she’s dead!’
‘Well, I thought so,’ mumbled Dr Hawnt. ‘There’s no pulse and I couldn’t see any signs that she was still breathing. Mind you, we’re all human and if you’d like to call in a second opinion you won’t hurt my feelings in the least. In fact,’ Dr Hawnt added with pathetic anxiety, ‘I’d prefer it, really I would.’
‘How long’s she been dead?’
‘Oh dear!’ Dr Hawnt fidgeted restlessly on his chair. ‘I do wish people would realize that I’m just not up to this kind of thing. I don’t know how long she’s been dead. I’ve been retired for over twenty years. I haven’t got a thermometer these days. And you need the body temperature, I remember that quite clearly. There’s some sort of formula you’ve got to work out but, of course, I’ve forgotten that years ago. Why don’t you get that chap from Bearle? He’d be much more help to you than I am.’
Dover scowled. ‘What did she die of?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’ retorted Dr Hawnt reasonably. ‘You need a doctor to tell you that sort of thing. I suppose it was an overdose of sleeping tablets.’
‘An overdose of sleeping tablets?’ howled Dover, going quite red in the face.
Dr Hawnt fumbled half-heartedly through his pockets. ‘Well, I found this under the body,’ he said. ‘It fell to the floor when I moved her. Gave me quite a turn, I can tell you. I thought she was coming back to life for one dreadful moment.’ Dover almost snatched the little bottle out of his hand. ‘You can see for yourself, it says sleeping tablets on the label.’
‘Are these hers?’ Dover turned furiously on poor Mr Tompkins. ‘Oh yes, Mr Dover. Definitely. She’s been taking them for some months now. Only one at night, though. They’re very strong and the doctor warned her not to exceed the dose.’
‘Do you know how many there were – last night, say?’
‘It was a new bottle,’ said Mr Tompkins faintly. ‘She gets them fifty at a time so there’d be forty nine left, that’s allowing for the one she took last night.’
Dover counted out the pills which were still in the bottle on to the palm of his hand. ‘Fifteen,’ he announced. ‘That means she’s taken twenty-four.’
‘Er – thirty-four, sir.’ MacGregor corrected Dover’s arithmetic and got a scowl of black fury for his pains.
Dover relieved his feelings by taking it out on Dr Hawnt. ‘Didn’t you even notice she’d been gassed?’ he asked in his most bullying manner. ‘The room was full of gas when we found her.’
‘Well, it wasn’t when I arrived,’ snapped Dr Hawnt with a sudden burst of irritability on his own account. ‘I’m not a magician, you know! 1 shouldn’t have been sent for in the first place, and well you know it. It’s not nice for a man of my age to be confronted with dead bodies just when he’s sitting down to his tea. Still,’ he added fairly, ‘there wasn’t any blood splashed about this time, I will grant you that.’ He turned to MacGregor as being the most hopeful source of sympathy. ‘It’s only accidents and things they call me out for,’ he explained unhappily. ‘When it’s just a nice touch of the ’flu in bed, they send for the chap in Bearle. Besides,’ he said crossly, ‘I don’t approve of suicide.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover with crushing sarcasm, ‘you do agree it was suicide, do you?’
‘There’s no need to be rude, young man,’ said Dr Hawnt haughtily. ‘Why else would she leave a note if it wasn’t suicide?’ Dover took a deep breath to steady his nerves. ‘What note?’ he roared.
Dr Hawnt began fumbling in his pockets again while Dover clenched his fists in a praiseworthy effort to prevent himself tearing the old man apart with his bare hands. The note was found at last, a little crumpled
