All the colour drained from Mrs Comersall’s face and she clutched at her heart. Even Dover was a bit worried at the startling change in her appearance. With lips trembling and chest heaving, she struggled to get the words out.
‘Three hundred pounds?’ she moaned pathetically. ‘Three hundred pounds?’
‘That’s right,’ said MacGregor, exchanging an anxious glance with Dover.
A little colour returned to Mrs Comersall’s face. ‘Three hundred pounds,’ she repeated as though fascinated. ‘The bitch! The cold, scheming, snivelling bitch!’
‘Who?’ asked MacGregor. ‘Mrs Tompkins?’
Mrs Comersall didn’t seem to have heard him. Panting slightly she got up from the table. ‘We’ll see about that!’ she muttered viciously to herself. She looked at Dover. ‘I haven’t time to be bothered with you any more. I’ve answered all your questions. I know nothing about it, see? Nothing! And if you go on from now till Domesday you won’t get anything out of me.’
Not that a statement like this stopped Dover trying, but it soon became evident that Mrs Comersall wasn’t entering into the spirit of the thing. She seemed to have something else on her mind. Finally Dover gave it up as a bad job. He jerked his head at MacGregor, and the two of them hurried out of the café, leaving the proprietress gazing blankly at her glass of cabbage water and mouthing silently the words, ‘three hundred pounds’.
Chapter Twelve
‘QUICK!’ barked Dover as the door swung to behind them, ‘the post office!’ With his blood well and truly up he raced across the lorry park, clutching his bowler hat to his head. After a moment’s hesitation MacGregor raced after him.
Overcoat tails flying Dover reached the edge of the pavement. He didn’t bother about any of that look left, look right, look left again nonsense. He plunged straight in. A white-faced driver with a couple of tons of bricks behind him stood on his brakes. A petrol tanker coming at a fair belt down the hill swerved as Dover cleared the gutter in a wild, heart-stopping leap for safety on the other side.
Windows opened hopefully two hundred yards up the road. There’d been some nasty accidents on that stretch at the bottom of the hill and the villagers didn’t want to miss anything. Even Dr Hawnt heard the squeal of brakes and the shouting. He tottered off and locked himself in the lavatory. It took his housekeeper three hours to get him out again.
Dover was impervious to the anguish and turmoil in his wake. Without pausing he flung himself at the door of the sub post office and dived in. MacGregor, who’d got across the road before the lorry drivers had recovered their wits and remembered their schedules, pounded along on his master’s heels.
Inside the shop Miss Tilley was sorting wool. She had a confused impression of a red-faced man charging towards her with outstretched hands. Miss Tilley gave a delighted squeak of terror and then gracefully pretended to faint across a display of frilly aprons. She had decided long ago that, should the occasion arise, she would sell her honour cheaply.
A bell in the little switchboard at the back of the post office counter rang loudly and one of the numbers clicked tremblingly down.
‘Blast the woman!’ thundered Dover and clutched Miss Tilley by the hair in an attempt to restore her to her senses.
‘The telephone!’ bawled Dover, advancing his lips close to Miss Tilley’s ear. ‘The telephone!’
Miss Tilley shivered with excitement. ‘To hell with the telephone!’ she breathed and, somewhat hampered by the intervening stretch of counter, made a determined effort to scramble into Dover’s arms.
Dover pushed her off. He was a trifle more panic-stricken than he realized, and even he was distressed to see Miss Tilley skid across the polished wood and collapse in a heap on the floor.
‘Pick her up!’ he shouted at MacGregor who was hovering uncertainly on the edge. ‘Pick her up and get her over to that switchboard! Hurry up, man, or we shall miss it!’
When Miss Tilley found strong masculine hands half dragging, half lifting her to her feet, she nearly did swoon from ecstasy, but she was a woman who had had many disappointments in her life, and she realized that this was not the moment she had been longing for.
‘I am quite all right, thank you,’ she said tartly as MacGregor hauled her into an upright position. ‘And I should be obliged,’ she addressed Dover who was still hopping around and trumpeting like an elephant on hot bricks, ‘if you would keep your voice down. My mother is lying bed-ridden in the next room and I don’t want her to get upset. And now,’ – she tidied her hair and smoothed her dress down, ‘if you will explain quietly what it is you want.’
‘We’re police officers,’ began Dover.
‘I am well aware of that,’ Miss Tilley reproved him. ‘Though from the way you came barging in here, I think I could have been forgiven for imagining you were drunken hooligans.’
Dover swallowed hard and waved a hand feebly at the switchboard. The bell was still ringing and the fallen number still fluttered impatiently. ‘Is that a call from Freda’s Cafe?’
Miss Tilley, with great dignity, walked over and picked up her head-set. ‘It is,’ she said having looked at the board.
‘I want to listen in to the conversation.’
With magnificent aplomb, Miss Tilley handed him a spare head-set and plugged it in for him. Then she sat down calmly and accepted the call. It was common knowledge that she listened in to all the calls herself, but to extend this privilege to others, even the police, was an innovation for her. However, Miss Tilley prided herself on being game.
‘Number, please?’ she trilled.
‘Thornwich 21.’ It was Mrs Comersall.
‘Thornwich 21,’ repeated Miss
