‘Whose number is it?’ hissed Dover.
Miss Tilley gave him a straight look. ‘It’s Friday Lodge. Dame Alice’s.’
‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover, a broad grin spreading across his sweaty face.
After a second or two Friday Lodge answered. The line was not a good one, but Dover and Miss Tilley had no difficulty in catching every word.
‘Hello? Thornwich 21,’ said a voice from the house up the hill.
‘Go ahead, caller! You’re through,’ chanted Miss Tilley and gave one of her switches a loud click. She winked at Dover. ‘It makes them think you’ve cut out,’ she whispered conspiratorily.
Dover didn’t answer. He was too busy listening to the telephone conversation which began, on Mrs Comersall’s part, without any of the conventional civilities.
‘You double-crossing, lying bitch!’
The voice from Friday Lodge was polite and distant. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You’ll be begging for mercy when I get my hands on you, you smelly old cow! Three hundred quid! You two-faced slimy snake! And how much was poor old Freda going to get for doing all the work and making all the arrangements and taking all the risks? A lousy hundred and fifty!’
‘Mrs Comersall . . .’
‘Don’t you Mrs Comersall me, you treacherous toad! I paid out nearly forty quid to that blasted girl. Forty quid out of my own money!’ Mrs Comersall’s voice squealed in anguish. ‘ “How very sad” you said when the kid died. “An occupational hazard,” you said. “Just one of the risks we’ve got to take,” you said. We’ve got to take? I like that! And what did you say when I asked you, as one lady to another, to split the loss half way?’
‘I . . .’
‘You said you hadn’t any money!’ screamed Mrs Comersall. ‘You strung me a story as long as your arm about how hard up you were. You even had the bloody nerve’ – Mrs Comersall struggled for breath – ‘you even had the bloody nerve to try and touch me for a fiver! You despicable rat, you! Well, you’re going to meet your Waterloo, you are, because I’m coming to get you and your three hundred nicker!’
‘But. . .’
‘Don’t try and kid me you haven’t got it! I know you have. Turned out nice for you that Winifred Tompkins died, didn’t it? All you had to do was keep your trap shut and hang on to the lolly, wasn’t it? If you’d played decent with me,’ – Mrs Comersall’s voice dropped sadly – ‘I’d have played decent with you. But you didn’t, did you, you rotten pig?’
‘Now, listen . . .’
‘I’ve listened to you long enough!’ roared Mrs Comersall at full pitch. ‘Now I’m coming to collect. Percy’s just come in with his lorry and he’s going to run me up to that stinking hovel you live in. And if that money, all three hundred pounds of it, isn’t ready and waiting for me when I get there, you’re going to be in trouble, my sneaky friend, big trouble!’
Mrs Comersall crashed the phone down at her end.
Miss Tilley turned large brown inquiring eyes on Dover. What excitement! Why, it was even better than when Mother fell downstairs and everybody thought she’d broken her neck. What with poison-pen letters, suicides and now this, one wondered what had come over Thornwich these days, one really did.
Dover was disentangling his bowler hat and his ears from the head-set. He brushed aside Miss Tilley’s questions.
‘Come on, MacGregor!’ he yelled, charging for the door like a superannuated war-horse at the sound of the bugle. ‘If we don’t get there first, there’ll be murder done!’
‘Oooh!’ moaned Miss Tilley, pressing a pile of blank telegram forms to her bosom. ‘Murder!’
MacGregor, who was far from clear as to what was going on, set off once again after his lord and master. It was a comparatively easy task to catch up with him. Dover’s progress, although accompanied by enough puffing and panting to satisfy a complete field of marathon runners, was not impressive. Thornwich’s hill was taking a terrible toll, but the Chief Inspector, heart pounding, legs trembling, laboured on.
Not unnaturally, MacGregor couldn’t get much sense out of him. What little breath Dover had to spare from the vital task of breathing he used for cursing. He soon became an object of great interest as the sweat poured in rivers down his crimson cheeks. People on the pavement stopped to stare. Lorry drivers leaned from their cabs and, addressing him as grandpa, asked jocularly where the fire was.
Dover struggled on. At last the gates of Friday Lodge were in sight. Dover, now supporting himself with an arm round MacGregor’s neck, made the supreme effort. His legs had gone, his lungs were near bursting-point. In an ungainly shamble they turned into the drive just as a car came screeching away from the front door. It swooped towards them.
‘Help!’ said Dover. ‘Oh God!’
He dived one way, MacGregor the other. The car swung out into the road, heading at a rate of knots down the hill. From somewhere there came the sound of confused shouting and screaming. A deep car-horn blazed away.
Dover, panting and dishevelled, dragged himself to his feet. Almost without knowing what he was doing, he took a tentative totter forward. A large double-decker van packed with baaing sheep turned into the drive from the main road. Gravel spurted from under its wheels and one of Dame Alice’s gate-posts took a severe battering. A tense-eyed young maniac dragged at the steering-wheel as Dover plunged, for the second time in as many minutes, for safety.
Mrs Comersall was leaning out of the cab window, yelling encouragement and imprecations as her Jehu swung his unwieldy vehicle round Dame Alice’s semi-circular drive. The wheels cut great gashes in flower-beds and immaculate patches of lawn. The sheep bleated louder than ever. Cries of ‘After her! After her!’ came from Mrs Comersall as she battered the side of
