Dame Alice frowned. ‘But why should Mrs Tompkins have committed suicide if she was on the point of adopting a baby?’
‘She may have already known the baby was dead,’ Dover pointed out. ‘That in itself might have been the last straw.’
‘And she went to meet her Maker without getting her three hundred pounds back?’ asked Dame Alice incredulously. ‘That doesn’t sound like Winifred Tompkins, I can assure you!’
‘We’re not entirely convinced that Mrs Tompkins did commit suicide, Dame Alice.’ MacGregor, unasked, joined in the conversation. ‘She may have been murdered,’ he added importantly and before Dover could stop him.
‘And she may not!’ snapped the Chief Inspector.
‘Murdered?’ said Dame Alice. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Who’s supposed to have murdered her – her husband?’
‘No!’ roared Dover. ‘He’s got a perfectly water-tight alibi and he’s no more motive than any married man.’
‘In view of this baby business and the three hundred pounds,’ said MacGregor, ‘Mrs Comersall and Miss Thickett might have had good reason for getting rid of Mrs Tompkins. They were clearly swindling her over the whole affair, especially so after the baby died.’
‘Balderdash!’ snorted Dover after having started off with a shorter word in mind. ‘Freda Comersall didn’t even know that Mrs Tompkins was the one who was going to buy the baby. She’d have cut this Thickett woman right out of the deal if she had done. And you can see Ma Comersall pussy-footing around, murdering Mrs Tompkins and making it look like suicide? Because I can’t. It’s beyond her physically and mentally.’
‘Well, what about Miss Thickett?’ asked MacGregor hopefully. ‘She had the most to gain and the most to lose. With Mrs Tompkins dead she could hang on to the money, and there was no danger that Mrs Tompkins would start cutting up rough and blowing the gaff on the whole deal.’ He turned to Dame Alice. ‘I suppose you don’t remember where Miss Thickett was on Wednesday, the day Mrs Tompkins died?’
‘I remember very well,’ retorted Dame Alice who prided herself, quite unjustifiably, on having total recall. ‘She spent the whole day with me. We were attending a conference on Venereal Diseases, at Branford, and we didn’t get back here until well after midnight. She certainly couldn’t have had anything to do with Mrs Tompkins’s death, unless it was done by means of some form of remote control which, I presume, is highly unlikely.’
‘Highly,’ agreed MacGregor, looking thwarted.
‘Well,’ said Dover, gingerly lowering his feet to the floor and assuming an upright position, ‘I don’t think we’re going to achieve anything by messing about here any longer. If I was you, Dame Alice, I’d do an inventory of the family silver. Miss Thickett may have helped herself to a few of your heirlooms while she was at it.’ Dame Alice showed no inclination to detain her guests, nor did she show any signs of being willing to wield the brandy decanter again. Dover decided to cut his losses and get back to the haven of rest which he was trying to create for himself at The Jolly Sailor.
He took a step forward, slightly more energetically than he had intended, let out a piercing howl, clutched himself and collapsed heavily on Dame Alice’s Persian rug.
‘My God!’ he howled through lips contorted with pain. ‘I’ve broken my ruddy back!’
Chapter Thirteen
HE WAS, of course, exaggerating. Not even Dr Hawnt, the only medical practitioner he would allow near him, could be inveigled into certifying that Dover had broken his back. Dover was indignant at such professional niceties and insisted on calling MacGregor in for a second opinion.
‘There!’ said Dover triumphantly as his pyjama trousers collapsed into folds round his ankles. ‘Look at that!’ He hoisted up his vest and surveyed himself over his shoulder in the wardrobe mirror.
MacGregor, who had witnessed many gruelling sights since becoming a policeman, closed his eyes.
‘Well?’ demanded Dover impatiently. He was standing in his bare feet upon the cold linoleum.
MacGregor opened his eyes. ‘It looks very nasty, sir. Most unpleasant.’
Dover looked pleased. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘That old fool Hawnt kept jabbering on about stiffness resulting from excessive exertion and minor bruising in the lower back. Stupid old cretin! Would you call that minor bruising, laddie?’
MacGregor shook his head.
‘No, and neither would I!’ snorted Dover. ‘ “Rub a bit of embrocation on,” he said. “I’ve got an impacted vertebra,” I told him, but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. However,’ said Dover, unable to conceal a smirk of satisfaction, ‘I did get him to see sense about one thing.’
‘He wants you to stay in bed for a few days, sir?’
‘Oh?’ said Dover. ‘He told you, did he?’
‘No, sir. I just thought it seemed the most likely course of treatment – in the circumstances.’
Dover was too busy doing a Narcissus to detect any arrière-pensée or maybe it should be double entendre. ‘See that?’ he said, poking at one spot which had a faint circular bruise. ‘D’you know what that is?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s that bloody dog’s footprint, where he jumped on me. Somebody ought to get a gun and shoot the brute.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor and bent at his crippled master’s behest to haul the pyjama trousers up again.
Dover hobbled back to bed.
It was inevitable that the investigation into Thornwich’s poison-pen case should hang fire for a few days. With the senior detective incapacitated on a bed of pain, nobody could expect that things would progress with their usual élan and verve.
‘I shall have to leave the leg work to you, laddie,’ he had informed MacGregor from his pillows. He groaned pathetically as he reached for his grapes. ‘I’ll just
