‘She’s catching the afternoon train.’
‘Right,’ said Dover. ‘I’ll be home tomorrow morning.’
He replaced the receiver and turned to MacGregor who was still sitting at the breakfast table. ‘I was going to do something when the phone rang,’ he said. ‘What was it?’
‘You were going upstairs, sir.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Dover. ‘Well, we’ve no time for that now. I want this case wrapped up today, one way or the other. We’re going to catch the night train back to London. I’ve had enough of this crummy dump. Well, for God’s sake, what are you sitting there for? Lost the use of your legs or something? Nip upstairs and get my hat and coat. We’ve no time to lose!’
‘Are we going to see Dame Alice, sir?’ asked MacGregor. It was a rhetorical question but Dover answered it.
‘’Strewth! Don’t you ever listen to anything that’s said to you? Of course we’re going to see Dame Alice! We agreed on it not five minutes ago, didn’t we?’
By the time MacGregor came downstairs clutching Dover’s bowler hat and long black overcoat, the Chief Inspector had got things humming in the bar of The Jolly Sailor. Mr and Mrs Quince had been pressed, without too much difficulty, into organizing Dover’s return home. It was a complicated business and Dover had no intention of tackling Dame Alice until he’d got his lines of retreat secured. MacGregor surveyed the – to him – premature hustle and bustle with dismay. There was no doubt about it. Dover intended to leave Thornwich and The Jolly Sailor that night, and in the lurch, if needs be. Mrs Quince was giving him sterling support. It took half an hour of acrimonious argument before it was finally established that the two detectives would have to catch the six o’clock bus into Cumberley, change there with a thirty minute wait on to another bus to Grailton and then wait two hours before catching the through train to London at a quarter to one in the morning.
‘You’d do much better to wait and catch the ten o’clock bus to Bearle in the morning,’ said Mr Quince. ‘Then you could get a local train to Wellchester and from there you could get another bus to . . .’
‘No!’ said Dover and Mrs Quince in unison.
‘I’ve got to get back to London urgently,’ said Dover. ‘They need me. We’ll have a high tea at five o’clock, Mrs Quince, and catch that six o’clock bus.’
Mrs Quince had intended to go to bingo that afternoon but, under the circumstances, she was prepared to forgo the pleasure. Anything to get rid of this fat lazy old devil.
MacGregor helped Dover on with his overcoat and handed him his hat.
‘Where are you off to now?’ asked Mrs Quince curiously.
‘Never you mind,’ Dover snubbed her. ‘You’ll hear all about it soon enough.’
‘Are you going to make an arrest, Mr Dover?’ asked Mr Quince.
‘Well, now,’ said Dover, smiling enigmatically, ‘that’d be telling, wouldn’t it?’
The pull up the hill, from The Jolly Sailor at the bottom to Friday Lodge at the top, didn’t get any easier or shorter. Dover was all for getting at Dame Alice as soon as possible but it wasn’t long before he was reduced to his usual panting crawl. When they were half-way there the rain, which had been threatening all morning, began to fall. -
‘Maybe we should have phoned first to see whether she was in, sir?’ said MacGregor, who was praying quite hard that the good Lord, in His infinite mercy, would ensure that she was out.
‘What? And tip her off that we were after her? Not on your nelly!’ The rain-water dripped off the brim of Dover’s bowler. ‘Surprise, that’s what we want. Catch her unawares. Chuck the accusation at her before she’s had time to think up some cock-and-bull story. Let her have it straight between the eyes, right out of the blue.’
It’ll be right out of the blue all right, thought MacGregor and wondered despondently what occupations or professions were open to an ex-detective sergeant who had been discharged with ignominy. Dame Alice would have their heads on a charger if Dover did one half of the things he was threatening to do. She wasn’t some old lag you could push around as the fancy took you. She was an experienced, well-educated woman of the world with friends in some very high places, and she’d go off like a rocket the minute Dover plonked one of his flat feet out of line. It wasn’t even, MacGregor told himself miserably, as though there was a chance in a thousand of her being guilty. All the evidence they had so far was that Dover didn’t like her face, and hadn’t since he had first laid eyes on it.
‘Thank the Lord!’ said Dover with genuine fervour. ‘We’re here at last. ’Strewth, my feet are killing me!’
They turned into the drive. Dame Alice’s car was standing outside the front door.
‘Oh well, it looks as though she’s in,’ said Dover, hobbling painfully across the gravel.
MacGregor silently cursed his luck. ‘Perhaps, sir,’ he said, grasping at a pretty soggy straw, ‘you’d sooner tackle her by yourself, without a witness, I mean? I could wait out here. I don’t mind at all.’
‘No,’ said Dover generously. ‘You come along and see the fun. Besides, if there are any repercussions it’ll be much better two against one. With you and me telling the same story, they’ll just put it down to another malicious attempt to blacken the good name of the police.’
As they approached the steps leading to the front door Dame Alice’s dog came bounding round the house with its usual jubilance. Dover bent down and grabbed a lump of stone from a nearby rockery. The dog stopped dead in its tracks as though unable to believe its eyes. Dover took careful aim. The dog didn’t wait. With an outraged yelp and its tail tucked well between its legs, it shot round the corner and disappeared from sight.
‘Pity,’ said Dover as
