MacGregor rang the bell and they stood waiting.
Dover rang the bell.
Dover hammered on the door panels with his fists.
Dover kicked the door.
‘I think she must be out, sir,’ said MacGregor, grateful for an answer, however belated, to his prayers.
‘Fiddlesticks!’ said Dover and peered through the coloured glass panels. ‘She must be in.’ He stepped back. ‘Here, try the door and see if it’s open.’
Reflecting, and not for the first time, that the Chief Inspector had a positive genius for unloading the dirty work on to younger and less canny shoulders, MacGregor tried the door handle. The door was not locked.
‘Well, don’t hang about, man!’ hissed Dover. ‘Get inside!’
MacGregor, hesitating naturally at entering private premises, got a good thump in the small of the back for his scruples, and the two detectives tip-toed cautiously into Dame Alice’s hall. Everything seemed very quiet and perfectly normal.
‘Hello!’ called Dover, feeling a bit of a fool. ‘Is there anybody about?’
There was no answer.
‘Just have a look around, laddie,’ suggested Dover casually. What are subordinates for if not to take risks?
There wasn’t a sign of any occupant on the ground floor.
‘She might be upstairs, sir,’ said MacGregor with muted urgency as he saw Dover heading like a homing pigeon towards the alluring haven of Dame Alice’s desk.
‘Well, keep a look-out, you great fool!’ snapped Dover, his fat paws already rummaging in the desk drawers.
Working quickly and ignoring MacGregor’s ever more pathetic protests, Dover gave the whole of the downstairs part of Friday Lodge a good going over. He knew what he was looking for and stout-heartedly ignored side issues such as a detailed study of Dame Alice’s bank statement and a bundle of letters tied up with ribbon at the back of one of the drawers. But nowhere, not in the kitchen, nor the dining-room, nor the drawing-room, nor the downstairs lavatory, nor the hall, did he find a little cardboard box containing a well-used child’s printing-set. He didn’t find any Tendy Bond writing paper either.
‘Sir!’ MacGregor came creeping back from his post at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I think there’s somebody up there. 1 can hear the bath water running.’
‘Bath water?’ said Dover, a most unpleasant suspicion crossing his mind. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I think so, sir,’ replied MacGregor, beginning to get worried in his turn.
‘But, nobody takes a bath at this time of the day,’ whispered Dover, his brow furrowed with anxiety.
MacGregor swallowed hard, ‘Mrs Tompkins did, sir.’
Dover crinkled his nose. ‘ ’Strewth,’ he said, ‘you’re a cheerful Charlie!’
‘They do say things go in threes, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out unhappily. ‘Poppy Gullimore, Mrs Tompkins, and now, this.’ He jerked his head in the direction of the stairs.
‘She must know we’re on to her,’ agreed Dover slowly. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her to try and take the easy way out.’ He scratched his head thoughtfully, pushing his bowler hat farther back. ‘I wonder if we ought to hang on a bit and give her time to make a proper job of it?’
‘Oh, sir,’ whispered MacGregor in deep reproach, ‘we can’t do that!’
‘I don’t know what you’re in such a flaming hurry for, laddie,’ grumbled Dover. ‘It won’t be a pretty sight, I can tell you. She’ll have got into a hot bath and slit her wrists. They always reckon it’s a very comfortable way to go, but I can’t say as how I’ve ever fancied it. Just slowly bleeding to death and all that pink water! Ugh!’ he shivered. ‘It’s a horrible mess for them that’s got to fish ’em out!’
‘We haven’t any choice, sir,’ said MacGregor stoutly. ‘I mean, her life may be ebbing away now, while we just stand here talking about it.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Dover grudgingly. ‘Come on! And I just hope you’ve remembered something of your first aid. If we’ve got to wait for old Hawnt to get here we might as well save ourselves the trouble of going upstairs.’
Still whispering and walking on tip-toe, MacGregor and Dover, each trying to let the other go first, made their way unenthusiastically up to the first floor. It didn’t take them long to identify the bathroom. They could hear the bath water gurgling away inside, and periodically there was a shattering series of heavy thumps from the antique water system.
‘You’d better knock,’ said Dover, nodding at the heavy mahogany door.
‘She’s keeping the water running a long time, sir, isn’t she?’ said MacGregor as a trickle of sweat ran down his temple.
‘She may have cut her throat,’ Dover suggested. ‘That’ll be even worse. Quicker, of course, if you do it properly but most .people tend to botch it. It takes some doing to draw a sharp blade clean across, nice and steady and cutting deep enough.’ He illustrated his point with a chubby forefinger across his own neck.
MacGregor gulped and tapped hesitantly on the door.
They listened intently. There was only the sound of the water pouring from the bath taps.
Dover shook his head. ‘I reckon we’re too late,’ he said. ‘You’d better go in.’
MacGregor turned the handle. The door opened a fraction of an inch. He glanced back at the Chief Inspector. Dover nodded his head. MacGregor steeled himself and opened the door wider. He stepped over the threshold with Dover close behind, treading on his heels.
It took them a fraction of a second to get their bearings. The bathroom was enormous. Over on the far left, gushing out great clouds of steam, stood a huge old-fashioned bath. Both taps were full on.
‘’Strewth! You could drown an elephant in that,’ breathed Dover as he and MacGregor moved forward instinctively to investigate whatever horrors the billowing steam might conceal.
They were well into the bathroom before a movement on the right attracted their attention. Only a few wisps of steam had managed to cross the vast tiled expanse so that the view was clear and unobstructed. There was Dame Alice, clothed in nothing but a flowered plastic
