‘You didn’t think of telling anybody at the police station, or letting his uncle know?’
‘Why should I? If he wanted to spend his week’s leave in bed, that was his affair. Besides, I didn’t know he was going to kill himself, did I? He seemed all right when he went off to work on Monday morning.’
Mrs Jolliott didn’t encourage her visitors to linger. They heard the vacuum cleaner being switched on before they had reached the bottom of the front steps.
‘This blooming business is going to be a real swine, that’s for sure,’ said Dover. ‘Just my ruddy luck to get lumbered with it!’
‘And mine,’ MacGregor pointed out gloomily.
‘Well, you can’t blame me for that, laddie. I didn’t ask for you!’
MacGregor could well believe it.
‘What are we going to do now, sir?’
Dover regarded his sergeant with dislike but answered unhesitatingly. ‘ Go back to the nick.’
‘But oughtn’t we to go and see Cochran’s girl-friend, sir?’
‘We’re not likely to get a cup of tea off her, are we, laddie?’ asked Dover sarcastically. ‘ You can go and see her this afternoon. Now then, which way do we go? I don’t want to spend all morning trailing around this blasted town.’
Before they could move off the door of Mrs Jolliott’s house opened and the good lady herself appeared on the threshold. She gazed disapprovingly at the dirty marks left by the detectives’ feet on her clean steps.
‘You’ve forgotten his things,’ she hissed in a loud whisper, neighbours having ears as well as eyes. ‘They’re all up in his room, waiting for you.’
But Dover was not easily swayed from his purpose. A cup of tea he wanted and a cup of tea he was going to have. ‘ We’ll pick ’em up this afternoon!’ he bawled. ‘After lunch!’ Before Mrs Jolliott could get her protest out he had started off down the street at a smart amble. ‘Job for you there, laddie,’ he said happily as MacGregor caught up with him. Pushing work off on to the shoulders of others was one of his few remaining pleasures.
Dover’s decision to repair to Wallerton police station was not entirely frivolous. The visit was productive of information as well as of refreshment. The station sergeant provided both.
He greeted Dover like a long lost friend. As he had already told his wife, he liked the look of the Chief Inspector. ‘He’s a good, solid chap,’ he had observed. ‘Down to earth, you know. No side about him, that’s what I like. Sort of chap you could have a cosy pint with down at the local.’ It was not the soundest of judgements, but it was a charitable one.
‘Come into the Inspector’s office, Mr Dover, sir! It’s more comfortable in there. Here, let me take your overcoat. My goodness me, you have had a soaking, haven’t you?’
‘Doesn’t it ever stop raining in this bloody town?’ asked, Dover with his usual charm.
‘You don’t call this rain, do you, sir? You ought to be here in August and see it then. Never stops in August, day or night. Harry! Take the Chief Inspector’s coat and hang it over the radiator and then nip down to the canteen and bring up a jug of tea and three cups. Hot tea, mind you, and look lively about it!’
Beaming resolutely, the sergeant found the box of cigarettes which the Inspector reserved for himself and visiting V. I.P.s, and handed them round. When the tea arrived he produced a bottle of brandy from the filing cabinet and laced Dover’s cup liberally.
‘It’ll take the chill out of your bones, sir.’
‘Humph,’ said Dover without either enthusiasm or thanks, ‘ it’s a bit late for that. I reckon I caught a cold on my stomach yesterday, all that messing about. I’ve got a very sensitive stomach, you know. The least bit of a thing and it gets me straight in the gut. I shouldn’t be surprised,’ he added with gloomy relish, ‘if I don’t have to lay up with it again before long.’
The sergeant tut-tutted with smarmy sympathy. ‘I thought you weren’t looking any too chirpy, sir. Tucked up in a nice warm bed, that’s where you ought to be.’
Dover sighed and helped himself to another shot of brandy with the air of a Christian martyr already feeling the flames licking round his feet. The station sergeant had gone up markedly in his estimation and Dover rewarded him with a detailed account of his more lurid symptoms.
MacGregor, with a suppressed sigh of his own, took his brandyless tea over to a chair by the window and sat down. At one time Dover’s gastronomic revelations had made him sick but long familiarity had produced its own immunity.
Eventually the conversation took a less clinical turn.
‘Well,’ said the station sergeant, rather unfairly leaping in as Dover paused for breath, ‘looks as though we’ve seen the last of young Cochran. He’ll be well out to sea by now, what’s left of him. I reckon the fishes are having a good feed.’ He chuckled comfortably. ‘ Poor fellow.’
‘Poor fellow, be blowed!’ snorted Dover. ‘Damned nuisance, that’s what he is!’
‘And was when he was alive,’ said the station sergeant feelingly. ‘There’s more than one’ll be glad to see the back of him round here.’
Dover cocked a quizzical, if bloodshot eye at the station sergeant. ‘The Chief Constable thinks he was hounded to death by his copper colleagues.’
The station sergeant grunted. ‘He would! Sounds likely, doesn’t it? Hounding the Chief Constable’s favourite nephew and leading blue-eyed boy to death? We may be a lot of country bumpkins down here but we’re not that barmy!’
‘What sort of a copper was he?’ asked Dover.
The station sergeant looked at him shrewdly. ‘Off the record and in the strictest confidence – lousy.’
‘Thick?’
‘Bent!’
‘Bent?’
‘Crooked as a corkscrew, in my humble opinion. If he hadn’t been the old man’s protègé I’d have had him out of here so fast his feet wouldn’t have touched the ground. As things were, I kept my mouth shut and looked
