The station sergeant gaped, mouth open.
‘Where’s that dratted tea?’ demanded Dover, scraping the palm of his hand over his five o’clock shadow.
‘It’s just coming, sir.’ MacGregor, hearing the tea cups rattling outside, got up and opened the door again. ‘Shall I be mother, sir?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dover unpleasantly. ‘And four lumps for me, remember.’ He glared at the station sergeant who was still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. ‘You paralysed or something? Sit down over there. I’ll come to you in a minute.’
There was a pause while MacGregor poured the tea out.
‘I came over a bit queasy after lunch,’ Dover informed the room in general. ‘A bit bilious, you know. I had to get into bed to keep warm.’
‘Nasty cold sort of day, sir,’ agreed the station sergeant.
‘I’d no small change for the gas fire, either,’ explained Dover, bringing a note of pathos into his voice. ‘Either of you lads got a shilling on you?’
Both lads fished obligingly in their pockets and produced five separate shillings.
‘Oh,’ said Dover with an innocent smile, ‘that’s very kind of you. Stick one in the meter, MacGregor, and light the fire. You can leave the others on the mantelpiece.’
MacGregor, inwardly cursing himself for presenting his lord and master with a couple of barely solicited bob, did as he was told and then started handing the tea round.
‘Now,’ said Dover, dropping a lump of strawberry jam down the front of his vest, ‘what have you been up to, MacGregor?’ Delicately he scraped the jam off with his knife and replaced it on his bread and butter.
‘I went to see Miss Sandra Jackson. She was Cochran’s girlfriend, you remember, sir.’
‘Of course I remember!’ snapped Dover. ‘ I’m not senile yet, laddie. And if you have a memory half as good when you get to my age you won’t be doing so badly.’ He blew on his tea.
‘Well, she didn’t seem to know anything, sir. Just that Cochran had called their holiday off at the last minute and that she hadn’t seen him since a week last Saturday and he seemed normal enough then.’ MacGregor solemnly consulted his notebook. ‘“As cheeky as a boxful of monkeys and sexy with it” – to quote her own words, sir. She went round to his lodgings to see what the dickens was going on but she couldn’t get past Mrs Jolliott. After that she decided he could stick it and that two could play that sort of game, and she’s made no attempt to get in touch with him since.’
‘Humph,’ said Dover. ‘Any cake? Well, get on with it, laddie! You haven’t spent all afternoon interviewing one twit of a girl, have you?’
‘No, sir, though she isn’t the easiest person to talk to. I don’t think she’s quite normal, really – not in the head that is.’ MacGregor smirked. ‘Though there was nothing wrong with the rest of her, I will say that. She seemed to think she ought to figure in Cochran’s will; the pair of them being as good as man and wife, she claimed. It took me a long time to convince her that Cochran’s heirs were no concern of mine.’
Dover grunted, and stretched out to pass the plate of cakes to the station sergeant.
‘Well, sir,’ continued MacGregor, ‘after that I went round to Mrs Jolliott’s again to collect Cochran’s things. I carted them all round to the police station and examined them there, but I’m afraid I drew a complete blank. There was nothing there to give us any lead on why he killed himself. He seems to have had a reasonable amount of money in the Post Office Savings Bank, nothing excessive, of course, which might have been suspicious. Just a reasonable balance. There were very few private papers and none of them helpful. Of course Mrs Jolliott had already cleared his room out before we got there. She says she hasn’t removed or destroyed anything, but we can’t be sure. We’ve only got her word for it.’
‘Oh, you can trust Mrs Jolliott,’ said the station sergeant who was restlessly counting his off-duty hours slipping by. ‘She’s on the Committee of the Ladies’ League.’ He made it sound like a pronouncement of canonization.
‘The Ladies’ League?’ asked MacGregor.
‘Yes, you’ve heard of them, surely? They’re very powerful here in Wallerton. Practically run the town, you might say. They started up orignally just after the war – the First World War, of course – to stop Wallerton from getting spoiled. Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength. I reckon we’ve got the most unspoiled sea-side resort in the whole blessed country. They just oppose absolutely everything. That’s why we’ve only two licensed hotels, no fun fair, no bowling alley, no bingo and practically no anything else you are to name. They do most of it through their husbands, of course. Talk about petticoat government! And it’s getting worse, not better. They’ve started branching out now.’ The station sergeant lowered his voice. ‘Do you know what they did a couple of years ago? There’s a fair-sized ladies’ shop on Sea Parade, Morrison’s, been there for donkey’s years. Well, young Morrison thought he’d liven things up a bit – just as a gimmick, you know. Of course, he’d never have done it if his father had been alive. His father had more sense. Well, young Morrison, he gets one of those topless dresses and sticks it in his main
