‘A lemon,’ said Dover.
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘A lemon,’ repeated Dover. ‘ That’s what the answer’ll be. Anyhow, if you want to waste your time on it, that’s your funeral.’
MacGregor could hardly conceal either his delight or his surprise. The Chief Inspector was not habitually so sympathetic to youthful aspirations. ‘ Do you mean I can go ahead, sir?’
‘That’s what I said, isn’t it?’
MacGregor pushed his chair back from the table. ‘ Now, sir?’
Dover chewed his lip moodily. ‘I don’t see why not. I shan’t want you again this afternoon. I’ve got a few ideas of my own I want to think out.’
MacGregor treated this shoddy old white lie with the contempt it deserved. ‘Well, I’ll be off, sir.’
‘Here, hang on a minute,’ said Dover. ‘Leave me that packet of cigarettes. I seem to have run out.
The prospect of being let off the leash to follow his own bent had gone to MacGregor’s head. ‘They’ve got plenty in the bar, sir!’ he observed cheekily.
Dover scowled. ‘Oh, have they, laddie? Well, you can just nip in and get me a couple of packets before you go. And I don’t want those damned filter-tips, either.’
MacGregor’s mini-revolt thus set him back precisely ten shillings and twopence. Regretfully, because even in these days detective sergeants are not rolling in money, he chalked it up to experience.
When MacGregor had gone Dover ordered himself another coffee and sat brooding over the luncheon table, much to the annoyance of the dining-room staff. Dover was thinking. It was not an occupation he indulged in frequently but, when he did, he was thorough about it. Knives and forks were chucked noisily into drawers, crockery was tossed from one end of the room to the other, table cloths were shaken with a snap like a whip lash. Dover sat on, oblivious. The foreign waiters chatted furiously amongst themselves and, driven to the limit, began piling the chairs on to the tables.
It would be unfair to accuse Dover of putting himself to the trouble of cudgelling his brains over the Cochran-Hamilton affair merely so as to be able, at a later date, to spit in MacGregor’s eye. This unworthy motive had its place in the scheme of things, but it was by no means the principal one. Nor was it true that the Chief Inspector was spurred on solely by the desire to resume his holiday. An uninterrupted fortnight of Mrs Dover’s company was not the sort of thing likely to inspire her husband to exert himself. No, although no one could accuse him of taking the affair seriously, none the less he was mildly intrigued by it.
Unlike MacGregor, he scornfully pooh-poohed the idea that Arthur Armstrong was a sadistic thug, or had even been used by a gang of sadistic thugs for their own necrophilic purposes. That left the problem of why Arthur Armstrong had said that he had seen the number of Hamilton’s house when, obviously, he could have done nothing of the sort. With typical perverseness Dover decided to believe that Arthur Armstrong was speaking the truth. That meant that he had seen the number of Hamilton’s house. But how?
Suppose – a beatific smile, which reduced the still waiting waiters to paroxysms of rage, spread over Dover’s pasty features – yes, that was indeed a possibility. Could be done easily, too. Bit of sticky paper, say, and the light left on, that’s all you’d need. Quickly set up and quickly taken down again without leaving any traces. And it was most unlikely, at that time of night, that any casual passer-by would notice it or bother his head about it if he did.
Ho, ho! Now they were getting somewhere! Dover chuckled to himself. But where, exactly? The Chief Inspector’s bottom lip jutted out sulkily. Oh well, he’d have a think about that later. What else was there?
MacGregor thought that Hamilton had died while some gang was in the process of murdering him. That seemed reasonable enough, so Dover duly wracked his brains to think up some other explanation. Suppose they weren’t trying to kill Hamilton? Well, if they were just giving him a beating-up, it all came to much the same thing. What else could they, whoever they were, be doing to him, for God’s sake? Dover mused for some considerable time over those mutilations. They just didn’t fit it. There were plenty of East End gangs of thugs who frequently chived up the opposition, but Dover could not recall a case in which they had exercised their art on an already dead body. Besides, in Dover’s experience, the face was the usual target and Hamilton’s face, unlike the lower part of his body, hadn’t got a scratch on it. Dover sighed. It was all very confusing. However much somebody might have had it in for Hamilton, would they really go to the extent of stripping him – dead or alive? The accepted method was a few artistic waves with a razor and a few swift kicks where it would do the most harm. And could anybody in their right senses, including that insufferable young nitwit MacGregor, really see Wallerton in the height or depth of the tourist season as the scene of gang warfare of this sort? London, Liverpool, Brighton even – but not Wallerton.
The subject of one dead body naturally led Dover on to think about the other; or rather the lack of it. Cochran’s. Dover was tired of wondering why Cochran had killed himself, unless he found out he looked like remaining in Wallerton for the rest of his natural. Jumping off Cully Point was a funny way to go, though. Not at all
