‘What difference is that going to make? The Chief Constable’ll only shove it back in my lap. You know what he’s like. It’s Pott Winckle’s crime and Pott Winckle must deal with it. It’s what he calls giving the man on the spot a sense of responsibility, the stupid basket!’
‘Scotland Yard!’ wheezed the station sergeant, unexpectedly burgeoning with ideas. ‘Ask him to fetch the Yard in! Then you don’t need to do nothing, ’cept stick a copper on guard until the Yard men get here. They’d appreciate that, the Yard men would. They’re always griping about us local chaps mucking their crimes about before they can get their hand on them themselves. Go on —it’s the perfect let-out!’
The chief inspector grasped anxiously at the tempting straw. ‘Do you think the Chief Constable’ll play?’
‘ ’Course he will! He won’t want to tangle with Big Dan any more than we do. But put it to him diplomatic like. There’s no need to mention that his son’s just started at Wibbley’s in the accounts.’ He winked.
‘You’re a cunning old devil,’ said the chief inspector gratefully. ‘If this works we might save our bacon yet!’
The station sergeant picked up the telephone and asked to be put through to the Chief Constable. ‘Just so’s you remember who it was what first thought of it,’ he said complacently as he handed the receiver over.
That was at about half past six on a damp, early autumn evening. At thirteen and a quarter minutes past two on the following morning a train rattled to a halt in Pott Winckle’s deserted railway station. Two men climbed stiffly down on to the platform. The bulkier one, the one who wasn’t encumbered with suitcases, turned up the collar of his overcoat and grimly surveyed his surroundings from beneath the brim of a shabby bowler hat. This was Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover of New Scotland Yard, not that New Scotland Yard was likely to boast about it.
Dover pursed his tiny rosebud mouth and screwed up his beady little eyes. ‘ ’Strewth!’ he said.
His assistant, Detective Sergeant MacGregor, struggled with the suitcases and sighed.
‘Why’, demanded Dover peevishly, ‘is there nobody here to meet us?’
‘I don’t know, sir, I’m afraid.’
‘In that case, laddie, get your skates on and find out!’
‘Yes, sir.’ With resignation MacGregor put the suitcases down on the platform and hurried off into the wavering shadows. Dover watched him for a moment and then shuffled over to the nearest bench and sat down.
A whistle blew, the engine coughed, a door slammed and the train pulled wearily out of the station.
Dover huddled deeper into his overcoat and closed his eyes. He’d barely had time to doze off before his sergeant was back again. Reluctantly he raised his heavy lids.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘well, at least you’ve been able to find a porter.’
There was an embarrassed pause. Even in a bad light there is little excuse for confusing a uniformed chief inspector of police in all his glory with one of the less glamorous employees of British Rail.
‘Er—no, sir,’— MacGregor, as so often in the past, rushed in to the rescue—‘this is Chief Inspector Bream, sir. He’s temporarily in charge of the Pott Winckle police, I understand. He was waiting for us in the waiting room. He hadn’t realized that the train had come in.’
A disparaging sniff came from the bench.
‘Your train was over two hours late,’ explained Chief Inspector Bream, wanting to kick himself for making excuses but unable to stop, ‘and it was getting really nippy out here on the platform and, as I was telling your sergeant here, I just thought I’d . . .’ His voice tailed off. Dover had closed his eyes again.
Chief Inspector Bream looked questioningly at MacGregor. MacGregor just failed to shrug his shoulders and, in a strictly non-committal voice, completed the introductions. ‘And this, sir, is Chief Inspector Dover.’
‘Oh,’ — Chief Inspector Bream floundered unhappily — ‘well, er—welcome both of you to — er— Pott Winckle. I —er—hope your visit will be a very—er—successful one.’
Dover rose abruptly and unexpectedly to his feet. ‘I’m just about whacked,’ he announced. Tm off to bed. Come on, MacGregor, get moving. Even if he isn’t a porter he can give you a hand with the bags.’
It was one of Chief Inspector Bream’s more humiliating experiences. None of the firmness and command which he was to display so eloquently in his later reconstructions of the scene came to his aid now. In the moment of truth all he could do, to his eternal shame, was pick up the heavier of the two suitcases and scurry, protesting feebly, after the humped and menacing figure of Dover.
He caught up with him at the station exit.
‘Is that’, demanded Dover, jerking his head at a gleaming Rolls-Royce parked directly opposite, ‘a taxi?’
‘Good heavens, no!’ Chief Inspector Bream’s voice soared to a squeak. ‘Look, you really must hang on for a minute and let me explain.’
‘Well,’ said Dover, pausing as if to the manner born while a uniformed chauffeur came round to open the door for him, ‘if this is a police car, all I can say is that I’ve been sweating my guts out all these years in the wrong bloody force! Drive straight to my hotel, my man!’
In the end, however, right prevailed and Chief Inspector Dover was not driven straight to his hotel, chiefly because the chauffeur had already been given his orders and he was accustomed to doing exactly what he was told,
‘All right,’ said Dover testily as the Rolls purred along through the dark streets, ‘the car belongs to Daniel Wibbley. So what?’
‘Mr Wibbley is the father of the girl,’ explained Chief Inspector Bream, grateful even for a morsel of Dover’s attention.
‘What girl?’ asked Dover, jabbing his stubby fingers at a mini-console of buttons which he had found on the arm rest.
‘The girl who’s been murdered!’ wailed Chief Inspector Bream as the window on his side of the car rolled silently up and
