‘If you don’t feel like facing the sweet,’ said Dover, ‘order the plum and apple pudding and I’ll have it.’
‘I did a quick check with the local police, sir. Off-hand they could only think of one person in Pott Winckle who’s got a car like that.’
Dover’s gaze and attention were fixed on the approaching waiter. ‘Oh yes?’ he said vaguely as MacGregor paused with dramatic intent.
‘Young Mrs Topping-Wibbley, sir.’
Dover leaned over and grabbed MacGregor’s spoon and fork. ‘Damn good pudding this,’ he announced. ‘You should have had some. And who’s young Mrs Topping-Wibbley when she’s at home?’
‘She’s the wife of Hereward Topping-Wibbley, sir. And he is the only nephew of Daniel Wibbley himself. And, more to the point, now that Cynthia Wibbley is dead, Hereward Topping-Wibbley will presumably be Daniel Wibbley’s sole heir.’
Dover mopped up the remaining juice off his plate with a piece of bread roll. ‘And what is this young Mrs Topping- Wibbley? A male impersonator?’
‘Of course not, sir, but her husband could have been using her car for some reason, couldn’t he? His own’s even more conspicuous, I understand—one of these continental sports cars made in the nineteen thirties. It’s perfectly feasible that he should have borrowed his wife’s car and driven to Birdsfoot- Trefoil Close in it.’
‘And then murdered his cousin there?’ scoffed Dover. ‘Pshaw!’
‘But he’s got motive, sir!’
‘He’ll need a damned sight more than that before I start taking him seriously.’
‘But look at the timing, sir.’ MacGregor got out his cigarette case and offered it as a minor bribe for a morsel of the Chief Inspector’s attention.
But Dover was not to be bought. Rather grandly he produced one of Daniel Wibbley’s cigars from his pocket and bit the end off. ‘I reckon’, he remarked idly as he puffed great mouthfuls of smoke all round the dining-room, ‘a drop of brandy’d go down a treat with this. It’d help settle my stomach, too.’
MacGregor signalled to the waiter. ‘Well, as I was saying, sir, the timing of the murder puts Hereward Topping-Wibbley right in the centre of the picture. Now, look, sir,’ — MacGregor got his notebook out and flicked over the pages—‘Cynthia Perking was killed in that front room some time between four thirty and six thirty. There was a good fire and the television was on. Now, we know from Mrs Carruthers that Cynthia always watched this serial For Better or Worse every afternoon. She never missed. The serial ends at five forty-five p.m. and, as soon as it finished, she switched off and went into the kitchen to start getting the supper ready. So, since she was killed in the front room, she must have been killed before five forty-five, mustn’t she? Otherwise she wouldn’t have been in the front room at all, she’d have been in the kitchen. Now, on the night of the murder, John Perking didn’t return home until ten past six—but his wife was already dead by then. She must have been. So we’ve got to start looking for somebody who was in that house before a quarter to six, and we’ve found him.
‘Now, we’ve no proof yet, sir, that this man who called on Cynthia Perking was in fact Hereward Topping-Wibbley, but I’m pretty confident that he’s our man. Just look how he behaved, sir! He uses a borrowed car, because anybody in the town would spot his a mile off, he parks it some distance away from the house and walks —in the rain—the rest of the way. Why—unless he doesn’t want to be noticed? Cynthia Perking lets him into the house about five o’clock. Naturally she takes him into the front room. Now, the next bit’s speculation, sir, but this is my guess as to what happened. He has a quarrel with Cynthia, sees the poker there, picks it up and kills her. Or, better still, she tells him that at long last she’s going to have a baby. You can see what that was going to mean to him, can’t you, sir? It puts paid to his hopes of eventually taking over control of the Wibbley organization. But with Cynthia and her child out of the way, he’s sitting pretty. He’ll get the lot.
‘All the details fit, too, sir. There are no fingerprints in that room that they can’t identify — apart from a couple of sets that I think are yours, sir. All the rest belong to Cynthia Perking or her husband. But, we know Hereward Topping-Wibbley was wearing gloves. Mrs Withycombe said so. So that’s what I think happened sir. Topping-Wibbley grabs the poker, kills Cynthia, lets himself quietly out of the house, gets in his car and drives off. He thinks no one’s seen him or, at any rate, recognized him. According to Mrs Withycombe—and her evidence is supported by others — he was in that house for about half an hour and nobody saw Cynthia Perking alive after he left it. It’s cast iron, sir.’
‘So are sieves!’ snorted Dover. He ground out his cigar in his coffee cup. ‘Here, give me one of your fags to take the taste away. I reckon that cigar’s gone off a bit.’
‘But you do admit there’s a pretty solid case against Topping- Wibbley, don’t you, sir?’
Dover pursed his lips judicially. ‘No,’ he said, after giving the matter a moment’s cursory thought, ‘I don’t. If you ask me it’s a load of old cod’s wallop. You want to watch that imagination of yours, laddie. It’ll be getting you into serious trouble one of these days.’
‘Well, if you can see any flaws in my theory,’ said MacGregor huffily, ‘I should be grateful if you’d point them out to me, sir.’
‘Trouble is’, said Dover, undoing the top button of his trousers, ‘to know where to start. That’s better! I hope my stomach’s not going to start playing me up again. I’ve been a bit constipated the last few days and that’s always a bad sign. Remind me to take a dose of salts
