‘Oh, her!’ sniffed Dover. ‘Hey, look — it’s a cocktail cabinet!’
‘Mr Wibbley is a very influential man in Pott Winckle, very influential. And the Chief Constable was most insistent that I should impress upon you that this case must be settled with expedition and discretion.’
‘My favourite brand, too!’ said Dover, holding a glass full of whisky appreciatively up to the light. ‘I wonder if he’s got any fags going spare? My, this is the life, isn’t it, eh?’
‘The Chief Constable says he doesn’t want any slip-ups. He said that several times. And he wants you to co-operate fully with Mr Wibbley, even if it is a bit unorthodox. Mr Wibbley is a very important man and he’ll want to be kept fully in the picture.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover in a tone of mock disappointment, ‘he’s only got cigars! Well, beggars can’t be choosers, eh? Got a light, MacGregor?’
‘I really don’t think’, Chief Inspector Bream said faintly, ‘that you ought to . . . Well, the chauffeur might be watching and . . . ’
Dover cheerfully told his brother officer what he could do with the chauffeur and stuffed half a dozen enormous cigars in his pocket for, as he jocularly put it, a rainy day.
Surreptitiously Chief Inspector Bream wiped his brow.
‘Well, old fish,’ said Dover, settling back comfortably in the cushions, ‘hey—do you get that, MacGregor? Bream —fish! Get it?’
‘Yes, sir,’ muttered MacGregor, ‘I get it.’
‘Well, don’t look so blasted boot-faced about it, then! That’s the “rouble with you, you’ve no bloody sense of humour. Some people are never satisfied. A Rolls-Royce, free cigars, whisky— what more do you want? Oh, I’m going to enjoy this case, I am!’
‘If you would just listen to me!’ whined Chief Inspector Bream, now getting as close to tears as a chief inspector ever does.
‘This woman who got herself croaked,’ said Dover, ‘was she married?’
‘Yes, she was.’
‘Husband knocking about?’
‘Well, yes. Actually he was the one who found the body.’
‘So what are you sweating about?’ asked Dover, leaning across and spilling the ash from his cigar all over MacGregor’s knees. ‘He’s the nigger in the woodpile. You just want to clap the handcuffs on him and shove him inside. He’ll be your man. all right.’
Chief Inspector Bream shuddered at the mere thought of arresting, in cold blood, the great Daniel Wibbley’s son-in-law on a charge of murder. ‘I don’t think it’s quite as simple as all that,’ he ventured.
‘ ’Course it is!’ scoffed Dover. ‘The world’s full of husbands bumping off their wives. It’s what you might call one of the laws of nature.’
‘Oh, come now!’ Chief Inspector Bream accompanied this gentle chiding with a most unfortunate laugh. ‘That’s a bit sweeping, isn’t it?’
Dover twisted round in the close confines of the back seat of the Rolls and scowled ferociously at Chief Inspector Bream. ‘Are you trying to teach me to suck eggs, mate? That’s ripe, that is! Do you hear that, MacGregor? Here’s a blooming glorified traffic warden who’s spent his life looking for lost poodles and telling people what time it is trying to teach me my job. That’s good, that is! Me, that was already C.I.D. when this yokel was trying to find out which end of his whistle to suck!’
Chief Inspector Bream went scarlet up to the ears and Sergeant MacGregor gazed miserably out of the window. Neither of which happenings staunched the flow of Dover’s eloquence. He proceeded to open up every festering old sore which had ever existed between the detective and uniformed branches, and then rubbed salt in them. The bewilderment of one of his fellow passengers and the mortification of the other made no difference to Dover. He hadn’t wanted to come to Pott Winckle in the first place and as for wasting his time on this mucky little murder case—well, you could stuff that! Naturally somebody had to pay for Dover’s ill temper and, since Chief Inspector Bream was handy, he would do as well, if not better, than anybody else.
It was thanks to this prolonged outburst of petulance that Dover eventually found himself face to face with Daniel Wibbley knowing, if possible, slightly less about the murder of the tycoon’s daughter than he had in London.
The bereaved father was an impressive figure as he stood in his spacious study surveying his visitors. He was a big man but in good physical trim and with a carefully tended look about him. His hair was greying appropriately at the temples and the blue of his eyes was exactly matched by the dominant colour in his silk Paisley smoking jacket. The room in which he stood echoed the theme of unobtrusive good taste, backed by money. After all, when one’s family fortunes are based on chamber pots and one’s name is Daniel, one cannot be too careful in eschewing any hint of vulgarity.
‘So you’re the detective from London, are you?’ he rasped, eyeing Dover up and down with ill-disguised surprise. Most people, it must be confessed, evinced a certain amount of simple disbelief when they saw Chief Inspector Dover for the first time. He chimed so ill with the popular romantic image of a senior policeman. He was too fat, too shabby and too surly-looking. Added to which he had a paunch, chronic dyspepsia and acute dandruff. Where were the keen grey eyes, the high intelligent forehead, the wide generous mouth crinkling slightly at the corners in a benevolent smile? Not, it was only too obvious, in Wilfred Dover’s lowering, heavy-jowled mug.
‘Hm,’ said Daniel Wibbley.
Dover glared bleakly back at him and hoped he was going to be invited to sit down soon. All this standing around did his poor old feet no good at all.
‘Well,’ said Daniel Wibbley, ‘I don’t think we need to have a committee meeting about this. Bream, you and the sergeant can wait outside. If you want any refreshment I dare say you’ll find some beer and sandwiches in the kitchen.’ He watched them leave the room. ‘I hope’, he observed, turning to Dover, ‘that
