‘Eh?’ gulped Dover, opening his eyes very wide and trying to look intelligent. ‘Oh yes, I am. Very surprised.’
‘This imprecision was the result of the proximity of a large fire in the front-room hearth. The body had fallen very close to the fire and this made a precise calculation of the time of death somewhat difficult as, so I am given to understand, the temperature of the corpse is a valuable clue and, amongst other things, affects the onset of rigor mortis. However, unsatisfactory as it is, that will be the medical evidence: death took place between four thirty and six thirty.
‘The discovery of my daughter’s lifeless body was made by her husband on his return from work. According to a brief statement he made to the police —on my advice he has not been questioned further and is now staying with his married sister at 25 Canal Bank Street under unobtrusive police surveillance-according to his statement he examined his wife to see if she was still alive and if he could render any aid and then he essayed to summon assistance. His own telephone, which stands in the hall, had apparently been torn out from the wall by the wires. He was thus obliged to leave the house and avail himself of the services of a public telephone kiosk, situated at the corner of Birdsfoot-Trefoil Close and Navelwort Drive. By some minor miracle this instrument had just been restored after the latest act of senseless vandalism and my daughter’s husband was thus enabled to contact the Central Police Station at six twenty-nine p.m. A police car was dispatched immediately to the scene of the crime, to which my daughter’s husband had also returned.’
‘I see,’ said Dover, and struggled to sit up a bit straighter in his chair. ‘Well, that’s given me something to be going on with. I . . . ’
‘I haven’t finished yet,’ said Mr Wibbley coldly.
‘Oh,’ said Dover.
‘I should like at this point to give you my opinions on capital punishment. I consider capital punishment a good thing. We are told in the Bible — an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and to let the punishment fit the crime. I am not myself a deeply religious man but on this point I wholeheartedly concur with the Church’s teaching. Unfortunately, as no doubt you are aware, capital punishment has been abolished in this country—a most retrograde step, in my opinion.’
‘You’re dead right there!’ agreed Dover with a sudden burst of enthusiasm. ‘Disgusting, I call it! Well, it ties your hands, doesn’t it? You can’t scare the life out of some rotten little yobbo by waving life imprisonment at him, can you? And where’s the incentive for us coppers, that’s what I want to know? In the old days you didn’t mind taking a bit more trouble over a job if you knew the villain was going to get his neck stretched at the end of it. It gave you something to work for, if you see what I mean, and topping . . . ’
‘Quite,’ said Mr Wibbley, eyeing Dover with some distaste. ‘I am glad we see eye to eye on this question, more or less.’
‘I reckon they ought to bring the birch back, too,’ muttered Dover resentfully. ‘And the cat. Give ’em a taste of their own medicine, that’s what I say. It’s these kids, you know. They’re the trouble. They’re not brought up to have any respect for law and order these days. Why, you’d hardly credit it, but there’s some of these vicious young devils that’d thump a copper as soon as they would their own mothers—and chiv him, too, if they get half a chance. And why not? What happens to ’em if, by some miracle, we do nab ’em? They come up in front of some silly old beak who says it’s all because they weren’t potted properly when they were kids and it’s not . . . ’
Even Dover, no more sensitive than the average pachyderm, felt a definite drop in the temperature. There were some things you could mention in the presence of Mr Wibbley and some it was advisable to avoid. Potting, even when used in the strict horticultural sense, fell in the latter category. Most of Pott Winckle shared Daniel Wibbley’s touchiness. Lavatory jokes were out and, even at the height of two world wars, the enemy were always referred to as Germans.
Mr Wibbley registered his disapproval of Dover’s faux pas by a slight tightening of the jaw and then resumed his monologue as though the Chief Inspector had never spoken—a touch of consideration for the feelings of others which shows that gentlemen can be made as well as born.
‘As a businessman,’ said Mr Wibbley, ‘I pride myself on being a realist. And we must be realistic on the question of capital punishment. In the present situation there is no hope at all that the murderer of my daughter will expiate his crime on the gallows. We may deplore this state of affairs but we cannot alter it. I therefore consider it no more than my simple duty as a father to ensure that this man is made to suffer the maximum punishment that the law allows.’
‘Life imprisonment,’ said Dover helpfully.
‘As you say, life imprisonment. And what, precisely, does that mean?’
‘Damn all, if you ask me,’ grumbled Dover. ‘Ten years inside on the average, so they say. And most of that in one of these open prisons if you play your cards right. Bloody mollycoddling! Mind you, there’s a few they keep locked up for a heck of a sight longer but, on the other hand, there’s some they let loose on society after as little as a couple of years, say. It makes you sick! Walking about without a care in the world in two years when you ought to be swinging with your heels six inches off the ground!’
‘And who is responsible for these anomalies?’
‘Eh?’
‘Who is responsible for keeping
