‘Carry on!’ Dover shouted up at them. ‘What’s all this about Cynthia Perking getting your money?’
But Mildred Denny was weakening. ‘I don’t want to stay out here any longer,’ she complained. ‘I’m getting soaked to the skin.’
‘You’re not the only one,’ snapped Dover. ‘Well, come on down then! It’ll suit me.’
The rain-sodden shoes shuffled about. The guttering creaked and sagged even further. Dover, squeamish, closed his eyes. There was a frantic scrabbling on the tiles of the roof.
‘I can’t get down!’ Mildred Denny’s lament came loud and clear. ‘I’m stuck! I daren’t move!’
‘Women!’ muttered Dover and relayed the news to MacGregor. ‘The stupid cat’s come to her senses but now she’s stuck and can’t get down.’
‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ Mr Whitbread was still hanging around. He went on bleating helplessly until Dover cut him short.
‘Well, now’s your chance, padre! Just let me clear out of the way and then you can nip out and do your rescue act.’ Dover leered wickedly at the chaplain whose face suddenly matched his clerical collar for shining whiteness. ‘I reckon they’ll give you a medal for this. And, believe me, you’ll have earned it! You wouldn’t get me out on that roof for a million quid.’
‘Oh, dear!’ said Mr Whitbread in quite a different tone of voice. He clutched his chest as a last straw. ‘Oh, dear, I do believe I’m going to have one of my attacks. Nothing to worry about, of course, but my heart isn’t quite as strong as it used to be. If I could just sit down . . . oh, thank you so much!’ — this as MacGregor pulled up a packing case—‘So kind! I’ll just sit here quietly. Don’t you bother about me. I’ll be as fit as a fiddle again in two or three hours.’
Dover wrinkled his little black moustache contemptuously. ‘Tell ’em to fetch the fire brigade, laddie!’
While the Pott Winckle fire brigade was wending its leisurely way towards the Pott Winckle hospital, Dover lent an ear to the remainder of Mildred Denny’s confession. As he pointed out to her, she might as well spit out the rest while she was waiting.
The juxtaposition of the laboratory reports on Mildred’s secretarial desk had proved too much for her. She’d had a lifetime of seeing Cynthia get everything and the knowledge that her cousin’s good fortune was going to continue unabated produced a crisis. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ said Mildred from her chilly perch on the roof, ‘but suddenly I saw it all quite clearly. After all, I’ve got to think of my future, haven’t I? I don’t want to finish up in one of these twilight homes with nothing but my old-age pension to live on. And you know what the hospital service is like — they don’t pay you enough to keep body and soul together, never mind put anything aside for a rainy day.’
‘I do wish you’d get to the point,’ grumbled Dover. ‘I’m getting a crick in my blooming back leaning out like this.’
‘But money is the point!’ retorted Mildred. ‘I would never have dreamt of doing it if it hadn’t been for the money.’
‘What blasted money?’ groaned Dover.
‘My money, of course. Well, it will be mine when Uncle Quintin dies. And now’ —she chuckled softly to herself—‘and now it will be all mine, won’t it? I shan’t have to share it with Cynthia. Not now!’ she added with great satisfaction. ‘Of course, Uncle Quintin’s the one to blame, really. He should never have made such a stupid will. Oh, I know what you’re going to say: Cynthia’s just as much Uncle Quintin’s great-niece as I am. Or, she was. Well, in a way you’re right. Both our mothers were Sinclairs, but my mother didn’t marry Daniel Wibbley, did she? If she had done and if I was heiress to all the Wibbley money, I wouldn’t have expected to get half the Sinclair inheritance too, would I?’
‘I wish you’d pull yourself together,’ said Dover, growing more and more impatient. ‘Do you mean that Cynthia Perking was going to inherit some money from your joint Uncle Quintin?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘How much?’
‘Well, nobody really knows. About ten thousand pounds, I think. But I’d have only got half of that, wouldn’t I? Cynthia would have got the other half and five thousand pounds to her—why, it would have been chicken feed. But, the way Uncle Quintin’s left it, if one of us dies the other gets the lot. Do you understand? Of course, one of us would have to die before Uncle Quintin does, otherwise it wouldn’t work.’
‘Clear as mud,’ said Dover scathingly.
‘Well, Uncle Quintin was a bit gaga when he made it,’ admitted Mildred. ‘Now he’s completely potty of course and they’ve had to get a power of attorney or something for him. That’s why there wasn’t any other way, you see. If Uncle Quintin was sane I could have gone and talked to him and told him that Cynthia didn’t need a measly five thousand pounds when she was going to get all her father’s money, but that it would make all the difference in the world to me. I’d have got him to change his will and leave me the lot, I’m sure I would. Then’, she added tearfully, ‘I shouldn’t have had to get rid of Cynthia, should I ?’
Dover retreated from the window. ‘Can you hear what she’s saying out there?’ he asked MacGregor.
MacGregor shook his head. ‘Not a word, sir.’
Thank God for small mercies, thought Dover.
‘By the way, sir,’ said MacGregor quickly before Dover disappeared again. ‘There are all sorts of people who keep coming to the door and demanding to know what’s going on. We’ve had the hospital secretary, the matron, the chairman of the board of governors, the . . . ’
‘Yes,’ said Dover, ‘very interesting. Well, tell ’em everything’s under control. And, while you’re about it, tell that parson fellow I’m still waiting for my second cup of tea.’ Mildred Denny began once more to
