‘Ah, well, that’s the Home Secretary, of course. Mind you, he gets a lot of advice from all these snivelling do-gooders like psychiatrists and prison chaplains and what have you, and if they say let ’em out he lets ’em out.’
‘I doubt if the matter is quite as simple as that,’ said Mr Wibbley rather patronizingly. ‘As a Justice of the Peace as well as an active supporter of the movement to restore the death penalty, I have made it my business to study the question in some depth. However, basically, you have the right idea. Periodically the case of every prisoner serving a life sentence is passed under review. All aspects of the matter are, so we are assured, carefully considered: the nature and motivation of the crime, the man’s attitude towards it, his behaviour in prison and so forth. I am given to understand that criminals who have committed particularly brutal, vicious and callous crimes for gain and so forth are less likely to secure an early release than those who have murdered in a fit of ungovernable passion, for example. Now, I hope you are following my line of reasoning?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dover.
‘Good! Then I can be confident of your full co-operation. We must ensure, Dover, not only that the murderer of my daughter is brought to public trial but that he is exposed as a cold-blooded, deliberate killer who should never again be allowed to contaminate decent society by his presence. There must be no half-measures, no sympathy for the accused, no understanding of his point of view, no suspicion that he is not as black as he is painted. He must not only be tried, he must be pilloried.’ He must go down in history along with all the other murderous thugs whose very names make honest citizens shudder. This man must not only be sentenced to life imprisonment, he must actually serve it—until his dying day.’
Mr Wibbley paused dramatically and there was a squeaking of leather as Dover wriggled uneasily in his chair. The Chief Inspector was not one to become involved in his work, emotionally or otherwise, and he found Mr Wibbley’s passionate oratory a bit embarrassing. He tried to lower the temperature.
‘Well, that’s fine, Mr Wibbley, but we’ve got one or two little jobs to get out of the way before we start talking about trials and verdicts. After all,’ —he produced an unfortunate giggle—‘we’ve got to catch our murderer first, haven’t we?’
Mr Wibbley waved an impatient hand. ‘What on earth are you blethering about? The identity of the killer is no problem.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘I thought I had clarified the situation for you more than adequately!’ snapped Mr Wibbley. ‘Apparently your wits are not as nimble as one would have expected in a so-called expert. Your job is to ensure that the murderer of my daughter does not escape his just and, I trust, lengthy reward. Good heavens, man, everybody knows who he is! He’s John Perking, my daughter’s husband and my son-in-law.’
Chapter Two
‘THAT marriage was doomed from its inception,’ said Mr Wibbley with a loquacity which appeared, to Dover’s increasing dismay, totally unaffected by grief, the lateness of the hour or any reasonable consideration for the feelings of others. ‘I told my daughter so when the matter was first mooted but, these days, you can’t tell an eighteen-year-old chit of a girl anything. She had the impertinence to accuse me of snobbery when I tried to point out to her that Perking was nothing more than a vulgar little upstart with his eyes firmly glued on the main chance. Anyone, except my daughter, could see that he was after her money—or, rather, after my money. However, I managed, I flatter myself, to thwart the young whelp there. When I realized that I could do nothing to stop my daughter— she even threatened to apply to the courts if I refused my consent—I sent for Perking and told him just precisely what the situation would be if he persisted: not one penny piece from me!
‘My daughter was, of course, my sole heir and in time she would, naturally, have inherited my not inconsiderable business interests. But, until my decease, the responsibility for providing for her would, in the circumstances, fall entirely upon the shoulders of the man she married. I made it quite clear that they could expect no help from me. Perking was considerably shaken by this intelligence but he possesses a certain amount of crude cunning. He informed me in a very eloquent speech, which had obviously been pre-prepared, that he loved Cynthia, that he would be honoured to support her on the measly pittance he received from this travel agency, that he was sorry to have caused so much trouble between myself and my daughter, that wealth meant nothing to either of them and that in time he trusted that my attitude towards him would become less suspicious and less antagonistic. You can see what his game was, of course?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dover, beginning to feel some sympathy for young Mr Perking. ‘I expect he thought you’d come round in time and then he’d be in clover.’
‘He didn’t know me very well,’ observed Mr Wibbley grimly. ‘I am not a man who changes his mind easily. They were married in a registry office. I did not attend the ceremony. However,’ he smiled unpleasantly, ‘I did send them a wedding present: a complete bathroom suite. Our popular model. The de luxe one would have been a trifle pretentious for Birdsfoot-Trefoil Close.’
Dover propped his eyes open and tried to turn the monologue into a discussion. He wasn’t much of a one for just sitting there and listening. ‘But, if your daughter had no money, what did her husband murder her for?’ In some matters Dover had a very one-track mind.
‘That is what you are here to find out.’
‘You didn’t relent
