Dover had a mind like a jumping bean and Mr Lickes’s peculiar antics had been irritating him for some time. ‘What do you keep wriggling about for?’ he demanded.
‘Isometrics,’ replied Mr Lickes, delighted that they’d now moved on to a mutually interesting topic of conversation.
‘You should see a doctor, laddie.’
Mr Lickes giggled. Fancy this surly-looking policeman having an impish sense of humour! ‘A fellow likes to keep fit,’ he explained, ‘and this isometric system, suitably modified to meet my own personal requirements, does pretty well.’
‘I should have thought you got enough blooming exercise just doing your own job,’ observed Dover. ‘I know I do.’
‘Ah, I’m afraid a lot of people delude themselves into thinking that. It’s a great mistake.’ Mr Lickes ran a discerning eye over Dover’s bulging form. ‘I’ve got a few books I could lend you, if you like.’
‘Don’t bother,’ growled Dover.
Mr Lickes understood his attitude perfectly. ‘No, well it’s not everybody’s idea of the perfect system,’ he agreed. ‘It’s not even mine, come to that. I’m really a great believer in jogging. You know, out in the fresh air in all weathers with the wind and the rain in your face, just jogging happily along. I used to find that a steady five or six miles a day kept me in perfect condition. However, in the circumstances, I thought it better to give it up for a while.’
‘In what circumstances?’ asked Dover who’d already classified Mr Lickes as a chronic nut-case some time ago.
Mr Lickes’s mouth twisted bitterly. ‘There were complaints,’ he said. ‘Well, only one really. You wouldn’t think people would be so narrow-minded in this day and age, would you? My apparel may have been scanty but it was not indecent. And to be accused of being a Peeping Tom into the bargain!’ Mr Lickes drew himself up with a fastidious shudder. ‘A man in my position has no defence against that kind of slander.’
‘A Peeping Tom?’ Dover found this sort of thing much more diverting than any lousy old murder investigation. ‘Who called you that, eh?’
‘You may well ask! As a matter of fact, it was Wing Commander Pile. As I explained to him, I’d been jogging around this village after supper for more years than I can remember without a single complaint from anybody. Then he moves down here and I’m accused of being an exhibitionist and a voyeur of a particularly nasty kind.’
‘No!’ said Dover encouragingly.
‘I thought you’d find it hard to credit,’ agreed Mr Lickes. ‘It was his daughter, you see. I used to go via Cherry Lane and West Street and out through the old Sally Gate, down the main road and back round through Sidle Alley. Well, by that time I was usually feeling a bit puffed and I used to stop for a few moments to get my second wind. Miss Pile’s bedroom was at the back of the house, overlooking Sidle Alley, and Wing Commander Pile had the infernal cheek to accuse me of pausing there to watch her undress. I ask you! Of course, one understands his concern for the poor girl but, even so . . .’ Mr Lickes shuddered again and looked at his watch. ‘Good heavens, is that the time? Well, if you have no further questions, Mr Dover, I really have rather a lot to do downstairs so . . .’
Unlike her husband, Mrs Lickes was only too glad to sit down and have a bit of a rest. She was a frail, tired looking woman who accepted, perhaps a little too readily, the dictum that the customer is always right.
‘I put her in one of the spare bedrooms,’ she told Dover, referring to Wing Commander Pile’s daughter. ‘She’d a few bruises and cuts but I thought the best thing I could do was to get her settled and off to sleep as soon as possible. Of course, if she’d been a normal sort of girl, you could have perhaps found something for her to do to take her mind off things – I’ve always found there’s nothing like hard work to stop you worrying – but with her being like she is – well, I didn’t quite know what to do. I mean, I’ve never had any experience of people like that before. I wasn’t too happy about just leaving her all on her own in a strange bed but things looked such a mess round North Street that I really felt I ought to go back there and help out. I did wonder about asking one of our ladies to look after her but, well, you don’t like to trouble your guests, not with a thing like that, do you? In the end I gave her a couple of my sleeping tablets. That put her out like a light and she slept right through until gone lunch time. By the way, before I forget, what time would you like your afternoon tea?’
‘Four o’clock,’ said Dover promptly, grateful to find somebody at last who’d got their priorities right.
Mrs Lickes nodded and went on with her story. How she’d made a gallon or so of sweet tea and put it in an old milk chum they happened to have, and how she’d lugged that plus an enormous pile of sandwiches, another torch and a couple of old sheets for bandages all the way back to North Street. She reckoned that, what with one thing and another, she must have been away for about an hour.
‘I saw them taking some of the wounded into the Studio so that’s where I went first of all. It was terrible in there. All these poor people lying about on the floor, bleeding and moaning. This Wittgenstein woman – she makes vases and things – she was doing the best she could but there is a limit, isn’t there? I mean with first
