MacGregor counted up to ten. ‘I’m glad you’re feeling better, sir.’
‘I’ll bet! Shove my shirt over!’
‘This, sir?’ MacGregor picked up a garment which seemed to have developed a bad case of fungi round the armpits.
‘Those artists that live in the Studio,’ said Dover, abandoning the unequal struggle with the top button of his trousers and grabbing his shirt from MacGregor’s fastidious fingers.
‘Oh, yes, sir. I interviewed them this afternoon.’ MacGregor pulled his notebook out and flipped over the pages. ‘Two men and a woman, wasn’t it? They turned their place into a first-aid shelter and . . .’
‘I’m going to see ’em after I’ve had my dinner.’
‘Tonight, sir?’
‘No,’ snarled Dover, the wit still scintillating, ‘a week come Pancake Tuesday!’
‘But I fixed up for the Hoopers to come in to see you this evening, sir.’
‘Then you’ll have to unfix it, won’t you? I’ll deal with them tomorrow, after lunch.’
‘I’m not sure if that will be convenient, sir,’ said MacGregor doubtfully.
Dover was busy scraping the varnish off a chair as he tied his bootlaces. ‘It’ll bloody well have to be!’
MacGregor frowned. What was the gibbering idiot up to now, for heaven’s sake? The artists – Oliver, Lloyd Thomas and Wittgenstein – had seemed innocuous enough. Why was Dover suddenly taking an interest in them? If he had been dealing with anybody else, MacGregor would simply have asked but it was no good trying to do things the easy way with Dover. Extracting information from him required the subtlety of a Machiavelli. MacGregor got his cigarette case out and offered it as a preliminary sweetener.
Dover, who would have accepted a buckshee fag from a bloodstained multiple murderer (and on one occasion actually had), flopped back on the bed and puffed happily away while he waited for his soft nancy of a sergeant to make his next move.
‘Perhaps,’ began MacGregor, very nonchalantly, ‘we ought just to bring each other up to date on the day’s activities, sir? We’ve got half an hour or so before supper and then I can write the reports up later on tonight. Now’ – he opened his notebook again – chow many people did you see this afternoon, sir?’
‘Three,’ said Dover amiably. ‘Lickes and his better half, and that chap, Pile. How many did you get through?’
‘Er – twenty-four, sir, actually.’
Dover ground the odious comparison ruthlessly out of sight. ‘You must have done a pretty skimpy job.’
‘Not really, sir. I was able to eliminate most of them after a couple of minutes.’
‘Didn’t you turn up anything interesting?’
MacGregor reluctantly shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, sir. Of course I haven’t had time to correlate my findings properly yet but it does look as though we can forget about ninety per cent of those I saw. Whole families can alibi each other, you see, and then some of the people were hurt in the earthquake and in no position to walk, never mind go around strangling Mr Chantry. And then, when you take into account all the children and the old people . . . Unless we’re up against a conspiracy, sir, I’m sure most of them can be eliminated.’
‘And those who can’t?’
‘Well, funnily enough, sir, those artists you want to see couldn’t produce much in the way of alibis. Under the prevailing conditions there’s nothing surprising about that, of course. They were wandering around, helping with the rescue work. Theoretically, one of them could have slipped off and killed Chantry. It needn’t have taken more than a few minutes. Everybody’s so vague about whom they saw and when they saw them, you see. I didn’t come across much in the way of motive either.’ MacGregor paused expectantly. ‘Er – did you, sir?’ Dover was too leery a fish to be caught on that hook. He did a bit more angling on his own account. ‘What was the general impression of Chantry?’
MacGregor stifled a sigh. Oh God, they weren’t in for another bout of the psychological approach, were they? He tried to remember what had been on the telly recently. If there’d been a repeat of that Maigret series, they were sunk. After a lifetime of wielding his fists to get results, Dover had been intrigued by the idea that some detectives (albeit fictional ones) solved their cases by just sitting and thinking. For a time he had actually adopted the technique – or a slight variation of it. He did away with the thinking bit.
‘Cat got your tongue, laddie?’
MacGregor tried to collect his wandering thoughts. ‘Sir?’
‘I asked you if you’d dug up any motive for Chantry’s murder. You got cloth ears or something?’
Motive? MacGregor winced. It was such an unprofessional approach. Means and opportunity – that’s what a proper detective should be concerning himself with at this stage. Only when you’d established those did you start looking round for motives. Trust Dover to began at the end and work backwards. ‘Nothing in particular, sir,’ said MacGregor, endeavouring not to sound too disdainful. ‘I was more interested in finding out who, in a time-and-space context, could have done the killing.’
Dover rolled his eyes eloquently up towards the ceiling.
‘However,’ – MacGregor went on – ‘I did gather that he wasn’t any too popular. He was rather a pushing sort of man and a bit too keen on ramming his views on morality down other people’s throats. Still, I would guess he was a man more disliked than actually hated. Did you come across any strong motive, sir?’
Dover was saved by the dinner gong from the effort of answering that one. He swung himself off the bed. ‘Grub up, laddie!’ he said and wallowed joyfully in MacGregor’s evident disappointment. That’d teach the cocky young pup that some people weren’t so green as they were cabbage looking!
Six
Dover was alone when he presented himself at the front door of the Studio and rang the bell. MacGregor, his curiosity having been fanned to obsessive proportions, had been despatched to
