Miss Wittgenstein rolled over on to her stomach. ‘It’ll only disturb Jim.’
‘Bugger Jim,’ said Lloyd Thomas indifferently. ‘Just because he’s got himself hooked on a working jag is no reason for me to make like a footman, is it?’
‘Butlers answer doors,’ Miss Wittgenstein pointed out with kindly superiority. ‘If you weren’t a pig-headed Taffy from up the bloody valleys, you’d know that.’
‘Stuff you!’ came the amiable reply.
‘If it was you, Jim would.’
‘Well, it isn’t and I’m not. And if you’ve got dear Jamie’s interests so much at heart, why don’t you go and answer the bloody door yourself?’
‘All right,’ said Miss Wittgenstein belligerently, ‘I will!’ She uncoiled herself like a cat and stood up. ‘Oh, God!’ She fished despondently down the neck of her blouse. ‘Something’s gone bust!’
Miss Wittgenstein was dramatically well endowed in certain spheres and Lloyd Thomas was still groping frantically for some suitably bitchy bon mot when the door opened and the third member of the household ushered MacGregor in.
From then on things began to move at a more business-like pace. Jim Oliver might have been an artist but he believed in keeping his feet on the ground. Within a matter of moments he had taken control. Dover, as guest of honour, was ceremoniously ensconced in a comfortable chair which had earlier escaped even his eagle eye and a packet of cigarettes was placed conveniently at his elbow. Miss Wittgenstein was despatched to the cellar for supplies of liquid refreshment and Lloyd Thomas was quietly told to go and put his trousers on. Jim Oliver had no more love for the police than his companions had but he knew, from past experience, that rubbing them up the wrong way only ended in tears.
MacGregor found himself a little table and got out his notebook. Jim Oliver, determined to miss out on nothing, sped across with a bunch of newly sharpened pencils.
‘So much better than those nasty ball points, dear,’ he whispered. ‘They never seem to allow you to express your personality, do they? Ah,’ – Miss Wittgenstein staggered in with an armful of bottles – ‘here comes the plonk! You’ll take a glass, won’t you, dear? You’ll find it astonishingly palatable. What I call a real vintage Algerian.’
MacGregor declined. ‘I am on duty, sir.’
Jim Oliver pouted his disappointment. ‘Does that mean your delightful chief inspector won’t be able to imbibe either?’
Dover had already got both paws round a bottle.
MacGregor hung a sour little smile over his disapproval. ‘He’s rather a law unto himself,’ he said.
‘Of course, of course,’ cooed Jim Oliver understanding^ and took up a dominating position on the hearthrug. ‘Now, are you all sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin.’
This attempt at the humorous approach didn’t go down too well. MacGregor maintained a poker face while Miss Wittgenstein and Lloyd Thomas realistically mimed being sick in a bucket. Dover, needless to say, wasn’t even listening.
Jim Oliver gave a nervous cough and turned to MacGregor. ‘Well, what is it you want, precisely?’
MacGregor turned to Dover. ‘Sir?’
The question was so sharp that Dover jumped and nearly spilled his wine. ‘Eh?’
‘We’re waiting to begin, sir.’
‘Oh?’ Dover squinted round the assembled company in some bewilderment. As far as he was concerned, they had begun. He clutched his glass. He’d got all he’d come for, anyhow.
MacGregor, through tight lips, broke the ignominious silence. ‘Shall I carry on, sir?’
Dover scowled at his sergeant and ungraciously nodded his head. ‘You do that, laddie.’
The story was pretty much the same as the ones Dover and MacGregor had been listening to all day, except that Oliver, Wittgenstein and Lloyd Thomas, as befitted their status as dissolute artists, were not in bed when the earthquake struck.
‘We were in this very room, dear,’ explained Oliver, ‘and suddenly everything just quivered. Not one of us so much as squeaked. Wasn’t that brave? Then we heard this sound of tearing and crashing. It seemed to come from all round. Not particularly loud, really, but ominous. It was old L.T. here who was the first to guess what it was. Well, we all came to the conclusion that we’d be safer outside so we grabbed a few coats and torches and things and headed for the open air.’
‘Now, you actually saw Mr Chantry, didn’t you?’ asked MacGregor with a meaningful – and completely wasted – glance at Dover.
‘You must be psychic!’ sneered Lloyd Thomas. ‘We told you all this this morning. And we didn’t so much see as hear. Like we told you, it was pitch dark.’
‘We heard people shouting up in North Street,’ explained Jim Oliver quickly. ‘Mr Chantry was just pulling Pile out of the wreckage when we arrived. Well,’ – he pulled uneasily at his left ear – ‘we thought the situation seemed under control and we’d probably be more use giving somebody else a hand, so we pushed off.’
Lloyd Thomas leaned forward impatiendy. ‘Come off it, Jim. These bluebottles have been nosing round the village all bloody day. Somebody’ll have marked our card for sure.’ He swung round to MacGregor. ‘Look, spook, the honest to God is that none of us would have given Pile a helping hand if we’d tripped over him. And likewise for Chantry.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t exactly say that,’ bleated Jim Oliver, blowing his nose nervously on a paint rag.
‘Why not?’ Miss Wittgenstein put her glass down with a bang. ‘It’s milk and water compared with what you did say before Chantry zipped through the pearly gates. I’m on Taffy’s side. Let’s shame the devil.’
‘Oh, nonsense!’ blustered Jim Oliver. ‘You’re making quite unnecessary mountains, my darlings. We didn’t like Chantry and Chantry didn’t like us, but that doesn’t mean . . .’
‘I understand that Mr Chantry was trying to evict you from these premises, sir,’ said MacGregor quietly.
Jim Oliver gulped and muttered something about gossipy old women. ‘That man didn’t know his own mind
