‘Well, there’s really not much more to tell you, dear,’ said Jim Oliver, taking up the tale once more. ‘In the darkness we passed quietly by on the other side and left Chantry and the Piles to it. We went off down to the far end of North Street and then Wittgenstein found this boy staggering about with blood pouring down his head. She brought him back here to the Studio to try and fix him up and a few minutes later I came back to get a spade. The Piles were still out in the road talking to Lickes and his wife. Then, Colin Hooper appeared and said that all hell was let out round the Sally Gate and could somebody go along there and give them a hand. Well, I said it wasn’t too choice at the far end of North Street, either, and that I was going back there.’
‘Did Colin Hooper mention his father-in-law?’ asked MacGregor.
‘I think so. To tell you the truth, I can’t honestly remember but I certainly assumed that Chantry and Hooper had been working together. I must admit I wasn’t paying much attention. I was in too big a hurry to get back to Lloyd Thomas with my spade.’
‘And you and Mr Lloyd Thomas spent the rest of the night in each other’s company?’
‘Well, not every minute, of course.’ Jim Oliver threw his hands up in a gesture of despair. 'Good heavens, you don’t seem to appreciate what it was like! Buildings were falling down and people were lying injured and trapped all over the place. L.T. and I were like everybody else – we were just rushing around doing what we could. It was all pretty chaotic. After a bit Wing Commander Pile turned up and tried to start throwing his weight around but nobody took much notice. Well, with somebody screaming in pain a couple of yards away, you don’t break off for a staff meeting, do you?’
MacGregor sighed. 'Were either of you in the Sally Gate area of North Street at all?’
Both men emphatically shook their heads.
‘We were up at the other end,’ said Lloyd Thomas. ‘There was more than enough to keep us busy there, believe you me. I never got nearer to the Sally Gate all night than this house – and that was only when I was bringing people along here for Wittgenstein to minister to.’
MacGregor scratched aimlessly in his notebook. This case was developing into a real stinker, and no mistake. Nobody would admit to more than the vaguest idea of where they were or at what time. Whoever had murdered Walter Chantry was hiding in a most effective smoke-screen of general, and genuine, uncertainty. Damn it all, how could you be expected to solve a murder when you couldn’t lay your hands on the slightest shred of evidence? For once, thought MacGregor with a kind of warped charity, they were going to have a failure for which Dover’s blundering incompetence couldn’t be held entirely responsible.
He collected his wandering thoughts and addressed himself to Miss Wittgenstein. ‘Did you see Mr Chantry again, miss?’
Of course she hadn’t. ‘It was us having those oil lamps that did it, you see,’ she said as Jim Oliver officiously opened another bottle of wine for Dover. ‘I lit them before I started to patch up this boy we’d found. Before I knew what was happening I’d everybody swarming in like moths round a candle. Scutari wasn’t in it! We’d the homeless and injured three deep in the kitchen. Some of the women gave me a hand with bandaging people up and things but, really, most of the time I was just run right off my feet. Chantry may have come in but, if he did, I didn’t notice him – and he wasn’t the sort of man who’d lurk modestly in a comer. Have you asked any of the others who were here if they saw him?’
MacGregor nodded. He had, and they hadn’t.
Dover belched loudly and then, with diminishing enthusiasm, poured himself out another glass of wine. ‘Not much kick in this stuff, is there?’ he asked, screwing up his face in an expression of distaste.
‘Well, no,’ admitted Jim Oliver apologetically, ‘but then it’s not really supposed to . . .’
‘Not gone off, has it?’ said Dover, sniffing suspiciously.
‘Off? Oh, no, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, you could have fooled me!’ Dover forced another tumblerful down his gullet, thought for a moment and then dragged himself to his feet. ‘Tastes like bloody vinegar! 'he muttered crossly. ‘And it goes right through you! Where’s the lavvy?’
‘The . . .? Oh,’ – Jim Oliver leapt forward to open the sitting-room door – ‘the first on the left, chief inspector, dear. The light switch is outside on the landing.’
Dover grunted and lumbered out, leaving an uneasy silence in his wake.
Jim Oliver went across and examined the dregs remaining in Dover’s second bottle. ‘I think this is all right, really, don’t you?’
‘Depends,’ said Lloyd Thomas pointedly, ‘how much you drink.’
Seven
To Dover the bathroom appeared as a haven of peace and he settled down there for a well-earned rest, staring blankly at nothing in particular. The evening had turned sour on him. Almost as sour, he reflected, as that blooming red ink they’d had the cheek to give him to drink. If that didn’t rot his guts for good and all, he’d like to know what would. He ran his tongue round his mouth. Left his dentures all furry, too! Drunken orgies! That fool, Pile, wanted his brains seeing to, building up people’s expectations like that.
After a while Dover found it was getting chilly, just sitting there. He got up with a sigh, adjusted his clothing and wandered disconsolately over to the wash basin. A prolonged examination of his tongue in the
