The resultant marriage of cheap Algerian wine and mouthwash was not a success and Dover spat it out disgustedly into the washbowl. ’Strewth! Perhaps, if he cleaned his teeth . . .
Too . . .
Toothbrushes and toothpaste lay conveniently close to hand but Dover was not a complete barbarian. He knew better than to go shoving somebody else’s toothbrush into his mouth, thank you very much! Carefully he selected the most upright set of bristles and covered them with a thick layer of paste. Then he removed his top and bottom set, gave them a good scrubbing, rinsed them under the tap and munched them back into place. Ah, that felt better!
Once having started, Dover saw no reason for not going on and he spent the next five minutes desultorily inspecting the contents of all the jars and bottles he could find. The pickings were disappointingly meagre, Dover – as his best friends could have told him – not having much time for deodorants and such-like effeminate cosmetic muck. Soap and water was good enough for him and he couldn’t see why it wasn’t good enough for everybody else. Thinking of soap reminded him that his own bar could do with replenishing. Unfortunately the tablet on the wash basin was too thin and slimy to be worth the nicking and he began to look around for where they kept their reserve supplies. A pile of cardboard cartons on the window sill looked promising and he strolled across to investigate further. While he was fumbling to get the first lid off, a light flashed on outside and caught his eye. It was coming from the bedroom of the house opposite and, as Dover watched, a young woman came into view and drew the curtains.
Dover got the lid off his box with a jerk. Bloody talcum powder! He dusted himself down and tried again. Now, that house straight across the road – that’d be Chantry’s place, wouldn’t it? He frowned slightly as he tried to recall the odd snippets of topographical information that had drifted his way since he’d arrived in Sully Martin. The second carton was abandoned and, craning his head, he peered right and left through the window. Signs of earthquake damage in one direction and the village church in the other. Yes, it must be Chantry’s house and the young woman was, presumably, Chantry’s daughter.
Dover had another look through the window. A good-sized house, well maintained, standing detached in a nicely laid-out garden. You wouldn’t get that for fourpence ha’penny! The envy on Dover’s podgy features faded and was replaced by a scowl of annoyance. If there was one cause dear to the chief inspector’s heart it was Crime Prevention. Not that he wanted to do himself out of a job completely but he would like to see the work load reduced to more reasonable proportions. Like three days a month. He became a little less despondent when he remembered that a burglary at the Chantry house would drop into the lap of the local police and not in his but it still irritated him to see people simply asking with both hands to be done by the first villain that walked by. A kid of two could get into that house. Garden wall to shed roof to that bedroom window in three easy strides.
Dover propped his elbows on the window sill, lowered his chins on to his hands and relapsed into a good brood.
Meanwhile, back in the sitting-room, those matters which should have been Dover’s urgent concern had ground to a complete standstill. MacGregor had no more questions to put on his own account and he was damned if he was going to put them on Dover’s when the old fool wasn’t even there.
‘He’s taking a long time,’ said Jim Oliver, softening the implied criticism with a feeble grin.
MacGregor concentrated on trying to look as though it had nothing to do with him.
‘More than likely he’s in there sleeping it off,’ said Lloyd Thomas who had not taken to Dover.
‘Nonsense!’ Jim Oliver was determined to nip that sort of seditious talk firmly in the bud. ‘He’s not had more than the merest soupgon.’
‘True, blue! If you call the best part of two bottles the merest soupgon.’
Miss Wittgenstein returned to her place on the hearthrug. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,' she begged, ‘don’t you two start spitting at each other again! The fuzz’s got trouble with his waterworks and, if he wants to spend all night in the bog. I’m damned if I can see what business it is of yours.’
‘Trouble with his waterworks?’ howled Lloyd Thomas, giving vent to a maniac scream of laughter. ‘Where on earth did you get that gem from?’
‘Oh, drop dead!’
‘No, seriously, duckie, I’m interested. Did he tell you?’
‘Of course he didn’t! If you must know, it was Mrs Lickes from the Blenheim Towers. She was regaling the queue in the grocer’s this morning when I was drawing the rations for you ravenous brutes. No sordid detail was spared us and, since I met up with her again in the post office. I had it all twice over. Poor little Millie Hooper looked positively sick.’
MacGregor’s faint heart sank. He was used to having Dover’s professional incompetence the subject of ribald gossip from one end of the country to the other but if they were now going to have the disgusting old pig’s bodily functions bandied about. . .
Miss Wittgenstein was continuing with scant regard for MacGregor’s finer feelings. ‘. . . and pulling the chain all night long. None of the poor old things can get a wink of sleep. Mrs Lickes said she was afraid there’d be the most terrible
