‘Excuse me, sir,’ – MacGregor paused in the doorway – ‘but I’ve accounted for everybody except Mrs Lickes. Did you see her by any chance?’
Wing Commander Pile nodded and, crossing over to the door, more or less edged MacGregor back on to the landing. ‘Yes, she was with her husband. If you want to find her now, I should try the kitchen. That woman reacts to every crisis by making a pot of tea.’
‘No, it doesn’t matter, sir, as long as I know she’s knocking around. I shall be seeing everybody later, of course.’
MacGregor returned to his dead body and, rather tardily looked at his watch. Damn – he should have checked that earlier! He’d better nip upstairs and get his notebook. When the local police arrived they would expect to find that everything . . .
MacGregor’s mouth slowly dropped open. He’d had a niggling sort of sensation for some time that something was missing and now he realized what it was. Where was Detective Chief Inspector Dover? He, a loud-mouthed sufferer from insomnia, couldn’t possibly have slept through all . . .
MacGregor leapt over the late Mrs Boyle and raced up the remaining stairs two at a time. Dover’s bedroom door was locked. MacGregor hammered on the panels.
Inside the room a waxen-faced Dover removed his head from the blankets which had been sheltering it ever since Mrs Boyle’s blood-curdling death scream had rent the night air. ‘Who is it?’ he asked in a tremulous voice.
‘It’s me, sir. Sergeant MacGregor. Are you all right, sir?’ Very cautiously Dover got out of bed and pussy-footed over to the door. ‘Are you alone?’ he whispered.
‘Alone, sir? Yes, I’m alone. Why?’
Dover thought about it for a minute or two and then, unlocking the door, grudgingly opened it the merest crack. He squinted suspiciously through at MacGregor, ascertained that the sergeant had been speaking the truth and stood back to let him enter the room. ‘What the hell’s been going on?’ he demanded.
‘Well, sir . . .’ MacGregor swung round to find that the door had been smartly shut and locked behind him and that Dover was hurrying back to bed with the key in his hand. ‘Is anything the matter, sir?’
‘Ho,’ puffed Dover nastily. ‘I was wondering when you were going to ask. If I had to rely on you. I’d be sitting here with my bleeding throat cut.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, sir.’
‘Surprise, surprise! There’s a murderous attempt on my life and you don’t understand.’
‘Your life, sir? But it was Mrs Boyle who . . .’
‘They were after me!’ insisted Dover furiously. ‘And wipe that stupid grin off your face! My life’s in danger and all you can find to do is sit on your backside and snigger!’
MacGregor took a hold on himself. He’d never had to cope with a persecution mania before. ‘I should think it’s more than likely that Mrs Boyle just had a heart attack, sir, and fell. . .’
‘When I’m interested in what you think, laddie, I’ll send you a telegram.’
MacGregor sighed. ‘What is it exactly that you want me to do, sir?’
‘I want you to get back out there and detect, you bloody fool!’ howled Dover. ‘What else?’
‘But won’t you be wanting to direct the investigation yourself, sir?’
‘What? And give ’em another chance to get me? Not likely!’ He stopped as the sound of footsteps and voices came up from the landing below. ‘What’s that?’
‘I imagine it’s the local police arriving, sir. I think I’d better go down and have a word with them.’
Dover relaxed his hold on the edge of his blanket. ‘Don’t bring ’em up here,’ he said. ‘I’m not letting anybody in this room until you’ve got that raving maniac behind bars.’
MacGregor held out his hand. ‘If I could have the key, sir?’ Dover scowled resentfully and began to climb out of bed. ‘I’ll let you out,’ he muttered. ‘And we’d better arrange a code for when you come back. Two knocks, a pause and then two more. Got it? And if the murderer’s got a gun stuck in your back, give six short taps. That way I’ll know not to open up.’
Mindful of the fact that they had not exactly shone over the murder of Walter Chantry, the local CID went quite mad over Mrs Boyle. When MacGregor emerged, with some difficulty, from Dover’s room it was to find the place swarming with plain-clothes men of every description. Flash bulbs were going off like a tropical storm and the air hung thick with fingerprint powder. MacGregor picked his way carefully through a welter of rubber gloves, plastic bags and foot rules to where a familiar face was beaming over the chaos.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Ah, sergeant!’ Superintendent Underbarrow was looking very neat and trim in his uniform. ‘Well, you’ll have to admit we’ve done you proud this time, eh? Luckily they’ve got the main road clear now and I delivered the whole team up here in under twenty minutes. We’re setting up the murder headquarters in the hotel lounge and I’ll have a couple of extra phones installed by mid-morning. Meanwhile I’ve got four motor-cyclists standing by outside for despatch duty and a couple of squad cars.’
‘Are you in charge of the operation, sir?’
‘Not likely!’ chuckled Superintendent Underbarrow. ‘That’s Detective Inspector Stokes’s pigeon. I’ve just come along to see to the administrative details. He’s downstairs starting the murder diary so I’ll introduce you to him later. Of course, if we find this case is connected with the Chantry business, we shall place ourselves under your direction. We don’t want to have two teams working at cross purposes, do we?’ MacGregor, somewhat stunned by all this feverish activity, watched a plain-clothes man crawling slowly on his hands and knees down the whole length of the landing. ‘You don’t think you’re going to rather a lot of trouble unnecessarily, do
