MacGregor got his cigarette case out again and slowly fit himself a cigarette. He needed time to think. If he didn’t choose his words very carefully, Dover would just go clean through the roof. Well, actually he would, anyhow, once he understood. ‘The local police have a sort of tentative theory about that, too, sir.’
‘Oh?’
MacGregor steeled himself. He managed a silly grin. ‘It involves casting you as the murderer, sir. Of course,’ he added diplomatically as Dover’s pasty face took on a brilliant purple hue, ‘they allow you were probably drunk at the time.’ Even Dover’s ravings eventually ran out of steam. Two more cigarettes and a cup of cold tea helped to abate the fury but MacGregor had to wait until physical exhaustion set in before he could continue.
‘I felt it was only fair to warn you what you were up against, sir. The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous, of course, but it’s no good our burying our heads in the sand, is it?’
‘I’d like to bury your head in boiling oil!’ came the ungracious rejoinder. ‘Of course, I might have expected it. Let you out of my sight for a couple of minutes and you’re stabbing me in the bloody back. Anybody else’d have given this What’s-his-name a punch up the bracket.’
‘I hardly think that would have helped much, sir. You see, it’s not just Inspector Stokes. It’s all the witnesses.’
‘Witnesses?’ howled Dover. ‘What bloody witnesses? My God, I’m being framed! How can there be any witnesses when I didn’t so much as lay a fist on the old bitch?’
MacGregor pulled up a chair and sat down next to the bed. ‘Listen, sir, the local police know all about your feud with Mrs Boyle. The way they see it, you upset her by making a noise late at night and she retaliated by publicly insulting you in the hotel dining-room. Last night, things went a stage further.’ MacGregor stole a glance at Dover’s face. ‘It’s no good looking like that, sir. Everybody in the hotel heard the pair of you banging about after we came in. The idea is that, round about half past one this morning, Mrs Boyle went on the offensive again. She’d sworn that she would stop at nothing to get the better of you.’
‘She’d a hope!’ bragged Dover half-heartedly. ‘I could have flattened her with one hand tied behind my back!’ MacGregor nobly refrained from pointing out that this was more or less what Dover was being accused of. ‘For motives which we shall probably never be able to uncover now,’ he went on, ‘she made her way up to your room. Now, according to the theory that you are the murderer, you anticipated this nocturnal visit and put the wire across the stairs to kill her.’
‘But why me?’ whined Dover. ‘I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t stomach the stinking old battle-axe. What about the Kettering woman?’ he demanded, tossing conventional standards of loyalty to the winds. I She’s got one of those magic doll things of old Mother Boyle and she passes the time sticking pins in it.’
MacGregor looked purposefully out of the window. ‘Yes, Miss Kettering has told them all about that, sir. She has also informed them that you visited her room last night and yourself stuck a pin in the model.’
‘Female Judas!’ growled Dover. ‘ ’Strewth, you can’t trust anybody these days!’
‘She also told them about the liqueur chocolates you ate, sir.’
‘What the hell’s that got to do with anything?’
‘They think they may have made you a bit tiddly, sir. You ate nearly a pound and, on top of the wine you had at the Studio . . .’
Dover stuck his lower lip out and started thinking. If there was one activity at which he excelled, having had a fair amount of practice, it was saving his own skin. And, underneath that mountain of indolent flesh, there was even a tiny little detective who occasionally managed to struggle out. Dover swung round on MacGregor. ‘What about the wire and the screw?’
‘Well, it’s early days yet, sir, for tracing where they came from. They’re just ordinary things you can buy in any shop.’
‘Buy?’ – Dover pounced on the word. ‘You mean they’re new?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Well, unused anyhow. Personally, from the look of them, I would say they were brand new.’
‘And where am I supposed to have got them from?’
‘Ah,' – MacGregor smiled with relief at being able to convey some more cheerful news – ‘that’s a strong point in your favour, sir. I’ve been able to vouch for the fact that you couldn’t possibly have purchased them since you came to Sully Martin. And they’re hardly the sort of thing you’d have brought with you, are they, sir? Actually, Superintendent Underbarrow’ – he permitted himself a patronizing smirk – ‘suggested that you might have pinched them from the murder bag. However, I was able to reassure him on that point.’
MacGregor need say no more. Both he and Dover knew perfecdy well that the murder bag which MacGregor lugged round from investigation to investigation contained nothing more lethal than a few empty beer bottles, a broken pair of tweezers and the 1934 edition of A Police Constable's Guide To His Daily Work. This is not what murder bags are supposed to contain but at least MacGregor had managed to stop Dover using the one they had been issued with for his dirty washing.
‘Well, that settles it,’ said Dover comfortably. He considered that more than enough time had been spent on red herrings whose trail could only lead to him being stuck in the dock. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is finger the collar of the blighter who was trying to nobble me. Bloody cheek! I’m warning you, I’ll break his blooming neck when I get my hands on him. Well,’ – he barked angrily at MacGregor – ‘what are you dithering about at now? You can’t still think Mrs Boyle was the intended victim.’
MacGregor shook his head. ‘No,
