‘Ah,’ said Captain Maguire, removing only his eyes from the fair Doris. ‘Four bunk-houses, eh?’
‘You remember?’
‘No.’
MacGregor, who had picked up more of Dover’s methods of interrogation than he would have cared to admit, gave Captain Maguire quite a rough shake. ‘It says in the file,’ he insisted, ‘that they were situated in Shinwell Square.’
‘So?’
‘Well, where’s that?’
‘Third on the right off Barbara Castle Prospect,’ said Captain Maguire promptly and without rancour. He could have mentioned – but didn’t – that these names harked back to the period when Sir Egbert was working for his K.
‘I should like to see it.’
Captain Maguire waved a hospitable hand. ‘Be my guest.’
MacGregor realised that, where Captain Maguire was concerned, he was already working on borrowed time. Quite apart from the personal magnetism of the nubile Doris, fresh rations of whisky were already wending their way down the bar and it wasn’t to be expected that the Captain would devote much more of his time to investigating a murder. ‘You only seem to have the name and address of the secretary of the Dockwra Society, sir. What about the other members? Haven’t you got any information about them?’
‘Always deal with the boss, old chap,’ said Captain Maguire thickly. ‘He’s the one with the money.’
There is absolutely no doubt that MacGregor would have pursued the matter much further if Dover hadn’t chosen this moment to topple off his stool. What with dragging Dover out of the bar, transporting him across to his bunk-house in a fortuitously handy wheelbarrow, putting him to bed and then returning to the Keir Hardie Saloon only to find that Captan Maguire and Doris had skipped it, even MacGregor eventually felt it was time to call it a day. Outside, as he already knew to his cost, it was pitch dark and raining cats and dogs. Even if he succeeded in locating Shinwell Square he wouldn’t be able to see anything. He decided he might as well behave like everybody else and forget about the whole sorry business until the morning.
MacGregor treated himself to a dry sherry and then went to have his evening meal in a dining room as large, as uninviting and as chilly as an aircraft hanger. At the next table a dozen or so Mediaevale Feasters slumped miserably over their deepfreeze trout and chips while, away at the far end, a shop steward was trying to persuade the waitresses that their go-slow had gone unnoticed and that they all ought to come out on a proper strike.
The television in the Cow-poke’s Parlour was out of order.
And it was still raining.
At eight o’clock MacGregor retired to bed in the bunk-house he was sharing with Dover. He gritted his teeth and settled down to twelve hours in a hard, damp bed and to a symphony of snores, grunts and snorts which came wafting from down the corridor. When William Schwenk Gilbert had talked about the policeman’s lot, thought MacGregor bitterly at 2 a.m., he didn’t know the bloody half of it.
Rankin’s Holiday Ranches didn’t run to serving breakfast in bed but, luckily for Dover, detective sergeants from Scotland Yard did.
‘I thought you’d bloody well emigrated!’ shouted Dover from his bedroom as MacGregor staggered up the bunk-house steps with his tray. ‘I suppose you’ve had your bloody breakfast,’ he added as MacGregor entered his bedroom.
MacGregor, not trusting himself to speak, placed the tray on Dover’s knees.
Dover was sitting up with his overcoat wrapped round his shoulders. ‘’Strewth, what a dump!’ he grumbled as he picked up a piece of bacon in his fingers. ‘And people actually pay good money to stay here?’
MacGregor perched himself on the bedside chair and tried not to look.’ Dover – bloated, hung-over, white of face and red of eye – was not the sort of sight any fastidious person would choose to contemplate.
But our natural sympathy for MacGregor mustn’t blind us to the fact that Dover, too, had his problems. Like what the hell happened last night. He’d got a dim feeling that somebody somewhere had made some progress and, since he was pretty sure it wasn’t him, he wanted to slam the brakes on before things went too far. Better that the identity of the dead man on the rubbish tip should remain a mystery for ever than that this bloody little infant prodigy he’d been saddled with should come up with the answer. First, though, he had to find out how the land lay.
Dover soaked a piece of buttered toast in his tea. That was the trouble with your National Health teeth – they were worth bugger-all when it came to munching. ‘I reckon,’ said Dover in a spray of soggy crumbs, ‘we’d better have a recap.’
It didn’t fool MacGregor for a second, of course, but he pulled out his notebook. Actually, he’d be quite glad to run over things again, just to clarify his own thoughts. ‘I think we’re beginning to make some headway, sir.’ He was slightly surprised to realise that this was true. Somehow one didn’t associate making headway with cases in which Dover was involved. ‘I think we can work on the assumption that our Mr X was here at the Holiday Ranch, in some capacity or another, shortly before he was killed. The piece of Funny Money – that’s the blue bead, you remember, sir – and the venison he’d consumed at his last meal virtually prove that. Indeed, sir, I think we may conclude that he deliberately swallowed the blue bead in order to lead us here.’ MacGregor paused. ‘Of course, that implies he knew he was going to be killed and that he had some time to think about leaving a clue.’
Dover spooned up a lump of marmalade from his top sheet. ‘We still don’t know who the blighter is,’ he groused, as willing as ever to look on the dark side.
MacGregor agreed. ‘But we are narrowing the field down, sir.’ He consulted his notes. ‘Venison was served here at midday on Saturday the fourteenth of
