After a few moment’s delay, the oracle uttered. ‘Humph,’ said Dover.
‘The next thing, sir, is that we have to ascertain who was here at the Holiday Ranch at that particular time. Of course we can discount anybody who’s been seen alive and well since that time. They can hardly be our unknown dead man, can they?’
As jokes go, this one hit rock bottom like a lead pancake. ‘Yack, yack, yack!’ chanted Dover wearily.
‘Captain Maguire and I have virtually eliminated all the staff who were around at the critical time, sir.’
Dover was scowling again.
MacGregor, a devout believer in the Scotland Yard myth that there were times when Dover couldn’t even remember his own name, hastened to elucidate. ‘Captain Maguire is the manager of this Holiday Ranch, sir.’
Dover was not inhibited by gratitude. ‘Oh, him!’ he commented viciously, fully aware to whom he was indebted for his present splitting head and queasy stomach.
‘That just leaves us with the two groups who were staying here, sir. A party of senior citizens, mostly ladies and in any case far too old for us. Our chap wasn’t anywhere near drawing
his pension.’ »
‘I wish I bloody was,’ said Dover, thinking wistfully of those halcyon days whose golden hours would be unmarred by work in any shape or form. He began to grow mawkish. ‘Not that I’ll last that long,’ he whined. ‘Not with my health. I ought to be out on a disability pension now. Those damned quacks on the medical board – they’ve got it in for me, you know. They . . .’
‘Which just leaves us with the other group, sir.’ Long experience had taught MacGregor not to indulge Dover when it came to a discussion of the latter’s failing powers. ‘There were only seven of them, luckily. Or, at least,’ he added as he recalled the insouciance with which the Holiday Ranch’s books appeared to have been kept, ‘that’s the number the records show.’
‘All men?’ asked Dover, who occasionally confused everybody by not consistently being as stupid as he looked.
The question led MacGregor neatly on to the next point he wanted to make. ‘Ah, that we don’t know as yet, sir. The group is called the Dockwra Society and all the arrangements for the weekend they spent here were made by their secretary. We’ve got his name and address, but nothing about the rest of the party.’
‘Can’t this Major Mollie chap remember?’
‘Captain Maguire, sir? I’m afraid not. He doesn’t seem to take what you might call a personal interest in the people who come here.’
‘Have you asked the rest of the shower that work in this dump?’
MacGregor made a point of not being caught napping as easily as that. Whilst Dover had still been sleeping it off, the sergeant had conscientiously been questioning everybody he’d met when he went in search of breakfast. ‘The ones I’ve managed to catch so far don’t seem any more helpful. The Dockwra Society only spent the weekend here – Friday evening to Sunday lunch-time. Hardly long enough to make their mark unless they did something really outrageous.’
‘Like getting themselves croaked,’ said Dover, indicating to MacGregor that he was ready to have the breakfast tray removed from his paunch. He began to sink once more beneath the blankets. ‘Well, that’s that, eh?’ he murmured as he pulled the sheets up round his ears.
MacGregor viewed this development with alarm. He knew – none better – how very stressful life could become when Dover took to his bed in the middle of a murder investigation. Senior officers back at Scotland Yard just didn’t understand why nothing kept on happening for weeks on end, and they were inclined to place the blame and vent their wrath on the innocent and guilty alike. ‘Er – don’t you think you’d better be getting dressed, sir?’
Dover uncovered one malignant, piggy eye. ‘Wa’for?’
‘Captain Maguire will be round in five minutes, sir.’
Dover weighed the implications carefully. Free booze was free booze and not to be sniffed at, but enough was also enough. He shook his head regretfully. ‘Tell him I’m not well,’ he said. ‘An old war wound playing me up. Maybe I’ll meet him in the bar at lunch-time.’
MacGregor suddenly realised that he might be able to find a silver lining here. ‘Very well, sir,’ he said carefully, ‘I’ll make your excuses.’
But Dover’s sensitive ear had caught the nuance and he raised his head from the pillow. What was little snotty-nose up to now? ‘What’s he coming for?’
‘Oh, only to show us round the chalets the Dockwra Society members occupied, sir,’ said MacGregor nonchalantly. ‘Not that there’ll be anything left to see. They’ve all apparently been thoroughly cleaned and even occupied again since, so 1 doubt if there’ll be much left in the way of clues. Still, I’ll just pop along with Captain Maguire and have a look, shall I, sir?’
Dover shoved the bed-clothes back. ’Strewth, it was a dog’s life, but he had no intention of letting a young whipper-snapper like MacGregor go stealing a march on him.
It was only then that Dover realised that he was still fully clothed.
‘God damn it,’ he whined as he contemplated several acres of crumpled blue serge, ‘you might have taken my bloody trousers off!’
Six
‘Stone a crow,’ chuckled Captain Maguire ruefully, ‘but we had a skinful last night! Really tied one on, eh?’ Reeking pungently of the hair of the dog upon which he had breakfasted, he took a deep breath and bent down once more to his task. Which was to insert the key in the keyhole of Bunk-house Number Eleven, Shinwell Square.
Dover leaned up against the
