‘Beginning to think I need glasses,’ mumbled Captain Maguire as he let MacGregor take the key off him.
With Attila the Doberman Pinscher in the vanguard, they all trooped inside, out of the howling gale.
The interior of Bunk-house Number Eleven contained little of interest and less of surprise. It was exactly the same as the interior of the bunk-house in which Dover and MacGregor had spent the night. There were two bedrooms, each containing one bed which did duty either as a single or a double according to need. There was a small bathroom and an even smaller, rudimentary kitchen. All these rooms opened off a narrow corridor which ran the length of the building and into which the outside door opened. Along the front of the bunk-house ran a primitive sort of verandah equipped (if not already nicked by the neighbours) with a couple of deck chairs and a wobbly cane table. It was here that holiday-makers were expected, weather and temperature permitting, to sit well back and take their ease.
‘And imbibe the odd cocktail or chota peg,’ added Captain Maguire, cutting Attila off in mid-stream with a resounding thwack from his riding crop. He led the way across the sand-drifts to Bunk-house Number Twelve.
The bunk-houses which had been occupied by the Dockwra Society were grouped round three sides of Shinwell Square and formed a little, self-contained enclave. The middle of the square was taken up with a patch of coarse grass and a couple of stunted trees which Attila was not walloped for irrigating.
‘We let ’em park their cars in the roadway here,’ said Captain Maguire, ‘as long as they don’t cause an obstruction. We have a proper car park, of course, but the bastards won’t use it. Insist on keeping their vehicles where they can see ‘em. Not surprising, really,’ he added with uncharacteristic understanding, ‘when you consider the sort of clientele we get staying here.’
‘Do most people come by car?’ asked MacGregor, making a quick tour of the rooms in Number Twelve while Dover sat moodily on the first bed he came to.
‘Fifty-fifty,’ guessed Captain Maguire. ‘They can get to Bowerville easily enough by train or bus, and we run ’em to and fro for a purely nominal charge.’
They moved on to Bunk-house Number Fourteen.
‘No Thirteen, of course,’ explained Captain Maguire, managing to find the key-hole quite quickly this time. ‘Just another instance of having to capitulate to the irrational superstitions of the labouring classes.’
‘That’s a master key you’re using, is it, sir?’ asked McGregor, mustard keen as ever to demonstrate that no detail escaped him.
Captain Maguire grinned. ‘You could call it that, old boy,’ he agreed. ‘Actually, all the bloody locks are the same. Kills me to watch ’em all solemnly locking their doors when they toddle off down to the beach or wherever! Bloody peasants!’
Dover chose this moment to stick his two-pennyworth in. ‘You could kick your way through these doors,’ he rumbled. ‘Easy as pie.’
‘Too right, squire!’ Captan Maguire nodded his head sadly. ‘And hundreds of the beggars have done just that. Irate husbands for the most part,’ he added for no apparent reason.
‘I believe you said that one of the bedrooms was turned into a sort of common room, sir,’ said MacGregor as they began to make yet another desultory tour of inspection.
‘Yes, we moved a bed out or something. Damned imposition but we got our own back on the bill.’
‘Can you remember which room it was, sir?’
Captain Maguire flicked at the sand which had drifted through onto the window sill. ‘Haven’t an earthly, old chum. Does it matter?’
MacGregor didn’t know.
‘Shall we move on then, sergeant?’
MacGregor looked round. ‘Where’s Chief Inspector Dover, sir?’
Captain Maguire jerked his head. ‘Shot into the bog before I could warn him, old son.’
‘Warn him, sir?
‘You don’t think we leave the water turned on in these match boxes do you, squire? Not in the middle of winter, we don’t!’ Dover caught up with them as they were going through Bunk-house Number Fifteen. He gave Captain Maguire a poke in the back. ‘I reckon you’d better have this,’ he said, surrendering a small, chromium-plated lever. ‘It sort of came off in my hand.’
With the completely fruitless inspection of the four chalets concluded, there was nothing to detain Dover and MacGregor any further at the Holiday Ranch, especially as Captain Maguire now seemed anxious to see the back of them. Indeed, his attitude had grown so unfriendly that Dover was probably right in suspecting him of hot passing his hip flask round but of retiring into dark corners and taking surreptitious swigs. Dover had never been quite nippy enough to catch Captain Maguire in this inhospitable act, but the old fool wasn’t a detective for nothing. He knew that honest, decent people didn’t keep emerging from around corners with their eyes watering and wiping their mouths on the back of their hands.
The train had already rushed many miles southward before Dover stopped brooding on the queerness of folk in general and of Captain Maguire in particular. ‘Who’s this joker we’re going to see now?’ he asked.
By MacGregor’s reckoning, this information had already been furnished three times – but who’s counting? ‘A man called Rupert Pettitt, sir.’
‘Rupert Pettitt?’ Dover tried the name for size. It didn’t sound like a hard drinker. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
MacGregor appreciated that this sudden thirst for knowledge was merely a temporary aberration and unlikely to last. ‘The secretary of the Dockwra Society, sir. He made all the arrangements for their weekend at the Holiday Ranch.’
‘That was a funny sort of place,’ said Dover reflectively. ‘You wouldn’t catch me spending my bloody leave
