‘Waddervewant to know for?’ he demanded crossly, removing the big cigar from his mouth so that he could get the words out.
‘I intend circulating a description of all the cars involved, sir,’ explained MacGregor, hoping to blur over the fact that he’d only just thought of it, ‘in case one of them might happen to have been spotted in the vicinity of the Muncaster Municipal Rubbish Dump.’
Dover leered reassuringly at Freddie Braithwaite. ‘Not a chance in a million!’ he said with a wink. ‘Nobody’s going to remember anything like that after all this time.’
‘And I’m enquiring about prior knowledge of Muncaster, sir,’ MacGregor went on, trying to convince himself that all he would get from seizing Dover by the throat would be impetigo in the hands, ‘because it’s obvious that whoever deposited Mr Knapper’s body in the dump must have known it was there.’
‘Fooey!’ sneered Dover. ‘It could have been sheer bloody chance.’ He never did have much patience with all these modern, scientific methods of investigation.
‘It could, sir,’ agreed MacGregor coldly, ‘but the Muncaster rubbish tip is off the beaten track, and I doubt if anybody would just come across it by accident.’
‘All you have to do is just follow your nose!’ tittered Dover who really did love his little joke. ‘You could smell that place five miles off!’
MacGregor counted silently up to ten and turned back to Mr Braithwaite. ‘Had you ever met any of the other people who took part in this trial before, sir?’
‘No, of course not! We were all total strangers to each other. It’s always arranged like that.’
‘Always, sir?’
Mr Weemys cleared his throat warningly, but Mr Braithwaite was eager to prove that there was nothing to hide. ‘Whenever one of these minor problems crops up, sergeant, our movement does everything in its power to ensure that the accused person gets a fair crack of the whip. Inter ‘alia, we try to avoid any suspicion of collusion amongst the members of the court. That’s why we assemble a complete cross-section – a mixture of sex, age, background, position and function within the Steel Band. In that way, no one element gets any undue weighting. I trust, sergeant,’ – Freddie Braithwaitc’s smile was very confident – ‘that that answers your question.’
‘Well, it damned well answers mine!’ said Dover, fed up with sitting there listening to MacGregor brow-beating an innocent man. It was this sort of going on that gave the police such a bad name! Dover pulled himself to his feet and thus brought the interview to an end which was as unsatisfactory as the rest of it had been.
The sixth and final member of the court which had sat in judgement at Rankin’s Holiday Ranch lived so far up north that Dover and MacGregor were obliged to spend the night in an hotel en route. Presumably the ubiquitous Mr Weemys had done the same because there he was, waiting for them when they arrived at Gordon Valentine’s house on the following morning. Mr Weemys’s manner couldn’t have been more hospitable as he welcomed the late arrivals into the lounge.
Gordon Valentine was an assistant bank manager and, since nobody wanted the embarrassment of policemen calling at the bank, he had been granted a couple of hours unpaid leave of absence. The bank manager didn’t care for his subordinate’s involvement with the Steel Band – extreme political views of whatever stripe were bad for business – and he certainly didn’t allow him to indulge in his fantasies during office hours. At home, though, and in his own time, it was a different matter. Even for a couple of hours and for a couple of policemen, Gordon Valentine was defiantly dressed up to kill. He was sporting the full gear – the black knee boots and riding breeches, the iron-grey shirt, the glittering badges, the sinister arm band and the truculent facial expression of your seasoned, battle-forged henchman. It was quite a sight.
Not that Gordon Valentine was really much of a bully boy. A poor physique and thick glasses prevented that. He was also hen-pecked as Dover soon discovered when he attempted to light up his fourth fag of the day.
Mrs Valentine, it transpired, was allergic to tobacco.
Of course, being married to a woman who doesn’t allow smoking anywhere in her house, doesn’t make a man guilty of murder. But, in Dover’s book, it helps.
It was MacGregor who took Valentine through his story. Once again, though, Mr Weemys’s briefing had been thorough and every question received an innocuous and succinct answer. Eventually MacGregor broached the question of the blue beads.
Valentine’s air of innate superiority remained intact. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I bought a couple of quid’s worth at the bar. More or less had to. It was the only money they would accept in the Holiday Ranch and there were no pubs or shops nearer than Bowerville. Well, nobody wants to go slogging all that way just for a drink, do they?’
‘You’re a boozing man, are you?’ demanded Dover with all the disapproval of one who has spent many a morning-after thinking about signing the pledge.
‘Not specially,’ said Valentine, wondering idly if Dover always went about half-shaved. ‘I suppose I’m what you might call a social drinker.’
MacGregor stole an anxious glance at his lord and master. Was the old fool on to something?
‘So,’ growled Dover, looking very fierce, ‘you bought a couple of quid’s worth of those blue beads to spend on booze, did you?’
‘Well, that and other things.’ Mr Valentine strongly objected to being classified as a toper, especially when there was more than an evens chance that his lady wife was listening behind the sitting-room door.
‘What other things? Fags?’
If this was a trap, Mr Valentine failed signally to fall into it. ‘I told you, I don’t smoke!’ he snapped. ‘I might have wanted to buy some chocolate or something.’
‘Chocolate?’ hooted Dover. He leaned forward. ‘You a gambling man?’
‘Gambling?’ bleated
