“I think we’re just arriving, sir.”
Dover glanced out of the window as the car turned into a driveway and approached a large, rambling house standing in its own grounds. He perked up a bit. Not exactly Buckingham Palace, but not bad. Not bad at all. There should be good pickings here.
The local constabulary had been on the scene for some time and were still milling busily around. Most of the available space in front of the house was occupied by their vehicles, lights flashing and radios chattering. Alerted by an underling, a uniformed inspector appeared in the doorway, but Dover, incensed at having had to walk all of fifty yards from his car, was in no mood to bandy compliments with power-mad bumpkins.
“Where’s the stiff?” he demanded, pausing, as he waddled painfully across the threshold, only long enough to deliver one of his better full-frontal scowls.
It was the uniformed inspector’s first experience of the Dover Method of detection but he was a highly disciplined man who fully appreciated the consequences of ramming a superior officer’s false teeth down his throat. Prudently unclenching his fists, he led the way to the back of the house.
The scene of the crime was a poky, apparently disused pantry which had been perfunctorily converted into a bedroom. Tight-lipped, the uniformed inspector indicated the salient features. Pride of place was occupied by the late Michael Montgomery, pinned to the mattress of a camp bed by a World War II German army bayonet, the hilt of which was still sticking up out of the middle of his chest. There were no signs of a struggle and only a modest path of brown blood stained the top sheet, through which the blade had passed.
“The murder weapon was the property of the deceased, sir,” said the uniformed inspector, “and there are no fingerprints on the handle. It has been wiped clean.”
Dover tipped what might have been a pile of vital evidence off the only available chair and sat down with a grunt of relief. “Access?”
“Sir?”
“How did the bloody murderer get in, numbskull?”
“Well, through the door you came in by, sir. There’s no other way.”
Dover raised a meaty and none-too-clean forefinger. “What about that then, eh?” He pointed at a second door across which the camp bed had been somewhat awkwardly jammed.
“We checked that, sir. It leads into the back yard, but it’s not been used for years. It’s locked and bolted on this side.”
“In any case, you can’t open it,” said MacGregor, “because the camp bed’s in the way.”
Dover ignored him. “Windows?”
“Just the one, sir.” By now the uniformed inspector was realizing that he‘d drawn Scotland Yard’s only purblind detective. He carefully picked his way through the obstacle course of discarded clothing, canvas grips, dogeared girlie magazines, and plastic bags from the Duty Free Shop which littered the floor, and triumphantly indicated the window. “It’s heavily barred, sir. Nobody could gain entry that way.”
MacGregor went to look for himself. “Was it open last night?”
“No.”
“It was very hot.”
“Not hot enough to melt the layers of paint on that window, sergeant. You’d need a chisel to get it open.”
Dover’s chair creaked impatiently. “Time of death?”
“The doctor reckons in the small hours of this morning, sir. He’ll have a better idea when—”
“Instantaneous?”
“Virtually, sir.”
“Need any expert knowledge or strength?”
“The doctor thought not, sir. A heavy, fairly sharp blade plunged into the chest of a man lying on his back and most likely asleep — well, you’d have a job not to kill him.”
“And no bloody fingerprints,” complained Dover. “Just my bloody luck!”
“None that can’t be accounted for, sir. No clues at all, really.”
“Never are these days,” said Dover. “It’s all this detective stuff on the telly. Talk about an Open University course in bloody crime!”
The ambulance men came for the body. They got no resistance from Dover. Bloodstained corpses put him right off his food, and he didn’t care who knew it.
On the pretext of trying to arrange for a cup of coffee, MacGregor slipped away and managed to achieve a slightly more professional debriefing of the uniformed inspector, though he wondered why he bothered. This case already bore the hallmarks of one of those typical Dover cock-ups in which the last person likely to be inconvenienced was the murderer.
When MacGregor returned, he found Dover still sitting on his chair, halfheartedly leafing through one of the victim’s girlie magazines. Instantly abandoning the soft porn, Dover struck straight for the jugular vein of the situation.
“Where’s my bloody coffee?”
“Just coming, sir,” lied MacGregor. “I thought you might care to see Mrs. Wilkins first.”
“Mrs. Who? ’Strewth” — Dover’s butterfly flitted off on one of its many tangents — “what a tip!” He swept a lethargic arm round the room. “Catch me spending the night in a crummy dump like this.”
“It is a bit basic, sir,” agreed MacGregor, “but that’s no reason for this Montgomery chap to have dumped all his belongings on the floor.”
“No wardrobe.”
“There are some hooks behind the door, sir.”
“No dressing-table. No bedside lamp. And it pongs.”
MacGregor wondered if the pong had been quite so pronounced before Dover had arrived.
“Suppose you got taken short in the night?” demanded Dover with all the caring concern of one who frequently did. “Have you seen where the blooming light switch is?”
MacGregor, a trained detective, had. It was on the wall next to the locked and bolted door across which the camp bed had been pushed. “I thought it was quite handy, really, sir. Well, when you’re in bed, that is. A bit awkward, perhaps, when you come into the room by the other door.”
“You could break your bloody neck.” insisted Dover indignantly, “groping around for that» n the bloody dark. In an emergency. Speaking of which, laddie” — he rose ponderously to his feet — “have you spotted a lavatory in your travels?”
By the time Dover got round to questioning Mrs. Wilkins — he’d found the roll of biblical quotations in the downstairs loo almost totally absorbing — the good lady herself had had ample time to sort out precisely what she intended to tell him. Seated on the camp bed — it was either that or stand — she delivered her statement with a succinctness that left Dover floundering.
Mrs. Wilkins was housekeeper-companion to old Mrs. Ongar and the only living-in servant. The others came in daily but on that particular morning they had, of course, been turned back by the police. How Mrs. Wilkins was supposed to cope with a prostrate Mrs. Ongar, a houseful of guests, and all these blessed repetitions about how she found the body she simply didn’t—
Dover clutched at the one straw he could see. Mrs. What’s-her-name had found the body, had she?
At seven-thirty that morning. She’d gone in to waken this Montgomery boy—
“With a cup of tea?”
If that was a hint, Mrs. Wilkins ignored it. She’d gone in to waken this Montgomery boy because he was the sort of idle ne’er-do-well who’d spend all day lolling in bed given half the chance. Mrs. Ongar liked her guests to be up with the sun. Mind you, Mrs. Ongar didn’t have to try rousing people who were as dead as mutton with nasty great knives stuck in their chests. Not that Mrs. Wilkins had lost her head. She had broken the news to Mrs. Ongar and then phoned the police. She hadn’t touched anything and neither had anybody else because she’d kept the door locked until the police came, and if that was all she’d be going because she’d only got one pair of hands and they’d all be screaming for their lunch before she’d had time to turn round.