Major Finch was shocked. “I m afraid my salary is a confidential matter,” he said coldly. “Strictly between myself and Ongar’s.”
And five minutes of intensive browbeating failed to make the major unseal his lips, in spite of Dover’s repeated warnings that such an uncooperative attitude did a murder suspect little good. In the end it was Dover who got fed up first and the Finch family, more than a little confused about what was going on, were allowed to take their leave.
Daniel Ongar, when he was shown into the dining room, got a smoother ride as Dover harbored no pipe dreams about becoming a personnel officer. However, his suggestion that the murderer had been some passing maniac tramp was received without enthusiasm.
“But why should any of us want to kill the little blackguard?” he asked, adjusting his cuffs and running a hand over his thinning hair.
Dover told him.
Daniel Ongar waved the explanation aside. “Nobody knows which one of us will get Ongar’s now,” he pointed out. “Beryl’s quite potty on the subject or she’d never have made that nasty Montgomery boy her sole heir in the first place. Dear God, she’d never even seen him. Now, I don’t pretend to be any more moral than the next chap, but you don’t really see me committing murder, do you, just to see the whole kit and caboodle go to Toby Stockdale or one of Dickie Bird’s lot?”
Dickie Bird?
“Richard Finch. That’s what they used to call him in the Army. And what about him as a prime suspect? He was in the infantry and if you want somebody who knows how to use a bayonet—”
“Have you no idea who the next heir will be, sir?”
Daniel Ongar stared imperturbably at MacGregor. “None, except that it’s unlikely to be me. I’m sixty and. in dear Beryl’s book, that’s geriatric. She talks about keeping it in the family but it could be the cats’ home or the Chancellor of the Exchequeur or something equally daft. I mean, where was the logic in leaving it all to young Montgomery, apart from the fact that he was tucked away safe on the other side of the world and unlikely to come bothering her? Poor Beryl, she thinks everybody’s after her money. I’ll bet she’s told you one of us is going to murder her next.”
“Don’t you think she’s every reason to be anxious, sir?”
“No, I damned well don’t! Can’t you see that Beryl is more valuable to us alive than dead? Dickie Bird. Toby, and I have got pretty well paid jobs. Mrs. Wilkins, too, if it comes to that. What guarantee have we got that Beryl’s successor, whoever it is, won’t give the whole bang shoot of us the sack?”
“Speaking of well paid jobs,” said Dover, “how much will your chief security officer be getting?”
Daniel Ongar frowned. “Dickie Finch? A damned sight more than we’d pay an outsider, that’s for sure. About twenty thousand, I should think.”
“ ’Strewth!” said Dover.
While MacGregor went off to fetch the last suspect for questioning, Dover busied himself with some simple arithmetic on the margins of the girlie magazine he had absent-mindedly removed from the scene of the crime. After much head-scratching and a heavy precipitation of dandruff he achieved a result which took his breath away. With his pension, even allowing for early retirement, and twenty thousand plus perks — well, there was bound to be a bit of a fiddle somewhere — he’d be bloody rolling in it!
Even when Toby Stockdale, an uninspiring young man in his middle twenties, was sitting opposite him across the dining-room table, Dover seemed unable to drag his popping eyes away from the girlie magazine, an apparent preoccupation which did little to enhance his public image.
Toby Stockdale claimed to have slept the sweet sleep of the deeply inebriated. “Still feeling a mite fragile,” he admitted with a sheepish grin. “Took me by surprise, really, the old girl pushing the boat out like that. Usually it’s one small dry sherry and a glass of grocer’s plonk.”
MacGregor looked up from his notebook. “Did Michael Montgomery drink a lot?”
“Swilling it down like there was no tomorrow. Well, you know what Australians are like when it comes to booze. Paralytic. Funny, really.”
“What is?”
“Auntie Beryl letting her hair down like that. I mean, when he first turned up, right out of the blue, I thought she looked pretty sick. Cheered me up because I reckoned she’d have second thoughts about leaving Ongar’s to a yobbo like him. Talk about your wild colonial boy! And when he came in at tea-time with that stupid bayonet thing, I thought he’d really cooked his goose. Well, it was a bit much. Pretending to stab people with it and everything. Childish. Still, that single red rose must have done the trick because she was all over him at the birthday dinner. Egging him on, laughing, joking, dancing with everybody.”
“Dancing?”
“Hopping around like a two-year-old. We had the radio on. Bit obscene, I thought, at her age. Not that I said anything, of course.”
A loud rumble from Dover’s stomach warned everybody that it was lunchtime, and Toby Stockdale, although somewhat bemused, didn’t wait to be told twice that he could go.
Dover, usually such a rapacious trencherman, didn’t however move.
MacGregor eyed him anxiously. Was the old fool sickening for something? If so, dear Lord, please let it be lingering, painful, and fatal.
Dover sighed and, folding up his girlie magazine, stuffed it into his pocket. “We could pin it on one of ’em, I suppose,” he said without much enthusiasm. “Fiddle the evidence a bit. Just for the look of things.”
MacGregor’s heart sank.
“Wouldn’t stand up in court, of course. Still, I wouldn’t mind putting that Major What’s-his-name out of circulation for a bit.”
“Major Finch, sir?”
“On remand six months at least before the case came to trial,” mused Dover, demonstrating that even his sluggish brain cells could be galvanized into life with the right motivation. “And no bail on a murder charge. You couldn’t expect Ongar’s to do without a chief security officer all that time, could you?”
MacGregor flattered himself that he could see the light at the end of this particular murky tunnel. “You’re not thinking of applying for the job yourself, are you, sir?”
Dover grinned with nauseating complacency. “Mrs. Ongar took quite a fancy to me.”
MacGregor resisted the temptation to debate the point. “She might like you a great deal more, sir, if you found out who really murdered her great-nephew.”
“Use your head, laddie! All that old biddy wants is the whole thing to just fade away.”
“Surely not, sir?”
“She hardly knew the joker,” insisted Dover. “And, I ask you, who cares about some blooming foreigner getting knocked off?” He dropped his cigarette in the general direction of the ashtray and hauled himself up. “Think I’ll go and have a word with her. See how she’d like to play it.”
“You mean whether she’d sooner have Major Finch framed for the crime or just let the whole investigation fizzle out?”
Cheap sarcasm was wasted on Dover. “You wait here, laddie. I shan’t be a tick.”
In the event, Dover was away for ten minutes — a period of time which left MacGregor perplexed. It was too long for Mrs. Ongar just to have sent Dover off with a flea in his ear but too short, surely, for any meaningful discussion to have taken place.
Luncheon was taken, on the recommendation of the uniformed inspector who finally got a bit of his own back, in a low-class pub full of hot and sweaty customers swilling pints of beer and carefully avoiding the bar snacks. Dover, having opted for the shepherd’s pie with a double helping of chips and half a bottle of tomato sauce, gobbled his way to apoplexy in as much silence as his distressing table manners would allow. Steamed ginger pudding and custard followed. Dover thought about cheese and biscuits but decided it was just too hot and went for a large brandy instead, just to settle his stomach. In the meantime, a quick trip to the Gents wouldn’t come amiss.