Dover stood up and made the supreme sacrifice to a temperature now soaring up into the nineties. He dragged his overcoat off and dropped it, with an audible clunk, on his chair.
MacGregor watched Dover waddle clumsily out of the bar. Although the sergeant’s mind was mostly occupied with the probable cost of a double brandy, his keen ears had caught that clunk — and it set the alarm bells ringing.
The Ongar house had contained many valuable knickknacks and trinkets which would fit quite nicely into the overcoat pocket of any light-fingered detective chief inspector who happened to be passing. MacGregor lived in dread not of Dover actually nicking something — he’d got used to that long ago — but of Dover being caught red-handed actually nicking something. The situation called for drastic action, and MacGregor was not found wanting. Hesitating only for a second, he plunged his bare hand into the pocket of Dover’s overcoat and found, together with several other articles too disgusting to bear closer examination, an electric torch.
MacGregor put the torch on the table in front of him. Why in God’s name had Dover purloined an electric torch? It was neither valuable nor especially attractive. Of course, Dover’s standards, even of dishonesty, were not high but—
Fifteen minutes of considerable discomfort spent in the pub’s outside convenience had done nothing to sweeten Dover’s mood. For one thing, there had been no Ongar’s toilet paper with which to while away the time.
“Just lousy little squares of newspaper threaded on a string,” he complained, and would no doubt have developed the theme further if he hadn’t spotted the electric torch on the table. “What the hell...?”
“Sir—”
“I didn’t steal it,” said Dover quickly. “Old Mrs. What’s — her-name gave it me.”
“Mrs. Ongar gave it you, sir?”
Dover scowled. “As a souvenir.”
“And she’ll confirm that, sir, will she? If asked.”
“Don’t be so bloody wet, laddie! She’ll deny she’s ever set eyes on it.” Dover dropped his overcoat onto the floor and sat down. “Where’s my bloody brandy?”
MacGregor’s brain was in turmoil. It was humiliating enough when Dover failed to solve a crime, but it was a thousand times worse when, by a pure fluke of course, the disgusting old fool spotted the solution first. MacGregor nodded at the torch. “That’s a vital clue, isn’t it, sir?”
“You want your brains examining!”
“It’s the only electric torch in that house, isn’t it, sir?”
Dover’s bottom lip stuck out. “How do I know? I haven’t looked and neither have you. Could be hundreds of ’em. I just suggested to Mrs. Ongar that she’d be better off without this one.”
“My God,” breathed MacGregor, “the murderer must have had a torch! He couldn’t have put the main light on if he’d wanted to because the switch was right on the other side of the room beyond the camp bed. And with all Montgomery’s possessions strewn over the floor... And then he had to locate the bayonet... He had to have a torch. And there was no moon last night, either.”
“You’re so sharp it’s a wonder you don’t cut yourself,” muttered Dover.
“But, sir—”
“Go and get my brandy and stop sticking your nose into what’s none of your business! And give us a fag while you’re at it.”
MacGregor got his cigarette case out. “But this is my business, sir! And yours. We’re supposed to be investigating a murder.”
“Ah,” said Dover, delighted to have his entire argument handed to him on a plate, “investigating’s the word, laddie! I’m with you there. It’s solving the bloody thing that’s going to drop us right in it. Look at it this way — there’s millions of unsolved crimes every year. This is just another one.”
MacGregor could be very uncooperative. “Sir, it’s our duty—”
“We’d be crucified in court!” Dover was twitching with exasperation. “Accusing somebody as rich and famous as Mrs. Ongar — a frail, bedridden old duck of seventy-five — of killing her teenage heir from Australia the day after she’d met him for the first time. Bloody hell” — he shuddered dramatically — “it doesn’t bear thinking about!”
“But she isn’t frail and bedridden, is she, sir?”
“Of course she is!” Dover’s voice rose to a near scream. “You saw her!”
“That was mostly for our benefit, sir.” MacGregor had ceased grasping at straws and was now beginning to make good, durable bricks. “She wasn’t bedridden on the night of her birthday party. She was even dancing. Stockdale said so. She sounds perfectly capable of getting up in the middle of the night and walking as far as Montgomery’s room. She wouldn’t even have to go upstairs afterward.”
Dover scowled. “She’s still an old lady.”
“A babe in arms could have stuck that bayonet in Montgomery, sir, especially if he was drunk. And who was it who’d — most untypically — been plying him with drink all evening?”
“You want your head examining!”
But MacGregor wasn’t going to be put off by vulgar abuse. “Mrs. Ongar had Montgomery put in that downstairs room, sir, well away from everybody else. She ensured he’d be sleeping soundly, and she had a torch. She also knew how awkwardly placed the main light switch was.”
“Anybody could have known that!” squealed Dover. “And had a torch. And what about motive? Montgomery was her blue-eyed boy. She was going to leave him all her money.”
“We don’t have to prove motive, sir.”
“Sometimes it bloody well helps!” snapped Dover. “ ’Strewth, she’d barely clapped eyes on the little bastard. You going to claim she suddenly ran amuck or something?”
“Didn’t she give you a hint?”
Dover squinted suspiciously at MacGregor. “Who?”
“Mrs. Ongar. sir.”
“When?”
“When you went to see her, sir, just before we left the house. When you — er — acquired the torch, sir.”
Dover had had time to work out his answer. “We didn’t discuss the matter,” he said firmly.
“You must have talked about something, sir.”
Dover shrugged his meaty shoulders. “I was asking her about getting a job at Ongar’s, if I took early retirement. You know, something in the security line.” He grinned to himself. “She was very helpful. Thought she might be able to shift that major joker to another department. Said it’d be simpler than trying to pin the murder on him. Give her her due,” said Dover generously, “she’s got a good head on her shoulders, that woman.”
“You don’t think she was perhaps trying to bribe you, sir?”
Less convincing displays of indignation have won Oscars, and Dover brought his performance to a sizzling conclusion by advising his sergeant to go and boil his head and reminding him that there was still a double brandy outstanding.
MacGregor reached reluctantly for his wallet. “If it had been Montgomery who’d killed Mrs. Ongar, I could have understood it. That would have been normal.”
“I used to think I had an ulcer,” said Dover, “the pain was so bad.”
But MacGregor’s thoughts were soaring far above Dover’s stomach. “I wonder if that’s what Mrs. Ongar thought — that Montgomery was going to kill her? She was terrified of being murdered for her money — Daniel Ongar or somebody said that. With Montgomery in Australia, she felt safe. But, when he turned up here—”
“The doctor’s quite definite, though. It’s just the wind.”
“He was a right young tearaway by all accounts,” MacGregor went on, “and when Mrs. Ongar found she had him under the same roof with her, she must have panicked. And when he started fooling around with that army bayonet, it must have confirmed all her fears. He intended killing her.”