Dover Strikes Again Page 3

  Dover turned, as he frequently did in moments of crisis, on MacGregor. ‘Well, don’t just stand there like Patience on a monument! Do something!’

  MacGregor smiled tentatively at Mr Lickes. ‘I’m afraid, sir, that, because of the peculiar nature of our business here, we’re going to make rather a lot of trouble for you.’

  Mr Lickes ground his shoulder blades together and smiled back. ‘Oh, no, you’re not,’ he assured MacGregor pleasantly.

  MacGregor tried again. ‘We may have to ask you for meals at rather inconvenient times.’

  ‘No harm in asking,' came the courteous reply.

  ‘We are here on official and very important duties, sir.’

  ‘Breakfast at nine,' said Mr Lickes, ‘lunch at half past twelve and supper at six. Unconsumed meals will be placed on the hot plate and may be eaten in the dining-room at the guest’s own convenience. It’s all written out on the card pinned behind your bedroom door. If that’s what you’d like to do now,' he added, genuflecting gently and rhythmically, ‘I shall be only too happy to oblige. You can eat when you feel like it.’

  ‘Strewth!’ groaned Dover.

  ‘We’ve having frozen cod fingers, tinned peas and chips tonight,' Mr Lickes went on happily. ‘The menu is decided by the relief organization that sends the food up. Saves us an awful lot of worry, I can tell you, not having to work out the menus. Oh – and reconstituted Scotch broth to start with and sago pudding for afters. Awful, isn’t it? Still, this is a crisis and we must all tighten our belts.’ He took a deep breath and held it for fifteen, vein-throbbing seconds. ‘Mind you,' he blurted out with a gasp, ‘we lay on cocoa, hot toast and dripping in the lounge at nine o’clock so nobody need go hungry to bed. And now,' – he broke off to touch his toes three times in quick succession – ‘it’s time for supper.’

  Under the astonished gaze of Dover and MacGregor, Mr Lickes leapt for the huge brass gong that stood in one comer of the hall and, seizing the leather-covered stick, began to thrash mercilessly away.

  The response was well nigh instantaneous. Down the stairs in a genteel stampede came the Blenheim Towers guests: two men, a teenage girl and three old ladies. Sparing only a brief sideways glance, they swept inexorably into the dining-room.

  Mr Lickes watched them pass and replaced his gong stick with a flourish. ‘Like the zoo, isn’t it?’ he asked in a conspiratorial whisper before following his livelihood through the open doorway.

  Dover slowly shook his head. ‘We’ve been dumped in a loony-bin,' he moaned. ‘Did you see that lot?’

  MacGregor nodded and tried to look on the bright side. ‘I don’t think they were too bad, sir. Some of them were rather elderly, perhaps, but. . .’

  ‘Elderly?’ snorted Dover. ‘A couple of ’em had rigor mortis setting in!’

  ‘Well, shall we wait till they’ve finished, sir, and have our meal later?’

  ‘Warmed-up fish fingers?’ asked Dover incredulously. ‘If your stomach can stand that, you’re lucky! Mine blooming well can’t.’ He heaved himself to his feet. ‘Come on! You can take the suitcases upstairs afterwards.’

  Mr Lickes shot forward to welcome them as they entered the dining-room. ‘You’re over there, gentlemen,’ he informed them and nodded to a vacant table on which the white cloth was already heaving inauspiciously in the breeze. ‘But, first, you must meet your fellow guests. We’re all one big family here.’ It was a civility with which Dover would have been happy to dispense but Mr Lickes was not to be denied. He took hold of the chief inspector by the coat sleeve and led him over to the three old ladies. They were at the far end of the room but Mr Lickes was too wily a hotelier to ignore the demands of age, seniority of residence and sex.

  Dover glowered with impartial dislike at Mrs Boyle, Miss Kettering and Miss Dewar. Their reactions, however, varied considerably. Mrs Boyle, the relict of a rear-admiral and a noted stickler for the ship-shape, stared in blank astonishment at the untidy hulk which confronted her.

  ‘Interestin’,’ she remarked in a very loud voice to her companions. ‘First time I’ve ever come across a peeler in good society. They’ll be presentin’ omnibus drivers to us next.’

  It was not an observation calculated to endear her to Dover and he tied a mental knot in his mind to pin the murder on Mrs Boyle, if it was humanly possible.

  Meanwhile Miss Dewar appeared to be trying to submerge her scarlet face in her soup bowl. This was not the consequence of Mrs Boyle’s somewhat unkind comments but Miss Dewar’s normal reaction to any member of the male sex who came within twenty feet. She was, as she frequently told her female friends, a martyr to shyness.

  Miss Kettering, on the other hand, wasn’t. At sixty-two and with several very near misses behind her, she had not yet abandoned hope. MacGregor looked much the more enticing proposition, of course, but Miss Kettering was a realist and knew her limitations. She fixed her sights on Dover and ogled him relentlessly until Mr Lickes led him away to the next table.

  Old Mr Revel was sitting alone. The batteries in his hearing-aid had run down and he hadn’t the faintest idea who Dover and MacGregor were or what they were doing there. Nevertheless he greeted them like long-lost brothers and, staggering to his feet, would have enfolded them in a warm embrace if Dover hadn’t fended him off with a well-directed shove in the chest. Mr Revel fell back, spluttering but not speechless.

  ‘God bless you!’ he quavered. ‘I knew it would happen one day.’ He flung a defiant, if watery, glance round the room. ‘We’ve got the bitches outnumbered at last!’

  Mr Lickes hurried Dover on. ‘Bit of a misogynist, our Mr Revel,’ he murmured. ‘Always going on about being incarcerated in a matriarchal society. And now,’ he said in a normal voice as he stopped at the third and last table, ‘let me introduce you to our two earthquake victims. Their house was destroyed, you know, and they’re staying with us until they can arrange other accommodation.’

  Dover’s stomach was now rumbling louder than ever and it was a lack-lustre eye that he turned on Wing Commander Bertram Pile (Retired) and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Linda. The indifference was mutual.

  Mr Lickes conducted the two policemen over to their own table and improved the brief moment with a quiet warning. ‘I should give those two a wide berth, if I were you,’ he whispered. ‘The girl’s not quite all there – mentally retarded, you know – and her father tends to be a mite over-possessive. They keep themselves very much to themselves.’

  Supper at the Blenheim Towers was consumed in total silence and at an incredible speed. Mr Lickes, who did the serving, flashed round the dining-room like a dancing dervish but even he had his work cut out. The trouble was, though, that while the diners had the table manners of ravenous wolves they hadn’t got the appetites to match.

  Dover, unsustained by a couple of mouthfuls of thin soup, regarded his fish fingers glumly. ‘It’s not enough to keep a bloody sparrow going!’ he whined.

  MacGregor tended to go off his food when he ate at the same table as Dover and so the sacrifice he was clearly being expected to make was not too severe.

  Dover accepted the proffered plate and shovelled the contents on to his own. ‘It still doesn’t add up to more than half a proper helping,’ he grumbled as he grabbed his knife and fork. ‘Isn’t there any tomato ketchup knocking around?’ He removed a tiny fishbone from the back of his upper plate and dropped it fastidiously on the floor. ‘ ’Strewth, we’d be better off in one of those prisoner-of-war camps. First thing tomorrow morning you get on to that Wheelbarrow chap and tell him we want some parcels sending up.’

  MacGregor made the mistake of smiling. ‘Yes, sir.’

  A mouthful of ginger-coloured breadcrumbs, which Dover could ill afford to lose, came spattering across the table. ‘I’m not joking, you bloody fool!’

  ‘No, sir!’ MacGregor, knowing only too well the unpleasantnesses that could result from rubbing Dover up the wrong way, hastened to offer the only olive branch that lay to hand. ‘I never eat sago pu
dding, sir. If you’d care to have mine . . .’ Coffee was served in the lounge but only half the Blenheim Towers contingent repaired there to consume it. Wing Commander Pile and his daughter hurried off immediately to their rooms and were followed at a slightly more dignified gait by Mrs Boyle and the still-blushing Miss Dewar. Dover, who had an eye for these things, beat the rest of the field to the most comfortable chair while MacGregor politely undertook to pour out the coffee. Old Mr Revel shuffled off into a dark comer and switched on the television set. Miss Kettering tiptoed elaborately after him and turned the volume control right down.

  ‘He can’t hear a thing,’ she confided in Dover as she joined him by the fire with a coy giggle, ‘and he’s perfectly happy just watching the pictures.’

  There was an unencouraging grunt from Dover but, good heavens, if Miss Kettering allowed herself to be put off by little things like that, she’d never make friends with anybody!

  ‘I think we watch too much television these days, don’t you?’ she pressed on. ‘Everybody says it’s ruining the art of conversation.’

  Dover snorted unpleasantly and rudely down his nose.

  Miss Kettering responded with a merry laugh. ‘You’ve got a bit of a cold coming on, haven’t you?’

  ‘More than likely,’ said Dover, brightening up a bit.

  ‘Bed,’ said Miss Kettering firmly.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Two aspirins, a hot whisky and stay in bed until you feel better – it’s the only treatment.’

  Dover began to regard Miss Kettering in a more favourable light. He was second to none in appreciating people who took a sympathetic interest in his health. ‘There’s only one snag,’ he said, trying to talk down his nose. ‘No whisky.’

  Miss Kettering glanced round to make sure that they could not be overheard. ‘Mrs Boyle has a small bottle in her handbag,’ she whispered. ‘Purely medicinal – so she says.’

  ‘Perhaps she’d lend me a drop?’ Dover whispered hopefully back.

  ‘Not if you were dying in front of her, dear! She’s terribly mean. Oh,’ – Miss Kettering jumped a little as MacGregor bowed in front of her with three cups of coffee on a tray – ‘how very kind!’

  When Miss Kettering had refused sugar and Dover had dug out his six spoonfuls, MacGregor sat down too. Unlike some people he could name, he never forgot that he was a detective or that he was supposed to be on duty. After one refreshing sip of his coffee, he got down to business.

  ‘Were you here when the earthquake happened, Miss Kettering?’ he asked as though merely making polite conversation.

  Dover rolled his eyes and sank back resentfully in his chair as the flood gates burst open.

  Miss Kettering certainly was here when the earthquake happened and she couldn’t begin to tell them what a horrifying experience it had been. She would remember that dreadful night until her dying day, and probably after it. ‘Of course,’ – she was perched on the edge of her chair, transported by the joy of addressing a masculine and (as far as earthquakes were concerned) virgin audience – ‘it came completely without warning, you see. That’s what made it such a terrible shock. If only they’d told us on the weather forecast . . .’

  ‘Were you in bed?’ asked MacGregor.

  Miss Kettering’s heart fluttered. That was twice already that bed had reared its fascinating head in the conversation!

  ‘Yes, I was,’ she admitted daringly. ‘It was the middle of the night, you know. Of course, I simply leapt out when I felt everything rocking and shaking. The awful part was not knowing what it was. My first thought was that those dreadful Chinese had struck at last. There wasn’t as much noise as I would have expected but they’re supposed to be frightfully cunning, aren’t they? I’m sure a silent atomic bornb wouldn’t be beyond their fiendish minds.’

  MacGregor avoided catching Dover’s jaundiced eye and concentrated on steering Miss Kettering back on more profitable rails. ‘What did you do after you’d jumped out of bed, madam?’

  ‘Well, I grabbed my crystal ball, as a matter of fact,’ said Miss Kettering with a deprecating laugh. ‘I wasn’t going to let that get broken if I could possibly help it. It’s such a comfort to me, you know, and they’re terribly expensive things to replace. I wrapped it up in my best bed-jacket and rushed off to see if Miss Dewar was all right.’

  ‘And was she?’

  ‘Oh, yes – apart from being scared out of what few wits she still possesses. She’d got up, too, and gone into Mrs Boyle’s room. In the end all three of us spent the rest of the night there. Miss Dewar and I curled up as best we could on a couple of chairs while Mrs Boyle just stayed in bed, looking’ – a rather malicious gleam appeared in Miss Kettering’s eye – ‘like the Rock of Gibraltar. Such a source of strength to the rest of us! She knew it was an earthquake, of course, having been connected with the navy for so long. She’s always right about things like that. She doesn’t believe in standing for any nonsense either, you know. She was quite sharp when poor Miss Dewar kept snivelling that it was the end of the world and I had to be frightfully careful that she didn’t spot my poor old crystal ball. When I realized that there was no danger of contamination by fall-out, I suggested we might be safer outside in the open air but Mrs Boyle wasn’t having any of that either. Mind you, it was raining very heavily.’

  ‘I see,’ said MacGregor, digesting these snippets of information carefully. ‘So you, Mrs Boyle and Miss Dewar remained here in the hotel and in each other’s company for the remainder of that night?’

  ‘Yes.’ Miss Kettering regarded MacGregor shrewdly. ‘So we couldn’t have murdered Mr Chantry, could we?’

  ‘Has anybody suggested that you did, madam?’

  ‘Not so far but, presumably, everybody in the village is more or less under suspicion. What time was Mr Chantry actually killed?’

  MacGregor, in spite of his elegant appearance, was a real policeman. He preferred asking questions to answering them. ‘Oh, some time before dawn,’ he said reluctantly.

  ‘Well, I can vouch for Mrs Boyle and Miss Dewar until after lunch when we all went to our rooms for a rest, and they’ll be able to vouch for me. We were never out of each other’s sight for more than a couple of minutes. I was all for going to help with the rescue work but Mrs Boyle said I’d be more trouble than I was worth, and she was probably right. Still, I felt guilty about just sitting here.’

  Dover bestirred himself. He gave a tremendous yawn and scratched his head. The dandruff fell in a shower on his shoulders. ‘Anybody got a fag?’ he asked.

  When he had got Dover contentedly dribbling ash down the lapels of his jacket, MacGregor resumed his interrogation. ‘What about the other people in the hotel?’

  ‘The other people?’ Miss Kettering hesitated. She didn’t exactly relish the role of police informer but, on the other hand, she couldn’t see what harm it would do. Whoever had murdered Mr Chantry, it wasn’t anybody from the Blenheim Towers, of that she was quite sure. ‘Well, there weren’t all that many other people here, actually. Only Mr Revel. Wing Commander Pile and Linda didn’t join us until after the earthquake, of course.’

  MacGregor glanced across at Mr Revel, who was still absorbed in the silent flickerings of his television screen. ‘Did he leave the hotel?’

  ‘Mr Revel?’ Miss Kettering’s mouth dropped open but then she recovered her sense of humour and gave MacGregor a reproving slap on the knee. ‘Silly boy!’

  ‘We have to check on everybody, madam,’ MacGregor pointed out stiffly.

  ‘But you might as well suspect me, dear!’

  MacGregor studiously said nothing.

  Miss Kettering sighed. She had thought that hob-nobbing with a couple of real live Scotland Yard detectives was going to be such fun. ‘To the best of my knowledge,’ she said distantly, ‘Mr Revel has not left the grounds of this hotel for the last five years. Even on one of his good days it takes him at least two hours to get to the gates at the bottom of the drive. If you think he is capable of making his way as
far as North Street in the pitch dark and murdering a man forty years his junior with his bare hands – well,' – Miss Kettering paused for breath and grammatical orientation – ‘you must have a very vivid imagination, that’s all I can say. Leave the hotel? Why, the poor old thing didn’t even wake up. He slept right through till breakfast time like a babe in arms.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure of it. At breakfast time Mrs Boyle and Miss Dewar and I spent twenty minutes trying to explain things to him. Even when he understood us, he wouldn’t believe us. It’s a point of principle with him not to believe anything any woman tells him. We just had to wait until Mr Lickes had time to cope with him.’

  ‘Ah, Mr Lickes!’ MacGregor restrained himself from pouncing too ferociously. ‘I suppose he left the hotel, did he?’

  ‘What would you expect him to do?’ demanded Miss Kettering tartly. ‘Cower under the beds like the rest of the silly old women in this place? We could hear all those people screaming and shouting quite distinctly, you know. It was obvious that something terrible had happened. Both Mr and Mrs Lickes rushed out to help as soon as they’d pulled some clothes on and been round to see that the rest of us were all right. Mrs Lickes came back after a bit to make tea and sandwiches for the rescue workers and the injured but Mr Lickes didn’t return until much later. He was nearly dead on his feet, poor man. He . . .’

  Dover perked up again, revived by the mention of food and drink. ‘What time do they bring this toast stuff round?’

  ‘Oh, not for ages yet, dear.’ Miss Kettering came to a painful decision. Masculine company or no masculine company, she had had enough of being grilled for one evening. She eyed MacGregor severely. Maybe she was growing old but, really, she did find the young so brutal these days! She stood up.

  ‘You going?’ The question came from Dover who, while not exactly enamoured of Miss Kettering, had no wish to be left tete-a-tete with his sergeant.