by Joyce Porter
‘I’ve come up here to get some peace and quiet while I get my next book finished and my husband’s tied up in London making the arrangements for our next trip. There’s nothing serious between Boris and me, but I’d simply rather my husband remained in ignorance about it. What the eye doesn’t see, you know . . . ’
‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘And how long has this liaison between you and Mr Bogolepov been going on?’
‘Oh, month or so.’
‘And you’ve kept it completely secret?’
‘Well, we thought we had.’
‘Did Juliet Rugg know about it?’
Eulalia’s eyes opened wide and she exchanged a quick glance with Boris. ‘No, not as far as I know. Why should she?’
‘It’s very hard to keep a thing like this quiet, you know, madam,’ Dover pointed out patiently. ‘Neighbours can often put two and two together and arrive at the right answer. We’ve got every reason to believe that Juliet Rugg was not above a bit of gentle blackmail when she had the chance. You would appear to be an ideal victim. Did she ever try to blackmail you?’
‘No, she certainly didn’t!’ Eulalia’s jaw set in a pugnacious line. ‘Just what are you getting at, Inspector? Are you hinting that we’d something to do with Juliet Rugg’s disappearance?’
‘It’s a possibility, madam, isn’t it? It wouldn’t be the first time that a blackmailer’s been bumped off by one of his victims.’
‘And no doubt it will not be the last,’ Boris commented helpfully into his glass of whisky. ‘Do you want me to accompany you as I am, my dear sir, or will you permit me to put on a pair of trousers?’
‘Oh Boris, do for God’s sake shut up! This isn’t a parlour game.’
‘My dear Eulalia,’ said Boris solemnly, ‘I have never suggested it was.’
Eulalia turned impatiently to Dover. ‘Now, look here, Inspector, let’s just get this straight, Juliet Rugg did not know of my association with Boris and she was not blackmailing me. Why on earth should she? Apart from the fact that I should just have told her to go to hell, I think it extremely unlikely that she even knew I was married. Why, even Boris didn’t know at first.’
‘Nobody,’ Boris chimed in plaintively, ‘ever tells me anything.’
‘And I can assure you, Inspector,’ she continued after an irritated glance at Bogolepov, ‘that whatever has happened to Juliet Rugg, I had nothing to do with it at all.’
‘Nor,’ said Boris, finishing off his whisky, ‘had I.’
‘Well,’ said Dover, reaching for his bowler hat, ‘we shall have to look into all this a bit further. Are there any other parts of your earlier statements that you would like to revise – just in case somebody else knows a bit more than you think they do?’
Eulalia and Boris shook their heads. ‘No, my dear sir,’ said the German in a voice which was becoming slightly slurred, ‘now you have the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me God !’
‘Hm,’ said Dover sceptically, ‘I hope you’re right’
‘But there is one small point which you may have overlooked,’ Boris squinted carefully into his empty glass.
‘Really?’ asked Dover with heavy sarcasm.
‘Oh, yes. Don’t forget that both Eulalia and I now have an alibi.’
Chapter Eight
‘CHEEKY young bastard!’ commented Dover grumpily when they found themselves once more standing on the drive of Irlam Old Hall.
‘It was a rather fishy story, wasn’t it, sir?’ ventured Sergeant MacGregor. ‘I mean, it doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’
‘The truth rarely does,’ Dover observed with a deep sigh.
‘But what about all this drink and dope business, sir? You said . . . ’
‘Oh, never mind what I said!’ snapped Dover, who couldn’t stand people quoting his own words back at him. ‘We can’t stand here all day discussing things. Who’ve we got left to see up here?’
The sergeant was understandably somewhat flabbergasted at this apparent thirst for work on the part of his chief inspector. ‘But, it’s getting on for two o’clock, sir,’ he pointed out, ‘and we haven’t had any lunch yet.’
Dover thought this over for a moment. His stomach appeared to have settled down fairly well, but he squirmed slightly at the prospect of what lunch at The Two Fiddlers would do to it No, better not risk it.
‘You young coppers are all the same,’ he said blisteringly, ‘never thinking about anything else except your stomachs! If you wanted a regular nine to five job, my lad, you shouldn’t have joined the police. Crooks won’t wait while you sit down and stuff yourself with meat and two veg, you know. We haven’t time for lunch. Now, who’ve we got to see up here?’
The Freels,’ replied Sergeant MacGregor sulkily – he was hungry – ‘and all die people in the flats.’
‘Oh, hell!’ said Dover. ‘Well, let’s start with the Freels. Maybe one of ’em’ll up and confess and then we can all go home.’
The Freel’s front door had two bells on it, marked A and B. With a muttered curse Dover stuck his finger into B and kept it there.
After a long wait the door was opened a grudging crack and a man’s face peered out at them. With great reluctance he admitted that he was Basil Freel and allowed his visitors to cross the threshold.
‘Kindly keep to the left of the line,’ he begged them, indicating a thin piece of white tape which had been laid down the centre of the hall carpet. He led them to a room at the back of the house. ‘This is my study,’ he observed. ‘I was working.’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’m very busy,’ he added.
‘We shan’t keep you a moment, sir,’ said Dover, hoping it was true.
‘Good,’ said Mr Freel bleakly and sat down gingerly on the edge of his chair. He was a tall thin man with a greyish but impressively strong face. Unfortunately, behind Basil Freel’s beaked nose and eagle eye, there lurked only a bird’s brain and he was inclined to fuss and cluck like an old hen.
He knew nothing, he protested with feeble fretfulness, about Juliet Rugg or her disappearance. He admitted that Colonel Bing and Miss McLintock had spent last Tuesday evening playing bridge with him and his sister.
‘They came after supper,’ he pointed out anxiously. ‘They come to us on Tuesdays and we go to them on Fridays, but always after supper. It comes so expensive if you have to provide a meal every time and, frankly, you don’t get enough to keep a sparrow going at their place, so it isn’t worth it.’
‘What time did Colonel Bing and Miss McLintock leave?’
‘Rather early, I remember. About a quarter to eleven. They were winning. They always leave early when they’re winning, just so that their luck doesn’t change. Not quite the behaviour you’d expect from gentlemen, but there you are, aren’t you?’
‘Where were you playing, sir?’
‘In here,’ said Mr Freel with a sigh. ‘She said it was my turn but I don’t think it was. I’m going to keep a notebook in future. Whoever’s host has to give ’em a hot drink, you know. I always make Ovaltine. They don’t like Ovaltine much so they generally leave quite a lot. I warm it up for myself the next day. Sometimes they leave nearly a whole cupful. The only trouble is,’ he sighed again, ‘I don’t like Ovaltine much either.’
‘What did you do when they left, sir?’ said Dover, who was beginning to feel he’d caught a ripe one here.
‘Oh, I went to bed straight away. The electric light had been on all evening, and the fire. I leave the clearing up till morning, when it’s daylight.’
‘And is your bedroom at the front of the house, sir?’
Mr Freel looked longingly at the pile of papers on his desk and sighed yet again. ‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I sleep in the front room downstairs. My sister has the top floor for her quarters and I live down here.’
Dover’s next question was postponed by a loud, persistent miaowing outside the door.
‘Oh, dear,’ complained Mr Freel distractedly, and got up to let a large, bad-tempered-loo
king and very pregnant cat into the room. She stalked around with a deliberate, sneering gait while Mr Freel hovered anxiously over her.
‘For God’s sake, don’t frighten her!’ he hissed at Dover. ‘If she has the kittens down here I shall have to dispose of them, and it’s not fair. It’ll be the third time. She shoos her downstairs, you know,’ he added spitefully.
Mr Freel’s anxiety was catching. Dover and Sergeant MacGregor watched the mother-to-be with bated breath as she made a leisurely tour of inspection. There was an audible sigh of relief as she finally waddled insolently out of the door by which she had entered. Freel collapsed into his chair and wiped a grubby-looking handkerchief over his face.
Dover resumed his questioning, but Mr Freel had neither seen nor heard anything on Tuesday night which had struck him in the slightest as suspicious or unusual. He always slept with the windows closed and the curtains drawn, and a dozen Juliet Ruggs could have walked up and down the drive without his being aware of it. Yes, he knew who Juliet Rugg was but he couldn’t ever recall having even spoken to her. He lived a very retired life nowadays and his few social contacts did not include the missing girl.
‘I understand,’ said Dover, ‘that you are a retired clergyman?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Freel with his habitual sigh, ‘you can put it that way if you like, I lost my faith, you know. It was very awkward. Of course, one had always had minor doubts and reservations here and there, but to lose all one’s faith all at once was a bit of a blow. In the prime of life, too, I was. Had a brilliant career ahead of me in the Church. Everybody said so. I might,’ he offered abjectly, ‘I might have been a bishop by now, or even had my own programme on television. But, there it is. You can’t go on if you’ve lost your faith, can you?’
‘No,’ said Dover, ‘I suppose not. And what do you do now?’
Mr Freel waved a long bony hand vaguely in the direction of his desk. ‘Mark correspondence course papers, mostly,’ he said. ‘Not very satisfying work, really. Most of ’em never last beyond the first lesson. I mark exam papers, too, sometimes. It’s all very depressing. Doesn’t pay all that well either. I have to live very modestly these days. Still, I don’t suppose you can expect to become a millionaire when you’ve lost your faith, can you?’
Dover and Mr Freel achieved a joint sigh in unison and there was a short pause while both men silently contemplated the unhappiness of their lot and the general unfairness of life itself. Sergeant MacGregor stared abstractedly at the almost blank pages of his notebook and tried to control the peevish rumbling of his empty stomach,
‘Well, thank you very much, Mr Freel. We won’t keep you any longer. Perhaps, however, we could have a word with your sister before we leave?’
‘Glad to have been some help to you,’ said Mr Freel, rising to his feet. ‘Perhaps you’ll follow me.’ He led them out into the hall again, indicating that they should keep to his side of the white line down the carpet. Somewhat to their surprise he opened the front door and ushered them out.
‘That’s her bell,’ he said, pointing to the one marked A. ‘She’ll come if you ring that. I haven’t,’ he added, ‘spoken to her for fifteen years and I don’t intend to start now. Good afternoon.’ And with that he closed the front door in their faces.
‘Oh, ring the bloody bell, Sergeant,’ growled Dover, ‘and let’s get on with it. I’ve never met so many nuts on one case in my entire life. Wouldn’t surprise me if his blasted sister came down on a broomstick!’
When Amy Freel, however, eventually opened the door she looked surprisingly normal. She was a plumpish, untidy-looking woman wearing a shapeless flowered dress and gold-rimmed spectacles. Dover guessed her to be in her middle fifties and possibly a year or two younger than her brother.
She was obviously delighted to see the two detectives and gushingly conducted them upstairs, smilingly requesting them in the hall to keep to her side of the white line. They were shown into her sitting-room in which every visible item of furniture seemed to have been covered with chintz. What looked like a very substantial afternoon tea lay waiting for them on a low table by the fire.
‘I saw you coming,’ she explained, ‘so I’d time to get it ready for you. I knew you wouldn’t get anything from him. And you haven’t had any lunch either, have you, you poor things! What did you go back to see Mr Bogolepov for? Was it something the Chubb-Smiths told you?’
Amy Freel’s sandwiches were excellent, and very welcome, but Dover had no intention of paying for them by satisfying his hostess’s startlingly well-based curiosity. He plunged once more into the old routine, alternating mouthfuls of food with his tatty stock questions. He got, once again, tatty stock answers. Although Amy Freel clearly spent most of her days peeping out at her neighbours’ doings from behind her sitting-room curtains, she was, regrettably, not indulging in her hobby late on Tuesday night. She was as sorry about this as Dover was.
‘If only I’d known,’ she wailed, ‘that something like this was going to happen! I’d have sat up all night for you. It’s really most frustrating to have Bingo getting all the excitement. And detective stories are my hobby, you know, not hers! She’s more interested in dogs and war memoirs, but I’m the recognized crime expert. Of course Georgie reads a lot of thrillers, but I don’t think those count, really, do you? Besides, she never remembers what she’s read and what she hasn’t. She doesn’t read constructively, like I do.’
‘Did you know Juliet Rugg well?’ asked Dover.
‘No.’ Miss Freel shook her head in regret and passed a plate of cakes around. ‘I doubt if I’ve said more than “good morning” to the girl more than twice in my life. Of course I know all about her reputation, that’s common knowledge. She was very friendly with Michael Chubb-Smith at one stage, you know. His mother was very worried about it. Juliet used to call at her house quite often before the baby was born.’ She cocked an inquiring eye at the chief inspector, who, munching away placidly, didn’t rise to the bait. ‘And, of course, I shudder to think what’s been going on at the Counters’ place. I know Sir John’s as old as the hills but I always say, you know what men are like. I mean, why on earth should he employ a girl with an illegitimate black baby if wasn’t for something like that? I feel so sorry for Eve. Sir John may be a baronet and he may have lots of money, but in my opinion he’s a disgusting old man, and I don’t care who knows it. Some of the things he’s said in my presence – well, I just wouldn’t dare to repeat them.’
‘Good,’ said Dover without thinking, and passed his cup over for a refill.
‘Mind you,’ Miss Freel went happily on, ‘if I’d known Juliet was going to disappear like this I’d have taken much more interest in her. I’d have invited her to tea and had a nice long chat with her. I might have been able to help you then,’ she said with a kindly smile. ‘However, it’s no good crying over spilt milk, is it?’ She leaned forward eagerly in her chair. ‘Now, tell me, what do you really think has happened to her? As I see it, it must be either murder or kidnapping. We can rule suicide out, I’m quite sure of that. She wasn’t the type. And if she’d just run off with some man or other, I’m sure somebody would have reported her whereabouts by now. No, what puzzles me is – where’s the body? She was such a big girl, you know. If something happened to her after Bingo saw her on Tuesday night and before she got back to the Counters – where’s the body? You couldn’t just pick her up in your arms and walk out with her and you couldn’t drive her out in a car because the gates were locked.’
‘Somebody might have taken her out next morning when the gates were open,’ said Dover.
Miss Freel shook her head triumphantly. ‘Nobody did,’ she said firmly. ‘I checked! Not one of the cars in Irlam Old Hall left here on the Wednesday. And no tradesmen’s vans or anything like that called either, because I checked that too.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover.
‘Bit of a facer, isn’t it?’ asked Miss Freel cheerfully. ‘But I’ve got one or two theories of my own which might interest you. T
hey’ll probably strike you as a bit far-fetched at first, but they do give us a lead. Now, if we could all work together on this, I’m sure we’ll be able to get it solved in no time. I could be a sort of unofficial collaborator, you know, like the amateur detectives in the books, and you could . . . ’
‘No!’ Dover had finished his tea and saw no point in wasting any more of his time. Amateur middle-aged lady detectives! My God, the things he had to suffer! ‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ he said shortly, ‘but things don’t work like that in real life, you know. This is a job for the professionals,’ he smiled smugly. ‘We shall get to the bottom of it, never fear!’
‘But, Inspector, this book I was reading . . . ’
Dover raised a lordly hand with a gesture which he had used many times as a young constable on traffic duty. He could stop a London bus with it in those days and he stopped Miss Freel now.
‘No!’ he said again. ‘We really haven’t time to discuss wild theories at this stage, madam. Sergeant MacGregor and I have got a lot of work to do. Perhaps later on. . . ’ he concluded vaguely.
Miss Freel’s crestfallen face brightened a little. ‘Well, I’ll go on working on it independently,’ she suggested, ‘and if I get anything concrete I’ll let you know, eh? But I really think this book I was reading . . . ’
‘Yes, that’ll be fine, madam,’ said Dover, heading rapidly for the door. ‘Come on, Sergeant!’
Miss Freel followed them downstairs.
‘I don’t suppose you got much help from him?’ she said in a loud whisper, jerking her head at her brother’s portion of the house. ‘He wouldn’t notice a body if he fell over it. He cheats at bridge, too, you know, if you don’t watch him.’
‘Really?’ said Dover.