Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 86, No. 6. Whole No. 511, December 1985

A souvenir for Dover by Joyce Porter[12]

“Ongar.”

The two other men in the police car realized that Detective Chief Inspector Dover had woken up and was taking notice.

“Ongar,” he said again, savoring the word.

The police driver stared woodenly ahead but Dover’s assistant, the young and dashing Detective Sergeant MacGregor, couldn’t avoid the burdens of social intercourse so easily.

“Sir?”

Dover bestirred himself and his fourteen and a half stone of unlovely fat oozed even farther across the back seat of the car. “ ‘Buy Ongar. it’s longer and stronger,’ ” he quoted.

Sergeant MacGregor, already squeezed as far as he could go into his corner, noted this unwonted display of animation with alarm. It was a swelteringly hot day but Dover refused to have a window open on the grounds that fresh air went straight to his stomach. The atmosphere in the police car had to be breathed to be believed, and the last thing anybody wanted was Dover getting excited and making things worse.

“Indeed, sir.”

“It’s the best damned lavatory paper there is!” snapped Dover, who didn’t care for subordinates arguing with him. “We’ve used it for years.”

“Really, sir?”

“I’ve tried to get ’em to buy it at the Yard. Like I told ’em — it’s educational, really.”

Recalling the considerable portion of the working day that Chief Inspector Dover already spent closeted in the gentlemen’s toilet, MacGregor was not surprised that the Scotland Yard authorities were reluctant to make their facilities even more attractive. Though how anybody could find the motley collection of humorous anecdotes, household hints, medical advice, conundrums, advertisements, and inspirational Thoughts for the Day which were printed on every sheet of Ongar toilet paper in any way educational was beyond MacGregor’s somewhat limited imagination.

“It’s the ink that does it.” observed Dover.

“Does what, sir?”

“Doesn’t come off, you fool! It was old Mrs. Ongar herself who invented it.”

“I didn’t know that, sir.”

“You would have if you read Ongar’s toilet rolls, laddie. ’Strewth, she must have made a bloody fortune.” Dover devoted a few moments’ silence to pea-green envy before his enthusiasm reasserted itself. “Did you see the one with the cartoons? Bloody funny, that was. Oh, well” — he sighed deeply — “it’s the end of an era, I suppose.”

“What is, sir?”

“Old Mrs. Ongar getting wiped out.”

MacGregor clenched his teeth. Dear God, you would have thought the stupid bastard... “It’s not Mrs. Ongar who’s been murdered, sir. It’s her great-nephew. A young man called Michael Montgomery.”

Dover’s interest waned. He eased his greasy bowler hat back on his head and cautiously undid the top button of his overcoat. “ ’Strewth, it’s hot in here.” He dragged out a handkerchief that few people could have cared to touch without surgical gloves and mopped his brow. “Got a fag, laddie?”

“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.

For all Dover cared, she could have dropped down dead, but MacGregor took the fight against crime more seriously. To the accompaniment of baleful looks from both Dover and Mrs. Wilkins, he insisted on asking a few questions.

When Mrs. Wilkins went to waken Mr. Montgomery—

Well?

— was the door closed?

Yes. Mrs. Wilkins had given a perfunctory tap and come straight in, having no intention of standing on ceremony with the likes of him.

Was the light on?

It had better not have been. Mrs. Ongar had a thing about wasting electricity.

So the room was in darkness?

Bright as day. Which was just as well, seeing the state his room was in. Why youngsters like him couldn’t hang things up in a civilized manner was beyond her. Mind you, she blamed the parents.

MacGregor frowned. So the curtains were open?

The curtains were closed. They were also paper-thin. Mrs. Wilkins was surprised that MacGregor hadn’t spotted that for himself. They let in more light than they kept out. And with the sun blazing down out of a clear blue sky—

MacGregor tried again. “I understand that Mr. Montgomery was only a guest. He didn’t live here.”

He lived in Australia and it was a pity he hadn’t stayed there. Of course he was only a guest — and an uninvited one to boot. That’s why he’d been put in the old pantry. It was the best they could do at short notice with the house being full. Waltzed in the day before yesterday, he had, large as life and twice as handsome if you didn’t count those shifty eyes and the pimples. Straight from Heathrow without so much as a phonecall first to see if it was convenient. As if Mrs. Wilkins hadn’t enough on her plate without hordes of foreigners descending without so much as a by-your-leave.

MacGregor had looked up from his notebook some time ago, but Mrs. Wilkins was not one to yield the floor until she was good and ready. “You say the house was full?”

Of course it was full. Still was. Full of Mrs. Ongar’s sponging relations, any one of whom would walk barefoot over a bed of nails for a free meal.

But they had been invited.

Mrs. Wilkins tossed MacGregor a final crumb before she brought the interview to a close. Of course they’d been invited. They’d come to celebrate Mrs. Ongar’s seventy-fifth birthday yesterday. There’d been a posh dinner party and Mrs. Wilkins still hadn’t got straight after it — a situation she proposed to rectify forthwith. Meantime, she would like to remind everybody that it was nearly a quarter past and Mrs. Ongar didn’t like to be kept waiting.

“Mrs. Ongar?” echoed MacGregor.

“Across the entrance hall,” said Mrs. Wilkins crisply. Turn left. First on the right. Knock before you go in.”

Mrs. Ongar was in bed. Propped up amongst her pillows, she gave an impression of frailty and vulnerability, belied only by a formidable jaw line of which the late Benito Mussolini would not have been ashamed.

Two chairs had been placed in readiness and Dover sank gratefully into the nearest. This hot weather played hell with his feet. When a few moments later Mrs. Wilkins marched in with coffee and biscuits, the chief inspector was almost happy. Munching rhythmically, he stared with some curiosity at the woman who single-handedly had put toilet rolls on the map. Mrs. Ongar handed a sheet of paper to MacGregor. “The name of the murderer is on that list.”

MacGregor tried to look grateful.

“It contains the names of the five people who were staying in the house as my guests last night.”

“For your birthday party, eh?” asked Dover, wondering if there’d been a cake.

Mrs. Ongar had got Dover’s measure as soon as he entered the room. She continued to address herself to MacGregor. “They are the sole surviving members of the family, on my side and on my late husband’s. Three of them — Christine Finch, Daniel Ongar, and young Toby Stockdale — would like to think of themselves as potential heirs to the Ongar empire. I don’t believe in rule by committee and it has always been my aim to leave the entire concern to one person. Since I own ninety-eight percent of the shares, whoever I appoint as my heir will get the lot.”

“It sounds more like a motive for your murder than for your great-nephew’s,” said MacGregor diffidently.

Mrs. Ongar’s nostrils flared. “If I might continue without interruption... Some years ago I made a will leaving everything to my great-nephew, Michael Montgomery, in Australia. I have had ample time to study my other relations and none of them is fit to run a multi-million-pound business. Daniel Ongar. Toby Stockdale, and Christine’s husband. Major Finch, have all been given jobs in the firm and their achievements have been no more than average. If they hadn’t been members of the family. I should have dispensed with their serviced long ago.”

Dover shifted unhappily in his chair. Having drunk his coffee and eaten all the biscuits, he was beginning to find time hanging heavy on his hands. His gaze wandered idly about in search of diversion. Mrs. Ongar’s bedroom was on the ground floor and had a bathroom en suite. Dover envied her that convenience. Not that it stopped the old biddy keeping an old-fashioned chamber pot under her bed. In fact, Mrs. Ongar seemed to be a real belt-and-braces character. Everything had a back-up system. On the bedside table there was not only an electric bell-push but a large handbell as well, to say nothing of a police whistle dangling on a ribbon from the headboard of the bed. And she’d got two wheelchairs, one manual and one battery-driven.

Mrs. Ongar was still telling MacGregor about her family. “Toby Stockdale is a junior sales representative — in other words, a commercial traveler. David Ongar, my late husband s younger brother, is Chief Personnel Officer, when he can tear himself away from the golf course.”

“And Major Finch, madam?”

“He is in charge of security. After an undistinguished career in the Army, he seemed well suited for the position. There is,” observed Mrs. Ongar drily, “comparatively little crime in the toilet-paper industry and, as far as industrial espionage is concerned, I myself safeguard the formula for our ink.”

Dover was losing interest in the desultory inventory he’d been making of Mrs. Ongar’s possessions — an electric torch and a candle, wires denoting an electric blanket on the bed and a rubber hotwater-bottle on one of the chairs, a pair of stout walking-sticks and one of those Zimmer frame things. His eye slipped indifferently over a single red rose drooping terminally in a vase. Security officer at Ongar’s? That didn’t sound a bad job. The sort of thing an experienced ex-copper should be able to do with his eyes closed.

“What’s the screw?”

Mrs. Ongar blenched, but she hadn’t got where she was by letting trifles like Dover throw her. Quite calmly and dispassionately she studied the crumpled suit, the dandruff epaulettes on that disgusting overcoat, the unspeakable bowler hat, the pale podgy face with the mean little eyes, the motheaten moustache. Then she took a deep breath and put the whole sordid spectacle right out of her mind.

“You must realize,” she said, addressing herself exclusively to MacGregor, “that while Christine Finch is actually my niece, her husband — the major — and her daughter have just as good reasons for killing poor Michael. They would both benefit if I were to leave Ongar’s to Christine.”

“Oh, quite,” said MacGregor.

“One of the reasons, you know, that I made poor Michael my heir was that I thought he would be safe, far away in Australia, from the murderous machinations of the rest of the family, safe from their greed and jealousy. You can imagine my feelings” — Mrs. Ongar raised a lightly starched handkerchief momentarily to her eyes — “when the poor boy just walked in. It was a terrible shock. And when I saw the hatred on their faces — I blame myself. I should have known they would kill him the moment they had the chance.”

MacGregor tried to lower the emotional tension by asking a few routine questions. Predictably, Mrs. Ongar was of little help.

“Last night was my birthday party,” she reminded MacGregor. “A happy day, but a tiring one. I didn’t get to bed until after eleven and then I slept like a log. All the noise and the excitement and the rich food. .” She relaxed back deeper into her pillows. “Oh, well, it’s not every day that one reaches the age of seventy-five, is it?”

There seemed little point in prolonging the interview. Mrs. Ongar seemed very tired and so, if the sagging jowls and the drooping eyelids were anything to go by, did Dover.

MacGregor smiled sympathetically at Mrs. Ongar. “Well, we’ll leave you to get some rest,” he murmured.

“Rest?” Mrs. Ongar’s head jerked up. “There’s no rest for me, young man.”

“No?”

“I have to draw up a new will. I’ve already sent for my solicitor.”

“A new will?”

Mrs. Ongar looked cross. “Haven’t you realized that it’s my life that’s in danger. Michael was killed for my money.”

“But if you leave your money to one of the others—”

“Precisely! And if I don’t make a will, my niece, Christine, will inherit everything. Suppose it was one of the Finch family that murdered Michael? Do you think they would hesitate to kill me in my turn?”

MacGregor tried to suppress the thought that a second murder in the Ongar household might make it a good deal easier to solve the first. “What are you going to do, then?”

“That’s my secret!” snapped Mrs. Ongar. “But you can rest assured that I shall take every precaution. In the meantime I want Michael’s murderer found without delay. And I also want all the remaining members of my family out of this house as soon as possible. My safety must be your prime concern.”

Dover and MacGregor retired to the dining room, which had been set aside for their use. Dover propped his elbows on the highly polished mahogany table and glowered disconsolately at Mrs. Ongar’s list of potential murderers. “We’re never going to solve this one.”

MacGregor tried to take a more positive attitude. “Oh, I expect we’ll get to the bottom of it, sir.”

Dover pushed the list away and reached for the packet of cigarettes MacGregor had laid out on the table as a sweetener. “Not a single bloody clue for a start,” he grumbled as he accepted a light from MacGregor’s elegant gold lighter. “This joker creeps downstairs in the middle of the night, stabs What’s-his-name with his own bloody bayonet, and creeps back to bed again. No fingerprints, no footprints, no bloodstains, didn’t drop anything, and a motive that’s shared with half a dozen other people. We’re on a hiding to nothing.”

MacGregor opened his notebook and laid his pencil ready. “Careful questioning of the suspects, sir—”

“Why don’t you grow up, laddie?” demanded Dover. “Careful bloody questioning? Look” — he dropped his voice to a tempting murmur — “why don’t we rough ’em up a bit?”

“We can’t do that, sir.”

“Why not? As long as we’re careful not to thump ’em where it shows, it’ll be their word against ours. And, if we stick together—”

MacGregor was reluctant to waste time discussing the extent to which Dover’s fist could be considered a legitimate instrument of justice. “Why don’t we just see how far we get playing it by the book first, sir?”

Dover’s thirst for violence was a good deal less passionate than his desire for a quiet life. “Oh, suit yourself!” he grunted as a lump of cigarette ash joined the rest of the debris on his waistcoat. “Let’s have this security fellow to start with. Major What’s-his-name. I rather fancy him.”

Major Finch knew the value of reinforcements and arrived accompanied by his lady-wife and his somewhat less than ladylike teenage daughter. “We’re all three in exactly the same boat,” he explained, “and I thought it would save time.”

Dover shrugged his shoulders to indicate that it was no skin off his nose.

The Finches had heard nothing, seen nothing, and knew nothing.

“We were all dog-tired.” drawled Mrs. Finch, who tried to distance herself from her lavatory-paper connections by affecting an air of languid sophistication. “That ghastly dinner party! I had a splitting head. I had to take a sleeping pill, so the whole house could have gone up in flames for all I cared.”

“Pretty grim.” agreed her husband. “And the way Auntie fawned over that disgusting young punk didn’t help. Talk about killing the fatted calf!”

“You’d have thought the rest of us simply didn’t exist,” complained Mrs. Finch. “I’d like to know what she’d have said if we’d turned up without a birthday present. That damned paisley shawl cost over fifty quid and for all the thanks we got you’d think we’d bought it in a sale at Woolworth’s.”

Samantha-Ivette, the teenage daughter with four earrings in one ear and pink hair, found contradicting her elders more natural than breathing and twice as much fun. “Mick didn’t know it was her birthday.”

“Then it was an amazing coincidence, darling, that he arrived all the way from Australia just in time for it.”

“And he got her that red rose.”

“A single red rose!” snorted Major Finch. “Very romantic! Especially when he’d had the damned cheek to touch me for a fiver to buy the old girl something, and then comes back with that damned bayonet for himself. Well, much good it did him!”

MacGregor tried to muscle in. “Who knew about the bayonet?”

“Everybody knew about the bayonet,” said Major Finch impatiently. “He was fooling about with it all through dinner, the damned idiot. I suppose we ought to be grateful he didn’t buy himself a submachine gun and a couple of live hand-grenades while he was about it.”

“He didn’t buy the bayonet.” Samantha-Ivette chipped in proudly. “He nicked it. From that shop by the post office. I helped him. I had to keep the old man talking while Mick pinched the bayonet. It was terrific fun.”

“Samantha-Ivette!” wailed Mrs. Finch.

“He pinched the red rose, too. From the cemetery.”

“My God!” exploded Major Finch. “Well, I just hope all this has taught Auntie Beryl a lesson.”

“You mean you hope she’ll leave Ongar’s to Mummy now, don’t you?” inquired Samantha-Ivette pertly. “Why should she? I think she liked Mick, really.”

“She was appalled by him! And with good reason.”

“Well, at least he wasn’t a fuddy-duddy old stick-in-the-mud.”

“He was a vicious young lout!”

“You think everybody who smokes a bit of pot is a moral degenerate.”

“Smokes pot?” Mrs. Finch clutched her heart. “I didn’t know he smoked pot. Why didn’t somebody say? Auntie would have thrown him out of the house.”

“Oh, Mummy, don’t be so prehistoric!”

Dover got enough of this sort of thing at home without having to put up with it at work as well. He fixed Major Finch with a beady eye. “Hear you’re a security officer,” he grunted. “Thought that was a job for an ex-copper.”

Major Finch took a second or two to catch up, but eventually he agreed that many security officers were indeed former policemen. “Not that background is all that important, you know. Any conscientious, reasonably intelligent man with good organizing ability can cope.”

Dover was less interested in the qualifications than the rewards. “How much do you get paid?”

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.

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.”

“Chronic gastritis,” said Dover. “There’s only one treatment. Lots of rest.”

“Sir” — MacGregor was so pleased with himself that he burst straight through Dover’s favorite daydream, in which the chief inspector was a semi-invalid for life — “I’ve got the motive! It was a preemptive strike. Mrs. Ongar killed her great-nephew because she thought he was planning to kill her.”

Dover was getting very bored with all this Ongar business. “You’d be laughed out of court,” he grunted. “Not that you’d ever get it into court. Like I said, no bloody evidence.”

“There’s that torch, sir.”

Quite slowly and deliberately. Dover picked the torch up off the table and put it back in his pocket. “What torch, laddie?”

MacGregor nodded slightly to acknowledge defeat. The torch didn’t really make a ha’porth of difference. Dover was right. They’d never be able to make a case out against Mrs. Ongar. “I’ll get your brandy, sir.”

MacGregor stood up and walked over to the bar. He arrived just in time to see mine host drape the last towel over the beer pumps.

“We’re closed, mate. I called last orders ten minutes ago.”

MacGregor appealed to the landlord’s sense of decency, fair play, and compassion.

“We’ve all got sick friends, mate, and if I was you I’d get mine out into the fresh air before I give the pair of you something to take to casualty with you.”

MacGregor swore under his breath. Damn Michael Montgomery and damn old Mrs. Ongar. If he hadn’t been so preoccupied with their blooming troubles, he wouldn’t be faced with the problem of telling Dover that he couldn’t take his medicine for at least two and a half hours.