MacGregor came back from the bar and placed a foaming tankard of best bitter in front of his lord and master.
Dover clutched it with both paws. ‘’ Strewth,’ he exclaimed, ‘ I reckon I’ve earned this!’
MacGregor slid into the seat on the opposite side of the table and hid his face as best he could in a glass of dry sherry. Everybody in the bar was staring at them – and with good reason. For five glorious minutes there had been more excitement in the saloon bar than those smoke-stained walls bad seen since the place opened.
The real fun and games had begun when a bewildered Josh finally realized that Dover wasn’t going to pay over the promised twenty nicker. The little man took the disappointment badly. His voice grew louder and louder as the aspersions he began casting on Dover’s honour and ancestry got nastier and nastier. Indeed, so angry did he become that Dover, in spite of the marked difference in their respective fighting weights, began to fear physical violence.
‘You great fat double-crossing old welsher!’ screamed Josh, leaping to his feet and banging his little fists on the table. ‘You’re cheating me, that’s what you’re bloody well doing! Well,’ – he sucked in a steadying lungful of air – ‘you won’t get away with it! I’ll get even with you, you swindling old bugger, if it’s the last thing I do!’
‘Oh, shove off!’ urged Dover, shuffling awkwardly along his bench so as to keep the table between himself and Josh. ‘I’ll run you in for causing a disturbance, else,’ he threatened.
Josh got his second wind. ‘You’ll run me in?’ he repeated scornfully. ‘You and whose regiment, mate!’ He leaned forward across the table and thrust his tiny, flushed face to within an insulting couple of inches of Dover’s nose. ‘You lay so much as one finger on me, you over-blown baboon, and I’ll …’
Posterity, and the handful of fascinated gawpers in the saloon bar, never discovered what dire threat Josh had in mind because it was at this precise moment that MacGregor came mincing diffidently to the rescue. He had been hovering outside the door for some time, waiting with an anxious eye on the second hand of his watch. When Dover said half an hour, he occasionally meant half an hour.
‘Chuck him out!’ shouted Dover, growing more resolute when he saw that MacGregor had got a firm grip on Josh’s collar. ‘Get shut of him!’
Josh twisted round and spat his next threat as best he could into MacGregor’s face. ‘ I’ll have you for bleeding assault, sonnie! You want to watch it, you do! I’ve got witnesses!’
The hitherto avid spectators had other ideas, though. They turned away immediately and became deeply engrossed in their own affairs. Well, a bit of excitement was a bit of excitement, but one didn’t want to get involved, did one?
MacGregor, meanwhile, was busy propelling a dangling Josh towards the exit. ‘You just keep quiet!’ he advised sternly. ‘And don’t come round bothering Mr Dover again or it’ll be the worse for you.’
Josh clutched at a partition in passing. ‘Bother that old pig again?’ he gasped. ‘ You must be joking!’ His grasping fingers were inevitably dragged away and from then on things began to happen rather quickly. MacGregor, skilfully avoiding all Josh’s attempts to put the boot in where it matters, got the saloon bar door open and the poor little man had barely time to bestow a few more pieces of his vulgar mind on Dover before he found himself sprawling on the cold, hard ground outside.
‘Drunk as a lord,’ said Dover as MacGregor came back, fastidiously brushing himself down. ‘As if I was going to hand over twenty quid to a cheap little rat like him.’
MacGregor loudly said nothing, letting the disapproval on his face speak for him. Detectives may not like informers, but they are under a moral obligation to keep faith with them. Dover, as usual, had let the side down and had let it down – MacGregor became conscious of the watching eyes – in full view of the general public. Oh, it was so absolutely mortifying!
Dover was quick to notice that his sergeant was standing there doing nothing. ‘I’ll have a pint of bitter!’ he said.
MacGregor marched off stiffly to get the drinks.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, when Dover’s unsavoury face eventually emerged with a large white moustache obliterating his small black one, ‘did you get any information out of him?’
Dover set his glass down, his good humour evaporating with the speed of light. He liked MacGregor’s cheek, by God he did! Whatever scraps of miserable information had been obtained from that drink-sodden midget had been purchased – by Dover – at a high price. It was typical of MacGregor to come strolling along when it was all over and expect to reap the fruits of another man’s work for free! The way he was going on you’d think bloody double whiskies grew on trees.
Dover sank resentfully beneath the froth again. ‘Gurgle-sloshlurp!’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘I said, nothing much!’ snapped Dover.
‘Oh, well, I’m not surprised,’ said MacGregor with that faintly knowing air that made Dover see red.
The chief inspector was stung to hasty retaliation. ‘Did you know that Marsh was up to his ears in debt to a bookie?’ he demanded.
‘No, sir. But, surely,’ – MacGregor smiled a superior little smile – ‘surely you don’t think that this is some sort of Chicago style, mobster killing, do you, sir?’
‘It’s as good a theory as any that you’ve come up with!’ snarled Dover. ‘ In any case, you’d better get up off your backside and do some investigating.’
MacGregor’s gentle scepticism was quite unruffled. ‘Do you by any chance remember the bookie’s name, sir?’
‘Taffy O’Sullivan!’ said Dover, astounding them both by the sharpness of his memory. He watched with contempt as MacGregor duly got his notebook out and then, losing interest, let his eyes wander round the bar. Over in one corner he noticed for the first time that there were a couple of brightly glowing fruit machines. Dover’s face brightened to match. ‘Got any change, laddie?’
‘I think so, sir.’ MacGregor snapped his notebook shut and wondered what old bird-brain was up to now.
Dover got to his feet and began to lumber across the room. ‘You can get some more at the bar,’ he said.
It eventually cost MacGregor the best part of three pounds to learn that Dover had managed to acquire no less than two new murder suspects. There was Taffy O’Sullivan and little Josh himself. That he should have achieved this in a mere half hour probably, thought MacGregor wiltingly, constituted a record.
Bored well nigh to tears, MacGregor watched his ten-penny pieces disappearing down the greedy slot of the one-armed bandit and listened while Dover, in between dragging the lever down and kicking the machine when it failed to disgorge, expounded his theories.
‘That undersized little twerp,’ Dover began.
‘Josh, sir,’ prompted MacGregor.
‘So he said.’ Dover paused while he waited for the spinning symbols to stop. A plum, a bell and a cherry slotted into the windows. He consulted the table of winning combinations. Just his bloody luck! ‘Anyhow, he’s got a motive for murder. Taffy O’Sullivan was threatening to duff him up if he didn’t collect that money from Marsh, but Josh’ – Dover broke off to feed another coin into the fruit machine – ‘Josh knew that O’Sullivan cancelled all debts if one of his punters died on him.’
MacGregor witheld comment until Dover had recovered from the exertion of working the lever. ‘So Josh was let off the hook? Well, I suppose it’s a possibility, sir.’ MacGregor prided himself on his tact. ‘Er – did you think to ask Josh to account for his whereabouts at the time of the murder, by any chance?’
‘’Strewth,’ grunted Dover, thumping the machine in the hope of inducing it to play the game, ‘I can’t be expected to do all the flaming work, laddie! You’ll have to follow it up. Sometime.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor, telling himself that chance would be a fine thing. ‘And you think this Taffy O’Sullivan might be involved, too?’
‘Could be.’ Dover was re-reading the instructions. Damn it all, it looked simple enough! ‘Marsh owed him money and wouldn’t pay. No bookie worth his salt can afford to let people get away with that sort of thing. He sent Josh to collect and got damn all for his pains. Not surprising if he turns to something a bit rougher. They probably only meant to beat What’s-his-name up but they went too far and he got killed by mistake.’
‘Yes, sir.’ MacGregor sometimes had bad dreams in which Dover solved his case by sticking a pin in the telephone directory and applying for a warrant. ‘Well, I suppose that’s a possibility, too.’
The want of enthusiasm did not go unmarked. ‘Oh, don’t rupture yourself!’ growled Dover, exploiting a rich vein of heavy sarcasm.
‘Well, sir, we do seem to be collecting rather a lot of suspects but very little evidence. I mean, you’ve already got your eye on Miss Marsh and Lord Crouch, the whole Tiffin family, the landlord of The Bull Reborn and – oh – and Lady Priscilla.’ MacGregor was staring mesmerized at the spinning symbols. ‘Now we’ve got this Josh character and Taffy O’Sullivan, the bookie. It does seem rather a lot, doesn’t it, sir?’
‘I’ve run out of change,’ said Dover.
MacGregor pulled himself together, went back to the bar and handed over another pound note.
Dover accepted the handful of coins sullenly. ‘I reckon this machine’s crooked,’ he said as he cast his next piece of bread on the ungrateful waters.
MacGregor sat himself on the edge of a table. They were obviously going to spend the rest of the evening stuck in The White Feathers so he might as well make himself comfortable. ‘What’s our next move, sir?’
Dover didn’t have time to voice his resentment at this continual harassment because, miracle of miracles, a couple of coins unexpectedly tinkled down into the cup. ‘Whacko!’ he said and was just about to pocket his winnings when he noticed that they were not legal tender. ‘ Here,’ he roared furiously, ‘I’ve been done!’
Patiently MacGregor abandoned the murder of Gary Marsh and explained to Dover that the coins were tokens which could only be used for purchases across the bar.
‘It’s a bloody swindle!’ objected Dover. ‘Oh, well, you’d better buy ’em off me. They’re no damned good to me. You can use ’em for the next round of drinks.’
Success, even to the modest tune of five new pence, didn’t strike again and Dover was not a good loser. By about half past eight the pleasures of chucking MacGregor’s good money down the drain were beginning to pall. Dover tugged down the handle on positively his last attempt to win fame and fortune, examined the line of two plums and a lemon and directed his mind to higher things.
He turned to MacGregor. ‘ We’ll go and have a bit to eat somewhere,’ he announced. ‘ I’m bloody starving.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And then’ – Dover flexed his shoulders. ’ Strewth, it took it out of you, yanking that lever thing. – ‘ we might go and tackle old Crouch.’
MacGregor registered surprise and not a little apprehension. ‘Sir?’
‘Suppose,’ said Dover, leaning on the one-armed bandit and trying to ease the weight on his feet, ‘there was something between him and Marsh?’
MacGregor gave the suggestion more consideration than it merited. ‘ What sort of a something, sir?’
‘Couple of pansies!’ explained Dover with a snigger. ‘The idea came to me just now, seeing you standing there like a drooping arum lily. It would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Like old Crouch giving him that posh job.’
‘Managing the motel, sir?’
‘Marsh was the wettest thing since nappies,’ said Dover. ‘Even old Crouch’d never think of employing him if he wasn’t besotted with the lad.’
‘There is the theory that Marsh was Lord Crouch’s illegitimate son – or nephew,’ MacGregor pointed out unhappily. ‘And then, again, for all we know, Marsh may have been extremely competent at his job.’
Dover, having buttoned up his overcoat, now appeared totally engrossed in trying to scrape off one of the more disgusting stains on the lapel. ‘You don’t reckon old Crouch is one of the nancy boys?’ he asked slyly.
MacGregor achieved a thin smile. ‘Hardly, sir.’
Dover took the demolition of his latest crack-pot theory with remarkable equanimity. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I reckon I’ll have to take your word for it, shan’t I? After all, they do say it takes one to spot one, don’t they?’