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

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.