Dover and the Claret Tappers

heart-strings. He positively beamed at Archie Gallagher. A kindred soul at last! In an excess of generosity Dover turned to MacGregor. ‘Get your fags out, laddie!’ he ordered imperiously. ‘And hand ’em round! Do you smoke, Mr Gallagher?’
‘Yes, but’ – Archie Gallagher saw the colour of MacGregor’s packet – ‘not those, I’m afraid.’ He extracted a slim box of fifty from the breast pocket of his prison battle-dress. ‘Here, try one of mine!’
Dover accepted an expensive, hand-rolled, emperor-sized cigarette with great pleasure and almost indecent haste.
When he had provided a light all round, Archie Gallagher slipped his solid gold lighter back in his pocket. ‘Yes,’ he said, resuming the conversation where they had left off, ‘bigamy is far from being the soft option some people fancy it is. And rich women are unbelievably mean, you know, and suspicious. Still,’ – he smiled apologetically – ‘I mustn’t bore you with my troubles.’
Dover was not to be outdone in graciousness, not with cigarettes like Archie Gallagher’s around. ‘You’re not boring us, old man! Is he, MacGregor?’
MacGregor managed a bit of a smile. ‘How long have you been in prison, Gallagher?’
‘This time? Eleven months, three days and about six hours.’
‘So you’ve got the best part of seven years still to do?’
‘Mr Justice Longbotham, in a most eloquent and moving speech, expressed the opinion that he owed it to society to make an example of me. He called me a heartless monster preying upon innocent women and regretted that he couldn’t give me an even stiffer sentence. However, seven years is rather an exaggeration, sergeant. I expect to get quite a handsome remission for good behaviour.’
‘With a box of fifty hand-made cigarettes in your pocket?’ enquired MacGregor incredulously. ‘I’ll bet you’ve got a finger in every fiddle and racket there is going. You’re damned lucky not to have lost your remission already!’
Archie Gallagher smiled. ‘One counts on a modicum of luck,’ he pointed out gently.
MacGregor tapped his teeth with the end of his pencil. I might be able to do something for you, Gallagher, he said.
‘Like guarantee me my remission?’ Archie Gallagher’s smile was mocking.
‘Or there’s parole. A word in the right place from us . . .’
‘And what, sergeant, do I have to do to earn a place in your good books?’
Dover got it in first. ‘How about handing your fags round again?’
Archie Gallagher was a generous man. ‘Here,’ he said, handing the box over, ‘take the lot! I can get plenty more.’
‘Oh, ta!’ said Dover, wondering if there was any chance of getting the gold lighter as a little souvenir of their meeting.
MacGregor attempted to get the interview back under his control. ‘You play ball with us,’ he told Gallagher, ‘and we’ll play ball with you!’
‘But I’ve already told you, I don’t know anything.
MacGregor watched Gallagher carefully. ‘You’ve never heard of the Claret Tappers?’
‘Never.’
‘They’re the bastards who kidnapped me in order to get you out of the nick,’ grumbled Dover, lest anybody should forget that he’d got a grievance.
‘Are you sure you’ve never heard of them?’
‘Quite sure, sergeant! Believe me, I’d help you if I could.’
‘Have you any suggestions, though?’ appealed MacGregor. ‘Doesn’t any of this mean anything to you?’
Archie Gallagher shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, it sounds terribly far fetched but, honestly, the only thing I can think of is that your Claret Tappers might possibly be Wykehamists.’
‘Wykehamists?’ The consternation on MacGregor’s face might have been amusing if it hadn’t been so obviously heartfelt. The sergeant had been educated at a very minor public school but he wasn’t in this league. He gazed in awe at the urbane bigamist and cleared his throat. ‘Were you at Winchester?’ he asked in an envious croak.
Archie Gallagher chuckled. ‘No,’ he admitted without a trace of shame. ‘But I always say I was. I always think a good educational background impresses people, don’t you?’

Five
DOVER RAISED A FACE CRIMSON WITH EXERTION AND dripping with foam. ‘Ah, that’s better!’ he asserted happily and set his pint tankard down with a thump on the old, formica-top table.
MacGregor, ensconced opposite in the other antique plastic settle, responded with a feeble smile. ‘Cheers, sir!’ he said, sipping his glass of unadulterated tonic water without enthusiasm and finding scant comfort in the knowledge that one of the partnership at least would have a clear head for the afternoon.
‘Best beer for five miles around!’ claimed Dover. It wasn’t true. The only reason the chief inspector patronised this rather dirty and inconvenient pub was that it was the sole establishment within reasonable range of Scotland Yard that wasn’t haunted by hordes of thirsty policemen. Dover lived in the constant fear that one day he would be called upon to stand his round and so he took what precautions he could.
‘A cigarette, sir?’
Dover accepted, but only under duress. ‘I can’t think why you don’t buy yourself some decent fags,’ he grumbled.
‘These are all I can afford, sir.’
‘That Gallagher chap must have made a packet out of bigamy,’ said Dover enviously. ‘Talk about money for bloody jam!’
‘It sounded more like the dickens of a lot of hard work, the way he told it, sir. And the risks! Why, he’d got six women at the end, all coming from more or less the same social stratum and all thinking they were married to him. No wonder it all came unstuck. I’d love to have been at Badminton, though, when Numbers Two and hive spotted him arming a prospective Number Seven around.’ MacGregor took another mouthful of tonic. ‘Serves him right for picking all his women from the horsey set.’
Dover dried off his moustache with the back of his hand. ‘Horses? I thought you played badminton with a bat and one of those shuttlecock things.’
MacGregor had neither the strength nor the inclination to start teaching Dover the facts of sporting life and he changed the subject slightly, hoping that old bird-brain wouldn’t notice. ‘Did you believe Archie Gallagher, sir? About not being mixed up in any way with the Claret Tappers?’
‘He seemed