Dover and the Claret Tappers

you,’ grunted Dover, ‘but I’m going home!’ This was apparently one of Dover’s little jokes and he chuckled ecstatically over it.
MacGregor waited until the eruptions had subsided. ‘Are we going to work on the assumption then, sir, that neither Whittacker nor Gallagher knows the identity of the Claret Tappers?’
‘What else?’ asked Dover, washing down most of the pie with a swig of tea. ‘I told you they’d both turn out to be a dead loss. We’d have done better to stay in the office. It’d have been warmer, too,’ he added sourly.
MacGregor took it upon himself to look on the bright side ‘I don’t think our trips were a complete wash-out, sir. After all, the kidnappers did mention those two specifically, by name. There must be a connection somewhere.’
‘Why?’ Dover’s podgy paw was hovering over the last two cakes, trying to settle his order of precedence. ‘It could all have been a joke. While the Claret Tappers were asking for the bloody moon, they reckoned they might as well chuck in a couple of crummy cons for good measure.’ He gave the chocolate eclair his casting vote. ‘So they picked our two beauties at random.’
MacGregor frowned. ‘That won’t do, sir.’
‘Whawhanoo?’
MacGregor responded to the spirit If the question. ‘Well, you and I could probably produce the names of a number of convicts, sir, but I doubt if ordinary members of the public could.’
Dover licked the bits of chocolate off his moustache and reached for the shrinking maid of honour. ‘The Claret Tappers are policemen?’
MacGregor bit his lip. God, it was like dealing with a gibbering idiot! There are other professions, sir, who might be familiar with the names of prisoners – lawyers, journalists, other prisoners, warders . . .’
‘And anybody bright enough to read a flaming newspaper! snorted Dover. ‘Which narrows the held down to about nine-tenths of the bloody population! What’s to stop these Claret Tappers just picking up the nearest daily rag and sticking a pin in the reports of the court proceedings, eh? I sometimes wonder what you use instead of brains, laddie.’
‘If that’s all they did, sir,’ objected MacGregor, stunned into defending himself, ‘why didn’t they land on somebody who was being tried and sentenced much more recently? Gallagher and Whittacker are a pretty un-newsworthy pair, sir, but, if their names ever did appear in the newspapers, it would have been at least a year ago. Are you suggesting that your kidnappers planned that sort of detail as much as twelve months ago?’
‘Yes,’ said Dover firmly. He’d had more than enough for one day. ‘That’s why you’ve got it all wrong as usual, laddie! There must be a connection but you’re just not bright enough to see it. Anyhow, I’m not sitting here all day arguing the toss with you. Nip out and get a taxi and let’s be getting home!’
‘A taxi, sir?’
‘You said old Brockhurst authorised one, didn’t you, moron?’
There were some moments in his life with Dover that even MacGregor enjoyed. ‘Ah,’ he pointed out with a great deal of relish, ‘but that was for going to Hlolloway, sir. The commander said nothing about having a taxi for the return journey.’
‘In that case, sonnie,’ sniggered Dover, confident that he could out-smart MacGregor with both hands tied behind his back, ‘you’ll have to foot the bill, won’t you?’

Six
WHENEVER HE WAS ENGAGED ON A CASE involving serious crime MacGregor adhered strictly to the best traditions of the C.I.D. and worked through at least the first seventy-two hours without a break. He fully appreciated how important speed was and how essential it was to make full use of the first few days after the perpetration of any crime. Every detective knows, to his sorrow, how quickly memories fade and clues get themselves erased.
Dover, on the other hand, had his own methods. Self educated in the ‘more-haste-less-speed’ school, he never did today what he could postpone to the middle of next week. In his spare time he was also a staunch supporter of the Lord’s Day Observance Society and extraordinarily scrupulous in his acknowledgement of every holiday permitted by either church or state.
Nobody, therefore, was more surprised than MacGregor when the door of their office opened and the dejected figure of Detective Chief Inspector Dover shuffled in. ‘Er – good morning, sir! I – er – wasn’t expecting to see you at the Yard today.’
‘Why not?’ Dover, retaining his overcoat and bowler hat, squeezed with some difficulty into the chair behind his desk. ‘Hie room he was obliged to share with MacGregor was little more than a glorified broom cupboard and it was a tight fit when the two of them were there.
‘Well, it’s Sunday, actually, sir.’
‘Very funny,’ said Dover, mentally consigning all members of the opposite sex to endless torment and hell fire. Had it not been for his lady wife and so-called help-mate, he could have been spending the Sabbath where any red-blooded man ought to be spending it – in bed. The trouble was that Mrs Dover, having set her heart on spending the first few days of her widowhood with a married niece in Clacton, didn’t see why she should change her plans just because an enigmatic Providence had dashed her fondest hopes. So Dover had reluctantly had to come in to work, there being no fun in staying at home without somebody to wait on you hand and foot. ‘Watcherdoin?’ he asked.
MacGregor gestured at several files which were spread out over his desk. ‘I’ve just been going through these crank letters, sir, in the hope that I might be able to winnow out a little corn from all the chaff’.’
Dover grunted. He didn’t go much on these agricultural metaphors.
‘Er – would you like to help, sir?’
Dover reacted as though MacGregor had made an improper suggestion to him – which, in a way, he had. ‘Doing what?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Well, I thought you might like to go through one of these files, sir. There’s this one, for example.’ MacGregor