Dead Easy for Dover

in chewing the nice uncle’s bootlaces. ‘You think perhaps that Mrs Plum . . .?’
‘Or the au pair girl,’ said MacGregor, watching carefully for any reaction to that suggestion. ‘You see, we know the dead girl asked her way to The Grove that evening. That rather implies that she knew somebody who lived here. Now, that doesn’t really apply to Mrs Plum, does it?’
Peter Bones wiped his hands down the legs of his trousers. ‘But it might apply to Blanchette? You aren’t seriously thinking that she could possibly have any connection with your murder, are you, sergeant? Good God, she’s barely seventeen and she hasn’t been in the country for more than a couple of months.’
‘We have to explore all possibilities, sir,’ said MacGregor with a sigh. ‘Were you and the Bickertons together for the whole of the evening?’
‘Yes. Well, apart from the odd couple of minutes or so when somebody disappeared to powder their nose or something.’
Mrs Bones had got down on the rug and was playing with the baby. ‘What about when you left old Bickerton alone with the port, darling? He said you were gone for at least half an hour. That would have given him plenty of time to bump into this girl, make himself damned objectionable – he’s a founder member of the Wandering Hands Club, sergeant – and kill her. After all, she presumably wasn’t married to one of old Bickerton’s bright young proteges and so she might have objected to being pawed about by the dirty old lecher and threatened to have him up for indecent assault or rape or what-have-you.’
Peter Bones stared at his wife as though he simply couldn’t believe the evidence of his ears. ‘Well, you bloody stupid bitch!’
‘What did you expect, darling?’ asked his wife, her eyes sparkling with venom. ‘Unquestioning loyalty to the old firm?’ Peter Bones’s jaw tightened. ‘I ought to break your bloody neck!’
Maddie Bones tossed her head. ‘I’m not sure that’s the most tactful remark to make in the circumstances, darling. Not with two policemen as witnesses. I imagine they’re already looking for somebody with a totally ungovernable temper.’
‘I’m sorry, sergeant!’ Peter Bones made an effort and calmed down. He even managed a bit of a smile. ‘I suppose I’d better explain what all this is about – before you start jumping to any wild conclusions.’
‘That might be as well, sir,’ agreed MacGregor, very much the stolid policeman. He checked to see that his pencil had a good point on it.
‘After dinner,’ said Peter Bones, pushing an astonished Ignatia-Jane away quite roughly as she staggered across and tried to climb onto his knee, ‘my wife and Alice Bickerton went upstairs to powder their noses and say goodnight to the kids. Alice Bickerton is very fond of children.’
‘She is also very fond of having a good snoop round,’ said Mrs Bones dryly.
Her husband ignored the interruption. ‘When they came downstairs again, they came into this room where Mrs Plum had laid the coffee out. They didn’t come back into the dining room where Joe and I were sitting over our brandy and cigars. It wasn’t really a case of “shall we join the ladies” . . .’
‘Although it may look like it!’ put in the irrepressible Mrs Bones.
‘. . . Joe and I simply had a couple of points of business we wanted to discuss and we didn’t want to bore the wives. Well, we’d just sort of got going when I thought I heard something outside in the garden.’
MacGregor looked up. ‘Something or somebody, sir?’
‘Something,’ said Peter Bones firmly. ‘A loud banging. I asked Joe to excuse me and I went outside to see what it was.’
‘Which door did you use, sir?’
‘The side one. It was the nearest. Well, to cut a long story short, I found that the wind had blown down part of the fencing and that was what was making all the noise. I saw that, if I just left it, not only would it keep the whole house awake all night, but it would probably finish up doing some real damage. So, I got hold of a piece of rope out of the garden shed and tied the thing up as best I could.’
‘How long would you estimate it took you, sir?’
‘About five minutes. No more. It was pitch dark and raining hard. Naturally, I finished up soaked to the skin and absolutely filthy. I could hardly go back into the dining room like that so I nipped upstairs, had a quick shower and changed into another suit. When I was presentable again, I returned to the dining room, weaned Joe off the brandy bottle and we joined our respective wives here in the sitting room.’
MacGregor, as was his habit, looked across at Dover on the offchance that he might wish to make some contribution to the proceedings, but the Chief Inspector was fully occupied in a life and death struggle with young Wayland over the last peanut butter and Marmite sandwich. Both protagonists had long since abandoned any pretence to civilized standards and feet and teeth were being brought indiscriminatingly into play on either side. ‘Did you explain what had happened?’
Maddie Bones stuck her oar in before her husband had got his mouth open. ‘Oh, yes, he explained it all, sergeant! He was most plausible. It’s not for nothing that he’s a professional salesman.’
Peter Bones hunched his shoulders. ‘My wife doesn’t believe me,’ he said with the air of a man stating the obvious.
With all the food now gone, Dover was beginning to show signs of restlessness. MacGregor attempted to stave off the inevitable by shoving a cigarette between the old fool’s lips and lighting it for him. The Boneses didn’t allow smoking in their home because of the bad example it set their children, but MacGregor reckoned that Dover ranked as a kind of honorary Joe Bickerton – to whom, apparently, almost anything was allowed.
MacGregor tried to pick up the threads of the interview again. ‘Couldn’t you have produced