by Joyce Porter
Dover stared disconsolately into as much of the fire as he could see with Colin Hooper’s legs in the way.
MacGregor, however, had a few questions. ‘You say you were working in the area over towards the Sally Gate?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s in the vicinity of where Mr Chantry’s body was found?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you still claim that you didn’t see him?’
‘It was dark, sergeant, and raining quite heavily. Most of the time I was groping and crawling around up to my waist in mud. Mr Lickes was around somewhere and I never saw him, either. Frankly, I was too worried about slipping down the hillside myself to bother about what other people were doing.’
‘But there were other people about?’
‘Yes, but it’s no good asking me who they were. They were just vague figures and I simply didn’t notice. There were people dead and dying all round me, you know. Well,’ – he realized this was a trifle over-dramatic – ‘injured, anyhow.’ Dover was turning a distinctly lack-lustre ear to these exchanges. Since he had failed to nail Colin Hooper with one swift blow below the belt, his interest in furthering the cause of truth and justice waned. All, as far as his jaundiced eye could see, was rapidly turning to gall and wormwood. The tea was drunk, the biscuits eaten and even that bloody fire was dying down. The meagre crumbs of the Hoopers’ hospitality had been consumed and the red Algerian wine was gnawing sourly at the lining of his stomach. It was time to go.
‘Come on!’ he said to MacGregor.
MacGregor discarded the craftily phrased question he had just worked out. ‘But, sir . . .’
‘But, nothing!’ Dover extricated himself with a great deal of puffing and blowing from the depths of the sofa and screwed his bowler hat back on his head. While he waited for the stiffness to go out of his legs, he improved the shining hour by delivering a parting broadside in the direction of Colin Hooper. ‘You’ve had your chance, laddie! If you’d played ball with me, I’d have played ball with you. Next time I come knocking at your door there’ll be a warrant in my hand. For murder!’
Eight
‘Ungrateful bastard!’ grumbled Dover.
MacGregor didn’t need to ask to whom he was referring. In the short walk from the Hooper residence back to the Blenheim Towers they had already had this conversation three times.
‘And you’re no better,' continued Dover. ‘If you’d joined in instead of sitting there like a stuffed dumb-bell, he’d have cracked soon as look at him. Of course,’ he added with a burst of generosity, ‘I blame myself. I should have cut the cackle and bloodied his nose for him. That’s the only language his sort understand. A couple of good thumps round the ears and he’d have sung like the Luton Girls’ Choir.’
‘The wife . . .’ murmured MacGregor, recognizing his cue.
‘I thought we were going to have the brat arriving on the hearthrug as it was. If I’d really started roughing pretty boy up, she’d have gone into labour just to thwart me. Still, I’ll get the bastard yet.’
‘I’m afraid we haven’t got much against him in the way of evidence, sir.’
‘I know that, dolt!’ snapped Dover. ‘If we’d got any bloody evidence, we wouldn’t want a free and voluntary confession, would we? Didn’t they teach you anything at this posh school you’re supposed to have gone to?’
‘Mind you, sir,’ said MacGregor meekly, ‘he does admit to being in the area where Chantry was killed.’
‘So does Lickes.’
‘The way I see it, sir,’ said MacGregor, adjusting his pace to keep down with Dover’s unathletic waddle, ‘Mr Chantry must have been killed pretty soon after he rescued Wing Commander Pile. Apart from young Hooper, nobody admits to seeing him after that and I can’t help thinking somebody would have spotted him if he’d been around. He strikes me as the kind of fellow who would have made his presence felt, even in the middle of an earthquake.’
Dover was wrapped up in his own speculations. ‘Maybe Lickes did it,’ he mumbled as they turned into the hotel drive. ‘Or Pile. He’s got a very shifty look, that fellow.’
‘But has he any motive, sir? He doesn’t appear to stand to gain in any way from Chantry’s death and, by all accounts, they were the very best of friends. And Chantry had just saved his life – or as near as makes no difference.’
‘The potty daughter could have done it.’
‘Without her father knowing, sir?’
‘Well, he’d cover up for her, wouldn’t he?’
‘I doubt if Miss Pile would be anything like strong enough, sir. I’ve been checking through the medical reports again. Considerable physical strength was used and, although Chantry wasn’t by any means a husky sort of chap, I think he’d have been more than a match for Linda Pile. Manual strangulation, sir – that means she’d have had to have done it with her bare hands.’
Dover plodded up the steps to the front door. ‘They have the strength of ten.’
‘So I’ve heard, sir.’ MacGregor followed-his chief inspector into the pitch-dark hall and wished, as he had often wished before, that Dover wouldn’t base all his scientific observations on old wives’ tales. ‘Oops – I beg your pardon, sir!’
‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ snarled Dover who had stopped dead in his tracks precisely because he couldn’t. ‘Where’s the light switch?’
Under the cover of darkness MacGregor backed off a foot or two and surreptitiously brushed down his coat. He was inclined to be rather over-fastidious. ‘I’m afraid I’ve no idea, sir.’
‘Trust you!’ Dover peered around. ‘The bloody fools! Somebody might break their neck, groping around in the dark like this. Here,’ – he grabbed hold of MacGregor and pushed him forward – ‘you go first.’
MacGregor fished his cigarette lighter out and in its flickering light the pair of them shuffled their way gingerly across the hall and up the stairs. Dover, as was only to be expected, made the worst of a bad job and their noisy progress was peppered with heartfelt obscenities as he blundered into walls and furniture.
‘Damned morons!’ he bellowed as he reached the first-floor landing and he mounted a final stair which wasn’t there. ‘What do they think they’re running, for God’s sake? A bloody nunnery?’
MacGregor fumbled hopefully along the wall for the light switch. ‘It is getting rather late, sir.’
‘Late?’ Dover knocked over a chair which should never have been there in the first place. ‘Nine o’clock isn’t late, even in this superannuated doss house.’
‘Actually, sir, it’s nearly a quarter past eleven.’ MacGregor found the switch and thankfully put the landing light on.
‘Rubbish!’ muttered Dover, propping himself up against the wall to recover his breath.
‘If you’d like to hang on here a second, sir, I’ll just run upstairs and switch the light on up there.’
Dover eyed MacGregor suspiciously. ‘What the hell are you whispering for?’ he demanded.
‘I think everybody’s in bed asleep, sir.’
This educated guess was only half accurate, in the case of Mrs Boyle. In bed – yes – but no longer asleep. Roused now both to wakefulness and blind fury, she seized the shillelagh which she kept by her bed to repel invaders and began to belabour the wall. The violence of her blows woke up everybody who had not already been disturbed by Dover’s return.
MacGregor turned tail and fled upstairs but Dover was made of sterner stuff. ‘I’m going to the bathroom first,’ he shouted after his retreating sergeant. ‘It’ll save me coming down those bloody stairs again.’
For the ensuing ten minutes the Blenheim Towers Private Hotel rocked to the cacophony of a hideous duet. As Dover pulled chains, banged seats and slammed doors, Mrs Boyle retaliated with ever more frenzied whacks with the shillelagh. Honours were about even when Dover emerged with a final crash from the bathroom. He was about to indulge in a subtle change of tactics by initiating a short pause in the proceedings. If all went accord
ing to plan Mrs Boyle would drop her guard – and her shillelagh – whereupon Dover would take the final and uncarpeted flight of stairs up to his room con brio.
An unnatural peace descended as Dover stood motionless in the middle of the landing and held his breath. He’d reckoned on maintaining the cease fire for a good five minutes but boredom set in after the first thirty seconds. He glanced around for something to occupy his bird brain, or even a chair to sit on, and saw that there was a chink of light coming from under the door of Miss Kettering’s room. Dover sniggered softly to himself and tiptoed across. Repressing a grunt he bent down and applied his eye to the keyhole. If it hadn’t been for his lumbago he would doubtless have been able to assume an upright and innocent stance before Miss Kettering had got her door completely open.
‘I thought it was you,’ whispered Miss Kettering triumphantly as Dover straightened his back with a wince. ‘I could hear your tummy rumbling.’ She inclined her head. ‘Are you coming in?’
Dover hesitated, not wishing to be compromised by a temptress of such a hoary vintage.
‘Oh, come on!’ urged Miss Kettering. ‘You can’t go on patrolling all night without a bit of a break. Besides, I’ve just treated myself to a box of liqueur chocolates.’
The creak of Dover’s boots as he stepped over the threshold proved that Miss Kettering had found the way to the heart of at least one man. Very sensibly she paved the path with no less than three liqueur chocolates and chatted merrily on while Dover let a stream of orange curagao, kummel and cherry brandy trickle down his gullet.
‘I think it’s so brave of you, dear, keeping guard on us all through the night. And it’s not as though you’re a young man, is it? Oh,’ – she tapped Dover reassuringly on the arm – ‘you needn’t look so taken aback! I realize it’s meant to be a great secret and I haven’t mentioned it to a soul. Well, it was pretty obvious, really – you spending all your days in bed and your nights wandering round the hotel. What else could you be doing? I must confess I did think of telling Mrs Boyle because her attitude is most unreasonable, isn’t it? But then I thought it would only alarm her unnecessarily if she found out the truth. Do you honestly think the murderer is going to strike again?’
‘Ugh,’ said Dover, his dentures cemented together by a wedge of chocolate.
‘Have another!’ cooed Miss Kettering. ‘Take two while you’re at it.’
Dover obliged and got drambuie and green chartreuse this time. The combination was fierce and his head gave an involuntary twist.
Miss Kettering, jumping like a gazelle to false conclusions, thought he was looking round her room. ‘I’m afraid you must think everywhere’s in a terrible mess,’ she simpered.
‘Oohwaagh!’ said Dover and accepted another chocolate to take the taste of the last lot away.
‘I call it my little museum of the occult,’ twittered Miss Kettering proudly. ‘It may not look like it, you know, but I can lay my hands on anything I want at a moment’s notice. My tarot cards, a unique collection of love philtres in those bottles, coffin nails, my astrological charts on the wall, my voodoo drums over there in the comer.’ Miss Kettering waved her hands expressively round the room. ‘My goodness, you certainly need some equipment these days!’
‘Gurawuff!’ said Dover, mopping his forehead.
‘Have another!’ Miss Kettering urged him. ‘Go on, dear – force yourself! Now, over there in that other comer,’ – she pointed to where the edge of the carpet had been turned back – ‘that’s where I’m practising my magic circles. Of course, you can’t even start summoning devils before midnight but I thought I’d better have a quick run through first. You get absolutely no protection if you make a mistake, you know, and all these signs and things are terribly complicated. Do you like my stuffed raven? I really ought to have a black cat, too, but Mrs Boyle made such a fuss when I barely broached the idea.’
Dover removed his bowler hat so that the air could get to his head and leaned weakly against a table. Miss Kettering, a little disturbed by the way his eyes had suddenly gone a funny red, pushed the box of chocolates at him. Dover focused his eyes and, at the second attempt, made his selection.
‘Ah,’ said Miss Kettering, getting a mite flustered and moving her ouija board out of harm’s way, ‘I see you’re admiring my dollies.’
‘Your dollies?’ gasped Dover. He calculated that it was worth jollying the old trout on since the chocolate box was not yet empty.
‘Yes. You know, the effigies one makes of one’s enemies. I should have thought you would have known about them. I did them quite early on in my correspondence course. Mind you,’ – she picked up the plumpest dolly and adjusted one or two of the pins sticking in it – ‘there’s a lot more to it than just making the models. You need to incorporate a wisp of hair or a few nail clippings for the best results. And then the incantations are most important. It took me simply hours to get this one fixed up.’
Dover looked somewhat sceptically at the plump dolly. ‘Does it work?’
Miss Kettering sighed. ‘Not as well as the correspondence course people led one to anticipate,' she admitted sadly. ‘But I have had one or two minor successes.’ She indicated a large pin which had been thrust through the middle of the dolly’s left leg. ‘She did complain of rheumatism five days after I jabbed that one in.’
Seeing that Miss Kettering’s attention was concentrated elsewhere, Dover quietly helped himself to another chocolate. ‘She?’ he questioned through a bulging mouth.
Miss Kettering giggled and looked suitably shamefaced. ‘Can’t you guess?’ She held the dolly up so that Dover could see it better.
Dover caught a stream of anisette before it dripped right off his chin and examined the dolly more closely. The hair fashioned out of corrugated paper painted silver? The crudely thick ankles? The huge nobbly nose? ‘Not Mrs Boyle?’
‘Who else?’
Dover looked at the figurine again.
Miss Kettering could read his mind like an open book. She selected a businesslike hatpin from the collection on the table. It had a carved jet bead on the end. ‘Would you like to try your luck?’
Dover considered it obligatory to make his position quite clear. ‘A load of old codswallop,' he remarked as he accepted the pin.
‘Of course, of course, dear!’ Miss Kettering pushed the dolly into Dover’s hands and trotted off to her bookshelf to find a spell with a really good punch to it.
Dover blew dubiously down his nose. Oh, well, you never knew – and they did say it was the thought that counts. He turned the dolly over, selected a likely looking spot in the area of the lower back and struck.
‘That’ll make her sit up!’ grinned Miss Kettering, coming back with one of the handbooks from her correspondence course. ‘Have another . . . Oh, we seem to have eaten them all! What a couple of greedy grunters we are! Do you know, that was a pound box! Oh,’ – as Dover began to edge towards the door – ‘you’re not going, are you? I was hoping you’d give me a hand with the incantations. I suppose duty calls, does it? Oh well, I mustn’t detain you but hang on just a sec while I see if I can find you an amulet.’ Miss Kettering scurried over to her dressing-table and began hunting through the drawers. Dover, on the off chance that you might be able to eat it, stood upon the order of his going.
‘Here we are!’ Miss Kettering waved a small brown object about the size and shape of a pill box gaily over her head. ‘Now, if I can just find those silly old thongs . . . Got them!’ She advanced purposefully on Dover.
‘What do you do with it?’ he demanded.
‘Well, actually you’re really supposed to wear it strapped across your forehead. I got it from one of those mail-order firms and there was a picture of an Onondaga Indian Squaw wearing it that way.’ Miss Kettering acknowledged that this was unlikely to lure Dover. ‘You could keep it in your pocket, I should think,’ she went on, ‘and I’m sure the smell will go off completely in time.’
Dover was not one for putting himself out for
anybody but he showed his gratitude by letting Miss Kettering down gently. ‘I reckon I’ll go on relying on my strong right arm,’ he said modestiy.
‘Oh well, perhaps you’re right.’ Miss Kettering dropped the amulet back in the drawer. ‘After all, it’s all in the mind, isn’t it? And you’ve nothing to worry about.’
‘Haven’t I?’ said Dover.
‘I can tell by your aura,’ confided Miss Kettering, finally establishing herself as a witch of many parts. ‘It’s all there. You’ll die in your bed all right.’
Dover didn’t find this prognostication quite as reassuring as Miss Kettering doubtless intended it to be but, on the whole, he was feeling pretty pleased with life as he stumped up the stairs to his room. He’d forgotten all about his plan to catch Mrs Boyle napping but he managed it just the same. The row he kicked up brought her with a jolt out of a shallow sleep and for a few seconds she couldn’t imagine where she was or what was happening. Then comprehension dawned and, gritting her teeth, she groped for the shillelagh. It was not Mrs Boyle’s night and for a long time she couldn’t find it. When at last she fished it out from where it had rolled under the bed, she had missed the bus. Dover’s second boot had long since walloped into the ceiling immediately over her head.
Mrs Boyle sank impotently back, quivering with rage. Never had she endured such humiliation, not even from the late admiral who had once, early in their married life, tried to assert himself. She set her jaw grimly. One who had successfully cowed the Knave of the Nore in the full flush of his manhood was not going to be beaten by an overblown Bow Street Runner. She began to plot a hideous revenge.
