Dover Two

by Joyce Porter

  Marrying ladies is me game!

  When I’m tired of their charms and grace,

  I bash ’em with a hatchet in the face!

  Oh, Big’mous Bertie is me name!

  Marrying ladies is me game!’

  Dover scowled at them and hurried on.

  Chapter Seven

  Over Lunch in the Station Hotel, MacGregor, who in spite of being so handsome and suave really was a bit of a prig, took it upon himself to remonstrate with his chief inspector about his somewhat unethical behaviour towards the Pie Gang. Dover’s lower lip protruded more and more. He bitterly resented criticism from any quarter and to have some jumped-up little detective sergeant laying the law down to him – well, it was more than human nature could bear! The fact that this untimely rebuke was fully justified only made things worse.

  ‘Whichever way you look at it, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out, primly self-righteous, ‘it was compounding a felony now, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ snarled Dover sulkily. His knowledge of the finer points of the law had some curious gaps in it but, just occasionally, he knew what he was talking about. ‘ From what I remember about compounding felonies, you’ve got to do it for some monetary gain. And I didn’t!’ He shovelled a large forkful of food into his mouth.

  ‘Well, whatever heading it comes under,’ retorted MacGregor, ‘it was an offence of some sort. You bribed those young beats by offering to return that gun to them, although they’ve no legal right to hold fire-arms and it’s probably stolen anyhow, and you’ve promised to conceal the fact that they were the ones who made an armed attack, of all things, on St Benedict’s church hall. It’s really going a bit too far, sir!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody squeamish!’ growled Dover. ‘You young coppers are all the same – frightened of your blooming shadows!’

  ‘But there’d be the devil of a row if it came out, sir,’ protested MacGregor. ‘Why, they might even give you the sack for it!’

  ‘It won’t come out! Not unless you start grassing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of saying a word, sir, you know that. But the fact remains, you really shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Phooey!’ Dover blew contemptuously down his nose. ‘I got results, didn’t I? You’ve got to sail a bit near the wind at times and the sooner you get that into your head, the better detective you’ll be. If I’d gone in with kid gloves on and asked ’ em a few polite questions, we’d have got the same answers as the local police did. And a hell of a lot of good that would have been to us! At least we know now where that gun was lost – right on the scene of the crime! It’s worth a bit of fiddling to get information like that.’

  MacGregor still looked puritanically unconvinced and Dover gobbled up his ice-cream with grim malevolence. When MacGregor produced his cigarettes, Dover very nearly refused one in a fit of pique. However, he decided to be magnanimous and grudgingly pulled one out of MacGregor’s elegant silver case.

  ‘What do you think about Miss Leddicoat’s evidence, sir?’ asked the sergeant, thinking that a change of subject might now be wise.

  ‘Dunno,’ replied Dover grumpily. ‘Interesting bit of background, but I can’t see it makes all that much difference, really. It’s not the first time a daughter’s been passed off as a younger sister and I don’t suppose it’ll be the last. Might explain why the pair of ’em were so keen on wedding bells, though. Once bitten, twice shy, as you might say.’

  ‘What are we going to do this afternoon, sir?’

  Dover shot MacGregor a look of loathing. ‘Well, you can go and write up your reports. I’ll meet you down here at, oh, at three o’clock. I’m going to go and have a quiet think about things in my room. And I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  The two men parted, MacGregor to produce a suitably fictionalized account of the evidence they had received from the Pie Gang and Dover to have a peaceful postprandial snooze, flat out on the top of his eiderdown.

  At three o’clock they set off to view the scene of the first crime.

  Isobel Slatcher had been shot on the corner of Church Lane where, for no apparent reason, it took a sharpish bend around St Benedict’s vicarage and the vicarage garden.

  The police car drove carefully and slowly – Dover didn’t permit anything over thirty m.p.h. even on a motorway – down Corporation Road and then gingerly turned right into Church Lane. Although Corporation Road was one of the main shopping streets in Curdley, Church Lane, lying at the far end and away from the town’s centre, was a quiet little backwater. The surface of the road was still cobbled and the main railway line ran along the entire length of the left-hand side. The railway was in a cutting and a ten-foot-high blank wall with bits of broken glass set in the top effectively kept the general public off the tracks.

  On the right-hand side, at the corner where Church Lane entered Corporation Road, was St Benedict’s churchyard, now full and no longer used for burials except in one or two of the family vaults which still had spare accommodation. Farther along Church Lane stood St Benedict’s Church itself. It was a massive, blank-walled, Victorian building in a slate-grey granite. The stained-glass windows were set high and covered with wire netting, a reasonable precaution taken by every church and chapel of whatever denomination in Curdley. Next to the solid block of the church and still on the right-hand side of Church Lane came the vicarage garden. The Lane took a quite pronounced right-hand bend here and it was just on this comer that Isobel Slatcher had been shot. The vicarage garden, like the railway lines on the other side of the road, was boxed in by a high stone wall, embellished along the top with bits of broken glass and a strip of rusty barbed wire. Proceeding along Church Lane, round the wall of the vicarage garden, you came next to the vicarage itself, which was contemporary with the church. Then came St Benedict’s church hall, a more modern brick building, with a fish and chip shop next to it on the far side. Beyond the fish and chip shop lay a row of bleak, small houses, most of which had broken out into an unfortunate rash of do-it-yourself front doors and chromium knockers.

  The police car stopped outside the main entrance to St Benedict’s Church and Dover and MacGregor got out with some reluctance to pursue their investigations. A light, soot-filled drizzle had begun to fall and every now and again there was a heavy rumble as an unseen train passed by on the other side of the wall. The two detectives walked to the bend in the road.

  ‘Must have been about here, sir,’ said MacGregor, tapping the pavement with his foot.

  ‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘Right under the wall of the vicarage garden, eh?’ He looked around him and sighed. ‘This curve’s so shallow here that nobody coming from Corporation Road, or from the other way past the vicarage, would be able to see a damned thing if they were more than twenty yards or so away.’ He looked up. ‘No street light either,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I suppose that’s why the murderer chose the spot,’ said MacGregor brightly.

  Dover scowled at him.

  There was a pause while both men damply surveyed their surroundings.

  ‘It’s a bit depressing, sir, isn’t it?’ ventured MacGregor.

  Dover ignored him and turned to face the direction from which they’d come. ‘ Now then,’ he muttered, ‘Rex Purse-glove must have been waiting down there, on the corner of Church Lane and Corporation Road – just by the graveyard, in fact. Now, he hears the shots and after a few minutes, when he’s worked his courage up – thank God we’ve got a Navy! – he comes walking along towards where we are now, past the graveyard and past the church.’

  The chief inspector walked a few yards towards Corporation Road and looked round again. Sergeant MacGregor trailed along behind him, thinking slightly more about what the rain was doing to his new shoes than about the as yet unsolved murder of Isobel Slatcher.

  ‘Now,’ Dover went on more loudly, ‘assuming, as we unfortunately must, that Mr Rex Purseglove is not the murderer, we shall also have to assume that he was speaking the truth about what happened when his girl frie
nd was shot, shan’t we?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Right. Well, he said that he didn’t see anybody coming away from the body towards him and Corporation Road, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In that case, whoever shot the girl must have cleared off in the direction of the vicarage and the church hall, mustn’t they?’

  ‘Well’ – MacGregor looked round for himself – ‘I don’t know about that, sir. They needn’t have stuck to the road at all, need they? They could have nipped off somewhere else – hidden for a bit, perhaps?’

  ‘Where?’ sneered Dover.

  ‘Over the railway wall?’

  ‘Don’t talk wet!’ snapped Dover. ‘Look at it, you fool! Nobody could scale that without a ladder, and I’ll bet there’s a sheer forty-foot drop on the other side.’

  ‘They could have slipped into the church itself.’

  ‘Bet you half a dollar that door’s locked. Go and check it.’

  It was.

  ‘That’s two and six you owe me,’ said Dover. ‘Hand it over. Thanks.’

  ‘How about the churchyard? That wall’s not all that high.’

  ‘It’s not all that low, either,’ retorted Dover. ‘Anyhow, it’s too near to where Purseglove was standing. Even he would have his ears pricked after those shots. He’d have been bound to hear or see somebody as close to him as that.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a gate in the wall of the vicarage garden?’

  Dover frowned. ‘I didn’t notice. Let’s have a look.’

  They walked back.

  ‘There,’ said MacGregor triumphantly, ‘I thought I’d seen one.’

  ‘All rusted up,’ snorted Dover. ‘Look at those hinges and the lock. Thing’s not been opened for years.’ He gave it a kick. ‘See? It’s stuck fast. That’s out!’

  MacGregor tried to open it without success.

  ‘Well, there you are!’ concluded Dover, displaying rather excessive satisfaction. ‘Whoever shot her ran off in that direction, past the vicarage and the church hall.’

  MacGregor suppressed a disloyal desire to ask, so what? After all, the old fool was doing his best.

  ‘What time is it?’ asked Dover. This was another of his annoying little habits. Although he had a watch (presented to him in gratitude by a multiple murderer who, thanks entirely to Dover’s blundering, had escaped his just reward and now kept a betting shop in Bognor Regis), he never dreamed of using it, but expected his current sergeant to provide him with the time.

  ‘It’s getting on for four, sir.’

  ‘Well, let’s go and call on the Vicar. Might be able to scrounge a cup of tea off him.’

  Mr Bonnington, however, was not in. He had not yet, so his housekeeper informed them, returned from the Sunday school which was held in the church hall. Dover intimated that in that case they would come inside and wait. The housekeeper eyed them suspiciously and didn’t seem reassured when Dover announced that they were detectives from Scotland Yard.

  ‘Well,’ she said grudgingly, ‘I suppose it will be all right, though what on earth you’re doing detecting on the Lord’s Day I can’t imagine.’ She swung back suddenly on them. ‘You’re not Holy Romans, are you?’

  ‘No,’ snapped Dover, pushing his way firmly inside. ‘We’re not!’

  ‘No,’ agreed the housekeeper unexpectedly, ‘I suppose coming from Scotland Yard you wouldn’t be – otherwise that Bigamous Bertie man would never have been caught. He was a Catholic, you know. Hanging’s too good for the likes of him.’

  ‘I think he only posed as a Catholic,’ said Dover, groping his way along seemingly endless dark passages in the housekeeper’s wake.

  ‘They got him in the end. Don’t you read the papers? He was converted to Rome just before they hung him. Oh well,’ she sighed grimly, ‘we all know where he is now!’

  She showed them into her kitchen. ‘ You’ll have to wait down here where I can keep an eye on you. I can’t take the responsibility of letting you loose all by yourselves in the Reverend’s study. You can sit down over there.’ She pointed to a couple of uncomfortable looking kitchen chairs. ‘ I’ve got to get on with my work. The Reverend’ll want a good hot meal inside him before he starts the evening service.’

  She began bustling around with pots and pans on the kitchen stove. The room was warm and there was a most marvellous smell of cooking in the air. Dover beamed hopefully, conscious of the fact that he’d not had a bite to eat since lunch and feeling sure that, in a Christian household, hospitality would be generous.

  ‘Mr Bonnington’s a widower, I understand,’ he remarked.

  ‘At the moment,’ agreed the housekeeper. ‘ His wife died four or five years ago – just before he came here. He’d already been appointed and it was too late to change it, but they’d never have agreed to him if they’d known he was going to stay unmarried all this time.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We see enough of celibacy with them Roman priests in this town. Scandalous, some of it is! We don’t want anything like that going on here! I could tell you a tale or two about some of the things that lot get up to.’

  ‘Really?’ said Dover.

  ‘They keep hinting to him that it’s about time he found himself another wife, but he keeps putting it off. I warned him only the other day that it’ll get to more than hinting soon.’

  ‘I should have thought he’d be able to find himself a wife easily enough.’

  ‘He could find a hundred! Every old maid in the parish has been setting her cap at him – and some of the young ones, too.’ She inspected something cooking inside the oven. ‘Mind you, he doesn’t want to go getting himself one of these green young girls for a wife. Not at his age and with his position. I’ve said to him many a time, what he wants is a more mature woman, one who’s had some experience of life, someone who can run his house for him and help him with the parish side of things. He wants a good respectable church woman, somebody his parishioners can accept.’

  ‘H’m,’ said Dover. ‘Are you married, Miss … er, Mrs …?’

  ‘Mrs Smallbone. I’m a widow.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘And do you live here?’

  Mrs Smallbone was scandalized. ‘I certainly do not!’ She drew herself up. ‘ I’ve got my reputation to think of, and so has the Reverend. Not that it wouldn’t be much handier all round if I did – obviously I could look after things much better – but I’m out of here every night by six o’clock or just after. This means he’s got to make do with a high tea before I go instead of a proper dinner, but as I’ve told him many a time he can’t have it both ways.’

  ‘So you weren’t here the night Isobel Slatcher was shot?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’d always gone by the time she arrived. If you ask me’ – Mrs Smallbone wiped her hands grimly on a towel – ‘that was part of the idea. I warned the Reverend about it. “ You’ll only get talk,” I said, “having a young woman like her coming here late at night when there’s only the two of you in the place.” He didn’t care much for it himself but of course he hadn’t the guts to stand up to her.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Isobel Slatcher was one of those who were setting their caps at Mr Bonnington?’

  ‘I’m not one to speak ill of the dead,’ retorted Mrs Smallbone self-righteously, ‘ but when you find unmarried women breaking their necks to do voluntary work for a parson who’s not married either – well, they aren’t always inspired by the welfare of the church. My guess is that if the Reverend had ever been such a fool as to ask Isobel Slatcher to marry him, she wouldn’t have said no. Apart from anything else, she wasn’t getting any younger, you know.’

  ‘Was Mr Bonnington interested that way?’

  ‘Not him! He could do a sight better for himself than Isobel Slatcher – and he knows it!’

  Dover gazed moodily at Mrs Smallbone who was now energetically laying one end of the kitchen table for Mr Bonnington’s high tea. She was, depressingly, only laying one place. Dover blew cro
ssly down his nose.

  ‘By the way,’ he asked, ‘ do you remember, about a fortnight or three weeks before Isobel Slatcher was shot, some gang of boys raided the church hall one evening – a Monday, I think it was?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ said Mrs Smallbone. ‘It was some of those young Catholic hooligans – not that they were ever punished for it, but you get used to that in this town.’

  ‘Do you know what happened?’

  ‘Well, I wasn’t there myself but I heard all about it. It was the Men’s Bible Class and, apparently, they’d just got settled down when these teenagers came bursting into the hall. There was hundreds of ’em and they were all wearing masks and brandishing coshes and knives and heaven knows what. Mr Purseglove told me they all came in whooping and screaming like a pack of wild Indians, smashing and breaking everything in sight. Well, the men in the Bible Class were a bit taken aback at first. After all,’ she commented sardonically, ‘it’s one thing to read about being martyred for the faith, and quite another to volunteer for it. However, one or two of ’ em were a bit more courageous than the rest and they led what I suppose you’d call a counter-attack. There was quite a bit of talk afterwards in the parish, I can tell you, about who was at the front and who was at the back. Charlie Bates, for example. He stands over six foot in his stocking feet and he’s supposed to have been no end of a boxer in his day. He took to his heels and cleared off out through the back way. Said he thought there might be some more of those little devils coming in from the back – but there’s not many who believe him. Mr Purseglove on the other hand, although he doesn’t look as though he could pull the skin off a rice pudding, he collected a black eye and gave as good as he got by all accounts.

  ‘Well, once they saw what they were up against, these young limbs of Satan beat a hasty retreat. Our chaps went tearing after ’em but they didn’t catch anybody. Mr Ofield chased ’em down as far as Corporation Road – ’ course, he’s a good bit younger than some of the others – but even he couldn’t catch any of them. The next day half the Bible Class were sporting bruises and cuts – and weren’t they proud of ’em! The vestibule of the church hall looked like a battlefield – I can tell you that because I was one of the women who helped tidy it up. Oh, and the Reverend fell over a chair and sprained his ankle, so I’d him limping around like a wounded soldier for days afterwards.’