by Joyce Porter
With a completely expressionless face the girl backed out and closed the door. They could hear her heels tapping on the pavement as she tottered off down the street.
Dover wrinkled his nose and Pedro shrugged his shoulders helplessly. ‘Thirty years ago,’ he remarked sadly to no one in particular, ‘my dad would have dropped down dead before he’d have let a moron like her get one foot in the business. Don’t tell me standards aren’t going down! Still,’ he sighed philosophically, ‘I suppose it’s the same in every profession. Now then, what was you asking? Oh yes, what time was Rex Purseglove in here. Well, half past seven – quarter to eight maybe. I can’t put it closer than that.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘Do you remember what he looked like? Did he look upset or worried or anything?’
‘Worried? He looked worried stiff! I’ve never seen him in such a state. Couldn’t sit still for a minute and kept looking at his watch every thirty seconds. I did wonder whether he’d come in to ask my advice about anything – you know. Sometimes these young chaps’d sooner come to me for a spot of help rather than bother their parents. It’s a bit less embarrassing all round and then, of course, I’ve got the right sort of contacts. Anyhow, before I could get over and have a quiet word with him he’d cleared off. Didn’t finish his coffee, either.’
‘You haven’t seen him since then?’
‘Not a hair of him. I heard he’d got his commission all right so I reckon my little diagnosis was wrong, eh? Still, he was dead chocker about something.’
And that was that. Not very helpful.
Outside Los Toros Dover stood for a moment, tossing a furious scowl at the police driver, and looked up and down the dreary, damp expanse of Corporation Road. MacGregor stood and looked too. They both spotted the pub at the same time. It stood on the other side of Corporation Road, just opposite Church Lane and St Benedict’s graveyard.
Dover sighed. ‘Might as well try,’ he said despondently. ‘ It’s the only place that’d be open at the right time. We’ll walk,’ he added quickly. ‘You tell that dangerous lunatic to follow us with the car. And tell him he’d just better watch it! Another trip like the last one and I’ll get him booted out of the Force before he knows what’s hit him!’
The public bar looked the best bet from the outside. From the inside it appeared to be a dead loss. There was only one customer, a dirty-looking old codger huddled in an ex-army greatcoat. His eyes lit up hopefully when he saw a couple of strangers walk in.
MacGregor ordered two beers.
‘Rotten evening,’ he observed chattily to the barmaid.
She looked at him sourly and slapped his change down in a pool of beer.
MacGregor turned the charm on. ‘You been here long?’ he asked with a winning smile.
‘Me and me husband took over last week. D’you want anything else?’
‘Just get me one of those pork pies, MacGregor,’ said Dover, carrying his beer away to one of the marble-topped tables.
As soon as MacGregor sat down, the old codger came over and joined them.
‘Welcome to the William and Mary,’ he said, grinning toothlessly.
Dover looked him up and down. ‘ Beat it!’ he said curtly.
‘Here,’ protested the old man, ‘ there’s no need to be like that! I was only trying to be friendly like. My old dad was a policeman,’ he added shrewdly.
Dover sighed and unwrapped his pork pie.
‘Cor!’ said the old man. ‘You’re not going to eat that, are you? They’ve had that on that there plate for five years to my certain knowledge. You’ll get food poisoning, that’s what you’ll get.’
‘Have you been coming here for five years?’ asked MacGregor, always the optimist.
‘Five years? I’ve been coming here every night for fifteen years, I have. Here, how old d’you think I am?’
‘Seventy-five,’ said Dover, who was pretty accurate in these matters, ‘and you look ninety!’
The old man shot him a glance of utter loathing and turned back to MacGregor, as being the more sympathetic, and generous character. ‘ My name’s Harry Twitchin,’. he said.
‘Well now, Mr Twitchin,’ said MacGregor, hoping that Dover would refrain from interrupting this delicate interrogation, ‘ do you remember the night that girl was shot round by St Benedict’s?’
‘’Course I do!’ retorted the old man. ‘First bit of excitement we’ve had round here since Fred Birtwistle’s wife come after him with an axe. Saturday, seventeenth February, it was. I remember it clear as yesterday.’
‘You were in here that night, were you?’
“Course I was. I was sitting over there by the window, looking out, same as I always do when there’s nobody else in the bar. That graveyard’s quite a place for courting couples, you know,’ he added with a chuckle. ‘Beats me what attracts ’ em, but some nights they’re well nigh queueing up to get in there.’
‘Do you know a young man called Rex Purseglove?’
“Course I do. Known his father for years, I have. And I saw him that night his girl friend was shot. She used to go round to the vicarage for about an hour every Saturday night, regular as clockwork, and this night she got herself shot I saw young Rex hanging about on the comer there, waiting for her. He’s waiting for his light-o’-love, I says to myself, but what good it’ll do him Gawd only knows because she never looked like much of a one for a bit of slap and tickle as far as I could see.’
‘I suppose you didn’t happen to notice the time, did you?’ asked MacGregor.
‘Of course he didn’t!’ snorted Dover. ‘The old fool’s making it all up!’
‘Here, who do you think you’re talking to?’ Harry Twitchin drew himself up with senile pride. ‘I’ll have you know that I’ve been a decent working chap all my life, and a good churchgoer too. I may be an old age pensioner but there’s no call for you to start insulting mel Some of you young whipper-snappers want to watch your manners. If your memory’s half as good as mine is when you’re seventy-four, you’ll be damned lucky! I can remember seeing Rex Purseglove standing over there on that corner the night Isobel Slatcher was shot as well as I can remember my own name.’
‘Of course you can,’ agreed MacGregor in a soothing voice. ‘We know he was standing there for a few minutes, but we want to establish exactly what time it was, if we can. Now, did you by any chance hear the shots?’
Mr Twitchin shook his head. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘All the doors and windows were shut. I didn’t hear no shots.’
Dover broke in. ‘Did Rex Purseglove stand on the corner for a second or two, and then go off down Church Lane, and then come back again a bit later on and wait on the corner again?’
‘No, he didn’t. He was only hanging about by the churchyard the once. You ought to know that. While he was waiting there he heard these shots and that’s when he set off down Church Lane and found this Slatcher girl lying on the pavement. His dad told me himself what happened.’
Dover grunted. ‘That’s what’s supposed to have happened,’ he said, stuffing the last lump of his pie into his mouth.
‘Are you hinting Harold Purseglove’s a liar?’ demanded Mr Twitchin ferociously.
‘Of course not, Mr Twitchin,’ said MacGregor hastily. ‘It’s just that we’ve got to check everything. I suppose as you didn’t hear the shots you wouldn’t have heard the train going by either?’
Mr Twitchin grinned. ‘ No, I didn’t hear the train going by, but’ – triumphantly – ‘I felt it! That London express is a great big heavy train and he goes through here at a fair lick, I can tell you. Nearly shakes the glasses off the bar some nights. He usually blows his whistle just after he’s gone through here and you can hear that if the wind’s in the right direction.’
‘I suppose you can’t remember,’ asked MacGregor very delicately, ‘whether Rex Purseglove had already left the corner and set off down Church Lane before the London express went by?’
Harry Twitchin withdrew, somewhat dramatically, into deep tho
ught. He closed his eyes and let his mouth drop open. It wasn’t often that anybody took such an interest in him – certainly not a couple of bigwigs like these fellows from London – and he was determined to stretch out his moment of glory for as long as possible. He opened one eye and observed with satisfaction that both the detectives were waiting expectantly for his answer.
He opened both eyes and closed his mouth. In spite of themselves, Dover and MacGregor leaned forward.
‘Very thirsty work, all this remembering,’ said Harry Twitchin saucily.
Dover gritted his teeth. ‘Oh, get the old … gentleman a pint of beer, Sergeant.’ He turned to Mr Twitchin. ‘And it had better be worth it,’ he threatened, ‘otherwise I’ll squeeze every last flaming drop out of you again!’
‘Right,’ began Mr Twitchin, clutching his pint happily and dribbling slightly on his ex-army greatcoat, ‘well, as it happens I can remember everything quite clearly – just like it was yesterday. I’ve got a good memory, I have. Inherited it from my dad. I told you he was a policeman, didn’t I?’
‘You did!’ growled Dover.
‘Well, there I was watching young Rex Purseglove this night we’re talking about and the reason I was concentrating on him; as you might say, was because there weren’t nobody else about at all. Rotten, nippy sort of night it was. Well, I guessed he was waiting for his lady friend coming out of the vicarage and he was getting a bit impatient like, dithering about, you know, and looking at his watch. Well, then he suddenly lifts his head and listens.’
‘The shots?’ demanded Dover.
‘No, the train! He sort of turned towards the railway line as it went by, not that he could see anything, of course, and then he looked at his watch again. ‘Course, I felt it rumbling past, shaking everything in here, and I knew it was the old London express going through.’
‘How long after that was it before he went down Church Lane?’ asked MacGregor.
‘Oh, a couple of minutes, I should think. He looked down the Lane, peering sort of, and then he looked all around as if he was looking to see if there was anybody else about. He looked a bit puzzled like and he seemed to be trying to make up his mind – you know how it is. And then he set off, not hurrying, mind you, towards St Benedict’s. ‘Course, as soon as he left the corner there I lost sight of him. It was too dark to see him going down Church Lane.’
Dover fought to the last ditch. At first he refused to believe it and then he refused to admit that he believed it. He vented his spare wrath on the police driver, who submissively drove back to the Station Hotel at a hesitant fifteen miles an hour and listened with great interest to the two nebbies from Scotland Yard bickering away in the back like a couple of fractious kids.
‘Look, sir,’ said MacGregor for the tenth time, ‘there’s really no getting away from it. If Rex Purseglove was standing on that corner when that train went by he couldn’t have shot Isobel Slatcher. He just wouldn’t have had the time. Mr Twitchin says he was there for a couple of minutes after the London train went through and …’
‘I don’t give a damn what that old rag bag said!’ snapped Dover. ‘He’s making the whole thing up. His sort’d say black was white if they thought they’d get a free jug of beer out of it. And the way you asked the questions he knew damned well what you were after and said what he thought you wanted to hear. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the Purseglove gang hadn’t got together and bribed him.’ He leaned forward and bawled down the driver’s ear. ‘ Is that pub Protestant or Catholic?’ he bellowed.
‘The William and Mary, sir? Oh, Protestant, of course.’
‘There you are!’ crowed Dover triumphantly, as though this decided everything.
‘But, sir!’ MacGregor tried again. ‘Nobody else could know about Mr Dibb’s evidence, could they? I mean, it’s the two statements taken together, isn’t it, which are really significant? Mr Dibb said he heard the shots just after the train had passed him. Now I know it wouldn’t take long for the train to go along the side of Church Lane and past the William and Mary, but it would take some time and if Rex Purseglove was still there on the corner when it did, he couldn’t have got right down to the vicarage garden in time to fire those shots. Even if he left immediately he couldn’t – and we know from Mr Twitchin’s evidence that it was another minute or two before he even set off – and then he wasn’t hurrying.’
‘Twitchin is a bleary-eyed, drunken, lecherous old sot!’ snarled Dover. ‘And if you believe that he can remember all this a year after it happened, you’re as big a fool as he is!’
‘Eight months, sir,’ corrected MacGregor.
Dover glared at him and snorted furiously down his nose.
‘I don’t care if it was only eight bleeding minutes,’ he howled. ‘Rex Purseglove attacked Isobel Slatcher in February and killed her last week in the hospital! I’ll stake my professional reputation on that! This isn’t the first murder case I’ve been on, Sergeant,’ he added sarcastically.
Unfortunately MacGregor was not in a position either to query the value of the chief inspector’s professional reputation as a gambling stake or to point out that, although he had indeed been involved in a number of murder cases, Dover had brought embarrassingly few of them to a successful conclusion. The sergeant had to restrain himself to more acceptable arguments.
‘But surely you don’t think that Mr Dibb is lying, do you, sir?’
‘Might be,’ said Dover darkly.
‘But what about Rex Purseglove’s alibi at the hospital? Nurse Horncastle is quite prepared to swear he was never alone with Isobel Slatcher for one single second.’
‘I reckon that’s been fixed too,’ said Dover sulkily.
The police car slithered to a sedate halt outside the Station Hotel and Dover hurried inside. In spite of his bad temper, he ate a hearty dinner.
Chapter Nine
Monday Mornings are pretty dreary at the best of times and this one was no exception. Dover had had a sleepless night which he attributed to strain and worry about the case, but which was more likely caused by an overladen stomach. He came down to breakfast more boot-faced than ever and lost no time in burying himself in the morning paper. He now accepted, reluctantly, that Rex Purseglove was probably not the murderer – even Dover occasionally had to face up to facts – but he saw no reason for informing Sergeant MacGregor of his change of mind.
MacGregor quietly got on with his own breakfast having learnt by painful experience that there was no future in trying to jolly the chief inspector out of one of his black moods. The sergeant was not surprised to hear a snort of baffled fury from behind the newspaper. It just meant that Bigamous Bertie and Super Percy had once again forced themselves on to Dover’s attention. Three women had demonstrated outside the prison when Bertie had been hanged and had been hauled up in front of the magistrates the following morning. One of them had made quite an exhibition of herself in court too, and the papers had devoted a fair amount of space to reporting her somewhat incoherent remarks.
Dover flung the paper aside with a pungent comment on the probable motives of these women – all unmarried – who apparently wanted to preserve Bigamous Bertie as a national institution.
‘Half a loaf,’ he remarked enigmatically and maliciously, ‘is better than no bread.’
This idea that a man, any man, was automatically regarded by the opposite sex as a valuable and attractive item seemed to cheer him up a bit, and he glanced round the dining-room at the female breakfasters with the air of a pasha inspecting potential candidates for the harem. The choice presented to him was not an embarrassing one and, with a virile sneer, he turned his attention back to his bacon and eggs.
MacGregor judged it now safe to speak. ‘ What’s the programme for this morning, sir?’
Dover regarded him with a jaundiced eye. Nag, nag; nag! Could he never be left in peace and quiet for a moment? Everything was always pushed on to his shoulders. He’d got to make all the decisions, work out all the plans, carry the whole bloody burden
! He sighed deeply with self-pity and wondered, somewhat despairingly, what indeed their next step was going to be. If he couldn’t have Rex Purse-glove, he thought sulkily, he damned well didn’t want anybody!
MacGregor was still waiting.
‘We’ll go round to the library,’ said Dover, suddenly inspired. ‘Might get a lead there. Some of her fellow-workers might know something.’
‘We ought to have a chat with this fellow, Ofield, too,’ agreed MacGregor. ‘After all he was right on the spot when she was shot. He could have nipped out of the church door, shot her and popped back in again.’
Dover glared at his sergeant crossly. He hadn’t thought of that possibility. Dover didn’t like his sergeants getting too smart. He thought quickly of something to demolish MacGregor’s theory.
‘The key!’ he said with ignoble triumph. ‘ There’s only one key to the main door of the church and the Vicar had got that. He said so.’
MacGregor looked disappointed. ‘Maybe it’s one of those locks like a Yale – you know, you don’t need a key to open them from the inside?’
‘No.’ Dover squashed the idea. ‘ That’s not very likely. Too modern for St Benedict’s. But,’ he added generously, ‘you can check it some time if you like!
The Curdley public library, formerly known as the Mechanics’ Institute and Cocoa Rooms (this sonorous title is still carved irremovably in stone over the door) stands in Curdley’s main square, opposite the bus station. It is a perfect specimen of Victorian Gothic. Inside everything was very sombre and gloomy. Stained-glass windows depicting Labour, Science, Education and the Domestic Arts cannot be expected to provide much passage for mere daylight. Every item of furniture – the shelves, desks, step-ladders and chairs – seemed to have been carved out of mahogany for a race of giants.
Mr Ofield, as head librarian, had a private little office which he shared with those books which were not considered suitable for general consumption. If any inquiring student could summon up enough nerve to invade Mr Ofield’s sanctum he might, if Mr Ofield considered his motives pure enough, actually get what he asked for. This is not to imply that Mr Ofield himself was either a prude or excessively interested in the moral health of other people. He was in fact rather a progressive young man, but he had to live with his library committee. As part of the town’s endless bargainings, all the members were Protestants. (Sewage and waste disposal, on the other hand, were acknowledged Catholic enclaves.) They were also somewhat puritanical in their outlook but very conscientious: they personally read all the doubtful books before banishing them to Mr Ofield’s private office.
