by Joyce Porter
Dover took an instant dislike to Mr Ofield. He loathed all witnesses, whoever they were, because they were associated in his mind with work, and Dover was highly allergic to work. But Mr Ofield was a rather good-looking, slick young man who obviously thought himself vastly superior to the rest of Curdley. And, of course, he was. He clearly thought himself vastly superior to Chief Inspector Dover as well, but he wasn’t quite sure where he stood in relation to Charles Edward MacGregor, which was annoying for him.
Dover treated him to a preliminary hostile scowl.
Mr Ofield smiled thinly back at him through his stylish, prestige-bestowing, horn-rimmed spectacles.
‘Well, Chief Inspector, what can I do for you? We have several books in our collection here dealing with criminology.’ He smirked at his little joke.
Dover glowered at him. ‘ We’ve come to take a statement from you, sir’ – his words were heavy with innuendo – ‘about your relationship with the deceased Isobel Slatcher.’
No one was more surprised than Dover to see Mr Ofield go, quite suddenly, completely white, and then a painful scarlet. The chief inspector had just been indulging in a typical bit of spite, designed to take Mr Ofield down a peg or two and here he had, right out of the blue, hit the jackpot.
‘You realize, Mr Ofield,’ Dover went on, ‘that we’re dealing with a case of murder. A case of capital murder. Whoever murdered Isobel Slatcher will hang by the neck until he is dead.’
MacGregor, who had glanced at Dover with something like admiration as his stray shot had landed plumb on target, felt a familiar twinge of anxiety. He hoped the old fool wasn’t going to ruin everything by overplaying his hand. Oh God, he was! With one podgy hand Dover was clasping his own neck as if to prevent a ligature from tightening around it. Luckily Mr Ofield was too unnerved to notice this performance.
‘Yes,’ said Dover, gloatingly, ‘capital murder! Now then, are you going to give us a frank, straightforward account or’ – hopefully – ‘have I got to, er, take other measures?’
‘My … my dear Inspector!’ Mr Ofield made a valiant effort to pull himself together. ‘I really don’t understand what on earth you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t you?’ said Dover with an unpleasant grin.
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. It’s true that Isobel and I were, well, quite friendly at one time, but it was never anything more serious than that. And in any case, all this happened some considerable time ago.’
‘Oh, you jilted her, did you?’
‘No, I did not! Nothing of the kind. You’re trying to make out that a perfectly innocent relationship – I might almost use the word “platonic” – was much more serious than, in fact, it was. Two or three years ago Isobel and I used to go to concerts together occasionally – the Hallé and things like that. The odd foreign film, and a couple of times we went together to the ballet.’
‘In Curdley?’ asked Dover sceptically.
‘Of course not. In Manchester usually. There’s quite a good train service.’
‘And what brought these little cultural trips to an end?’
‘Well, it’s a bit difficult, really. After all the poor girl is dead and … Well, I realized after a bit that Isobel was, well, keener on me than she was on chamber music – if you follow me. Oh, you know what some women are like. They start getting possessive and looking in furniture-shop windows and asking how on earth you can manage without some blasted woman to look after you, and do you think church weddings are more romantic than registry ones. You know how it is. I could see the jaws of the tender trap opening and, well, frankly, I didn’t find the cheese attractive enough.’
‘So you broke it up?’
‘I made a tactful but strategic withdrawal. It wasn’t too easy, I can tell you, with both of us working here in the library. At one time I seemed to spend most of the day dodging out of sight behind the book stacks.’
‘And how did she take it?’
Mr Ofield frowned. ‘ Not too well, I’m afraid. And, of course, when she found out a bit later on I was engaged to be married to someone else she got, really, quite spiteful.’
‘Jealous, eh?’
‘Well, not only that. My wife’s Austrian, you see. And she’s also a Catholic. No doubt you know, Inspector, what that means in this town. As far as Isobel was concerned anything Catholic was like a red rag to a bull. We got engaged, Trudi and I, unofficially, last Christmas. We tried to keep things as quiet as possible because I knew there’d be a devil of a row when it got out and I wanted to try and break people in to the idea first. Well, somebody let the cat out of the bag! My parents nearly had fifty fits and the people at church started treating me as though I’d got an infectious disease. The chairman of the library committee came to see me. He’d had an anonymous letter of all things, and for a bit I really thought I was going to get booted out.’
‘And you think Isobel Slatcher was responsible?’
‘I’m damned well certain she was! My fiancée got an anonymous letter too, hinting at all kinds of filthy things about me and my past and I’ll stake my oath on it, Isobel wrote that. She damned nearly broke up my engagement. Of course, I’ve no proof that she was behind it all, but most of the furore seemed to die down after she was shot.’
‘Indeed?’ said Dover, glancing significantly at MacGregor.
Mr Ofield intercepted the glance. ‘But that doesn’t mean that I tried to kill her,’ he protested. ‘Good God, I wouldn’t dream of doing anything like that!’
‘Of course not, sir,’ said Dover blandly. ‘ But you were on the scene, weren’t you, when Miss Slatcher was shot outside St Benedict’s?’
‘I was practising in the church, but I didn’t even know anything had happened until I came in to work the next morning.’
Dover sniffed, not very reassuringly.
‘Were you attending the Men’s Bible Class when the Pie Gang raided it in January?’
‘Those young Catholic hooligans? Yes, I was. But what’s that got to do with it?’
‘Where were you on Friday morning last week, Mr Ofield?’
‘I was here.’
‘In this room?’
‘Well, here and in the library – you know, just like any other day.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Prove it?’ yelped Mr Ofield, now really worried. ‘Look here, you don’t seriously suspect me …?’
‘You’re on my list, Mr Ofield,’ said Dover smugly. ‘You’re on my list.’
‘But why?’
‘You’ve told us yourself! Isobel Slatcher, for various reasons, was out to make trouble for you. Thanks to her you might have lost your job, and your Austrian fiancee. Miss Slatcher was, most effectively, put out of action with a couple of bullets in her head and here you are – married, I think you said, and still Curdley’s head librarian. You haven’t got much of an alibi, have you, either for the first attack last February or for Friday’s more successful attempt?’
‘Oh my God!’ bleated Mr Ofield, clutching his head in bewilderment. ‘ You can’t be serious! I tell you I wouldn’t have hurt a hair of Isobel’s head! She was a nuisance, yes I grant you that – but so are lots of people and you don’t go around trying to blow their brains out.’
Dover sniffed. ‘Is it true,’ he asked, trying another tack, ‘that you are on the verge of leaving Curdley?’
With some reluctance Mr Ofield admitted he was. He wasn’t at all happy about the way the interview was developing, and had now reached the stage when he would have been suspicious if Dover had asked him what time it was.
In spite of Isobel Slatcher’s disappearance from the scene, Curdley, or that section of it which mattered, was not prepared to forgive and forget the unholy alliance which Mr Ofield had contracted. All the town’s social life, from golf to bingo, was strictly segregated, except for the annual reception which the mayor traditionally gave in the town hall at the end of his year of office. Here all parties gathered together and congratulated each other on the gr
owing tolerance and co-operation which had been observed in the previous twelve months. Nobody believed, or was expected to believe, a word of all this twaddle and everybody went cheerfully home, mentally girding up their loins for the next round in the battle.
‘Curdley’s an intellectual backwater,’ explained Mr Ofield, polishing his spectacles with an air. ‘ There’s no cultural life here at all. You can’t find anyone to have a serious conversation with about fundamentals – or about art or literature, or even good food, if it comes to that. I want to get somewhere where people really think and talk about something besides last night’s programme on the telly. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble building up a really good collection of progressive literature here – but do you think anyone reads it? Not on your life! All they want is books on breeding racing pigeons or do-it-yourself home decorating. No, I decided it was time to get out.’
‘And where are you going?’ asked Dover.
‘Er, Welwyn Garden City, as a matter of fact. Of course we shall be able to get up to London from there and see all the shows and exhibitions and things. Besides, Trudi doesn’t like the climate up here.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘By the way, did you see the report in last Thursday’s Custodian about Isobel Slatcher?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘What did you think about it?’
‘Well, I know it sounds awful but, to tell you the truth, I’d really half forgotten she was still alive. Such a lot seems to have happened recently what with me getting married and then going after this job in the South and the move and everything. Rotten shame, of course, somebody killing her like that just when there was a chance she might recover.’
Dover began to get bored. Out of sheer bloody-mindedness he made MacGregor write out Mr Ofield’s statement on the spot and amused himself while this was going on by examining Curdley’s collection of restricted library books. He found them a disappointing lot.
When the statement was ready, and there wasn’t all that much of it, MacGregor passed his one-and-sixpenny ball-point pen over to Mr Ofield. Mr Ofield refused it with a surprised, but kindly smile, and pulled an expensive-looking Sheaffer out of his waistcoat pocket. MacGregor’s face fell. It wasn’t often he got caught out on things like that.
Mr Ofield read the statement through carefully, corrected one or two minor punctuation mistakes and scribbled an impressive signature underneath in jet-black ink – Antony Victor Ofield, F.L.A.
The two detectives returned to the Station Hotel for lunch, both agreeing for different reasons that, all things considered, they’d as soon see Antony Victor Ofield hanged for the murder of Isobel Slatcher as anybody else.
‘Still,’ admitted MacGregor regretfully, ‘he doesn’t really look a very strong candidate, does he, sir?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ said Dover through a mouthful of Yorkshire pudding. ‘ He’d got a motive, you know, probably a damned sight stronger than he led us to believe. Isobel Slatcher could have done him quite a lot of harm and busted his marriage up as well. He strikes me as the kind of chap who’d go quite a long way when it came to looking after his own skin.’
‘And he could have got the gun.’
‘Yes, he could. And he could have nipped out of the church and shot Isobel and nipped smartly back in again. That’d explain why nobody else was seen in Church Lane after the shots were fired.’
MacGregor had a vague idea that somebody already had propounded this theory and had it pooh-poohed, but it was no good worrying about that now. ‘But why should he kill her last Friday; sir? He’s nothing to fear now. He’s got married and he’s on the point of leaving Curdley – why worry about Isobel Slatcher?’
‘If he shot her in the first place, you damned fool, he’d have plenty to be afraid of, wouldn’t he? If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times, MacGregor, whoever finished our Sleeping Beauty off in the hospital did it to stop her identifying him as the man who shot her last February. There can’t be any other motive! My God, if you can’t keep a few simple deductions like that straight in your head you might as well sign for your helmet and whistle and get back on the beat!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor, meekly turning the other cheek.
‘Now,’ Dover went on, ‘after lunch you get back to the library and see if you can find anything out about Ofield’s movements last Friday morning. See if he could have slipped out over to the hospital and croaked Isobel Slatcher.’
Privately MacGregor thought that it might have been better to have conducted such an investigation before lunch, and before Mr Ofield could have had a chance of coaching a few witnesses, supposing he had any inclinations that way.
‘Then,’ said Dover, ‘ you’d better go round to St Benedict’s and check the lock on that front door. If it can be opened from the inside without the key …’ He popped a lump of cheese into his mouth – ‘we’ll have another chat with Mr Ofield.’
Dover munched and thought. He’d already made up his mind as to how he was going to spend the afternoon but he wanted to be sure that MacGregor wouldn’t find time hanging on his hands.
‘While you’re at the library, Sergeant, you’d better ask the other girls there if they’ve got any revelations on Isobel Slatcher’s love life. There might be one or two more unwilling swains that we haven’t heard of yet. After all, she was twenty-eight, she must have had more than two near misses. And you might do a bit of tactful probing and see if they know any more about her relationship with Rex Purseglove and this Ofield squirt.’ Dover yawned unpleasantly and scratched his head. ‘You might turn up something. You never know.’
MacGregor hurried off happily like a dog let off the lead on a country walk, and Dover lumbered upstairs. Much to his annoyance he found that hordes of elderly women were pushing vacuum cleaners all round his room and those of his neighbours. There was no hope of having a quiet think up here. He lumbered back downstairs again and found a secluded corner in the writing-room. He settled himself luxuriously in one armchair and, having thankfully removed his boots, put his feet up on another. With a sigh he loosened his collar and undid the top button of his trousers. Thirty seconds later Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover, his mouth sagging open, was fast asleep.
He slept soundly until half past three. Most of the hotel staff and some of the other guests had been in to have a look at him – it was, after all, not a sight to be missed. However, their twittering mutters of shocked disapproval didn’t disturb Dover.
What did rouse him was the piping squeaks of a small child who had been brought into the near-by lounge for afternoon tea by an over-indulgent mother. While waiting for the tea to arrive – service was not rapid at the Station Hotel – the moppet grew impatient and fretful. After a short period of whining that she was hungry and a few tentative attempts at bawling (for which she received a sharp slap on the behind) she amused herself, and infuriated everybody else, by starting to recite poetry. Her repertoire was not large but her lungs were powerful and Dover groped back to consciousness to the accompaniment of a sketchy version of ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’.
‘“The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat.”’ The child’s shrill voice was barely within the range of the human ear. Dover scowled. ‘“ The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat.”’
With a groan of rage and despair – Dover didn’t approve of audible children – he closed his eyes and tried to shut the noise out, but the voice piped on, penetratingly if inaccurately.
‘“Wrapped up in a five-pound note.”’
Dover opened his eyes and glared in the direction of the disturbance.
‘“And they sailed away for a year and a day.”’ The needle stuck.
‘“And they sailed away for a year and a day,”’ repeated the child. ‘“And they sailed away for a year and a day. And they sailed away for a year and a day.”’
‘Hush, dear.’ That was the mother. Even her indulgence was becoming exhausted.
‘�
��And they sailed away for a year and a day!”’ bawled the infant gleefully. Dover reached grimly for his boots. ‘“And they sailed away for a year and a day! And they sailed away for a year and a day! And they sailed away for a year and…”’
The sound of a smack rang joyously through the hotel.
There was a moment’s delicious silence while the child drew breath, and then there came the outraged scream of pure fury.
Dover smiled. The scream was ear-shattering but, remembering the slap which had preceded it, and caused it, it was bearable.
The chief inspector finished tying his boot laces and, with difficulty fastened the top button of his trousers. Near by things quietened down as the tea at last arrived.
Suddenly Dover paused. His hands dropped in astonishment from his tie which remained twisted under one ear. ‘My God!’ he exclaimed aloud in a voice of reverent awe.
‘My God!’
He sat, staring vacantly into space, occasionally repeating his call to the deity in a hushed voice.
MacGregor, arriving hot foot from his solo mission, thought, with hope, that the old fool had gone off his rocker at last.
‘Oh, here you are, sir,’ he said brightly. ‘I thought you’d be in your room. Well, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t spent a very profitable afternoon. I went to the library first and I …’
‘Never mind all that twaddle!’ said Dover and added proudly, ‘I’ve had an idea!’
