Dover Two

by Joyce Porter

  ‘She was.’

  There was a gasp of astonishment from Mr Bonnington. The woman turned viciously on him. ‘Well, what about it? She was my daughter and I loved her! Is that a crime? I made a foolish mistake when I was a girl – well, I’ve paid for it since. I only half knew at the time that what I was doing was wrong. In those days girls were left in ignorance until the night before they were married. At least, my mother never told me anything. I suppose she thought it wasn’t nice. Well’ – she laughed without humour – ‘she was right about that! I found out the hard way what beasts men are.’

  ‘My dear Miss Slatcher …’ began Mr Bonnington, feeling it incumbent upon him to offer some words of consolation and Christian forgiveness.

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry for me!’ she snorted. ‘God punished me for my wickedness, but He sent me consolation, too, in His infinite mercy. I had Isobel. I didn’t betray my trust where she was concerned. You know that, Vicar! You know I brought her up to fear God and live a clean and decent life.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ murmured Mr Bonnington. ‘Er, Inspector, is this all you came to discuss? I fail to see that it has much bearing on your investigations and it is obviously a topic which is extremely painful for Miss Slatcher, under the circumstances.’

  Violet Slatcher broke in. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter now,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to keep it a secret all these years. I’ve been afraid every single minute that some Nosy Parker’ – she glared at Dover – ‘would find out. But I wasn’t bothered about myself, I’ll have you know. I had sinned, and if the Lord wished to punish me by public shame – well, I must bow my head and submit to His will. That’s what the Bible teaches us, isn’t it? But I didn’t want Isobel to suffer. She was innocent. I didn’t want fingers of scorn pointing and mocking at her. Well, now she’s gone and I don’t care if the whole world knows of my shame.’ She drew herself up resolutely. ‘But I want her murderer caught and tried and hanged! That’s what I pray to God for on my knees every night!’

  Dover cleared his throat uncomfortably. ‘ Miss Slatcher,’ he said, ‘if we catch the man who shot Isobel when she left the vicarage, you do know that he won’t be hanged, don’t you?’

  Violet Slatcher stared at him, her eyes bright and feverish. ‘ Won’t be hanged?’ she repeated. ‘Why not? It’s capital murder. I know it is because I looked it up. Of course he’ll be hanged. All you’ve got to do is go out and arrest him.’

  Dover shook his head. ‘We shall only be able to charge him with attempted murder, you know,’ he said gently. ‘In a murder case the victim must die within a certain specified time, from the results of the attack.’

  Miss Slatcher tossed her head. ‘ Good heavens, man, I know that! It’s a year and a day. I looked that up too. I’m not a fool, you know.’

  MacGregor glanced up from his notebook and caught Dover’s eye. So that’s what he was getting at with his ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat’ hint. ‘They sailed away for a year and a day …’ Well, well, who’d have thought the old man had so much subtlety in him? Still, MacGregor felt extremely annoyed with himself. He shouldn’t have missed an obvious point like that, not a bright and up-and-coming young detective sergeant like Charles Edward MacGregor.

  Dover sighed again. He really wasn’t enjoying this at all.

  ‘So you knew that too, did you, Miss Slatcher?’ He took a deep breath. ‘Is that why you killed Isobel in the hospital on Friday?’

  ‘My God!’ That was Mr Bonnington whose mouth fell open in sheer astonishment.

  Violet Slatcher reacted in a peculiar manner. She looked extremely annoyed. ‘ What absolute nonsense!’ she snapped crossly, and tossed her head again. ‘If that’s all you can produce it might have been as well if you’d stayed down in London where you were. You’re obviously wasting your time up here, and the taxpayers’ money.’

  ‘No,’ said Dover, ‘I haven’t been wasting my time, and you know it. You loved Isobel and you wanted the man who shot her caught and punished, didn’t you? At first you thought she might recover, after all she was still alive. But then, as time went on, you realized that she was never going to get better. And you realized too, didn’t you, that people had just stopped bothering? The police seemed to have lost interest in the case and even your friends kept forgetting to ask you how she was.’

  ‘A nine days’ wonder!’ Violet Slatcher nodded her head bitterly. ‘That’s all she was to them, a nine days’ wonder. But I didn’t forget!’

  ‘No, but the doctors at the hospital finally made you realize that Isobel would never regain consciousness. She was condemned to a living death, and she might linger on like that for years and years.’

  Violet Slatcher wasn’t listening to him. When she spoke she seemed to be talking to herself. ‘She was already dead,’ she whispered. ‘Her soul was with God. It must have been. Only flesh and bones were left, but Isobel wasn’t there. I could do nothing more for her, nobody could, except to see that she was avenged. I saw Rex Purseglove’s mother. She told me that he was coming home on leave. She said it might be months before he got back to Curdley again. They’d posted him somewhere a long way off – I can’t remember where. I knew I had to act quickly, for Isobel’s sake. I got them to put that story in the Custodian. I knew Rex would see it when he came home. It must have scared the living daylights out of him, the cowardly little rat! I did wonder at first if that would be enough. If he’d be so frightened that she’d betray him and ruin his beautiful career that he’d sneak round to the hospital and finish off the job he’d already bungled once. But I daren’t risk it. I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to go through all that again. I had to do it all myself. I persuaded him to go round to see Isobel at the hospital. I knew he wouldn’t be able to miss a chance of showing himself off in his new uniform. I went to Isobel’s room just before he was due to arrive. Nobody noticed me. I held the pillow over her face. She didn’t suffer. I put the pillow back and left everything nice and tidy. Then I went to the bank as usual’

  The room was quiet. Mr Bonnington mopped his brow.

  ‘Well,’ said Dover, ‘that’s that. Did you get it all down, Sergeant?’

  Miss Slatcher gave herself a little shake. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked in a bright, unconcerned voice.

  ‘Not just now, thank you, madam,’ said Dover. ‘Sergeant, nip outside and bring that policewoman in. I think the sooner we get Miss Slatcher down to the station the better.’

  Mr Bonnington went over to her and took her hand. He spoke softly to her but she didn’t seem to understand. He looked questioningly at Dover. ‘I’m afraid …’ he said.

  ‘I reckon it’s the shock, sir,’ said Dover. ‘We’ll get a doctor to her. All things considered, she’s probably better like that for a bit. I don’t think she really understands what she’s done.’

  Mr Bonnington shook his head. ‘ She’s certainly been very queer and withdrawn lately, but I never suspected she was carrying a burden like this. Poor soul’ He swallowed hard. ‘They won’t hang her, Inspector, will they?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Dover. ‘By the look of her I don’t imagine she’ll ever even come to trial. And I can’t see the judge being very severe, even if she does.’ There was the sound of people coming into the hall. ‘Thank God, they’re here at last. We’ll get her away as quickly as we can. Don’t worry about her, sir. She’ll be looked after all right.’

  Things in fact went off quite smoothly. MacGregor fetched Miss Slatcher’s coat and she put it on calmly. She seemed to take quite a fancy to the young policewoman who had been brought to escort her and actually appeared pleased to have her support as they left the house and got into the waiting police car.

  Back in the sitting-room Dover pushed his bowler hat back on his head. ‘’Strewth!’ he said. ‘Thank God that’s over!’ He sat down heavily in his chair.

  ‘You were lucky, sir,’ MacGregor said.

  ‘You’re telling me!’ agreed Dover. ‘ I never thought she’d just give i
n quietly and admit the whole thing like that.’

  ‘Well, at least she’s got it off her conscience,’ said Mr Bonnington piously. ‘I still can’t really believe it. She still thinks that Rex Purseglove did the original shooting, I take it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Dover. ‘She was trying to frame him really. She was quite convinced he was the fellow who’d shot Isobel and she realized that he wouldn’t pay the full penalty of the law unless Isobel died within a year and a day. The law’s quite clear. If you linger on for a year and two days it might be grievous bodily harm, but it ain’t murder. Violet just wanted to make sure that this was a murder case, both to stir up the police investigation and to see Purseglove swing for it. Simple, really. Whichever way it turned out, whether we thought Isobel died from her injuries or whether we found out there’d been a second attempt to kill her, she hoped to see young Purseglove hang for it. Might have worked, too,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘Naturally, nobody’d expect that the girl’s own devoted sister – or mother – would kill her like that.’

  ‘And just to get a fellow creature hanged, too,’ said Mr Bonnington. ‘Dreadful, quite dreadful! Oh well, Inspector, I suppose you’ll want to get off now. You must have a lot to do. I’ll stay and lock the house up.’

  ‘No, that’s all right, thank you, sir,’ said Dover with a tremendous yawn. ‘I want to have a look round here first. Case isn’t closed yet, you know. We’ll see everything’s left safe and secure before we go. But there’s no need for us to detain you, sir. I don’t mind saying I was very glad you were here, but it’s all over now. There’s nothing more you can do for her tonight.’

  With some reluctance and repeated offers of help, Mr Bonnington finally took his leave. When the front door had at last closed behind him, Dover got to his feet.

  ‘Well, the first thing you can do, Sergeant,’ he announced, ‘ is get into that kitchen and make us both a cup of tea! I don’t know about you, lad, but I could damned well do with one.’

  MacGregor fumbled around in the kitchen and finally produced a pot of tea with an air which stated quite firmly that this was not the kind of chore which a detective sergeant should be asked to undertake. He was not entirely displeased when Dover commented unfavourably on the thin, straw-coloured liquid which came dribbling out of the pot.

  ‘What are we going to do now, sir?’ asked MacGregor.

  ‘Well, technically,’ said Dover, ‘we’ve found the murderer, and I suppose that’s all we were expected to do. Still, I think we’ll stretch our brief a bit. I’m damned if I’m going back without clapping the bracelets on the chap who was really responsible for that girl’s death. I don’t suppose they’ll be able to pin anything more than attempted murder on him, but I’ll have him behind bars for that if it’s the last thing I do!’

  MacGregor glanced curiously at Dover. He’d never seen the chief inspector in what you might call a crusading mood before. Catching criminals was just a job he was paid to do. But on this occasion he seemed to have been touched by the tragedy of Violet Slatcher, who had felt herself forced to kill her own daughter in order that the real criminal should not slip away scot free.

  ‘Do you think Miss Slatcher was right, sir? I mean, did Rex Purseglove do the shooting outside St Benedict’s – in spite of everything?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Dover grumpily. ‘I suppose we’ll have to go through the whole damned thing again from the beginning – now that we don’t have to bother about what happened in the hospital any more. Still, I don’t see how Rex Purseglove can have done it, even so. Anyhow, there’s not much more we can do tonight. We’ll have a look round here and see if there’s anything that’ll give us a clue. There might be something in Isobel’s past life that we haven’t cottoned on to yet.’

  ‘Hm,’ said MacGregor doubtfully, ‘but she’s not likely to have been able to keep much secret from Violet, is she, sir? I mean, if it was anything serious enough to lead to murder, surely the older woman would have found out about it, and she’d have been able to put two and two together, same as us. She wouldn’t have picked on Rex Purseglove so firmly if there’d been another candidate in the field.’

  ‘Violet Slatcher may have thought she knew everything about her daughter’s life,’ Dover pointed out wisely, ‘but that doesn’t mean that she actually did. When you’ve had a bit more experience, my lad, you’ll realize that there’s nobody to equal nicely brought up young ladies when it comes to living double lives. You get it all the time with these disappearing cases. Sixteen-year-old Mabel disappears one day and Mum tells the police, in all good faith mind you, that her daughter’s never had a boy friend in her life. And what do you find? Nine times out of ten she’s hopped it with the local butcher who she’s been having an affair with for the last two years. Parents don’t know everything about their kids, not even when they think they do.’

  When the two detectives had finished their tea and Dover had polished off a large piece of slab cake which he’d found in a tin – as he said, there was no point in letting it go mouldy – they set about their work.

  The Slatcher household didn’t appear to have been a wildly exciting one. Nobody had kept a diary or bundles of old love letters – or, indeed, any letters at all. MacGregor found a box of old receipts which went back about fifteen years and he unearthed the bank accounts of both women. Their expenses appeared to be highly reasonable in view of their income, and neither of them was overdrawn at the bank. The family photograph album came to an abrupt halt when Isobel was about ten – ‘Probably lost the flaming camera!’ commented Dover grumpily.

  They moved into Isobel’s bedroom, which Dover had half unconsciously been saving to the last, as a treat. If they were going to find anything it would surely be here. At the sight of the small, bleakly furnished room, his heart sank. He directed MacGregor to have a look through the chest of drawers and the wardrobe while he tackled the only remaining piece of furniture, apart from the narrow bed and an upright chair. With a grunt he sank on his knees by the small bookcase and peered at the books.

  ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘she may have been a staunch Protestant, but her reading was what you might call Catholic!’ He squinted up at MacGregor to see if this witticism had been appreciated. It hadn’t. Dover sighed crossly. ‘Come and look at this lot, MacGregor! Some old children’s books, and not a mark on ’ em, about half a dozen prayer books and four Bibles. Then we’ve got all these pious books – dear lord, the things people spend their money onl But take a shufty at this lot. Oh dear me! Married Love cheek by jowl with The Sexual Behaviour of the Human Male – and well thumbed too. She wasn’t going to be caught napping on her wedding night, was she?’

  He pulled himself to his feet. ‘ Look through all that lot, MacGregor, just in case she’s slipped a letter or something in one of ’em.’ He sat down on the bed with a sigh. ‘Then I think we might as well be getting back to the hotel. We aren’t going to find anything here.’

  But they were luckier than they had expected, or than Dover had any right to be. In one of the Bibles MacGregor did find a letter. Dover grabbed it before the sergeant had a chance to read it. After all it had been Dover’s idea to search through the books and he’d got the right to first look at whatever was found.

  The letter was written on a single sheet of cheap note-paper. There was no address and the date, ‘ Jan. 10’, gave no indication of the year. The handwriting was rather sprawling and none too easy to read.

  Dear Vic, I expect you will be surprised to hear from me after all these years but blood is thicker than water and I have nobody else to turn to. They have tracked me down at last and now they have got me. I expect you have read about it in the papers. You probably think I deserve all I have got coming to me but you can’t forget that however much has come between us, you are still my brother. I need money and I need it desperately. I know you are not a rich man but you must have some put away or be able to borrow some. What’s the good of being respectable if you can’t do that? I would like to
see you again but I realize this may be asking too much. Do try and send me the money, as much as you can. If I ever get out of this mess I swear to you I will go away abroad somewhere and you will never hear of me again. This is a matter of life and death.

  Yours with love

  Dover puzzled for a minute over the signature. ‘What do you think this is, MacGregor? Cuth?’

  ‘Looks more like Cath to me, sir.’

  Dover wrinkled his nose. ‘ Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’ He frowned. ‘A woman? Well, I suppose there’s no reason why not.’

  ‘Do you think it’s important, sir?’

  ‘Well, it’s odd, isn’t it? It’s the only thing we’ve found that’s in any way out of the ordinary. Why should Isobel Slatcher be hiding a letter like this, written to a man called Vic?’

  ‘Perhaps she found it in one of the books at the library?’

  ‘In that case, why preserve it so carefully in her Bible?’

  ‘Some people are like squirrels. They’ll hoard anything.’

  Dover shook his head. ‘ Not the Slatcher women!’ he said firmly. ‘They don’t keep bits and pieces of rubbish just for the sake of keeping them. You’ve seen that for yourself, MacGregor. Nothing’s wasted in this house, but there’s no old junk lying around either.’ He scratched his head. ‘No, if Isobel had found this letter somewhere and kept it to make paper spills or hair-curlers with I could understand it. But she didn’t. She kept it, presumably where Violet wouldn’t find it, as a letter. It must mean something.’

  ‘Perhaps she just slipped it absent-mindedly in her Bible – you know how you do, sir – and forgot about it.’

  ‘No.’ Dover shook his head again. ‘Look, she’s got four Bibles. This one’s a school prize. Look at the condition it’s in. She’s never used this one – why the thing’s hardly ever been opened.’ He cracked back the pages to prove his point. ‘ No, she put it in here deliberately. She hid it here. Point is, why? It’s not her letter, that’s for sure.’