Dover Two

by Joyce Porter

  Chapter Thirteen

  When Sergeant Macgregor, in later years, looked back to the Curdley Sleeping Beauty murder case, his dominant memory was of the seemingly endless breakfasts of which he and Dover partook together in the Station Hotel. Rightly or wrongly he remembered them as gloomy, long-drawn-out affairs, during which pathetically ineffectual attempts were made to repair the havoc wreaked on Dover’s theories of the night before. This Wednesday morning breakfast was so typical as to be almost a caricature of those that had preceded it.

  A damp depressing mist hung over the chimneys and slate roofs of Curdley, but it was nothing to the almost visible gloom which hung over Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover. Last night it hadn’t been quite so bad. Dover had been so irate at being baulked, once again, of his prey that sheer roaring bad temper had kept him going. The various reports from London and the local police which had come in during the course of the evening were only fuel to an already raging fire. Dover sat with his fat face drooping in sulky petulance while MacGregor sorted things out and gave him a precis. Dover’s reaction was a series of contemptuous grunts and snorts which were expressive of nothing except that the chief inspector was thoroughly fed up with everything and everybody connected with the death of Isobel Slatcher, including Charles Edward MacGregor.

  The reports, in fact, didn’t add up to much, anyhow. They only confirmed the reasonably accurate guesses which had been made in response to MacGregor’s earlier, urgent inquiries. The letter had quite definitely been written by Bigamous Bertie shortly after he had been arrested by Superintendent Roderick. There was no indication that his real name had ever been anything else but Cuthbert Boys and, apart from his numerous aliases, assumed for business reasons, he had made no attempt to change his name by deed poll or any other means. He had always been extremely reticent about his family and had never even given a hint that he had any surviving relations. He had no known connexions with Curdley, all his operations having been carried out exclusively in the South of England.

  Dover’s scowl deepened, and morosely he took his boots off, dropping them heavily one after the other on to the floor of his bedroom. It was now after midnight so there was a reasonable chance that this would disturb the sleep of whoever was on the floor below. Even this didn’t cheer Dover up much. After his ignominious defeat at the carefully manicured hands of Mr Ofield, the two detectives had returned to the Station Hotel three and a half minutes after the bartender had gone home for the night. Dover’s curses had been eloquent but he hadn’t been able to get a drink. That wine muck, which was Ofield’s idea of progressive hospitality, had upset his stomach and after two hasty visits to the lavatory he insisted on giving MacGregor a detailed account of what was probably going on inside him. MacGregor listened squeamishly and wished he dared tell the chief inspector that he had only himself to blame. His inability to refuse a free drink from anybody, even a murder suspect, had now brought its own appropriate retribution.

  All this – the reports, the closing of the bar, Dover’s boots and his stomach – helped to pass the time, but they didn’t bring the case any nearer to a solution. The chief inspector’s reaction to the latest setback was typical. He simply washed his hands of the whole affair. He was, he proclaimed, thoroughly fed up with the whole damned business, he’d had a hard day, his stomach was giving him hell, and he was going to bed. He didn’t much care if every second man in Curdley was an unapprehended attempted murderer; he’d had more than enough for one day. In fact, the way he was feeling at the moment, he didn’t give a tuppenny damn whether the fellow who shot Isobel Slatcher was ever brought to book. Scotland Yard’s files were full of unsolved crimes, and as far as Dover was concerned they could add this one to the list and be done with it.

  Seven hours later, with a large fat kipper sizzling in front of him, his frame of mind was much the same. His night had not been too restful and several of the guests had already been complaining to the management about the endless flushing of water closets which had gone on throughout the night And what little sleep he had managed to snatch had brought neither inspiration nor clarification. In the cold light of a typical damp Curdley morning Dover’s mind tetchily flicked away from the harshest fact of all: he was rapidly running out of suspects. The only two men who seemed to have played any part in Isobel Slatcher’s admittedly thin romantic life – Rex Purseglove and Antony Victor Ofield – had duly been eliminated. There wasn’t anybody else much left. That was the trouble with these blasted respectable women, thought Dover, they didn’t have enough enemies to give you a fair chance.

  He sighed crossly and poked at his kipper. He wondered what it would do to his stomach. Oh well, kill or cure, in for a penny, in for a pound. He wolfed it down and toppled a quart or so of hot sweet tea on top. MacGregor watched him apprehensively. For a man whose stomach was supposed to be upset, this greedy recklessness seemed a bit drastic. Dover himself was more than a little anxious but, after a couple of minutes of tense waiting, nothing happened. Dover relaxed and MacGregor thought it might be safe enough to open a conversation.

  ‘Mrs Ofield last night was a tasty bit of homework, wasn’t she, sir?’ he remarked brightly.

  ‘Hm,’ said Dover, more interested in excavating a kipper bone which had penetrated the defences of his top set.

  ‘I’m afraid we picked the wrong man there, didn’t we, sir?’ MacGregor was delicately edging the conversation round to a subject which was usually taboo at this time in the morning – the case in hand.

  Dover scowled. He was on the point of retorting that, indeed, MacGregor had backed the wrong horse in the gallows stakes, but it was, he thought, a little too soon to start trying to pull off that face-saving switch.

  ‘Of course,’ MacGregor added, anxious to spare Dover’s feelings as much as possible, otherwise the old fool would sulk around all day like a bear with a sore ear, ‘we obviously couldn’t check up all that stuff about his family and them not being old enough to be the parents of Cuthbert Boys before we went round to see him. I mean, there wasn’t time, was there, sir?’

  Dover squinted suspiciously at his sergeant. Was the young pup trying to take the mickey? He contented himself with a non-committal grunt.

  ‘Er, have you any idea yet, sir, of what we’re going to do next?’

  It was a good question, penetrating and to the point. Didn’t somebody say that the true essence of something or other was knowing what questions to ask? Well, whatever it was, Charles Edward MacGregor would have done very well at it.

  Dover scratched his head disconsolately. He glumly poured himself another cup of tea and stirred it rhythmically while he thought. What the hell were they going to do next? Start rooting around again in Isobel Slatcher’s private life to find if she’d any more boy friends who might have jilted and shot her to get rid of her? Perhaps further investigation would unearth a disgruntled lover whom she had jilted? For a second Dover perked up a bit. This was a line they hadn’t yet explored. Perhaps … no, he simply couldn’t imagine Isobel Slatcher arousing that sort of passion in anybody. You just had to face it – she wasn’t that kind of girL Perhaps if they dug around a bit more at the Cuthbert Boys end of things? Surely, with all the resources of the police at their beck and call, they ought to be able to find the brother of the decade’s most sensational murderer?

  MacGregor was chattering again. ‘I think we’re on the right lines though, sir, don’t you?’

  ‘What lines?’ grunted Dover.

  ‘Well, the connexion with Cuthbert Boys, sir. The letter we found in Isobel Slatcher’s Bible.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Dover vaguely.

  ‘I’m sure if we can find who that letter was written to, we shall have the man who fired the shots, aren’t you, sir?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dover cautiously.

  ‘Do you think it’s any good questioning Violet Slatcher, sir? I mean, Isobel may have mentioned something to her which would give us a clue.’

  ‘Might be,’ agreed Dover, ‘provided
she hasn’t gone completely off her rocker.’

  ‘She’d probably be very willing to help us, sir, if she could,’ MacGregor pointed out ‘After all, she only killed her own daughter to help get the real murderer punished, didn’t she? If she’s in any fit state to help us I’m sure she would.’

  ‘It’s an idea, MacGregor.’ Dover nodded graciously. ‘In fact, you can follow it up yourself. I don’t know where they’ve taken her – local loony-bin, probably – but wherever it is you can nip round this morning and interview her. If she isn’t chewing the carpet up you might try asking her if Isobel ever mentioned anything about any whited sepulchres in the district Anybody who seemed respectable enough on the surface but about whom young Isobel could tell a thing or two if she wanted.’

  ‘Do you think the fellow we’re after, sir, might be a Catholic? I mean, that was one of Cuthbert’s specialities, wasn’t it? Posing as a good Catholic himself and making all his contacts through the Church? Perhaps the Boys were a Catholic family so he’d got all the background and so on off pat?’

  Dover wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘But in that case, what was she holding her hand for?’

  ‘Holding her hand, sir?’

  ‘Yes! That letter was written, when? The tenth of January, wasn’t it? And yet Isobel wasn’t put out of action until February the seventeenth, was she? Now, if Cuthbert Boys’s brother is a Roman Catholic, what was Isobel waiting for? You know what she is supposed to have felt about Holy Romans. Surely she’d have denounced him right away, and have enjoyed doing it.’

  ‘We don’t know how long the letter had been in her possession, sir.’

  Dover chose to take umbrage at the implications of this remark. ‘Stop trying to teach your grandmother to suck eggs!’ he snapped. ‘I know damned well we don’t know how long she’d had the blasted letter! But we do know she’d had it long enough for her to threaten her victim with it, and for him to make all the preparations – including hanging on to that gun at the church hall. What was the date of that raid?’

  ‘Twenty-ninth of January, sir,’ said MacGregor sullenly.

  ‘Right! Well, we can take a pretty fair guess that not only had Isobel Slatcher got that letter before the twenty-ninth, but that she’d let Cuthbert Boys’s brother know that she’d got it – otherwise, why should he whip the gun? Now, I’ll just repeat my earlier remarks. If the brother is a Roman Catholic, what was Isobel Slatcher waiting for? Why didn’t she denounce him straight away? By the time she was shot on the seventeenth of February she still hadn’t let the cat out of the bag. Why?’

  ‘Sadism? Enjoying watching her victim squirm, sir?’

  ‘Hm,’ said Dover. He hadn’t thought of that. ‘Well, I suppose that’s a remote possibility.’

  ‘Actually, sir,’ MacGregor went on, ‘I think you’re right all the same about the fellow not being a Catholic. We’ve got to remember that gun, sir, haven’t we? Assuming that the Pie Gang were telling the truth, somebody at that Men’s Bible Class must have found that gun. And that means he must be C. of E.’

  ‘He must have actually been at that Bible Class, too,’ said Dover. ‘I’d forgotten about that We don’t have to look all over Curdley for the brother of Cuthbert Boys, we’ve only got to check the men at that Bible Class.’

  Dover could have kicked himself for not having worked this out before, but he was grateful that smartie-boots MacGregor had overlooked the obvious, too.

  ‘All right, MacGregor,’ he said, suddenly becoming all precise and efficient, ‘ you clear off right away and see what you can get out of Violet Slatcher. Then come back here and pick me up. If you haven’t got something pretty clear cut from her, we’ll follow up this men’s Bible Class business. It’ll probably mean a lot of work,’ he sighed pathetically, ‘but we can shed some of it on to the local boys. Mr Bonnington’s housekeeper – Mrs What’s-her-name– she said the Vicar’d have a list of the members, didn’t she? All right, we’ll get hold of that and start working through it We’ll check every single bloody one of ’em and see whether they’ve changed their names. ’Strewth!’ he beamed delightedly, ‘should be a piece of cake!’

  ‘Perhaps it would be better to start on that straight away, sir, and leave Miss Slatcher till later?’

  ‘No!’ Dover was adamant. ‘I want to have a bit of a think about the case and I can’t do that with you fidgeting around yacking your head off. No, you get off and see Violet. And don’t rush it! You’ll get better results if you take your time. She’ll need patience, you know.’

  MacGregor shot off, and Dover ambled away to a quiet corner of the lounge. Although he made himself comfortable with his feet up on a second chair, and although he closed his eyes (the better to concentrate), for once he didn’t actually go to sleep. He really did a bit of thinking.

  The Isobel Slatcher case had gone on long enough for Dover’s money. He didn’t like Curdley. He wanted to get back to London and his own home as soon as possible. The quickest way to achieve this modest, and purely selfish, ambition was to solve the problem and get the man who shot Curdley’s Sleeping Beauty behind bars, pronto. With this inspiring motivation driving him on, Dover, for the first time really, began to think about his investigation.

  He no longer needed to bother about Isobel’s actual death in her hospital room. Violet was responsible for that and nobody else was involved. People, like Mr Bonnington, who had been eliminated at first because they had an alibi for the actual killing were now placed firmly back in the picture. All Dover now had to consider were the motives for the shooting outside the vicarage and the movements of everybody known to be in the vicinity at that time.

  All right! He scratched his stomach thoughtfully. Who exactly was near the scene of the crime at the vital time? Well, there was Rex Purseglove to start with. And Antony Victor Ofield playing the organ in the church. And Mr Bonnington in his study. And the agnostic Mr Dibb in his fish and chip shop. Anybody else? Oh, there was that senile sponger in the pub on the corner – what was the name? Er, the William and Mary – that was it. And what was his name? Oh damn it! His father was a policeman, or so he said. Twitter? No. Pitter? No. Twitchin, that was it, Harry Twitchin. Then there was that smooth pimp in the café place, the chap who ran Los Toros. Pedro Something, his name was. And, as far as he knew, that was the lot. Of course there might be somebody who was on the scene that he hadn’t even heard about, but he’d have another look at this bunch first.

  Now, the man who shot Isobel Slatcher must fulfil at least two, what you might call, background conditions: he must have been able to get that gun and he must be Bigamous Bertie’s blasted brother. The first condition eliminated some of the fringe characters. It would have to be checked, but Dover felt he was on pretty safe ground if he assumed that the chap at the fish and chip shop, the slimy proprietor of Los Toros and that old soak, Harry Twitchin, were most unlikely members of the St Benedict’s Men’s Bible Class. ’Strewth! That narrowed the field down a bit. Who’d he got left? He frowned crossly. Rex Purseglove and Ofield the librarian. Oh God, not those two again! Oh, and there was the Vicar, Mr Bonnington.

  A nasty little suspicion began nibbling at the outer perimeter of Dover’s mind. He resolutely ignored it and went on deducing, rather frantically. Rex Purseglove, he told himself firmly, hadn’t been at the Men’s Bible Class, but his father had. Mr Purseglove might have found that gun, kept it and handed it to his son at some later date, so Rex wasn’t eliminated on that score alone. Mr Ofield had been at the Class in person. And so had Mr Bonnington.

  But what about these three as candidates for the position of Bigamous Bertie’s brother? Well, Ofield had eliminated himself. He was just too young. But Rex Purseglove was even younger. Dover blew irately down his nose. Neither Mr nor Mrs Purseglove was old enough to have a fifty-year-old son. They couldn’t possibly be the parents of the late Cuthbert Boys. So that left … Mr Bonnington, the Vicar.

  Oh God! Dover felt a slight chill trickle down his spine. Mr
Bonnington, the Vicar. ‘ Dear Vic.’ Suppose it wasn’t short for ‘Dear Victor’ but was just a facetious abbreviation for ‘Dear Vicar’? Rubbish, it couldn’t be!

  Why not? demanded a little voice inside Dover’s somewhat apprehensive brain. Bonnington’s the right age to be Cuthbert Boys’s brother, isn’t he? He’s not a local man. His family haven’t been well known in Curdley since before the Reformation. You don’t know anything about his background. And what about that gun? When the Pie Gang attacked, Mr Bonnington hurt his leg, didn’t he? Twisted his ankle or something? He couldn’t go chasing after the young devils when they ran away. He had to stay behind in the church hall, where he could have found the gun.

  Poppycock, Dover told himself, quite out of the question.

  Is it? the little voice nagged on again. What about the actual shooting? Just stop being pig-headed about it and see how Mr Bonnington fits the bill there.

  Unless you’re going to assume, at this late stage, that the crime was unpremeditated, the man who fired the shots must have known when Isobel Slatcher was going to leave the vicarage. Now, most of the people concerned knew she would leave at about eight o’clock, so they could have hung around in the darkness of Church Lane waiting for her to come out. A risky business, but a quite possible one. The one person, however, who would know exactly when Isobel left the vicarage was, without a doubt, Mr Bonnington. In addition he could have found Freddie Gash’s gun in the church hall, and he was of an age which made him a possibility as Bigamous Bertie’s brother. Isobel Slatcher came in regularly to help him with his paper work. She could easily have come across that fatal letter in the Vicar’s study. So far nothing was known about Bonnington’s background He could have changed his name long ago, before he was appointed to the living at St Benedict’s. And if Bonnington were Isobel Slatcher’s victim, it might explain why she didn’t make her exposure immediately. Perhaps even she would hesitate to blacken the name of an ordained priest in the Church of England? This delay in taking action still bothered Dover a bit. The obvious explanation was, of course, that Isobel was extorting money from the unfortunate brother of Cuthbert Boys but, somehow, Dover couldn’t see the dead girl resorting to common blackmail for financial gain. It didn’t seem in keeping with what little he knew of her character.