Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All

by Joyce Porter

  Within a few minutes the Chief Constable was back again. It had all been settled. Nobody at Scotland Yard, where Dover had few friends, had raised a finger to save him. His leave was cancelled and he was placed, body and soul, at the disposal of the Chief Constable.

  ‘They’re sending your sergeant down by the next train,’ he informed Dover curtly. ‘MacDonald, is it? Some damned foreign name like that. Can’t see why they don’t stop in their own blasted country.’

  ‘But they can’t,’ said Dover, grasping at what few straws were left to him. ‘He’s off touring on the Continent.’

  ‘Managed to catch him at the airport just before he left. It’s only about seventy miles from here. He’ll be along by lunchtime. I’ve told the sergeant to book the pair of you into a local hotel. Now, I’ve got to phone my wife and break the tragic news to her. I’ll see you in the Inspector’s office in fifteen minutes and we’ll get down to planning what lines your investigation should take.’

  ‘And what would you like me to do, sir?’

  The Chief Constable regarded his Inspector coldly. ‘ I should like you, Tasker, to drop down dead, but I suppose that’s asking too much even from a benign Providence. You can carry on with your normal duties, if any, and just keep out of my way for the next couple of years.’

  Mrs Dover’s offer to stay in Wallerton and succour her husband in his hour of need was rejected with the contempt it deserved.

  ‘You can go on to Filbury or you can go home or you can stuff yourself!’ stormed Dover. ‘I don’t give a damn!’

  ‘But you’ll get your leave later, Wilf. They’ve only postponed it.’

  Dover’s answering snort all but dislocated his dentures.

  Mrs Dover departed in tears for a solitary holiday at Filbury. The Chief Constable blew his top as his wife went off into hysterics at the other end of the telephone line. The station sergeant occupied himself with trying to look busy and the Inspector hovered around uncertainly and trembled as he thought of the wrath to come.

  Dover, an old and experienced hand in these matters, undid the top button of his trousers, removed his boots, propped his feet up on the radiator and went to sleep.

  He was aroused some considerable time later by the arrival of Charles Edward MacGregor, detective sergeant and Dover’s long standing accomplice in crime. MacGregor, whose holiday had been ruined too, was sulking, but one more miserable face in Wallerton Police Station was hardly noticeable.

  Dover greeted him with his usual warmth. ‘Got here at last, have you? What did you do – walk?’

  MacGregor gritted his teeth.

  The Chief Constable had been forced to nip back home to calm his wife down so he was not in the best of moods when Dover and MacGregor eventually trooped in for their briefing. It was short and to the point. From what Dover could gather, and he wasn’t straining himself to concentrate, the Chief Constable wanted two things done and done quickly. First, he wanted to know why his nephew, the late Constable Cochran, had committed suicide and, second, he wanted the responsibility for this tragic act to be pinned fairly and squarely where it belonged – on the shoulders of the Inspector in charge of Wallerton Police Station.

  ‘That fool Tasker’s at the back of all this,’ he asserted, thumping his fist on the desk, ‘and, by God, he’s going to pay for it! He’s had it in for young Peter ever since I sent the lad down here. Had the infernal nerve to accuse me of showing favouritism to my own nephew. How do you like that, eh? I gave it to him straight from the shoulder. “ I’m posting Constable Cochran to your division,” I said, “because your division is the one that needs a bright, go-ahead chap most. It’s the sloppiest division in the whole ruddy force, but we’re going to alter that, with or without your co-operation.” Tasker being Tasker, of course, he’s been nursing a grudge ever since. Can’t take criticism, you know, a bad fault that. Well, he’s got his revenge. He couldn’t get at me but he could get at Peter. And he has! All right, he’s going to pay for it, and pay dearly. You’ll report direct to me. Chief Inspector, in person. I don’t want anything over the telephone. Those damned operators at Headquarters listen in to every word and before you know where you are it’s all round the county. Now then, any questions? No? Right! Well, I’m off now. I shall expect to be hearing from you, and soon.’

  In spite of the need for urgency and the oft reiterated exhortations to get a move on, Dover proceeded imperturbably at his own pace. He and MacGregor repaired to their hotel, one of the two in Wallerton which were licensed, and had a leisurely and ample lunch. During coffee Dover thought up a number of useless and time-consuming errands which were designed to keep MacGregor on the trot until dinner time and so leave the Chief Inspector free to retire to bed for the afternoon. The investigation proper would, he announced to his unimpressed sergeant, begin on the morrow, when he had had time to work out their plan of action.

  ‘Think,’ he said, already yawning, ‘that’s what you’ve got to do in our job, MacGregor. Think. Use the old brain. Why, I’ve solved more problems just by thinking ’em out in the peace and quiet of my own room than you’ve had hot dinners.’

  MacGregor composed his handsome features into a polite if slightly incredulous smile, gave the Chief Inspector his packet of cigarettes and took his leave.

  The next morning Dover came downstairs to breakfast almost prepared to knuckle down to some work. Since the previous afternoon he had had fifteen hours sleep broken only by dinner and a pleasant session afterwards in the hotel bar. He was in quite a good humour, all things considered. MacGregor, the blameless instrument, soon put a stop to all that.

  ‘The Chief Constable’s just been on the phone, sir. He wanted to know if we’d made any progress.’

  Dover’s scowl came back. ‘At this time in the morning?’

  ‘It is half past nine, sir.’

  ‘I’ll have porridge, bacon, egg, sausages and tomato,’ Dover informed the waitress, ‘ and a large pot of tea.’ Having dealt with the essentials he turned back to MacGregor. ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘Well, I said we were just sort of filling in the background, sir. There wasn’t much else I could say, was there?’

  Dover snorted unpleasantly. ‘ What did you find out about this Cochran fellow?’ he asked. ‘Was he married?’

  ‘No, sir,’ replied MacGregor who was quite efficient if given half a chance. ‘He was a bachelor. He doesn’t appear to have had any family, apart from the Chief Constable, of course. He was living in digs here in Wallerton. They haven’t got a station house.’

  ‘What about his friends?’

  ‘Well, he doesn’t seem to have had many, sir, not amongst the other policemen at any rate. He’s only been here a few weeks, of course, and the other men are naturally a bit wary of him, his uncle being the Chief Constable. Nobody’s saying much at the moment but I did gather he’d got half a dozen girls kicking around. I suppose it could be something like that that drove him to suicide.’

  ‘What, a broken heart?’ sneered Dover.

  ‘Well, it might be, sir.’

  ‘If you believe that, laddie, you’ll believe anything. It’s only in books a man kills himself because some chit of a girl said no to him.’

  ‘At least it’s as credible a motive as believing that Inspector Tasker drove him to it just to spite the Chief Constable, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out.

  ‘Have you finished with that toast? Well, shove it over then. And the butter.’

  ‘Where were you, er, thinking of starting, sir?’

  Dover hadn’t the faintest idea but there was no point in admitting it to MacGregor. ‘We’ll go to his digs,’ he said. ‘Search his room. Have a word with his landlady.’

  ‘But, wouldn’t it be better, sir …?’

  ‘No,’ said Dover shortly, through a mouthful of toast, ‘it wouldn’t.’

  Chapter Three

  Wallerton was a small seaside resort of limited renown and attraction. In this age of the common man it remained select because few
people could be found who would put up with the place for five minutes, never mind spend their annual fortnight’s holiday there. In the sunshine stakes Wallerton was three from the bottom, but for chilling winds and driving rain it stood second to none in the entire country. The beach was stony and the natives indifferent where they weren’t actively hostile. Apart from one cinema and the Winter Gardens (which traditionally closed down for the whole of August) there was little on which the unfortunate visitor could fritter away his long bleak hours of leisure. There was the Sailing Club, of course, but the locals wouldn’t admit temporary members unless they had blue blood on both sides going back to the Conquest or a couple of million pounds in their current account – and such people were few and far between in Wallerton.

  Still, some hardy annuals and chronic masochists went there year after year for their summer holidays. Quiet and bracing, they called it. It certainly had the virtue of making them markedly less disgruntled with the ennuis of their ordinary, everyday life.

  Mrs Jolliott, the erstwhile landlady of Peter Cochran, lived in a part of the town which was even more select than the rest of it. Or, which had been more select. Things change, even in places like Wallerton. Fifty years ago if you lived in Kilmorie Road you really were somebody. Nowadays, however, here and there in the windows of the rather pleasant Late Victorian houses little notices proclaiming ‘Apartments’ or ‘Vacancies’ peeped coyly from behind lace curtains. Nobody took in visitors for money, of course. They obliged only because they had so much spare room going to waste and it seemed uncharitable to turn away people who would otherwise be unable to enjoy Wallerton’s unique amenities.

  There were no little signs in the windows of number 48, though perhaps there soon would be.

  The door was opened by a woman who admitted, with visible reluctance, that she was Mrs Jolliott. She had one of those faces which look as though they’ve been carved, with difficulty, out of granite. Her hands were rough and uncared for. She wore no make-up. Over her strong, well-built figure was an enveloping white apron, starched within an inch of its life.

  She had Dover and MacGregor off the front door step and inside the hall in a flash. Not even her nosiest neighbours got time to have a proper look at them. The thin strip of coconut matting in the hall was covered with clean sheets of newspaper.

  ‘Watch where you put your feet,’ said Mrs Jolliott. ‘I’ve just done this hall.’ She seemed to hesitate for a moment. ‘ Oh well, I suppose you’d better come into the front room. You won’t be staying long.’

  The front room was dank and stuffy and reeked of furniture polish. With a martyred sigh Mrs Jolliott removed the sheets of newspaper from three chairs and revealed the yellowing antimacassars underneath.

  ‘I hope you wiped your boots as you came in,’ she said as she motioned them to sit down. ‘I’ve only just done this carpet.’

  Dover got straight to the point. ‘We’ve come about Constable Cochran.’

  ‘It had crossed my mind that you weren’t here to read the gas meter,’ replied Mrs Jolliott tartly. ‘You’ll be taking his things away with you, I hope? I’ve got them all packed up. I can’t give that room a good clean out till they’re gone.’

  Dover blew fretfully down his nose. ‘Were you surprised to hear he’d committed suicide?’

  ‘I’ve long got long past the stage of being surprised at what any man does,’ sniffed Mrs Jolliott, ‘especially these days. There doesn’t seem to be any decency or morality left anywhere in the world.

  Young hooligans! A taste of the birch, that’s what they need. It’s the only thing they understand.’

  ‘Was Constable Cochran a young hooligan?’

  ‘I thought they liked to be called police officers nowadays? A bit more of this modern tom-foolery! Constable was good enough in my father’s day and it ought to be good enough now. Well, Master Cochran didn’t try any of his monkey business under my roof, that I can tell you. I gave him no room for doubt on that score. “Guests,” I told him, “are not allowed to entertain visitors of the opposite sex in their rooms, fiancées or not.”’

  ‘Oh, he was engaged, was he?’ asked Dover, thus demonstrating that he didn’t call himself a detective for nothing.

  ‘So he informed me,’ said Mrs Jolliott darkly. ‘ Unofficially, he said, whatever that may mean. Though if I were that young flibberty-gibbet Sandra Jackson, I shouldn’t count on him making a decent woman out of me.’

  Solemnly MacGregor made a note in his notebook. ‘Sandra Jackson. Fiancée?’

  ‘Had he had a dust up with her or anything?’ asked Dover.

  Mrs Jolliott laughed without mirth. ‘Over what? The only thing that would upset young Cochran where a girl was concerned would be if she said no. And from what I know of Sandra Jackson that particular word wasn’t even in her limited vocabulary.’

  ‘So it wasn’t unrequited love?’ said Dover with an I-told-you-so look at MacGregor.

  ‘Lust,’ said Mrs Jolliott flatly, ‘is the word I should use, and unrequited it certainly wasn’t. If it had been the other way round, of course, there might, possibly, have been some reason. But he was the one who called the whole thing off, wasn’t he?’

  Dover blinked. ‘Was he?’

  ‘Well, of course. It was me who had to phone her up and tell her, wasn’t it? Not that I minded doing that at all. It may be what young people do these days, but that doesn’t make it right, does it? Not but what it hadn’t already happened as far as those two were concerned right here in Wallerton, and not just the once either.

  Still, that’s no excuse to go flaunting it round the countryside, is it? You’d think a girl would have more self-respect, wouldn’t you?’

  Dover looked hopelessly at Mrs Jolliott and scratched his head as he wondered what the blazes she was yattering about.

  ‘You say he broke off his engagement to this girl?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything of the kind. Don’t you start putting words into my mouth.’

  ‘Then what did you say, for God’s sake?’

  ‘I don’t permit swearing in my house,’ said Mrs Jolliott, nodding at one of the many embroidered texts which decorated the walls. ‘“Take not the Lord’s name in vain,”’ she read aloud.

  Dover took a deep breath.

  ‘What I said,’ Mrs Jolliott continued imperturbably, ‘was that he cancelled his holiday.’

  ‘His holiday? What holiday?’

  ‘He had a week’s leave starting last Monday week. Didn’t you know that? It was all fixed up that he should go away with this girl – this Sandra Jackson. They were hiring a car and going touring or something. Well, at the last minute he just called the whole thing off. He came back here on Sunday evening to supper – I only do a cold supper on Sundays – after he’d been down to the police station to tidy a few things up before he went on holiday. He came in, said he didn’t want any supper and would I phone up this Jackson girl and tell her the holiday was off. Well, I’d no objection to doing that, none at all.’ Mrs Jolliott’s mouth twisted into a faint smile and she flicked an invisible speak of dust off her apron.

  Dover regarded her unhappily. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘He went to bed.’

  ‘He went to bed?’ repeated Dover desperately.

  Mrs Jolliott nodded. ‘ For a week.’

  ‘For a week?’ squeaked Dover.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘But, what did he do?’

  ‘Nothing. He just went to bed on the Sunday night and stayed there for the whole week until he got up to go on duty yesterday morning.’

  ‘Was he ill?’

  Mrs Jolliott shook her head. ‘He said he wasn’t. And he didn’t look ill to me, not physically that is. I can’t answer for his mental state.’

  ‘Didn’t you send for a doctor or anything?’

  ‘He told me not to. Not that I would have paid any heed to that if I’d thought he was really sick. I did ask Nurse Smithies to have a look at him, though. She’s my othe
r regular lodger. I only have just the two. Two’s all I can manage on my own and what with the type of girl you get these days you’re better off without them. Especially when you’ve got a young unmarried man in the house. Better to work your own fingers to the bone than have any truck with young trollops like them. Most of them are foreigners, too, and they’re worse than the English when it comes to that sort of thing. Talk about service! The word’s got quite a different meaning these days!’

  Dover fidgetted uncomfortably in his chair. At this rate they’d be here for a fortnight. Why couldn’t they just tell you what they knew, if anything, in a few well-chosen words and then wrap up? He looked with dislike at Mrs Jolliott. ‘What did this nurse woman think?’

  ‘Sulking, that was her diagnosis. And she was a District Nurse for forty years so if she doesn’t know what she’s talking about I’d like to know who does.’

  ‘It all sounds very peculiar,’ grumbled Dover.

  ‘It was very peculiar,’ agreed Mrs Jolliott. ‘Perhaps he just had a brain storm or something.’

  ‘And he didn’t tell you what was up with him?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. And it wasn’t for want of asking either. He said there was nothing the matter with him and he just wanted to be left alone. He wouldn’t see anybody. That girl came clamouring round, of course, wanting to know why he’d cancelled the holiday, but he wouldn’t see her either.’

  ‘You didn’t think of telling anybody at the police station, or letting his uncle know?’

  ‘Why should I? If he wanted to spend his week’s leave in bed, that was his affair. Besides, I didn’t know he was going to kill himself, did I? He seemed all right when he went off to work on Monday morning.’

  Mrs Jolliott didn’t encourage her visitors to linger. They heard the vacuum cleaner being switched on before they had reached the bottom of the front steps.