Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All

by Joyce Porter

  ‘I think,’ said MacGregor firmly, ‘ that we should re-investigate this Hamilton business.’

  Dover’s bottom lip pouted out. ‘There’s no flaming evidence that it’s got anything to do with Cochran’s suicide,’ he protested.

  ‘Well, what do you suggest we do, sir?’ MacGregor controlled his impatience and tried to speak reasonably.

  Dover thought. ‘Re-investigate the Hamilton business,’ he said after a long pause, and sighed.

  MacGregor jumped in happily. ‘ You see, sir, it’s my theory that Hamilton’s killing may have been one of these ritualistic murders – because of the mutilation. Wallerton is a sea port, sir. There are probably all kinds of odd characters hanging around.’

  ‘Like one-eyed Lascars and sinister Chinamen, I suppose? I should have thought there were more boarding houses than opium dens in this dump.’

  ‘But the mutilations, sir, how do you explain them?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Dover flatly.

  ‘If it was some sort of foreign gang that got Hamilton, Cochran may have got on to them and …’

  ‘And they put the voodoo on him and he jumped off Cully Point?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened, sir.’

  ‘Not in Wallerton they haven’t, laddie!’

  With considerable reluctance Dover permitted himself to be bribed into some further study of the Hamilton case. MacGregor installed him in a small musty writing-room, fetched a couple of rounds of drinks and went upstairs to get the papers from the suitcase.

  While Dover sat and moodily drank his beer MacGregor hunted happily through the contents of the suitcase. The investigation had been handled thoroughly if with, in MacGregor’s opinion, little imagination. There had been no less than 1,752 house-to-house inquiries which had produced no relevant information of any kind. MacGregor tut-tutted in a thrifty Scottish way over such lavish expenditure of public money.

  ‘There’s one thing, sir,’ he remarked to Dover in an effort to revive the Chief Inspector’s rapidly flagging interest, ‘Hamilton wasn’t mutilated in order to hinder identification.’

  ‘I never thought he was,’ said Dover scathingly. ‘ He’d have hardly been dumped in his own front garden with all his belongings piled up beside him if that was what they were after, would he?’

  ‘Er, no, sir. I suppose not. They must have done it for revenge, I should think. Look, sir, his face hasn’t been touched at all.’ MacGregor passed a large shiny photograph over.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Dover, passing it rapidly back again. ‘Do you mind? I’ve only just had my dinner.’

  ‘It is rather nasty, sir, isn’t it?’

  ‘Nasty? From the waist down he looks like a pile of butcher’s mince!’

  ‘All done after death, according to the path. report, sir,’ said MacGregor examining dozens of other photographs with, in Dover’s opinion, an unhealthy relish.

  ‘What with? A bacon slicer?’

  ‘A small sharp instrument, sir. Maybe a scalpel!’

  ‘Oh God, don’t tell me we’re looking for a mad doctor now! Didn’t they find any bloody clues?’

  ‘Apparently not, sir. There was the report by the lady who saw the green van with the two men in it and that’s about all.’

  Dover sighed. ‘ Was he married?’

  ‘Hamilton? Oh, yes, sir.’

  ‘Right. We’ll go and see the wife.’

  ‘The wife, sir? I don’t think she’ll be much help. Her evidence doesn’t add up to anything. You see, sir, she …’

  ‘First rule of detection, laddie,’ said Dover ponderously as he rose to his feet. ‘When a husband’s murdered, it’s the wife who’s done it.’

  ‘Oh, not invariably, sir,’ said MacGregor with a nervous laugh. He was distressed to find that the celebrated Dover method of investigation was once again raising its head. As a system its sole merit was its simplicity.

  ‘Nine times out of ten, near as dammit,’ said Dover.

  ‘Ah, but the tenth time, sir!’

  ‘If you get through your career in C.I.D. solving nine murder cases out of ten, laddie, you’ll be Commissioner before you’re thirty,’ said Dover hitching up his trousers and yawning.

  ‘Well, yes, I know, sir, but you just can’t go around arresting the wife whenever a husband’s killed.’ MacGregor was uncomfortably aware that this was more or less precisely what Dover did do. ‘What about the exceptions, sir?’

  ‘You can’t win ’em all,’ said Dover philosophically. ‘We’ll go and see Mrs Hamilton in the morning. Meantime, you can go through that lot with a fine tooth comb. Who knows, you might spot something the local boys have missed.’

  At ten o’clock the following morning it was still raining, though not so heavy. Dover and MacGregor made their way down Minton Parade.

  ‘This is the house, sir.’

  ‘And about time, too. When are they going to let us have a car?’

  ‘Tomorrow, sir. Or the day after.’

  ‘Or next Preston Guild! If I’ve got all this walking to do you’ll have to get a taxi.’

  ‘Well, I thought this morning, sir, since it was only just round the corner …’

  Dover sniffed unpleasantly. With a sigh he leaned over the garden wall and looked at the entirely undistinguished patch of grass which lay on the other side. ‘Where was the blooming body?’

  ‘Er, right here, sir, tucked up under the wall. Hiding it from the road as much as they could, I suppose.’ MacGregor fished importantly in his briefcase and produced one of the official photographs.

  ‘Never mind!’ growled Dover. ‘I can imagine. And don’t keep waving those dratted photographs at me. They fair turn my stomach.’

  ‘Are we going to interview Mrs Hamilton, sir?’

  ‘Might as well,’ said Dover sourly. ‘At least we’ll be out of the rain.’

  He pushed himself off the wall and gazed morosely round. A flicker of life came into his mean little eyes. ‘I thought that fat sponger said that there were some council offices on the other side of the road,’ he said accusingly.

  MacGregor followed the direction of the Chief Inspector’s eyes. No council offices. He looked back at the house.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, sir. This is number 15. It’s number 25 we want. It’s the numbers, you see, sir, they’re practically illegible. I’m terribly sorry, sir. Number 25 must be a bit higher up.’

  ‘And he calls himself a blooming detective!’ murmured Dover. Not entirely displeased at having caught his subordinate out, he stumped off after MacGregor who was peering intently at the house numbers.

  ‘I think this is it, sir.’ MacGregor advanced halfway up the front steps and looked closely at the number on the door. It was obscured by several layers of old and blistered paint but MacGregor was satisfied that he had now found the right house.

  Having surveyed one front garden Dover wasn’t going to waste his time examining another, scene of the crime or not. ‘ Ring the blooming bell,’ he ordered, ‘and let’s get on with it.’

  Dutifully MacGregor rang and rang and rang. By the time Dover had lumbered up the steps precisely nothing had happened. The house remained as apparently lifeless as it had been when MacGregor’s finger first made contact with the bell push.

  ‘She must be out, sir.’

  The rain trickled off the brim of Dover’s bowler hat. He reflected, not for the first time, that it was a dog’s life and lashed out with a malicious kick at the door. Still nothing happened. Again Dover applied boot to wood.

  MacGregor’s alert young ears picked up a muffled sound from the depths of the house. ‘I think somebody’s coming, sir.’

  From behind the door came a sustained rattling and clinking as bolts were withdrawn and keys turned in the locks. With a weary creak the door scraped open by at least six inches. Above a stout taut chain a shadowy face appeared.

  ‘Wat yer want?’

  MacGregor, after a moment’s hesitation, raised his hat politely. ‘Mrs Hamilton? I wonder if we could ha
ve a few words with you. This is Detective Chief Inspector Dover. We’re from Scotland Yard.’

  One suspicious eye regarded MacGregor warily.

  ‘Wat yer want?’

  MacGregor looked at Dover as if expecting him to assume the initiative. Dover glowered back. ‘For God’s sake, get on with it!’ he hissed.

  ‘We would like to ask you a few questions about your husband’s, er, death, Mrs Hamilton.’

  ‘Oh yerse?’ said the eye.

  Dover dug his elbow into MacGregor’s ribs as an encouragement to speed things up.

  ‘Perhaps,’ ventured MacGregor, ‘we could come inside?’

  ‘Why?’ demanded the eye.

  MacGregor looked despairingly at his Chief Inspector. ‘ Well, you don’t want all the neighbours watching us, do you?’ he smiled persuasively.

  ‘Don’t bother me.’

  MacGregor tried an appeal to her sympathy. ‘It is raining rather heavily,’ he pointed out. ‘We’re getting soaked.’

  ‘Yer’d better come back when the sun’s shining in that case.’

  Dover got his boot in the narrow opening a split second after the door had started to close.

  ‘’Ere!’ protested the eye. ‘Wat yer think yer doing?’

  ‘Open this door, you old hag!’ snarled Dover, never very strong on public relations.

  The eye assumed a cunning look. ‘ Yer’ll have to take yer foot out first. I can’t unfasten the chain ’cept with the door closed.’

  Dover, in spite of much evidence to the contrary, wasn’t a complete fool. He had, moreover, cut his professional teeth on some pretty fly characters in the old days. ‘I’m not that daft,’ he sneered.

  ‘Looks like stalemate then, dunnit?’

  ‘You can get into serious trouble for obstructing the police in the execution of their duty,’ blustered Dover.

  ‘I know me rights. Yer can’t come in ’ere without I lets yer.’

  ‘We can get a warrant, you know,’ thundered Dover.

  ‘Well, you hop off and get one, mister.’

  There was a pause while both sides considered the situation.

  ‘We just want to ask you a few simple questions,’ said Dover plaintively.

  ‘It’s no good arsking me. I don’t know nothing. I just went to bed that night after ’e’d gorn out and I didn’t know nothing till they told me next morning.’

  ‘Had your husband any enemies?’

  There was a sardonic laugh from behind the door. ‘Just about every husband and father in Wallerton, I shouldn’t wonder. Not to mention a few sons.’

  ‘Oh, it was like that, was it?’

  ‘So I’ve been told. I reckon I was the only woman in the whole town he didn’t have those sort of ideas about. Dirty pig! He tried to get rid of me, you know. Wanted a divorce. Got his eye on some young bit of fluff down by the harbour end. I told him what he could do with his divorce. “ You can take yer divorce,” I told him, “and stuff it!” I haven’t put up with his goings on all these years just to let some young tart get her thieving hands on everything.’

  ‘Was he a wealthy man?’ asked Dover in some surprise.

  ‘Pretty warm. I’ll be all right, don’t chew worry. Ten thousand quid in insurance alone.’

  ‘Ten thousand?’ said Dover, and looked significantly at MacGregor.

  ‘I kept the payments up meself,’ said Mrs Hamilton proudly.

  Dover regarded what little he could see of her with approval. Just like a woman! Yack, yack, yack. Putting the noose round her neck with her own tongue, as you might say. Only, to Dover’s great regret, there was no noose in these benighted days.

  ‘He must have led you a terrible life,’ he said, trowelling on the sympathy.

  ‘I’ve had more than me fair share,’ agreed Mrs Hamilton.

  ‘I expect your friends felt pretty bad about it, too,’ suggested Dover, not quite seeing Mrs Hamilton disposing of her husband in such a bizarre fashion single-handed.

  ‘’Ere, what chew hinting at?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Dover soothingly.

  ‘He died natural. That’s what they said at the inquest. He died natural.’

  ‘Well, now, I’d hardly call it that.’

  ‘It were nothing to do with me. I was in bed.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Dover. ‘ Now, look, why don’t you just let us come inside so we can have a nice cosy little chat about it?’

  Perhaps his tone was too treacly. Perhaps Mrs Hamilton just got bored. At all events she retreated quietly and with a certain amount of dignity down the hall to where she kept a coal hammer for just such an occasion. She returned to the door with the coal hammer concealed behind her back and, sportingly, gave Dover a last chance. ‘Are yew going?’

  ‘Your husband was a friend of Cochran, the policeman, wasn’t he?’

  Mrs Hamilton swung the coal hammer. Dover saw it coming but was unable to get his foot out of the way in time. The coal hammer struck fair and square on the toe of his boot.

  Dover screamed.

  Mrs Hamilton, having successfully achieved the withdrawal of the offending foot, slammed her front door shut and began shooting the bolts back into place.

  Meanwhile the Chief Inspector, bellowing with pain and fury, hopped around on one leg. MacGregor stared at him with more embarrassment than concern as heads began poking out of windows and doors opened from one end of the street to the other.

  ‘Er, are you all right, sir?’

  ‘You bloody fool!’ howled Dover. ‘Don’t just stand there. Do something!’

  Luckily for MacGregor the delicate decision of what to do for his injured Chief Inspector was taken by other and more capable hands. Two middle-aged ladies, fairly bristling with self importance and the urge to succour their fellow-man, were already coming up the steps at a near gallop. They had been walking past the house when Mrs Hamilton had delivered her blow against the forces of law and order. At the first scream these two Good Samaritans had exchanged delighted glances.

  ‘Come on, Bella!’ cried the fatter one and, touching the bow of blue ribbon on her bosom as though it were some form of talisman, resolutely led the way. Bella, panting a little and with eyes sparkling, was dose behind.

  No words were wasted. When they reached the top of the steps the pair of them snapped into action like a well-drilled team. MacGregor was shouldered ruthlessly aside. Bella kicked away Dover’s uninjured leg and, since it was the sole support of his not inconsiderable bulk, brought him crashing to the ground. Then she flung herself smartly on top of him with a technique derived from what she had seen of the wrestlers on the telly. As she landed on his chest Dover’s mouth involuntarily opened. Whether to utter some words of greeting or merely because the air in his lungs had got to go somewhere will never be known for, at the precise moment that his jaws opened, Bella’s friend, the fatter one, rammed the handle of her shopping basket between, his teeth.

  ‘Move over a bit, Bella,’ she commanded, still forcing the basket handle down Dover’s throat.

  Obediently Bella moved down on to Dover’s stomach while her friend replaced her on his chest.

  Comparative quiet reigned. Dover, now turning a very funny colour, could manage no more than a few gasping grunts. The two ladies rested on his prostrate form and concentrated on getting their own breath back.

  When she had recovered her composure the fatter one smiled reassuringly at a horrified MacGregor.

  ‘Good thing we happened to be passing,’ she remarked.

  MacGregor nodded, speechless.

  ‘We’ve both got our First Aid certificates,’ said Bella with the air of one making polite conversation over the tea cups.

  ‘I’m chairman of the First Aid Sub-committee of the Ladies’ League,’ put in the fatter one. She touched her blue ribbon again. ‘You see, I’ve got a little red cross on mine.’

  Dover began to struggle feebly. His face was getting black.

  The fatter one regarded him complacently and shoved th
e basket handle in a bit further. ‘ He’s quietening down now,’ she observed. She glanced up rather patronizingly at MacGregor. ‘I’ll bet he had you worried there for a moment, didn’t he? Still, it says in the handbook that epilepsy always looks much worse than it really is, and it’s usually right, isn’t it, Bella?’

  Bella nodded. ‘ It’s very good, that handbook,’ she agreed. ‘It’s never let us down yet, has it, dear?’

  ‘Epilepsy?’ asked MacGregor weakly.

  ‘The important thing,’ said Bella, closing her eyes the better to recall the handbook’s pearls of wisdom, ‘ is to ensure that the patient doesn’t bite his tongue. Hence’ – she opened her eyes and beamed at MacGregor – ‘the basket handle. You should never use your finger. He might bite it off.’ She giggled.

  MacGregor gulped. He felt extremely diffident about contradicting two such capable women, but Dover’s condition was clearly deteriorating.

  ‘It’s not epilepsy,’ said MacGregor unhappily. ‘ I’m most frightfully sorry, but the lady who lives here she – well – she hit him on the foot with a hammer, I think.’

  The ladies looked disappointed but they took it very well. Chuckling ruefully they hoisted themselves to their feet.

  ‘More haste, less speed, Bella,’ said the fatter one good-humouredly as she pulled her basket handle out of Dover’s mouth.

  ‘Impacted fracture, dear?’ suggested Bella hopefully as Dover lay panting at their feet.

  ‘Could be,’ said the fatter one, pursing her lips judicially. ‘Could be. We’ll tackle it on that assumption, anyhow. Have you got your penknife handy, dear?’

  Chief Inspector Dover was certainly down, but he was not out. Making a supreme effort he raised himself up on one elbow and, managing to munch his teeth back into position, flung a touching and desperate appeal to MacGregor.

  ‘Keep ’em off me!’ he wheezed and fell back exhausted.

  MacGregor smiled awkwardly at the two ladies who were now rummaging in their handbags.

  The fatter one was unperturbed. ‘ Nothing to worry about, young man,’ she assured MacGregor breezily. ‘It’s a common reaction with patients. We’re quite used to it, aren’t we, Bella? Being unappreciated doesn’t worry us. It’s a good sign, really. Shows the victim has got over the shock. Ready, Bella?’