by Joyce Porter
‘He had a nervous breakdown.’ The brunette Chick leapt to the defence of her lover. ‘He went missing, you know, and lost his memory or something. Overwork, they said it was.’
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed the blonde sardonically. ‘Well, that’s a new name for it, I must say! The only work he ever did …’
‘Why don’t you keep your trap shut?’ snarled her friend. ‘Just because he never took a fancy to you …’
‘Never took a fancy to me? I like that! He tried it on a good few times, I don’t mind telling you, but I happen to have my standards. I can’t stick these men who think that they’ve just got to jerk their heads at you and you’ll come running. So, unlike you, dearie, and unlike every other cheap little tart, amateur or professional, in this godforsaken town, I said no!’
Chapter Nine
MacGregor tried every means, subtle and crudely blunt, to find out what Chauncey Davenport and his amorous adventures had got to do with anything. He was so intent on this line of investigation that he completely forgot to ask why Dover hadn’t told him about the true identity of Mr Hamilton. Dover, however, stubbornly refused to reveal all. This was partly due to sheer meanness and partly to the fact that the Chief Inspector really didn’t know himself. He just had an ill-defined, cloudy sort of impression that there was some connection between Chauncey Davenport and Constable Cochran. They had both been members of the Country Club, of course, but it wasn’t only that. What more it was, Dover grandly decided to think about on the morrow. He’d had a hard day and you never got any gratitude for flogging yourself to death.
It had been no later than half past eleven when Dover and MacGregor had left the Country Club, their Fluffy Chicks having fled the roost as soon as Dover had indicated that he had finished with them. The barman rang up for a taxi and barely concealed his astonishment when he received a mere fourpence for his trouble. Dover and MacGregor entered the lift and slowly descended to the ground floor. The doorman watched them leave in silence, contenting himself with making an obscene gesture of farewell to their departing backs.
In the taxi MacGregor took it upon himself to display some initiative in the partnership and asked the driver if he was the one who’d driven Hamilton home on that fatal night.
‘No,’ said the taxi-driver.
MacGregor asked him if he knew the man who had driven Hamilton.
‘Yes,’ said the taxi-driver.
‘Does he work for the same firm?’ asked MacGregor.
The taxi-driver became loquacious. ‘He does.’
‘What’s his name?’ MacGregor’s usually excellent memory had let him down and it was too dark in the car to read his notes.
From the darkness of the back seat came a scornful sniff. ‘ How to be a detective in ten easy lessons,’ said Dover, sotto voce.
‘Arthur Armstrong,’ obliged the driver.
‘Mate of yours, is he?’
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ said MacGregor, wishing he’d never started the conversation. ‘Is he on duty now?’
‘No.’
‘Well, what time does he come on then?’
‘Midnight till eight in the morning.’
‘I suppose we’d better leave it till tomorrow, sir.’ MacGregor sank back in his seat.
‘Leave what?’ grunted Dover.
‘Well, questioning the taxi-driver, sir. He’s a very important witness. He was one of the last people to see Hamilton alive.’
‘And good luck to him!’ rumbled Dover.
‘Shall we leave it till tomorrow then, sir?’
‘Too right we shall,’ said Dover sourly.
‘You’ll have to be early,’ said the taxi-driver suddenly. ‘ He’ll be in bed by nine, soon as he’s had a meal.’
Dover groaned.
As things turned out it was after half past ten before MacGregor managed to get Dover, who had developed his limp again, to the cottage in which Arthur Armstrong lived.
The cottage looked poor but respectable and Dover sniffed contemptuously. He was more than a bit of a snob and was always resentful that none of the really juicy cases involving the aristocracy ever seemed to come his way. He would dearly have loved to put his feet up in some marble halls for a change. Still, he made an unaccustomed effort to look on the bright side, the down-trodden peasants who inhabited this modest cot might be good for a mid-morning cup of tea.
It was a woman who opened the door. She had a rosy-red face and was wiping her wet hands on her apron. She looked like a woman who had worked hard all her life and who would be completely lost if she hadn’t got a duster or a scrubbing brush in her hand.
MacGregor’s suave announcement that they were detectives from Scotland Yard threw her into considerable confusion.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she kept muttering as she showed them into a tiny kitchen. Dover, as was his custom, headed straight for the most comfortable chair and dropped down heavily into it. He found himself a mere six inches away from a cheerful fire which was roaring up the chimney, but since they were enjoying yet another of Walterton’s blustery, bracing days, that was no disadvantage.
MacGregor seated himself at a small table covered with a green, bobble-trimmed, velvet tablecloth. Mrs Armstrong, she had confessed with resignation that she was Arthur’s mother, stood and hovered. Worried as she evidently was, she still gave more than half her attention to a large saucepan bubbling dyspeptically on the gas stove.
‘I can’t understand it,’ she said as much to herself as to anybody else, ‘I can’t understand it.’ She darted across to the gas stove and raised the lid of the saucepan. ‘ They said he was cured. I mean, well, he’s been all right for over a twelvemonth now, hasn’t he?’
Dover looked at her with acute distaste and hooked a small stool forward to rest his injured foot on. A pile of old newspapers and magazines, which had been stacked on the stool, duly collapsed on to the floor and Mrs Armstrong, apologizing profusely, hurried to pick them up. Dover raised his eyebrows and scowled at a television sat standing in the comer. It was worth the examination. The entire set, with the exception of the tube, was swathed in a hand-knitted coverlet of red and blue wool. It was too much for the Chief Inspector. Composing his face into a sneer, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Once again MacGregor shouldered the burden of the interrogation. He spoke loudly and clearly in an effort to wean Mrs Armstrong’s attention away from her gas stove.
‘We would like to ask your son a few questions about the night he drove Mr Hamilton home from the Country Club.’
Mrs Armstrong shot towards the kitchen table and grabbed a spoon out of the cutlery drawer. ‘ Oh, he wouldn’t do anything like that to a man. I mean, it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’
MacGregor took a grip on himself. ‘You remember Mr Hamilton, don’t you?’ he asked slowly and carefully. ‘The man whose dead body was found in his front garden about a month ago?’
‘Oh yes?’ said Mrs Armstrong distractedly.
‘Your son drove him home that night.’
‘Well that’s his job, him being a taxi-driver.’
MacGregor gave up. ‘ Is your son at home, Mrs Armstrong?’
Mrs Armstrong was now slicing potatoes at an incredible speed into her saucepan. ‘ Oh, yes.’ She seemed grateful for a straight-forward question. ‘He’s upstairs in bed. Did you want to see him?’
‘That was the idea, rather,’ said MacGregor, lapsing into mild irony.
It was wasted on Mrs Armstrong. She concentrated on adding a generous helping of salt to whatever brew she was manufacturing and just didn’t answer.
There was a mild grunt from Dover. MacGregor took it as a warning that somebody’s patience was becoming exhausted.
‘I would like to see your son, Mrs Armstrong.’
‘Oh? Well, I should come back about three o’clock this afternoon then, if I was you, sir. He’s usually up about then.’
There was a definite snort from Dover. MacGregor fixed Mrs Armstrong with
a firm eye and eventually got through to her with the message that two high-ranking detectives from New Scotland Yard were not to be denied. Young Armstrong must be roused from his slumbers forthwith and brought downstairs.
Mrs Armstrong turned down the gas under her pan and, rather surprisingly mumbling something under her breath about the Gestapo, left the room.
There was a moment’s silence. Dover opened his eyes and looked round. ‘Been carted off in a plain van, has she?’ he remarked pleasantly and closed his eyes again.
Five minutes went by. The cosy fire, the comfortable chair and the stuffy room did their work. Dover’s mouth dropped open and his head lolled helplessly to one side. Even MacGregor was beginning to find it difficult to keep on the alert.
Suddenly there was the sound of voices from upstairs, then a yelp, then a series of heavy bumps, then a dull crash.
Mrs Armstrong opened the kitchen door. ‘He’s fallen downstairs again,’ she said. ‘I keep telling him to take his glasses upstairs to his bedroom with him but oh, no, he knows best. Lose his head, that boy would, if it was loose. Where did you leave ’ em then?’ she bawled over her shoulder. ‘On the mantle-piece? Well, don’t you move till I’ve got ’em for you. I don’t want the whole place smashed to smithereens.’ Pausing only to peep under the saucepan lid, she scurried across to the fire-place. Dover’s propped up leg was barring the way. Mrs Armstrong thought she could reach without disturbing the Chief Inspector. She was wrong.
A detective’s life is one of constant danger. To survive a man needs razor-sharp reactions. Chief Inspector Dover had been a detective for over twenty years. Some people, MacGregor for instance, might have thought that the old man’s reflexes had got bogged down in the fat which draped his unshapely form. Some people would have been goggle-eyed, as MacGregor was, to see Dover’s seventeen and a quarter stone leap dramatically out of the chair and fling itself on Mrs Armstrong before that poor woman could get so much as half a squawk of terror out.
The pair of them came crashing to the ground. In their progress they broke the stool and rocked the television set on its table. Mrs Armstrong put up a brave fight but she was no match for Dover. Bellowing ferociously he soon overcame her. Her struggles, her grievous cries for help, her shouts of rape, became weaker and fainter.
MacGregor managed to get Dover’s hands off Mrs Armstrong’s throat just in time. Somewhat dazed, the two combatants began to sort themselves out. Both were panting and dishevelled. Mindful of his priorities MacGregor helped his Chief Inspector back into his chair before turning to assist Mrs Armstrong. He was just disentangling her from the wreckage of the footstool and trying to get her on her feet when yet another figure appeared in the already overcrowded kitchen.
It was a young man, in pyjamas and with his hair standing up like a flue brush. He groped his way into the room and bumped into the kitchen table.
‘Arthur!’ screamed Mrs Armstrong, the prospect of yet more disaster acting on her like a tonic. ‘Stay where you are!’ She let go of MacGregor’s supporting arm and smoothed down her apron. ‘His glasses! He can’t see a thing without his glasses.’ She moved towards the mantlepiece.
‘Never mind,’ said MacGregor quickly, ‘ I’ll get them.’
Even with his glasses on young Arthur Armstrong had difficulty in distinguishing the various objects in the room, as his attempt to sit on Dover’s knees showed. For one heart-stopping moment MacGregor thought the whole thing was going to start up again, but the Chief Inspector was wide-awake now. He contented himself with employing the toe of his boot to propel Arthur Armstrong three quarters of the way across the room. Mrs Armstrong caught her son just before he reached the gas stove.
MacGregor, employing all his organizing ability and tact, finally got everybody sitting down at a safe distance from everybody else.
But Mrs Armstrong had not yet forgotten and forgiven. ‘I don’t know what come over you, sir,’ she complained to Dover. ‘I thought you was sitting there sound asleep like a baby.’
‘You banged my sore foot,’ retorted Dover accusingly. ‘You want to be more careful. Well, for God’s sake, MacGregor, get on with it! We haven’t got all blooming day.’
Arthur Armstrong seemed quite grateful when MacGregor spoke to him by name. He turned eagerly in the direction of the authoritative voice, called MacGregor ‘sir’ and answered the questions briefly and to the point.
Yes, he had driven Mr Hamilton to his house from the Wallerton Country Club on the night in question. No, Mr Hamilton was not drunk, just a bit merry like, sir. No, he had not seen anything suspicious or in any way out of the ordinary. He had just dropped Mr Hamilton outside his house. Mr Hamilton had paid the fare and given him, Arthur, a nine-penny tip. No, he had not seen Mr Hamilton actually enter his house. When he, Arthur, had driven away Mr Hamilton was still standing on the pavement. No, there was nothing at all unusual about Mr Hamilton’s behaviour as far as he had noticed, and Mr Hamilton had said, to the best of his recollection, nothing of any significance at all.
MacGregor sighed and looked disappointed. Dover was less downcast. He’d long ago given up expecting anything from anybody, and really helpful witnesses just didn’t, in his rather jaundiced experience, exist at all.
Dover gazed into the depths of the fire. ‘Had you driven this Hamilton chap back home at night before, laddie?’ he asked suddenly.
Arthur jumped and gawped vaguely in Dover’s direction. It seemed doubtful whether he really appreciated that there was a fourth person in the room, in spite of the kick he had received for lèse-majesté, ‘Well, yes, I think so, sir, a couple of times, or three maybe, since I’ve been driving.’
‘And how long’s that?’
‘Six or seven months now, sir.’
‘How did you find the house?’
‘Find the house, sir?’
‘That’s what I said, laddie. You got cloth ears or something? How did you find the house?’
‘Well,’ – Arthur seemed to have trouble in finding the right words – ‘Mr Hamilton, he told me the address and I just drove there.’
‘When you got to the street, how did you know where to stop the car?’
Arthur sighed. ‘Mr Hamilton had told me the number. When I seed it, I stopped. Is that what you mean, sir?’
‘It’ll do, laddie,’ said Dover, nodding his head. ‘ It’ll do.’
MacGregor looked at Dover suspiciously. He was the first to complain that the Chief Inspector’s contribution to their professional partnership was virtually nil, but in his heart of hearts he preferred it that way. He had a high opinion of his own ability, not unjustified when it was contrasted with Dover’s, and he rather fancied himself in the role of bright young detective solving everything while his senior colleague floundered about completely baffled. This was a somewhat optimistic, even romantic view of their joint exploits, but MacGregor had long ago convinced himself that it was a true one. This made it all the more distressing when Dover, by sheer accident or blatant good luck, occasionally saw the wood while MacGregor was still admiring the trees. And the Chief Inspector was not the man to share his rare inspirations with anyone, never mind a jumped-up, prissy detective sergeant who was getting a damned sight too big for his boots anyhow. MacGregor was thus forced to keep his weather eye wide open and start thinking furiously whenever Dover roused himself to ask some particular question. What did the old fool mean now, for instance, by asking about how Armstrong found the house. MacGregor cudgelled his brains and the light dawned. Of course! He waited for Dover to pursue the point.
The Chief Inspector switched his questions to Mrs Armstrong. ‘How,’ he demanded bluntly, ‘did this son of yours ever become a taxi driver? He’s as blind as a perishing bat.’
‘He’s not!’ Mrs Armstrong rose spiritedly to the defence of her offspring. ‘He can see near as good as anybody with his glasses on.’
‘It were Mrs Liversedge what fixed it,’ said Arthur with a stupid grin.
‘Yes, well there’s
no call to go into all that,’ retorted his mother, speeding as she always did in moments of crisis to the gas stove.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dover easily, having no intention of budging from this warm and comfortable haven till lunch time. ‘I’d like to hear about it. And while you’re up, missus, now about making a cup of tea, eh?’
Mrs Armstrong had little choice but to acquiesce to this delicate hint. While she banged around with the tea caddy and cups and saucers, she grudgingly related how it was that Arthur had become a taxi-driver. Dover, musing happily by the fire, nodded his head from time to time to show that he was still listening.
‘Our Arthur’s never had what you might call a proper chance, really,’ began Mrs Armstrong, having a quick peep into the saucepan to steady her nerves. ‘What with his dad passing over when he did and him never seeming to settle down properly at school. He’s a good lad, clever with his hands, really, but not much good at book-work and me not able to help him, of course, like his dad might have done. Well, when he left school he had two or three jobs but he couldn’t seem to find anything to suit him, really.’
‘Here, Mum!’ Arthur broke in to protest. ‘ I had eighteen jobs in nine months. That woman at the Labour said I was the record-holder for the town. You ought to tell him that.’
‘I’ll tell you something if you don’t keep quiet,’ snapped his mother. ‘These gentlemen aren’t interested in how many jobs you’ve had and it’s nothing to be proud of anyhow.’ She warmed the teapot vigorously. ‘You just go and see if you can find some biscuits in the cupboard. Oh, no,’ – as Arthur jerked enthusiastically to his feet – ‘never mind! I’ll get ’em. We don’t want you knocking this poor gentleman’s leg.’
Dover beamed at this touch of real consideration. ‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly.
‘Well, then he started to get into bad company.’
‘Ooh! I didn’t, Mum. It was all my own idea.’
‘I shan’t tell you again, Arthur!’ warned Mrs Armstrong, pouring out the tea. ‘You young ones are all the same these days. If you ask me,’ – she turned back to Dover – ‘it was that job at the cinema that did it. You know what some of these films are like, and there was the dark, too. Well, that started him off getting interested in things – you know.’
