by Joyce Porter
Wilhelmina clutched her tea-cup and huddled closer to the kitchen range. ‘You’ll have to do something,’ she said. ‘ They’ll kick that door down before long. You’ll have to do something.’
William wasn’t having any. He winced as the hammering on the door grew louder and more insistent. ‘There’s only one of ’ em,’ he muttered. ‘I told you that before. A great hulking brute. Looked a right ruffian.’
‘You’ll have to do something,’ said Wilhelmina. She was a great believer in constant dripping. ‘They’ll have that door down before long.’
‘I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.’
‘I thought you were supposed to be a boxer?’
William snorted. ‘That was over forty years ago, and I was a bantam.’
‘You knocked Tom Pritchard out, didn’t you?’
‘He slipped and hit his head on a post,’ said William grimly.
‘Oh? First I’ve heard of that. I always thought knocking Tom Pritchard out was your main claim to fame.’
William sighed. He should have kept his mouth shut. She’d never let it drop now.
‘You’ll have to do something,’ said Wilhelmina yet again. ‘We’ll never be able to hear the telly with this row going on.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘David and Goliath,’ said his sister.
‘You haven’t seen him. He’s like the side of a house.’
‘You’ll have to do something.’
‘Why don’t you go out and have a chat with him. Likely he wouldn’t hit you, you being a woman.’
Hoarse, unintelligible cries were now supplementing the kicking.
Wilhelmina had a better idea. ‘ Suppose you stand behind the door with the poker and then I’ll let him in and you hit him?’
‘He’s twice my height,’ objected William.
‘You could stand On a chair. You’ll have to do something. He’ll have that door down before long and then where’ll we be?’
William looked reluctantly at the poker. ‘All right,’ he agreed, ‘but don’t blame me if I kill him.’
It took some time to get one of the kitchen chairs placed strategically behind the door and even longer to hoist William up on to it. Then it was found that he’d forgotten the poker. Mumbling something about it being just like a man Wilhelmina shuffled back across the room to get it.
‘Are you ready now?’
William grasped his poker irresolutely and nodded.
Wilhelmina pulled back the bolts, turned the key in the lock and opened the door a couple of inches.
‘And about ruddy well time!’ roared Dover, pushing the door back and striding in. There was a shriek from William who found himself knocked off his chair and flattened up against the side wall.
‘William!’ cried his sister, hurrying as fast as she could to the rescue.
‘Never mind him!’ said Dover callously. ‘Where’s your telephone?’
‘He’s dead!’ Wilhelmina screamed. ‘He’s dead! I know he’s dead.’
‘Of course he’s not dead!’ snapped Dover impatiently. He reached down and seizing William by the coat collar tugged him to his feet and shook him. ‘He’s as right as rain. Now, where’s your telephone?’
‘We haven’t got a telephone,’ said Wilhelmina, escorting her dazed brother back to his seat by the fire. ‘And if it’s money or valuables you’re looking for you’ve come to the wrong house. We …’
‘Where’s the nearest telephone then?’
‘The nearest telephone? Oh, well now, the nearest telephone? That’s asking something, that is.’
‘Hey you!’ Dover lowered his face to William’s and bellowed. ‘Where’s the nearest telephone?’
William, now trembling like a leaf, cowered further back in his chair. His mouth opened but no words came. Dover, getting exasperated, shook him again.
‘The nearest telephone, you old rag-bag!’
Wilhelmina shrieked. William groaned. Dover let fly a string of oaths. Just his luck to pick on a pair of animated fossils. And look at the time!
Eventually William found his voice. It turned out that the nearest telephone was a mile and a half away as the crow flies and three miles round by the road. Prompted further by the Chief Inspector, William admitted that in this context the crow flew over two wheat fields, a swollen brook and the meadow with Harrison’s bull in it.
Dover flopped down into Wilhelmina’s chair. ‘Give us a cup of that tea, missus! Now, how do I get there by the road?’
It was a complicated journey and neither William nor Wilhelmina possessed the gift of clear and concise explanation. Neither seemed a hundred per cent sure of the difference between right and left and both bickered fiendishly about whether it was quicker to go round by Quidgery Lane or not. Dover’s meaty paws itched to knock their heads together.
‘Is there anybody round here with a car or a motor-bike? Well, a bloody bicycle, then?’
The grey heads shook regretfully.
‘There’s my tricycle,’ said William suddenly.
Wilhelmina roused on the instant. ‘Our tricycle!’ she corrected him. ‘Don’t you go telling this gentleman it’s your tricycle.’
‘I bought it,’ said William sulkily.
‘I lent you the money.’
‘Only half of it.’
‘Which you’ve never paid me back, never to this day.’
‘That doesn’t make the tricycle yours.’
‘I didn’t say it was mine!’ crowed Wilhelmina triumphantly. ‘ I said it was partly mine.’
‘Oh well, if that’s the way you feel about it, just you let me have your account and I’ll settle it when I get my pension tomorrow.’
It says something for the pathetic state to which Dover had been reduced that he let this conversation go on so long. The last few hours had taken their toll. Dover tried to organize his life so that as little exertion as possible was involved, but the amount of physical energy he had been forced to expend since he left Wallerton was practically his entire ration for a normal year.
Wearily he separated William and Wilhelmina who were on the point of coming to blows. ‘Where’s this blooming tricycle?’
William got excitedly to his feet and shouldered Wilhelmina out of the way. This was a man’s conversation. ‘In the shed outside. Come on, I’ll show you.’
‘Don’t you go out in the yard in those slippers!’ said Wilhelmina in a last attempt to muscle in.
‘Oh, belt up!’ chirped William.
A few minutes later he proudly wheeled his tricycle out for Dover’s inspection. ‘Good as new, it is, mister. Clean as a new pin and oiled regular as clockwork.’
Dover wrinkled his nose. He looked at the tricycle and then he looked at William and then he looked at the tricycle again. ‘Do you mean you actually ride that bundle of scrap iron?’
‘Once a week when I go into the village to get the pensions and do the shopping. You’ll find it goes a real treat. You can’t fall off it, you see, not like a bike.’
Dover pondered. He weighed the pros and cons. The cons won. ‘You ride it,’ he said, ‘and I’ll stand on this bar thing at the back. Hang on a minute while I fetch my suitcase.’
‘Eh?’ said William, aghast.
‘I can’t just ride off with it,’ Dover pointed out reasonably. ‘How’m I going to get it back to you? Why, you don’t know me from Adam. I might steal it.’
William gulped. ‘I’ll trust you,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Oh no, you won’t!’ Wilhelmina, wearing a war-surplus greatcoat, joined them in the yard. ‘That tricycle belongs to me as well, and don’t you forget it. You’re not letting a complete stranger walk off with it just for the asking.’
With such an ally Dover couldn’t lose. Protesting feebly the old man was hoisted up into the saddle and Dover’s suitcase roped securely across the handlebars in front of him. Wilhelmina tied a thin khaki scarf round his neck and Dover, one foot on the back cross-bar and one on the ground, gav
e him a good initial shove-off.
The journey to the telephone kiosk was eventful and took almost as much out of Dover as it did out of William. The trouble was that William just wouldn’t knuckle down to it. At first he complained about his heart and then his legs and tried to cap everything by saying he was coming over all dizzy.
‘Stop talking so much!’ Dover bellowed heartlessly in his ear. ‘Save your breath for pedalling!’
A major contretemps occurred when they came to the hill. Dover was disgusted, and said so. Half a mile long it might be, but the gradient was so gentle as to be almost non-existent. No, he had no intention of getting off. William was to stop this endless whining and get a move on. He, Dover, would assist from time to time by a scootering action with his right leg should William falter.
‘Oh no! Not that, for God’s sake!’ wheezed William. ‘You damned near ruptured me last time! It makes these pedals fair fly round.’
Dover snorted, and scootered regardless whenever William’s speed began to drop. In between times he urged on his driver by frequent cries of exhortation and encouraging thumps in the back. Luckily for both of them the last five hundred yards was downhill William’s feet were whirled round at a rate of knots while Dover, grim-faced and terrified, hung round his neck with the tenacity of a giant octopus.
Their speed increased. The telephone box rushed nearer.
‘The brakes!’ howled Dover. ‘Put the bloody brakes on!’
William’s teeth were chattering too violently to tell Dover that the brakes didn’t work. They were passing the telephone box. Dover abandoned William to his fate and baled out. The tricycle shot completely out of control across the road and landed up in the ditch. William, flung clear just in time, lay coughing and panting on the grass verge. Even Dover could see that there was no sense to be got out of him at the moment. Without saying a word he strode across to the old man and turned him over on his back. In the third pocket he tried he found William’s purse. Feeling very honest he extracted only the fourpence he needed and put the rest back.
Chapter Fifteen
The police car made it from Wallerton in fifteen minutes. William had got his tricycle back on the road though he still wasn’t up to facing the return journey.
‘Perhaps we could give him a lift, sir?’ said the driver as he put Dover’s suitcase in the boot.
‘We’ve no time to waste on him!’ snorted Dover, getting into the car. ‘ We’ve got a job to do!’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ the Chief Constable said caustically as he slid across the seat before Dover sat on him.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Dover foolishly.
‘Who were you expecting? Snow White and the seven dwarfs?’
Dover refrained from verbal comment.
‘Now, look here, Dover.’ The Chief Constable’s voice was unfriendly. ‘Before we go any further with this charade, I want a full explanation and I want it now. Thanks to your letter, I’ve got the police station in Wallerton cram-jam packed with policemen of assorted sizes. They don’t know what for, I don’t know what for, and I have a horrible suspicion that you don’t know what for either. God help you if I’m right!’
Dover assumed his most aggrieved expression. It was wasted because the Chief Constable couldn’t bear to look at him. ‘ There’s nothing to worry about,’ he said in an offended tone. ‘I’ve got the situation under complete control.’
There was a sceptical grunt from his travelling companion.
‘By the way,’ said Dover, ‘ where are we going?’
‘Straight up the creek, as far as I can see.’
‘I think we ought to get back to my hotel as soon as possible. I’m getting a bit bothered about Sergeant MacGregor.’
‘You hear that, Taylor?’ the Chief Constable barked at his driver. ‘Biggest bloody ears in the force, that fellow,’ he muttered. ‘What’s all this about MacGregor?’
‘Well, he’s a sort of decoy you see, sir,’ said Dover ingratiatingly. He didn’t make a habit of calling senior officers ‘sir’.
‘Go on!’
‘Well, you see, sir, things have started going a bit cockeyed with that train not stopping. I meant to be back in Wallerton by a quarter to seven at the latest. Then I’d have contacted you and we’d have kept a watch on MacGregor and then when they grabbed him we’d have walked in at full strength and caught’em red-handed.’
‘Who’s them?’
‘Why, the Ladies’ League, sir.’
You could practically see the steam coming out of the Chief Constable’s ears. ‘ The Ladies’ League!’ he exploded. ‘ What the purple blazes has the Ladies’ League got to do with it?’
‘Oh, they’re at the back of the whole caboodle, sir,’ explained Dover.
‘You’re mad!’ said the Chief Constable slowly. ‘You’re stark, staring mad! You need treatment, you do. It’s overwork, I expect. Turned your brain, that’s what it’s done. You great, fat, blithering slob, do you realize my wife belongs to the Ladies’ League?’
‘That’s why I had to move so carefully, sir. Everybody’s wife belongs to the Ladies’ League, and if I’d told you all about the plan to use MacGregor and everything, it’d have been all round the place in five minutes flat. Those women have got an organization that would put the Gestapo to shame. You just think about it, sir – every other woman in the whole of Wallerton a potential spy. The mind boggles!’
‘Mine certainly does.’
‘It’s quite simple, really,’ said Dover with an easy assurance that was perfectly genuine, ‘once you get the hang of it.’
‘Well, I should be grateful to be let in on the secret. What is it that the Ladies’ League are supposed to have done?’
‘We’ll start with the Hamilton affair, sir,’ announced Dover firmly. He had no intention of letting off his nuclear device without a suitable build-up. The Chief Constable had a very florid complexion and Dover didn’t want a heart attack on his hands on top of everything else. ‘You remember Hamilton? A dog’s dinner in his own front garden? All right, now we know Hamilton was mixed up with quite a few crooks, financing their various jobs.’
‘No!’ roared the Chief Constable in blank amazement. ‘I didn’t know anything of the kind. Why wasn’t I told about all this?’
‘Oh well, never mind about it now,’ said Dover hurriedly. ‘ It doesn’t really matter. Hamilton dealt with professional villains, not homicidal maniacs. No professional would have wasted his time and his energy chopping up a dead man. No, the motive behind the attack on Hamilton was something quite different.’
‘But the Ladies’ League were nevertheless responsible?’ asked the Chief Constable with withering sarcasm.
Dover nodded. ‘What happened was something like this. Hamilton went off to the Country Club as he frequently did. He had a drop too much to drink and came home by taxi. All perfectly normal. He’d done it before. Now, the taxi-driver was called Armstrong. He’s as blind as a bat but he’s quite sure that he found Hamilton’s house without any difficulty. But the houses in Minton Parade are as alike as two peas in a pod and the house numbers are practically invisible even in broad daylight. So, how did Armstrong find Hamilton’s house with no trouble at all?’
‘Go on,’ said the Chief Constable, ‘surprise me!’
‘The answer’s simple,’ said Dover, ‘he didn’t. Oh, he pulled up at a house numbered 25 all right, but it wasn’t Hamilton’s house. It was a nearby house where somebody had stuck huge and unmistakable figures on the fan light over the door – at least, I reckon that’s how they did it. Armstrong sees these figures, stops, Hamilton gets out of the taxi and goes unheedingly into a house which looks just like his. Any little discrepancies he’s too sozzled to notice. Inside this house they’re waiting for him. As soon as he’s got one foot over the threshold they nab him.’
‘The Ladies’ League?’ asked the Chief Constable, not quite so bumptious now.
‘Of course. The house next door belongs to Miss ffiske, the vet
erinary surgeon. She’s a leading light in the Ladies’ League.’
‘You’re not accusing her?’ gasped the Chief Constable.
‘I certainly am. Mind you, she’d got accomplices, but she was the king pin. She had to be, of course, because of the operation.’
‘What operation?’
‘The operation they were going to perform on Hamilton, of course. Why else do you think they grabbed him?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ the Chief Constable shook his head in bewilderment.
‘Well, I’m guessing now, of course, but the main outline’s clear enough. They whipped Hamilton into the operating theatre. Did you know that your precious Miss ffiske has a proper operating theatre in her house? Well, she has. She uses it for animals in the normal way but it’s an operating theatre all the same. Well, the operation had only just got started when Hamilton mucks the whole scheme up by dying on them. I’ll bet that fair put the cat amongst the pigeons! Now, they’d got a flipping corpse on their hands, and a corpse with the telltale marks of the operation on it. Panic all round, with nobs on! All they can think of doing is mutilating poor old Hamilton still further in an effort, successful as it turned out, to cover up the signs of the operation. Then they took Hamilton’s body and all his clothes and dumped them over the wall into his own front garden. It’d be the early hours of the morning by then so, of course, nobody saw them.’
There was a pregnant silence while both the Chief Constable and his driver up in front digested what they had heard.
‘I have in my time,’ said the Chief Constable thoughtfully, ‘been forced to listen to a considerable amount of sheer, undiluted poppycock. I have, however, no hesitation, in stating that this unspeakable rigmarole of yours takes the cake – to put it crudely.’
‘It holds water,’ said Dover sulkily. ‘You just try picking holes in it.’
‘All right! Hamilton usually came back from the Country Club in his own car, didn’t he? Well, how did anybody know that on this particular night he was going to return in a taxi driven by a near-blind taxi-driver?’
‘Somebody must have tipped them off.’
