by Joyce Porter
MacGregor was well aware that Clifford de la Poche was watching him intently from under those long, curling eye-lashes. ‘You mean the bridge players, sir?’
‘Bridge players?’ Clifford de la Poche’s joy was quite unconfined. ‘Is that what he told you?’
‘We did,’ said MacGregor, fairly certain that Dover was temporarily incapable of claiming the credit that was his due, ‘think that seven was a funny sort of number to assemble for an evening’s bridge.’
Clifford de la Poche stole another look at his clock. No, really, this was beginning to cut things a bit too fine! ‘Would you believe a witches’ coven, dear?’ he asked before scrambling to his feet and attempting to rouse Dover. ‘Because that’s what it is. Worshipping Satan and sacrificing black cockerels and dancing naked round one of those rude altars.’ He managed to gain Dover’s attention by smacking him, a mite over-playfully, on the cheek. ‘Or holding seances and going in for a touch of tablerapping,’ he said somewhat more prosaically. He turned back to Dover. ‘Time to go, Chief Inspector dear!’ he screamed.
MacGregor had stood up, too. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘I thought a witches’ coven had to have thirteen in it.’
‘Seven’s nearly as good, dear,’ said Clifford de la Poche firmly. ‘And if your poor girl managed to break in and witness one of their disgusting orgies, they’d have to kill her, wouldn’t they? A sort of sacrifice to whatever dark, mysterious gods they worship. Have you thought of that? Now, do you think you could take his other arm, dear?’
Between the pair of them, Dover was propelled successfully towards the front door.
Clifford de la Poche, though bending under Dover’s weight, could always find the breath for talking. ‘You ought to consider whether this really is a ritual killing, dear. I know they’re supposed to cut their victim’s throat and let the blood run all over the altar, but maybe that’s only black cocks or something. Anyhow’ – Clifford de la Poche had got his front door open and had manoeuvred Dover and MacGregor onto the right side of it — ‘do let me know if I can be of any more help, but phone first, will you? Lovely to have met you both! Nighty-night!’
MacGregor was thus left supporting an intolerable burden of sagging flesh and staring at a front door which seemed as solidly shut against the intrusions of the outside world as that sported by Mr Talbot himself. MacGregor was just debating whether it wouldn’t be better to prop Dover up against the wall while he fetched the police driver to give a helping hand when a tiny, but wiry, middle-aged lady appeared apparently from nowhere. In fact she had been waiting round the corner of the house for the last ten minutes, but MacGregor was not to know this.
She took in the situation at a glance and, draping Dover’s limp arm round her shoulders, took Mr de la Poche’s place as supporter on the sinister side.
‘I suppose he’s been telling you the old, old story in there, has he?’ she panted, jerking her head back in the direction of the house. ‘Disgusting pig! Told you he was all alone the night that girl was done in, I’ll be bound. Well, you can take it from me, my love, that slimy bastard’s a black liar on top of all the other things.’
8
MacGregor, who hadn’t been trained as a detective at great expense for nothing, deduced that he had encountered Mrs Yarrow, Clifford de la Poche’s charwoman and oracle. The fact that she had a large bottle of washing-up liquid and two tins of Vim wrapped up in an apron may, of course, have given him a clue. Actually, Mrs Yarrow described herself as the housekeeper. The non-residential housekeeper.
‘Not,’ she explained with a haughty toss of her head, ‘that I wouldn’t be as safe as houses living-in, but there’d be talk. There always is. Folk just don’t believe in these here platonic relations, and I can’t say as I blame’em. What,’ she asked as Dover emitted a sleepy hiccup, ‘is supposed to be up with him?’ MacGregor was not a liar by nature but there are occasions when the unvarnished truth is inappropriate. ‘The Chief Inspector has been over-working recently,’ he said, working on the principle that, if you’re going to tell a fib, make it a whopper. ‘And it was oppressively warm in Mr de la Poche’s house.’
‘Bloody hell!’ said Dover quite loudly, missing his footing as he progressed along the dead straight drive.
MacGregor felt obliged to keep on talking. ‘Have you worked for Mr de la Poche long?’
‘Long enough,’ said Mrs Yarrow, sniffing darkly. ‘Not that I’d set one foot over his threshold, of course, if he didn’t pay double the going rate.’
‘Oh?’
‘Dirty animal!’ snorted Mrs Yarrow. With approximately half of Dover’s not inconsiderable weight pressing on her shoulders she seemed disinclined to say more.
Dover attempted to flourish one arm. ‘Up the City!’ he bawled.
Mrs Yarrow replaced her hat. ‘He pongs of booze,’ she observed suspiciously.
‘Mr de la Poche slipped and spilt some on his coat,’ said MacGregor smoothly, wondering why in God’s name he imperilled his immortal soul for so unworthy a cause. ‘Er – were you implying by your earlier remarks that Mr de la Poche was not alone on the night of the murder?’
‘I might have been,’ admitted Mrs Yarrow with some lack of frankness. ‘And then again, I might not.’
They had reached the police car. With the driver’s boot-faced help, they got the Shame of Scotland Yard bundled into the back. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but at least they’d got Dover off the street where his appearance and behaviour would not only have frightened the horses but done irreparable damage to police/public relations as well.
Mrs Yarrow straightened her hat again and got her breath back. ‘My lips are sealed,’ she announced improbably. ‘But, I will say this . . .’
‘Yes?’ MacGregor was always the optimist.
‘You might not be wasting your time if you was to go round to St Columbia’s church and cross-question some of those horrid little choirboys.’
MacGregor pursed his lips as he tried to indicate that a wink was as good as a nod. ‘You mean that a week ago last Wednesday, Mr de la Poche was not alone in his house in the evening, but had some choirboys with him.’
‘Not some,’ Mrs Yarrow corrected him as she re-wrapped her bundle. ‘One.’
‘Do you know – er – which one?’
‘You’ll have no trouble finding out,’ said Mrs Yarrow. ‘You just charge Mr de la Poche with the murder and he’ll produce the name of his little friend all right. You see if he doesn’t. I mean, better go to prison for a few months for that sort of thing than get yourself a life sentence, eh? By the way’ – her tone became quite sugary as she coyly indicated the bundle under her arm – ‘this is my apron. I left it by mistake when I was here on Friday.’ Since MacGregor offered no comment she was forced to continue. ‘I could have left it till I come in tomorrow, of course, but I like to have it clean for a Monday.’ MacGregor just smiled. Mrs Yarrow swallowed hard and struggled on. ‘And the washing-up stuff I’ve just borrowed, like. Same with the Vim. We’ve run right out at home. I shall put it all back, of course. Soon as the shops are open. I just thought I’d explain in case you were wondering.’
Chief Inspector Dover sobered up in time for supper. He usually did. MacGregor had suggested that a cold shower might work wonders, but Dover knew that forty winks on top of the bed would bring him up as fresh as a daisy. He was somewhat overstating the case, of course, but he emerged from the Land of Nod quite fit enough to crawl downstairs and do full justice to Mrs Plum’s fish and chip supper.
Over their meal the two detectives naturally talked shop. MacGregor might have preferred a rest from the subject of sudden and violent death when he was eating, but at least the discussion took his mind off Dover’s table manners. He briefed Dover about what had happened at Mr de la Poche’s house and afterwards.
‘I was thinking we might leave this business of the choirboys to the local police, sir,’ he concluded. ‘We don’t want to get ourselves involved in any minor breaches of the law whic
h may have been going on. Our interest should, in my opinion, be limited to seeing if Clifford de la Poche can, in fact, produce an alibi for that evening.’
But Dover wasn’t prepared to let Mr de la Poche slip through his greasy fingers as easily as that. Pausing only to help himself to those chips which the fastidious MacGregor had left unconsumed on his plate, the Master Mind succinctly outlined his theory that de la Poche did it. ‘Look,’ he said through a mouthful of disintegrating potato, ‘we can still get him, even allowing for the fact that he’s not likely to have fathered that girl’s kid.’ MacGregor, following the direction of Dover’s bulging eyes, passed over his bread roll. ‘How do you make that out, sir?’ he asked out of pure politeness. The day he couldn’t keep three jumps ahead of an old bungler like Dover, he told himself, he’d pack it in.
Dover replied in a spray of bread-crumbs. ‘The girl arrives in The Grove looking for this particular house where her boyfriend lives. Right? So, it’s dark. All the houses have got their gates left wide open so you can’t read the blooming names without going into the driveway, if then.’
‘There are only five houses in The Grove, sir. She couldn’t possibly not be able to find the one she wanted. It may be slightly inconvenient to read the house names, but it’s not impossible. They’re all there.’
Dover scowled and pushed his plate petulantly away. ‘All right, she didn’t know the name of the house. That’s bloody possible, isn’t it?’
‘It’s possible, sir,’ admitted MacGregor, ‘but rather improbable, really. The point is that, in my opinion, she was looking up the address of her gentleman friend when she was at the station in Chapminster. You may recall, sir, that she only asked the ticket collector how to get to Frenchy Botham after she’d emerged from the phone box. In other words, before that she’d only known that lover boy lived somewhere in the Chapminster area, but not his precise address.’
‘It’s all supposing,’ grumbled Dover, never slow at picking holes in other people’s theories. ‘You don’t know that she didn’t actually make a phone call and tell him she was coming.’
‘No, sir,’ agreed MacGregor equably. ‘But I do know that, if she did look up the name of any resident in The Grove, she would have found the name of his house in the phone book. They’re all there, you see: Les Chenes, Ilfracombe, Otterly House, Fairacre and Lilac View. I’ve checked.’
‘You would!’ snarled Dover. ‘All right, so she knew the name of the bloody house when she was in Chapminster, but by the time she got out here she’d forgotten it. People do, you know. Not everybody’s got a memory like a bloody ostrich.’
‘No, sir,’ agreed MacGregor meekly.
‘When she gets to The Grove, she naturally has to go and ask where Mr So-and-So lives. Anything wrong with that?’
MacGregor shook his head. ‘No, sir.’ He supposed they owed all this intense mental activity on Dover’s part to Pomeroy Chemicals.
‘All unbeknowing,’ Dover went on, ‘she picks on that blooming pansy’s house. She rings the bell. “Where can I find Mr What’s his-name?”’
There was a pause.
‘And then, sir?’
‘And then,’ said Dover, groping around for the knock-out punch, ‘she sees something.’
MacGregor, rather than sit there all night, was prepared to help out. ‘Like some improper behaviour between Mr de la Poche and this unknown choirboy, for example, sir?’
‘Precisely!’ said Dover, relieved to find he hadn’t forgotten what he was talking about after all. ‘Well, Mr de la What’s-his-name knows it’s disgrace and prison if he gets caught, even in these enlightened days, so he kills her to shut her mouth and then disposes of the body as per usual in amongst the rhododendrons. I haven’t,’ said Dover hurriedly as he sensed that MacGregor was about to start nit-picking again, ‘worked out all the details yet, but that’s the general idea.’
MacGregor straightened his pudding spoon and fork and brushed the odd crumb off the table-cloth. ‘What about the missing handbag, sir?’
‘What about it?’ Dover pretended to be more interested in his afters. ‘Here,’ he ordered, ‘go and give that woman a shout. I don’t want to be sitting here all bloody night.’
‘I think she’s just coming, actually, sir. And the missing handbag is of some importance, you know. You see, we’ve been assuming all along that the handbag was deliberately removed to conceal the identity of the dead girl.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, if the girl was murdered by Mr de la Poche just because she’d accidentally seen something compromising, why should he go to any trouble to hide who she was. There was no point, as far as I can see. On the contrary, since he had absolutely no connection with her, it might have been marginally to his advantage if her identity were known.’
Luckily Dover could destroy that kind of logic with one hand tied behind him. ‘He got rid of the handbag just to confuse us, laddie! To make it look as though she’d been bumped off by the chap who’d got her into trouble—see?’
MacGregor hated doing it of course but he steeled himself. ‘Clifford de la Poche couldn’t possibly have known she was pregnant, sir,’ he pointed out gently. ‘Much less that one of his neighbours was responsible or that . . .’
Mrs Plum came banging in from the kitchen with a pleasingly loaded tray and Dover’s interest in talk about work dropped sharply to zero.
‘Well, it’s just a coincidence that the bloody handbag’s missing,’ he snapped. ‘An accident.’ He watched carefully to see that he got the larger of the two plates of pudding. ‘In any case I’ve been thinking it over. I can’t see that it matters a damn which one of’em we pin it on, man or woman. We can make a case out against any blooming one of’em.’ He at least had the decency to wait until Mrs Plum had left the room before setting out his solution to the problem fairly and squarely in front of his sergeant. ‘Look,’ he began, employing a wheedling tone which set MacGregor’s teeth on edge, ‘let’s draw up a list and stick a pin in it eh? That way nobody can accuse us of unfair prejudice. We can easily juggle around with the evidence a bit so that it fits, and then we’ll go and apply for a warrant. As soon as we’ve got the whole thing tied up nice and tight we’ll call in the newspapers and the TV people. I’ll hold a news conference and tell’em all that I – Detective Chief Inspector Dover of New Scotland Yard – have solved this tricky murder case single-handed in less than twenty-bloody-hours. That’ll hit the headlines – and make Pomeroy Chemicals sit up and take notice eh? Oh, that reminds me . . .’ Dover came down from these dizzy heights and began rummaging aimlessly through his pockets. ‘What the hell did I do with that bloody application form? You haven’t nicked it have you, laddie?’
MacGregor said that no, he hadn’t.
‘Ah, got it! I knew I’d put it away safe somewhere.’ Dover grinned happily and tucked the grubby little wad of paper back in his waistcoat pocket. ‘I’ll send it in as soon as we’ve got this bloody case cracked.’Strewth, it couldn’t have happened at a better time. A success like this and my name’ll be a bloody household word!’
MacGregor sought to bring a touch of reality into the conversation by asking what would happen if they picked the wrong man.
‘He’ll get acquitted!’ snarled Dover. ‘’Strewth, you tell me the last time one of mine didn’t get acquitted! And he’ll probably get compensation for false arrest or whatever it is. The last one bloody well did. Besides it won’t matter then. I’ll be on Pomeroy’s payroll and’ – Dover chuckled richly at the thought – ‘they’ll have to give me a golden handshake to get rid of me! Here, come to think of it, picking the wrong bleeding joker mightn’t be a bad idea at that!’ He was still mulling over this new plan for getting money without actually working for it as he licked the last smear of custard off his spoon. Then he turned to more important matters. ‘Do you reckon she’d run to second helpings?’ he asked MacGregor. ‘Pop into the kitchen and tell her how good it was and ask if there’s any more!’
But MacG
regor qualified for the Victoria Cross and sat firm. We all have our breaking point and MacGregor’s had just arrived. Over the years he had put up with a lot from Dover, but to be asked to subject an innocent man to the indignity of being tried for murder just so that Dover could land a cushy job with a commercial firm was too much. MacGregor took his courage in both hands and blurted out his declaration of independence. ‘No!’
Dover had a full stomach and this kept his reaction down to a flicker of mild surprise. ‘Why not? She won’t eat you, laddie. She’ll take it as a compliment to her cooking.’
MacGregor fought for self-control. No doubt the best thing would have been for him to have flung himself across the table and regardless of personal hygiene fastened his hands very tightly round Dover’s unlovely throat. But MacGregor was still a policeman. He still retained that inculcated respect for his superiors which is proof against all the evidence of the senses. ‘I was talking about framing one of the suspects actually, sir,’ he said weakly.
‘Oh?’ Dover seemed puzzled. ‘Well, see if you can get me another plateful of pud and we’ll discuss it, eh? I mean’ – Dover could have doubled as the embodiment of Sweet Reason – ‘I’m easy. If there’s somebody you’d like to fix – that’s fine. I just suggested sticking a pin in the list for the hell of it. I don’t give a monkey’s which one of’em we nab. And don’t you start getting into a muck sweat about him giving us the slip on some blooming technicality. I haven’t seen the joker yet that I couldn’t bash a free and voluntary confession out of and not leave a mark on him – given a sound-proof cell, of course, and no witnesses and a bit of time. You just tell me which one, laddie, and I guarantee to bring him to trial at the very least and – who knows? – we might even get a conviction.’ Benevolence could go no further. Dover beamed in an almost paternal manner at his sergeant before his face hardened slightly. ‘Now, you nip along, laddie, and see about my second helping before that old cow scoffs the lot herself!’
