by Joyce Porter
‘Cheeky bugger!’ exploded Dover, his eyes bulging indignantly. ‘Why doesn’t he mind his own bloody business?’
‘You asked him to, sir.’
Dover glared round pugnaciously. ‘What about this joker here?’
Inspector Walters’s quiet smile of self-satisfaction had faded long ago. ‘What joker where, sir?’
‘Here!’ repeated Dover. ‘You gone deaf now or something? The landlord of this pub. Have you checked him?’
Inspector Walters glanced uneasily at MacGregor. Was this some sort of leg-pull. ‘Mr Plum, sir? I didn’t realize you wanted him checked. Is he a suspect?’
‘He’s Number One in my book!’ said Dover roundly.
‘Is he, sir?’ Inspector Walters was not acquainted with the Dover Method of Detection and was thus at something of a loss.
‘Look, laddie,’ said Dover, apparently willing to share his expertise with those less fortunately endowed, ‘who was it who turned our attention to The Grove in the first bloody place?’
‘The girl’s body was found there, too, sir,’ said MacGregor, sticking his oar in where it definitely wasn’t wanted.
Dover paid scant heed to the interruption. ‘It was Plum, wasn’t it? He was the one who came rushing forward with this cock-and-bull story about the girl coming in here and asking for The Grove. That’s what set all you numskulls combing The Grove for the murderer in the first place, isn’t it? Well, just you suppose it’s Plum himself who’s the father of What’s-her-name’s unborn child and see where that gets you! It gets you to him killing her and dumping her body in The Grove, to which he then cunningly misdirects our attention.’ Dover refreshed himself after his labours with the entire contents of one of the glasses on the tray.
‘Good God!’ said Inspector Walters faintly. ‘But, there’s no evidence to connect Mr Plum with the murder, is there, sir?’
‘There’s no evidence not to connect him with it, either,’ pointed out Dover. As an argument it was unanswerable. ‘And I’ll bet you haven’t even checked his alibi.’
‘His alibi, sir?’
‘For the night the girl was killed, you moron! Believe you me, if Plum can’t account for every second of his time, with witnesses, he’s for the bloody high jump!’
MacGregor felt it was time to take a hand again. ‘But, if Mr Plum is lying, sir, we don’t actually know when the girl was killed. We’ve nothing to go on but the medical evidence, and you know how vague that is.’ MacGregor was feeling very cross. He knew Dover was only doing it for devilment but, still, Mr Plum’s evidence shouldn’t have been accepted quite so complacently at its face value. That was the trouble with Dover, thought MacGregor bitterly. Once in a blue moon and by some sheer fluke, the old fool got something right. Of course, the idea that Mr Plum was involved in the murder of Pearl Wallace was quite absurd – the mere fact that it was Dover who’d thought of it proved how absurd it was. Nonetheless it should have been investigated. It would have to be investigated now, just in case. MacGregor found himself back in the middle of his old nightmare where he was being outsmarted by Dover.
He closed his notebook with a snap. ‘I’ll go and ask a few questions right away, sir,’ he said. ‘Somebody else in the pub may have seen the girl that night or . . .’
‘Fetch him in here!’ commanded Dover, upon whom alcohol seemed to be having a rejuvenating effect. ‘Ring the bell for him!’
MacGregor knew that Dover hated letting him go off on his own and so, all unsuspecting, he rang the bell.
In a few moments Mr Plum duly poked his head round the door.
Dover took immediate charge of the situation. ‘My sergeant here wants to ask you a question,’ he announced, grinning wickedly all over his fat and sweaty face.
Mr Plum responded with equal good humour. ‘Oh, yes, sir,’ he said cheerfully, ‘and what question might that be?’
‘He wants to know if you’ll bring us another round of drinks!’ howled Dover, all but rupturing himself with his extravagant expressions of puerile mirth. ‘Large ones, this time!’
By rights there should at that moment have been another nasty murder in Frenchy Botham, but MacGregor managed to restrain himself. One day, he promised himself, he would really go for Dover with the utmost malice aforethought – but not in front of two witnesses. He waited with seething impatience while a highly amused Mr Plum fetched in yet more booze and while Dover, still laughing helplessly, mopped away at his eyes with his table napkin and finally blew his nose on it. Inspector Walters sat there with his head well tucked in, wondering what the hell to make of it all. He’d come across some damned crack-brained coppers in his time, but this fat old bastard took the bloody biscuit.
Order and decorum were, however, eventually restored and the question as to whether or not Mr Plum was a murderer was allowed to remain in abeyance. Dover lit up one of MacGregor’s cigarettes and exhorted a bemused Inspector Walters to stop sitting there like a constipated hen and get on with it.
Inspector Walters pulled himself together. ‘Oh, yes, the criminal records, sir!’ He scrabbled through his papers. ‘Well, as I was saying, Miss Henty-Harris has no previous form, which is not surprising, really, as old Sir Perceval would have turned her out of the house if she’d even thought about wandering off the straight and narrow. He was a right narrow-minded old devil, he was. God rest him, of course. Now, who’s next? Ah, yes, young Mr and Mrs Bones . . .’
‘Bloody little bastard!’ snarled Dover, proving that there were some things at least that he neither forgot nor forgave.
‘Mrs Bones, sir, has never been in any trouble with the Law but her husband, Peter Bones, has had three convictions for speeding. None of’em very serious and spread out, admittedly, over the last ten years, but infringements of the Law nonetheless.’
A lump of ash dropped off Dover’s cigarette and made its small contribution to the debris which graced the front of his waistcoat.
Inspector Walters went soldiering on. ‘Brigadier Gough. He’s the man, sir, who lives in the house next door to the one the girl’s body was found at. His wife is the religious lady, the one who wants to become a parson and . . .’
‘I know!’ snarled Dover, who didn’t care for being patronized. ‘Get on with it, for God’s sake!’
‘Well, Brigadier Gough is actually quite interesting, sir. He was fined pretty heavily a couple of years ago for failing to stop after being involved in a road traffic accident. He was in collision with a laundry van near a bus stop just outside Chapminster.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he hadn’t a snowball’s chance of getting away with it, sir. There were half a dozen eye-witnesses, three of whom took his number. When the case came to court he pleaded guilty and offered no excuses or explanations.’
Dover shifted impatiently in his chair. ‘Why don’t you get to the bloody point?’
‘Brigadier Gough’s a real stickler for law and order, sir. I believe there was once some question of him becoming a JP himself. In any case, he certainly isn’t a hit-and-run driver.’
‘So?’
‘He’d got somebody else in the car with him, sir. A young female, I understand. This information, being irrelevant, didn’t come out in open court, nor did the fact that his wife was away from home at the time. Demonstrating outside Lambeth Palace or chaining herself to the altar rails in York Minster or something.
Dover grasped the implications with gratifying speed. ‘I said right from the start that man was a womanizer! Lecherous old devil! Chasing around after kids young enough to be his daughters! Well, he’s gone a sight too far this time!’
‘I suppose,’ said MacGregor, who could also see the possibilities, ‘that Mrs Gough is away from home quite often?’
‘Quite frequently, I understand,’ agreed Inspector Walters. ‘So, what with one thing and another, it’s not surprising that the Brigadier’s eyes wander occasionally. I mean, who’d want to be married to the sort of woman that wants to be a bishop? Mind you,’ he added, selecting another o
f his sheets of paper, ‘Mrs Esmond Gough’s a pretty lively specimen, all things considered. She’s got more blooming form than a Derby winner!’ He looked across at Dover. ‘You don’t want me to read it all out, do you, sir?’
Dover had no doubts. ‘Not bloody likely!’
‘Actually it’s just a series of charges of breaches of the peace, causing an obstruction, insulting behaviour, one assaulting the police and resisting arrest, and one charge of indecent behaviour in St Jude’s Church, Hornfield Green, under the Ecclesiastical Court Jurisdiction Act, 1880.’ Inspector Walters rattled his list off. ‘You may remember that last one, sir? A couple of years ago. It created quite a stir at the time. Seems the vicar at this St Jude’s Church didn’t go much on the idea of lady parsons and was saying so from the pulpit when Mrs Esmond Gough and two or three of her supporters attacked him physically with their handbags. It was later claimed in their defence when the case came to trial that the subsequent debagging of the vicar on the sanctuary steps was entirely accidental.’
‘Has she ever been sent to prison?’ asked MacGregor, succumbing to pure vulgar curiosity.
Inspector Walters shook his head. ‘No. She’s never even been given a suspended sentence, if it comes to that. Just bound over and fines. I think the thing is they don’t want to make a martyr out of her. She’s a big enough damned nuisance without that.’
‘Silly cow!’ grunted Dover. ‘That the lot?’
‘Oh, no, sir! We’ve got several more suspects to deal with.’
‘In that case,’ said Dover, who prided himself on never missing a trick, ‘I think we’d better have another little drink. It’s thirsty work, talking.’ He pushed his glass impartially between his two juniors, indicating that he didn’t give a monkey’s which one of them bought the next round.
When things had settled down again and Dover had raised a purely conventional objection about the embarrassment of drinking alone, Inspector Walters moved on to the Talbots and MacGregor reminded Dover that Mr Talbot was the bank manager.
‘He goes in for seances, you know,’ said Inspector Walters disparagingly. ‘Table tapping and spirit voices. Ectoplasm, too, I shouldn’t wonder. It’s an open secret round here. We’ve known about the crazy goings-on for donkey’s years.’
‘Actually, we had discovered that for ourselves,’ said MacGregor loftily. ‘In fact, we’ve even considered the possibility that these arcane meetings might have provided a motive for Pearl Wallace’s murder.’
Inspector Walter’s eyebrows rose. ‘What? A sort of human sacrifice? Blimey, I thought you needed a virgin for that.’
‘That wasn’t quite what we had in mind,’ said MacGregor. ‘We simply thought that the girl might have inadvertently stumbled onto the orgy or whatever was going on. Then Talbot or somebody killed her so as to prevent their secret getting out.’
‘That sounds a bit far-fetched, sergeant.’
MacGregor’s face showed that he hadn’t wasted all his time in Dover’s company. ‘I know it does!’ he snapped. ‘But Talbot is a bank manager. Maybe he didn’t think it would do his career much good if people thought his financial decisions were being guided by spirit voices. Anyhow’ – he got his irritation under control – ‘you were telling us about Mr Talbot’s criminal record. I presume it doesn’t amount to much?’
‘Illegal parking,’ said Inspector Walters sulkily.
‘I see.’
‘In Soho,’ said Inspector Walters more cheerfully. ‘When he was supposed to be attending a weekend conference on banking in Doncaster.’
‘Interesting,’ admitted MacGregor.
‘It shows that he’s another one who might be keen on les girls, in a mild sort of way.’
MacGregor sighed. ‘The trouble is, sir, that we’ve got almost too many people who might have been mixed up with Pearl Wallace and had a reason for killing her. The case is littered with motives. Or possible motives. What we’re short of is hard evidence. So far we’ve not turned up one single fact to connect Pearl Wallace with this part of the world in general, never mind this village in particular. And as for trying to pin the job on anybody living in The Grove . . . well!’ MacGregor shrugged his shoulders despairingly before knuckling down to the job once more. ‘That’s Mr Talbot for illegal parking, then. Now, is anything known about his wife?’
‘She’s been done for shop-lifting.’
‘Where?’
‘In Chapminster. Her solicitor presented a classic case and she virtually got away with it. You know – middle-aged woman, a cry for help, veiled hints about a lack of understanding on the part of her husband. In the end she got a conditional discharge on the understanding that she went to a Marriage Guidance Counsellor. That might,’ said Inspector Walters moodily, ‘tie in with old Talbot seeking solace in Soho.’
‘It might,’ said MacGregor without much interest. He was beginning to think longingly of his bed. ‘Is that the lot?’
‘There’s Clifford de la Poche.’ Inspector Walters stifled a yawn on his own behalf. ‘We nabbed him once for forgetting to renew his dog licence. Otherwise the beggar’s been too clever for us. Still, we’ll get him one day. One of those dratted choirboys is sure to shop him sooner or later, however well he bribes’em.’
‘I don’t remember a dog,’ said MacGregor wearily.
‘He got rid of it. It was a Jack Russell bitch. Which brings us,’ said Inspector Walters with an apologetic grin, ‘to the last one on my list: Mrs Yarrow.’
‘The charwoman?’
‘You’d better not let her hear you calling her that!’
‘What’s she been up to?’
‘She just happens to be the only person connected with this business – if you can call it a connection because she’d been home for a couple of hours before Pearl Wallace appeared on the scene – she’s the only one with any violence in her background. She attacked the lady of the house where she was working over at Horwill. Went for her with a poker. The lady had criticized the way Mrs Yarrow cleaned brass.’
MacGregor raised a very faint grin. ‘What did they charge her with? Justifiable attempted murder?’
‘Not quite! She got a good ticking off from the Bench and was bound over to keep the peace. It was her first offence. And her last, if it comes to that.’
‘And that’s the lot?’
Inspector Walters agreed that it was. ‘Not much help, I’m afraid.’
It was true but MacGregor, given half a chance, was quite a kindly lad. ‘Oh, well, every little helps, sir, and you never know – we might have found that one of the suspects had already committed murder. You know what it’s like these days. Some killers are out and back in society in a matter of weeks.’
Inspector Walters nodded. ‘Bloody disgusting, I call it,’ he agreed as he began to gather himself together for his departure. ‘Well, I’d better be pushing off home before the old woman starts thinking she’s a widow. Where is it you’re off to tomorrow? Birmingham?’ He shook his head. ‘I still think the answer’s to be found here in Frenchy Botham.’ He looked at Dover for a brief moment. Of course, the chap could just be resting his eyes against the light but . . . ‘Oh, by the way, I almost forgot. The Chief Constable would like a word sometime. Just to say “hello”, you know, and find out how you’re getting on. At your convenience, naturally, but he’d like it to be tomorrow morning. Maybe you could call in before you leave?’
Dover couldn’t have picked a better moment to fall off his chair. It saved MacGregor the trouble of finding an evasive answer to an inconvenient question, and it happened before Inspector Walters had left. This enabled MacGregor to get some assistance in lugging the paralytic, seventeen-and-a-quarter stone Detective Chief Inspector upstairs to bed. The incident proved something of an education for Inspector Walters. Until he’d helped disrobe Dover and seen his underwear, the local man hadn’t realized what a sheltered life he’d lived.
‘Just time for a night-cap!’ whispered MacGregor as they thankfully closed the door on Dover’s st
entorian snores.
Inspector Walters, having just had a brutal lesson on the dangers of strong drink, was dubious.
‘Come on!’ urged MacGregor. ‘We’ve earned it. Besides, I want to make a few enquiries about Mr Plum, our helpful host.’ He led the way downstairs. ‘I hate to admit it, but old Dover was quite right. We have only got Plum’s unsupported word for it that Pearl Wallace ever mentioned The Grove at all.’
14
The Last Trump apart, there was probably only one thing that would have induced Dover to rise from his bed of pain the following morning, and by some miracle MacGregor came armed with it.
‘The Chieth Conthtable?’ repeated Dover, taking out his top set and blearily examining it for unfair wear and tear. ‘You can thuff that for a lark, laddie!’ He munched his teeth defiantly back into place.
‘Half past nine in his office, sir,’ said MacGregor, really putting the frighteners on. ‘And he wants a full progress report.’
‘’Strewth!’ moaned Dover, rolling miserably over and hiding his head in the blankets. ‘Tell him I’m not well. Unfit for duty. Gastric flu. The runs. Typhoid.’
MacGregor grinned to himself. ‘He’d be round like a shot, sir,’ he pointed out. ‘With a police surgeon.’
Dover unveiled a face pallid with fear, constipation and hangover. ‘Save me!’ he begged.
‘I think even the Chief Constable would be prepared to admit that our trip to Birmingham should take priority, sir,’ lied MacGregor smoothly. ‘We can’t be expected to postpone serious investigations for something that doesn’t amount to much more than a courtesy call. If we were to make an early start . . .’ He saw that Dover was hoisting the white flag. Birmingham it was! ‘Shall I ask them to serve you breakfast up here, sir?’
Dover shook his head and wished he hadn’t. ‘No breakfast, laddie!’ he gasped – and showed how the mighty were fallen.
They eventually reached Birmingham after lengthy halts at every public convenience en route. In spite of this, Dover’s first question when he arrived at the premises of the Bullrush Interdenominational Adoption Society was where was the lavatory?
