Dover Three

by Joyce Porter

  ‘She was always talking about expressing herself,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow defensively. ‘Besides, how was I to know what she was up to? She was a funny sort of girl, I grant you, but I always put that down to her being educated. I never thought she was at the back of anything like this.’ She waved the letter at Dover. ‘She’s the one who’s been writing these anonymous letters, you know. It’s all down here. A full confession.’

  Dover grabbed at the sheets of paper but Mrs Leatherbarrow whipped them smartly out of his reach.

  ‘You can have it in a minute,’ she said generously. ‘I just want to phone Dame Alice first and read a few bits out to her.’

  ‘That letter is evidence!’ shouted Dover. ‘It’s mine! Hand it over!’

  This time he was quicker and managed to get one podgy hand on the untidy sheets of paper. With a yelp of triumph, he pulled.

  Mrs Leatherbarrow held firm. The letter parted quite neatly down the middle.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ they said in unison, each clutching a handful of evidence.

  ‘There is such a thing,’ snorted Dover furiously, ‘as hindering the police in the execution of their duty. If you don’t give me the rest of that letter . . .’

  With a resigned sigh Mrs Leatherbarrow handed it over. After all she could remember enough to give a pretty accurate summary to Dame Alice.

  ‘And now,’ said Dover, sitting down resolutely in the armchair, ‘I should be obliged if you would answer a few questions.’ He fished around in his pockets and produced an old envelope. Mrs Leatherbarrow, impressed in spite of herself, found him a pencil in one of Miss Gullimore’s drawers.

  ‘Right!’ said Dover, licking the pencil to make the scene look more official. ‘Full name?’

  ‘Emily Leatherbarrow,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow and watched Dover solemnly write it down.

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Widow. I buried Mr Leatherbarrow ten years ago next Tuesday.’ Touched by the nearness of this sad anniversary Mrs Leatherbarrow dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  ‘Age?’ said Dover, removing the kid gloves and getting really nasty.

  Mrs Leatherbarrow bridled. ‘I don’t see what you want all this for. I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Just routine, madam,’ leered Dover happily. ‘Age?’

  For a moment Mrs Leatherbarrow hesitated. ‘Forty-nine,’ she said quickly.

  Dover examined her slowly. He twitched his nose. ‘Fifty-five if you’re a day,’ he announced flatly.

  ‘I’m fifty-four, if you must know,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow with great indignation. ‘And you’ve no cause to go spreading that round the village, either. It is a lady’s privilege, after all.’

  ‘Well,’ said Dover, shoving his envelope back in his pocket, ‘now we’ve got those little formalities out of the way we can get down to the real business. What happened this evening?’

  Mrs Leatherbarrow had had all the stuffing knocked out of her. She was more than willing to co-operate. ‘Well, I came back from the whist drive on the 5.30 bus from Cumberley. That got me back in here at about half past six, I suppose. I took my hat off and changed my frock and then I put the kettle on to make myself a cup of tea. Well, just before the kettle boiled, I called upstairs to Poppy. She didn’t answer me and I thought it was a bit odd because I knew she was in. Her scooter was in the front garden same as usual. I called her again and she still didn’t answer, so I came upstairs to see if anything was the matter. I opened the door and there she was – all sprawled out in that very arm-chair you’re sitting in. I gave her a bit of a shake and then I saw the bottle and the glass on the floor and this letter addressed to the coroner propped up on the dressing-table. I didn’t know what to do so I rushed off to get Dr Hawnt. He only lives a couple of doors away and I thought he’d be better than nothing.’

  ‘She hadn’t locked this door, then?’ said Dover.

  ‘Oh no, it was just closed, that’s all.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘What time does Miss Gullimore get back from work?’

  ‘Well, she’s usually in by a quarter to five at the latest. She comes on her scooter and that’s much quicker than waiting for the bus.’

  ‘Did she know what time you’d be in this evening?’

  Mrs Leatherbarrow looked surprised. ‘Well, of course she did! There’s a whist drive every Monday afternoon in Cumberley. I haven’t missed it in donkey’s years.’

  ‘And you always come back at the same time?’

  ‘I haven’t much choice, have I? If I miss that 5.30 bus, there isn’t another until after seven. The whist drive’s always over just before five so I’ve nice time to catch the bus at half past. Sometimes it’s a bit late, of course, but never more than five minutes or so.’

  ‘And do you always invite Miss Gullimore down for a cup of tea when you get back?’

  ‘Always,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow firmly. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I tell you, I’ve been like a mother to that girl. She used to like to come down and see what I’d won.’

  ‘But you can’t have won every week,’ objected Dover.

  ‘Oh, can’t I?’ Mrs Leatherbarrow preened herself on the bed. ‘Let me tell you, it’s a bad week when I come home empty-handed. Ask anybody round here. It’s my hobby, you see,’ she explained, ‘that and bingo.’

  ‘It sounds more like a profession,’ grumbled Dover who never won anything.

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty that have called it a sight more than that,’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow tossing her head. ‘I’ve had some very catty things said about it in my time. Still, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. That’s what I used to say to Poppy when these nasty old letters started coming.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dover, ‘you’ve had some, too, have you?’

  ‘I’ll say I have, though not as many as Poppy did. She was always getting them, poor girl. Dear me, whatever am I saying!’ Mrs Leatherbarrow went of! into a sudden screech of girlish laughter which was most inappropriate to a woman of her years and weight. ‘Of course it was Poppy writing those dreadful things herself, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Did you ever suspect her?’ asked Dover with massive indifference. He’d found out all he wanted to know long ago but the room was warm, the chair comfortable and Mrs Leatherbarrow seemed a hospitable sort of woman. Dover concentrated hard on looking as though a cup of tea and a bit of her vaunted mothering wouldn’t come amiss.

  ‘Of course not!’ said Mrs Leatherbarrow. ‘She was only a kid. She tried to make out that she was no end of a woman of the world, but it didn’t fool me. Here – is that the time? I must be off! There’s a programme I want to see on the telly and I’ve got to give Dame Alice a ring first. You can let yourself out, can’t you, dearie?’

  Dover poked around for a few minutes after Mrs Leatherbarrow had gone. There was no sign of a typewriter and no sign of any white Tendy Bond notepaper. He knew there wouldn’t be. Still, you’d got to go through the motions, hadn’t you? He looked disconsolately at the two halves of the suicide note which he was still clutching in his hand. A few chance phrases, hugely scrawled in pencil, caught his eye. One of my problems has been that there’s nobody I can communicate with . . . I feel my presence is of no value or interest to anyone . . .

  He sighed. Five ruddy foolscap pages of self-pity! Well, MacGregor could plough through them. Dover let himself out of the bedroom and made his way downstairs. He followed the sound of a studio audience roaring its head off with spontaneous laughter and found Mrs Leatherbarrow’s sitting-room. Mrs Leatherbarrow was already comfortably installed in front of her set. Her feet were resting on an over-stuffed pouffe and she had a large box of chocolates on the aim of her chair. She heard Dover open the door but didn’t turn her head.

  ‘What is it, dearie?’

  ‘Do you know what subjects Miss Gullimore taught at school?’ said Dover loudly over another shriek of laughter.

  ‘English and Art, I think,’ shouted Mrs Leat
herbarrow. ‘Don’t forget to shut the door behind you when you go out.’

  Dover made a rude gesture at the back of Mrs Leatherbarrow’s head which gave him some small satisfaction. Out once more he plodded into the cold, driving rain and fumbled his way back to The Jolly Sailor. He arrived there all in one piece, owing to a miscalculation on the part of a driver of an articulated truck, who had left his final, murderous burst of acceleration a fraction of a second too late. Dover had leapt desperately for the kerb and found himself in the embracing arms of MacGregor.

  ‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover. ‘I thought he’d got me that time.’

  ‘Some of these drivers want reporting,’ agreed MacGregor who had taken in the whole incident with his usual quickness. For a moment his hopes had soared but he accepted Dover’s survival philosophically. He was too cold and hungry to do anything else. ‘Did you get his number, sir?’

  Dover released himself and stood on his own feet instead of MacGregor’s. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool!’ he snarled. ‘What do you think I’ve got – X-ray eyes? And where the hell have you been?’ He didn’t give MacGregor a chance to answer. ‘Trust you to be missing when something happens! I don’t know how you do it. You must have a bloody sixth sense or something.’

  ‘What has happened, sir?’ asked MacGregor, who knew from long and bitter experience that the Chief Inspector loathed explanations and excuses, especially when they were genuine.

  ‘The dratted girl, Poppy Gullimore, has just tried to kill herself. Left a note confessing to writing the poison-pen letters.’

  ‘Oh,’ said MacGregor.

  ‘Now, you get straight off to the hospital, and stop there till she comes round. Get a statement from her as soon as she’s fit to make one and find out what she took and how much. All the usual rubbish. Oh, and I want to know what her underwear’s like.’

  ‘But I haven’t had any dinner yet, sir!’ protested MacGregor. ‘Neither,’ said Dover pompously, ‘have I.’

  And with that he marched quickly into The Jolly Sailor to remedy the omission. MacGregor stared hopelessly after him. Only when the Chief Inspector’s portly figure had disappeared from sight did he realize that he had no idea which hospital Poppy Gullimore had been taken to. And what was all that about her underclothes? He shivered and pulled his overcoat collar up round his ears. Perhaps the old fool had developed a fetish about young ladies’ underwear. It wouldn’t surprise MacGregor if he had.

  Chapter Five

  THE JOLLY SAILOR hadn’t had a night like it for years. Bert Quince was so overwhelmed by the sight of so many paying customers that he had actually brought another electric fire down from his bedroom and plugged it in near the fireplace. He and his wife were rushed off their feet serving drinks but they had enough sense to recognize and cherish a golden goose when they saw one.

  ‘There’s the Chief Inspector now!’ Bert Quince hissed to his wife. ‘You go and get him his dinner right away. I can manage in here. I’ll get Charlie to give me a hand.’

  The excitement mounted as Mrs Quince and Dover attended to the wants of the inner man. Half the male population of Thornwich had crowded into the public bar and there were several women there as well. The mystery of the poison-pen letters had never really sparked much interest amongst the men folk, but a young girl’s suicide – well, that was something more like it, wasn’t it? It was by now general knowledge that this fat policeman chap from London liked his liquor and was certain to be fairly talkative once he’d wet his whistle a couple of times. All in all, with a bit of luck, it looked like being an interesting session.

  Dover had been fed – and very well fed, too – in the kitchen. Mrs Quince had apologized, but it was warmer and he had a bit of privacy there, didn’t he? Dover had been delighted and paid a delicate, if unconscious, compliment to Mrs Quince by wolfing down everything edible in sight. No need to worry about saving anything for Sergeant MacGregor, he assured her, he’d be sure to get a meal out somewhere.

  When the Chief Inspector finally entered the public bar he was greeted by a hushed and respectful silence. Those who had not seen him before were a little taken aback but, sensing the prevailing mood, they kept any opinions they might have had to themselves and joined in almost universal offers to stand the great man a drink.

  To say that Dover was surprised at this reception would be an understatement. He was flabbergasted! During his chequered career there had been relatively few occasions when he had been the object of popular acclaim. Of course, he was used to other people standing him drinks. He would be an enforced teetotaller if they didn’t, but such eagerness was unusual. He beamed happily at the assembled company and selected the lucky man. In many ways Chief Inspector Dover was no fool and no one could accuse him of lack of foresight where his own comfort and convenience were concerned. Nor was he ungrateful for or unmindful of past favours – not when they came from a man with one hundred and seventy thousand smackers tucked away under his mattress.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Tompkins,’ he said graciously and walked across to sit down beside his friend.

  Mr Tompkins was delighted. The drinks arrived as if by magic. Mr Tompkins didn’t smoke – it was one of his few faults in Dover’s eyes – but he was one of nature’s gentlemen and had brought a packet of Dover’s favourite brand from the shelves of his own shop. He laid it shyly on the table and suggested that Dover should help himself. Dover did.

  When Mr Tompkins had lit the cigarette, he and Dover settled down to an intimate conversation. Those standing close around their table listened intently and passed each tit-bit back to the less fortunate ones stuck over by the wall.

  ‘Well, you’re a fast worker, Mr Dover,’ said Mr Tompkins admiringly and acting as spokesman for the assembled company. ‘You’ve only been here a couple of days and you’ve got the whole case cleared up. That’s Scotland Yard for you, eh? I think it’s marvellous! How did you pick on her? Why, bless me, she’s the only one you’ve interviewed and there you go – hitting the jackpot first time!’

  ‘Oh, come, come!’ said Dover with a modest smirk. ‘I think you’re jumping to a few too many conclusions, Mr Tompkins. This case isn’t over and done with by any means. Though we’re making progress,’ he added quickly.

  ‘But, I don’t understand, Mr Dover. I mean, why should Poppy Gullimore try to kill herself if she didn’t write those letters?’ Mr Tompkins’s bewilderment was shared by a number of flushed, sweaty faces which moved in closer to catch Dover’s answer.

  ‘Well now, in the first place,’ said Dover, ‘Miss Gullimore didn’t try to commit suicide.’

  ‘But . . .’ Mr Tompkins’s eyes popped. ‘You don’t mean it was attempted murder, do you?’

  ‘Good God, no!’ said Dover with a rich chuckle at such naivety. ‘Murder in Thornwich? You’ll have to watch that imagination of yours, Mr Tompkins! No, she took the aspirins or whatever it was herself all right, but it wasn’t a serious attempt at suicide.’

  Mr Tompkins frowned. ‘But, how can you tell?’

  Dover settled back comfortably in his chair and prepared to enlighten the ignorant. ‘Experience, mostly,’ he said. ‘When you’ve been in the game as long as I have, it takes a bit more than a chit of a girl to pull the wool over your eyes. Now, just let me tell you how somebody who really wants to commit suicide goes about it. They don’t muck about with bottles of aspirins. If they’re going to do it that way they get hold of something really lethal and take a massive overdose of the stuff – ten or twenty times the amount you’d need to knock off a whole regiment. Or else they shoot themselves – stick the muzzle in your mouth and pull the trigger and you blow the back of your head off. There’s no shilly-shallying about that, is there? Nobody’s going to arrive in the nick of time and bring you round after that, are they?’

  There was a general murmur of agreement from Dover’s audience.

  ‘But what does this Gullimore girl do?’ asked Dover contemptuously. ‘Gets hold of a few lousy aspirins and swallows ’em. Any d
octor’ll tell you it’s well-nigh impossible to kill yourself with an overdose of aspirins. No, if she’d wanted to finish it all off seriously she’d have thrown herself under an express train or tried crossing this murderous road of yours out here when it’s dark.’ This local reference got an appreciative round of titters. ‘And then look at her timing! She does it when she knows Mrs Leatherbarrow’ll be coming home, regular as clockwork, and find her in plenty of time. No,’ – Dover flicked the ash off his cigarette down the trousers of a man who’d approached a bit too near – ‘Poppy Gullimore was just trying to make people think she was going to kill herself.’

  ‘But, maybe she didn’t know aspirins were no good,’ suggested Mr Tompkins, ‘and perhaps she was so upset she forgot about Mrs Leatherbarrow coming home.’

  Dover eyed him with mild contempt. ‘Come now, Mr Thompkins, give me credit for a bit of common sense! There are other things, too, you know. Take this suicide note – so-called.’ Dover produced the rather tattered remains and waved them in front of Mr Tompkins’s face. ‘Five blooming pages of it! Mostly about herself and dripping in self-pity! Now then, would it surprise you to learn that genuine suicides practically never leave a note? And when they do, it’s usually a couple of lines scrawled on a bit of paper – not a blooming thesis like this. It’s the phonies who write reams and reams of stuff because they want people to feel sorry for them and give ’em bags of sympathy’ – Dover waggled a fat, admonitory finger – ‘when they’re brought round. Real suicides don’t give a damn what people think. Why should they? They’re not going to be there to find out, are they?’

  ‘Gosh!’ said Mr Tompkins in a hushed voice.

  ‘There are a few other points, too,’ said Dover nonchalantly, ‘which I’m expecting my sergeant to confirm any minute now. Not that there’s any doubt about it. Besides, why should Poppy Gullimore commit suicide?’