Dover Three

by Joyce Porter

  ‘It’s very odd,’ said Dover, who would have liked to tie up a few loose ends with Mr Tompkins before he left. ‘Well, ask him to drop me a line at the Yard, will you?’

  ‘If I think on about it,’ said Mrs Quince.

  ‘He didn’t say where he was going, did he?’ asked Dover.

  ‘No, he didn’t,’ said Mrs Quince, observing with a rejoicing heart that it was now only five minutes to zero hour. ‘And if you want to catch that bus you’d better be getting a move on. They run a bit early sometimes, and he won’t stop if he doesn’t see you there.’

  Dover settled his bowler hat squarely on his head and MacGregor picked up the two suitcases. Unmourned, they left The Jolly Sailor for the last time and ventured out into the darkness. It was raining again, a fact they had ample time to appreciate because’ not only was the bar clock fast, but the bus was late as well. When, at last, it arrived they clambered on board.

  The overnight express from Grailton to London was running smoothly. There were no sleepers on the train but Dover and MacGregor had a first-class compartment to themselves so the journey was not going to be too uncomfortable. Very few people seemed to be travelling down to London that night, and nobody had even tried to invade the detectives’ sanctuary.

  Not long after two o’clock in the morning the train was rocking along merrily at high speed. MacGregor and Dover were sitting at diagonally opposite ends of their compartment. MacGregor was scratching a few desultory notes in his notebook and worrying about his future. Dover, staring glassy-eyed in front of him, was wondering anxiously about his wife. He sincerely hoped she had fully recovered her health and strength under the administrations of her horrible sister, because he had an idea she was going to need both in the near future. His stomach didn’t feel at all good. Maybe it was Mrs Quince’s parting kipper, or maybe it was those sausage rolls MacGregor had bought him at the station buffet, or maybe he’d caught a chill with standing about waiting for all these buses and trains. It could, he thought, be almost anything, knowing his stomach. But, whatever it was, he was sure it was going to force him to take to his bed for the next six or seven days. By the time he reported fit for duty, the worst of the unpleasantness which was sure to come would have blown over, and the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) and his various underlings would have found something else to tear their hair about.

  You could regard the Thornwich poison-pen case either as a qualified success or a qualified failure, depending on your personal point of view and standards. Dover didn’t think that, in the circumstances, he had done too badly. God knows, there were plenty of occasions when he’d done a hell of a lot worse. But his superiors were a carping, fault-finding crew and it might be pleasanter all round if he didn’t turn up at the Yard for a few days.

  And his stomach really did feel queasy. Slowly he heaved himself to his feet. What a life! Nothing but go, go, go! MacGregor looked up from his notebook.

  ‘I’m just going down the corridor,’ explained Dover as he pushed open the sliding door.

  MacGregor’s eyes dropped back to his notes and he sighed.

  Dover sat moodily in the little room at the end of the corridor for a good five minutes. It was warm and comfortable there and he’d nothing else to do. From time to time a faint grin passed over the broad expanse of his face as he thought of Dame Alice’s discomfiture, past and present. The investigation had not been entirely without its minor satisfactions.

  Eventually he decided it was time to be getting back. MacGregor might be getting worried. With a sigh and a grunt he twisted the lock from ‘engaged’ to ‘vacant’ and opened the door. Immediately outside, to Dover’s vast astonishment, stood a steely-eyed, grim-faced Mr Tompkins holding a large revolver in his hand. The revolver was pointing unwaveringly at the dead centre of Dover’s stomach.

  ‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover, backing away instinctively.

  Mr Tompkins stepped towards him into the toilet and, still not removing his eyes from Dover’s face or his gun from pointing at Dover’s stomach, locked the door behind him with his left hand.

  For a long, dramatic moment the two men stood staring at each other.

  ‘You think you’ve been very clever, don’t you, Mr Dover?’ said Mr Tompkins in a quiet voice.

  ‘Eh?’ said Dover, glancing despondently at Mr Tompkins’s gun.

  ‘It’s a Colt 36,’ explained Mr Tompkins helpfully. ‘The U.S. Navy model. It’s over a hundred years old but it’ll still blow the living daylights out of you if you so much as move a muscle.’

  ‘Oh, quite,’ said Dover, swallowing hard. ‘You won’t have any trouble with me.’

  ‘Good,’ said Mr Tompkins. ‘Now, what was it we were talking about? Oh yes, you think you’ve been very clever, don’t you? Well, you’ve just got to realize that, this time, you’ve not been quite clever enough. I saw you get on the train at Grail ton, you know. You thought you were going to catch me unawares, didn’t you? But I saw you getting on the train and I’ve had time to make a few little arrangements of my own.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Dover as soothingly as he could. ‘Why don’t you just put that gun thing away and come back to my compartment and have a quiet little chat about it, eh?’

  ‘Don’t give me any more of that dumb ox act!’ retorted Mr Tompkins impatiently. ‘You’ve fooled me all along the line with that! There was me thinking you were just a great fat stupid lump – all this complaining about your stomach and spending half your time in bed . . . oh, you really pulled the wool over my eyes!’

  Dover looked unhappily at Mr Tompkins’s gun which was now being waggled up and down in a rather excitable manner.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ complained Mr Tompkins. ‘If they’d just sent an ordinary detective down, I’d have got away with it. Even you’ve got to admit, it was a brilliant plan.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was,’ said Dover, smarmily eager to agree. ‘Really brilliant!’

  ‘It didn’t deceive you, though,’ Mr Tompkins pointed out crossly.

  ‘Oh, well,’ said Dover with a deprecating smile.

  ‘I’d worked it all out very carefully,’ insisted Mr Tompkins, ‘and I took my time about it. I think patience is a great virtue, don’t you? I typed all the poison-pen letters out months and months ago – in my shed out at the back. Nobody ever went in there. It took me a long time, just a few letters every day. Then, when I’d finished, I destroyed everything: the typewriter, the notepaper, the rubber gloves, everything! I just kept the letters, all stamped and addressed and sealed up.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dover, nodding his head slowly and trying not to look as though all this was news to him.

  ‘The timing was most important,’ said Mr Tompkins. ‘As soon as she started this business of trying to adopt a baby, my first instinct was to get cracking and finish her off there and then. With a baby in the house I’d never have managed to get away. But I restrained myself. It was important that I shouldn’t appear to have a shadow of a motive. You do see that, don’t you?’

  Dover nodded his head again.

  ‘Well, when things quietened down again I started posting the letters. I always carried a few on me and whenever a favourable opportunity presented itself I slipped them into one of the post boxes. Too easy, really, because nobody ever suspected me. Well, it worked like a dream, everybody getting all upset and panicky and blaming everybody else. Lovely! Just what I wanted! I knew that sooner or later they’d call the police in, but I’d taken my precautions. They wouldn’t find any incriminating evidence within a hundred miles of me.’

  Dover sighed and leaned wearily up against the wall. God, he’d caught a ripe one here, all right! Mr Tompkins watched him suspiciously.

  ‘Don’t try anything funny!’ he warned Dover. ‘One false move and I’ll let you have it.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to worry about from me,’ Dover assured him earnestly. ‘I won’t move a muscle, I promise you.’

  Mr Tompkins sniffed. ‘You’d be
tter not! I’ve killed once and I’ll kill again. I’ve got nothing to lose now.’

  ‘Your wife?’ asked Dover, his mouth suddenly becoming very dry.

  ‘Of course.’ Mr Tompkins frowned. ‘You needn’t waste your time trying to trick me into making a confession, you know. I’m only talking to you in here to give you the satisfaction of knowing all the details before it’s too late. Not that it’ll do you much good,’ he added and Dover broke out in a cold sweat. ‘Now, where was I? Oh yes, the murder of Mrs Tompkins. Of course I’d got the general plan worked out long ago. I had toyed with the idea of a shooting accident, me cleaning one of my guns, you know, but I think that one’s been done a bit too often, don’t you? In the end I settled for the gas fire. Simpler, really. And it’s the stupid sort of thing that happens every day. If it hadn’t been for you I might have made it just a simple accident – the light blowing out on the gas fire, somehow. Mind you, I had thought about a fake suicide but when you told me just how to do it, well I decided that was the best way after all.’

  ‘I told you?’ said Dover.

  ‘At The Jolly Sailor after the Poppy Gullimore fiasco,’ agreed Mr Tompkins. ‘Of course, at the time I just thought you were one of those stupid, bragging oafs who can’t keep their mouths shut after a couple of drinks.’ Mr Tompkins gave a wry little laugh. ‘I need hardly say that I underestimated you! Anyhow, I’d got to go through with it right away. I’d already set the poison- pen letters in motion and I knew she was fixing up something about that black-market baby – she didn’t tell me but I put two and two together. There was no time to lose so I decided on suicide for her. All your tips were most helpful and I flatter myself I did a pretty good job. I’d a bit of difficulty persuading her to take a bath on Wednesday morning, but otherwise everything went like clockwork. I was very lucky about that suicide note. I’d been saving that for months, just on the off-chance. It was part of a letter she’d been writing. I’d slammed a door – by sheer accident, of course – and made her jump, so she had to start a new sheet.’ Dover, swaying gently as the train roared and rattled on its heedless way, regarded Mr Tompkins sourly.

  ‘I knew she’d ask for a glass of brandy,’ Mr Tompkins went on, blithely unaware of the anguish and suffering his words were inflicting. ‘She always did. I’d got it all ready and waiting for her. With an overdose of sleeping pills mixed up in it, naturally.’

  ‘There was no trace of the sleeping pills in the glass,’ said Dover. ‘We had it analysed. There was only brandy.’

  ‘Oh, but I changed the glass,’ said Mr Tompkins brightly. ‘When we went into the shop together I’d smelled the gas long before you did. I thought you were never going to mention it.

  Well, when at last you did, I rushed to the sitting-room door and told you it was locked.’ He smiled shyly. ‘It wasn’t, of course. I rushed round outside and broke into the room through the window. Then I pushed the suicide note under the body, and substituted the innocent brandy glass I’d been carrying around ail afternoon for the one Mrs Tompkins had drunk from. That’s all there was to do, really.’

  Dover wrinkled his nose and wondered how much longer that young nit MacGregor was going to go on sitting on his backside before coming to find out what was the matter. Dover sighed. He decided to work on the principle that yack-yack was better than bang-bang. ‘But how did you turn the gas on in the first place?’ he asked wearily. ‘According to Mrs Poltensky, you never went near the sitting-room.’

  ‘No more I did,’ said Mr Tompkins proudly. ‘Don’t you remember I told you that just before the two of us, Mrs Poltensky and me, left the shop, I went back into the kitchen to get some stamps? Well, while I was in there I just turned all the gas off at the meter. Mrs Tompkins was fast asleep and, of course, she didn’t notice when the gas fire went out. Exactly one minute later I turned the main gas tap on again. That’s all there was to it.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ observed Dover bitterly.

  ‘But not ingenious enough,’ said Mr Tompkins with some regret. ‘You obviously spotted it or you wouldn’t be here now, would you?’

  Dover managed a half-hearted smile. ‘No, I suppose I wouldn’t, would I?’

  ‘It was your sergeant who first started putting the wind up me,’ mused Mr Tompkins. ‘He’s not a patch on you when it comes to playing the village idiot, is he? When he got on to all that baby buying business, I began to get really worried. I mean, he was heading straight for the core of the whole affair, wasn’t he? But you did a wonderful cover-up job, pretending you just couldn’t see what was staring you straight in the face. Oh, you fooled me all right! You must have been laughing yourself silly deep down inside. Of course, I can see now you were just biding your time, giving me enough rope to hang myself, eh? You’re a proper card, Mr Dover, you really are! I was a fool ever to think that I could outwit you, though, really, I think you’ve got to give me full marks for trying.’

  ‘Oh, I do,’ said Dover sincerely, ‘I do.’

  Mr Tompkins looked pleased. ‘Coming from you that’s a real compliment, Mr Dover. Thank you!’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Dover, moving uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He nodded his head at the only seat available. ‘Do you think I might sit down?’

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Mr Tompkins cunningly. ‘I don’t trust you. You just stay where you are. We shan’t be much longer. Anything else you’d like to know?’

  Dover searched his memory frantically. ‘Why didn’t you want to tell us where you were on the Wednesday afternoon?’ he asked.

  Mr Tompkins waved the gun about vaguely. ‘Oh, that was just a bit of over-elaboration,’ he explained. ‘I thought it would look more convincing if you found out about Louise de Gascoigne for yourselves. Anything else?’

  Dover thought about scratching his head but decided that Mr Tompkins, who was really behaving in a most peculiar manner, might misinterpret this innocent gesture. ‘I’m not absolutely sure, you know,’ he said cautiously, ‘exactly why you had to kill your wife. It seems a bit drastic. Why didn’t you just leave her?’

  ‘Oh,’ exclaimed Mr Tompkins looking both surprised and shocked, ‘I couldn’t have done anything like that! She relied on me absolutely for everything, you know. What sort of a life would she have had if I’d just skipped off with all the money? The shame and humiliation would have killed her. How could she have faced all those people in Thornwich? Oh no, I may be selfish and a murderer, but I’m not cruel – nobody could ever accuse me of that! That’s partly why I had to start writing that second batch of poison-pen letters. Your sergeant really scared the pants off me when he started hinting that the whole of the poison-pen scheme was aimed at getting rid of Mrs Tompkins – I suppose you put him up to that, you cunning old fox! Naturally, I had to start writing a new lot of letters to scotch that idea. But I did it for Mrs Tompkins’s sake too, you know. I couldn’t have them all saying that she’d been writing all those disgusting letters. She was absolutely incapable of doing anything like that and it was up to me to clear her name and her memory. You do see that, don’t you?’

  Dover nodded his head. He wasn’t really listening too carefully to what Mr Tompkins was saying. He was fully occupied wondering how long all this was going on, and how it was going to end.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Mr Tompkins went on, ‘but up to Friday night I was quite confident I’d got away with it. Over-confident, I suppose.’ He smiled wanly. ‘And then suddenly I just saw the whole thing in a flash : how you’d been playing with me like a cat playing with a mouse. All this comic blundering around and pretending to get tiddly and making believe you’d be my partner in a private detective agency – well, on Friday night I suddenly couldn’t see how I’d ever been taken in by it! I felt such a fool!’

  ‘So you decided to run for it?’

  ‘Yes. I’d got everything pre-planned of course, just in case. I worked out a new identity and even got myself a false passport – and that was dead easy, I don’t mind telling you. Somebody ough
t to do something about it – criminal it is! Still, I did a brilliant job, though I say it as shouldn’t. I defy anybody,’ pronounced Mr Tompkins truculently, ‘to connect me now with Arthur Tompkins of Thornwich! I’ve covered my tracks perfectly. I’ve . . . ’ His face fell suddenly. ‘But you found me, didn’t you?’

  Dover cleared his throat modestly.

  ‘You found me or you wouldn’t be on this train. Oh dear’ – Mr Tompkins looked quite crestfallen – ‘I haven’t been as clever as I thought, have I?’ He sighed. ‘You’ve not left me much choice, have you? I’m not going to let you clap a pair of handcuffs on me and lead me off quietly, you do realize that, don’t you? I don’t suppose you’d call my family exactly distinguished, but we’ve always kept ourselves decent and I’m not going to be the first one to besmirch our good name. You do understand that, Mr Dover, don’t you? I’m very sorry for your sake, but there it is.’

  ‘Now, look here, old chap,’ said Dover in a hoarse but fatherly voice, ‘just take your time about this and think it over. There’s no hurry. If you pack it in quietly now, they can only give you life and, a chap like you, why you’d be out as free as a bird in eight or nine years, honest you would. You don’t want to go making things worse by killing me, now do you?’

  ‘Kill you?’ asked Mr Tompkins in great surprise. ‘What on earth made you think I was going to kill you? Oh well,’ he admitted ruefully, ‘I must confess that the thought did cross my mind, but there’s your sergeant, too, isn’t there? And then, if I shot you now in here, I’d never get this door open, not with a brawny, well-built chap like you sprawled over the floor. They really ought to make these toilet doors open outwards. And anyhow,’ – Mr Tompkins rubbed his free hand wearily across his face – ‘I’ve had enough. The whole thing’s sort of gone sour on me. I thought I’d solve everything by killing Winifred. I’d start a new life and it’d all be wonderful and different, but it isn’t. And the odd thing is, I miss her somehow. No, I’m going to kill myself. I just wanted to talk to you first and make sure you’d got everything straight. I could have left a note, I suppose, but I think I’d sooner do it this way. I know I can rely on you, Mr Dover. You will see that they identify me properly, won’t you? I might have been a bit too clever there. I’d like to be buried next to Winifred, if you could arrange it.’