Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All Read online

  ‘It’s just coming, sir.’ MacGregor, hearing the tea cups rattling outside, got up and opened the door again. ‘Shall I be mother, sir?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Dover unpleasantly. ‘And four lumps for me, remember.’ He glared at the station sergeant who was still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. ‘You paralysed or something? Sit down over there. I’ll come to you in a minute.’

  There was a pause while MacGregor poured the tea out.

  ‘I came over a bit queasy after lunch,’ Dover informed the room in general. ‘A bit bilious, you know. I had to get into bed to keep warm.’

  ‘Nasty cold sort of day, sir,’ agreed the station sergeant.

  ‘I’d no small change for the gas fire, either,’ explained Dover, bringing a note of pathos into his voice. ‘Either of you lads got a shilling on you?’

  Both lads fished obligingly in their pockets and produced five separate shillings.

  ‘Oh,’ said Dover with an innocent smile, ‘that’s very kind of you. Stick one in the meter, MacGregor, and light the fire. You can leave the others on the mantelpiece.’

  MacGregor, inwardly cursing himself for presenting his lord and master with a couple of barely solicited bob, did as he was told and then started handing the tea round.

  ‘Now,’ said Dover, dropping a lump of strawberry jam down the front of his vest, ‘what have you been up to, MacGregor?’ Delicately he scraped the jam off with his knife and replaced it on his bread and butter.

  ‘I went to see Miss Sandra Jackson. She was Cochran’s girlfriend, you remember, sir.’

  ‘Of course I remember!’ snapped Dover. ‘ I’m not senile yet, laddie. And if you have a memory half as good when you get to my age you won’t be doing so badly.’ He blew on his tea.

  ‘Well, she didn’t seem to know anything, sir. Just that Cochran had called their holiday off at the last minute and that she hadn’t seen him since a week last Saturday and he seemed normal enough then.’ MacGregor solemnly consulted his notebook. ‘“As cheeky as a boxful of monkeys and sexy with it” – to quote her own words, sir. She went round to his lodgings to see what the dickens was going on but she couldn’t get past Mrs Jolliott. After that she decided he could stick it and that two could play that sort of game, and she’s made no attempt to get in touch with him since.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Dover. ‘Any cake? Well, get on with it, laddie! You haven’t spent all afternoon interviewing one twit of a girl, have you?’

  ‘No, sir, though she isn’t the easiest person to talk to. I don’t think she’s quite normal, really – not in the head that is.’ MacGregor smirked. ‘Though there was nothing wrong with the rest of her, I will say that. She seemed to think she ought to figure in Cochran’s will; the pair of them being as good as man and wife, she claimed. It took me a long time to convince her that Cochran’s heirs were no concern of mine.’

  Dover grunted, and stretched out to pass the plate of cakes to the station sergeant.

  ‘Well, sir,’ continued MacGregor, ‘after that I went round to Mrs Jolliott’s again to collect Cochran’s things. I carted them all round to the police station and examined them there, but I’m afraid I drew a complete blank. There was nothing there to give us any lead on why he killed himself. He seems to have had a reasonable amount of money in the Post Office Savings Bank, nothing excessive, of course, which might have been suspicious. Just a reasonable balance. There were very few private papers and none of them helpful. Of course Mrs Jolliott had already cleared his room out before we got there. She says she hasn’t removed or destroyed anything, but we can’t be sure. We’ve only got her word for it.’

  ‘Oh, you can trust Mrs Jolliott,’ said the station sergeant who was restlessly counting his off-duty hours slipping by. ‘She’s on the Committee of the Ladies’ League.’ He made it sound like a pronouncement of canonization.

  ‘The Ladies’ League?’ asked MacGregor.

  ‘Yes, you’ve heard of them, surely? They’re very powerful here in Wallerton. Practically run the town, you might say. They started up orignally just after the war – the First World War, of course – to stop Wallerton from getting spoiled. Since then they’ve gone from strength to strength. I reckon we’ve got the most unspoiled sea-side resort in the whole blessed country. They just oppose absolutely everything. That’s why we’ve only two licensed hotels, no fun fair, no bowling alley, no bingo and practically no anything else you are to name. They do most of it through their husbands, of course. Talk about petticoat government! And it’s getting worse, not better. They’ve started branching out now.’ The station sergeant lowered his voice. ‘Do you know what they did a couple of years ago? There’s a fair-sized ladies’ shop on Sea Parade, Morrison’s, been there for donkey’s years. Well, young Morrison thought he’d liven things up a bit – just as a gimmick, you know. Of course, he’d never have done it if his father had been alive. His father had more sense. Well, young Morrison, he gets one of those topless dresses and sticks it in his main window. Just as a joke, really. Well, you’d have thought he was organizing sexual orgies on the front line from the row that blew up. Mind you, the Ladies’ League were quite fair about it. They gave him ten minutes to get the whole bang shoot removed from the window. Miss Billson, she’s a retired gym mistress from the High School, she stood outside on the pavement with a stop-watch. Young Morrison, the fool, tried to bluff it out. Said it was a free country and he wasn’t breaking the law and all that sort of rot. And a fat lot of good it did him, too.’

  ‘What did they do?’ asked MacGregor kindly. ‘ Burn the shop down?’

  ‘Worse, because that way young Morrison would have got the insurance at any rate. No, they just boycotted him. The word was sent round and not a single woman living in this town so much as put one foot over the threshold. They all closed their accounts and that was the end of young Morrison. Three quarters of his staff handed their notice in and in just over a month he sold out. Dropped a packet on the deal, too, from what I’ve heard. Cleared out of the town, too. Went into a monastery, so they say, but I reckon that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Oh, you’ve got to watch your P’s and Q’s in Wallerton if you want to survive. There was that fellow …’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dover. He turned to MacGregor. ‘So what it all boils down to is that you’ve buggered around all afternoon for nothing?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t quite put it like that, sir.’

  ‘No,’ said Dover moodily, ‘I don’t suppose you would. You’d wrap it up in a lot of flowery language, but it wouldn’t change the facts, would it?’

  ‘Perhaps the sergeant here might be able to give us a lead, sir.’

  ‘Wadderyermean?’ growled Dover.

  ‘I was going to tell you about the Hamilton business, sir,’ said the station sergeant eagerly. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of bringing the file along with me in case you’d like to have a look at it.’

  ‘What,’ said Dover, ‘that?’

  The station sergeant looked at the heavy suitcase with considerable pride. ‘It was a very complicated case, sir.’

  ‘It must have been!’ was Dover’s morose comment. ‘That’s the trouble with you lot these days. Too much damned paper.’

  ‘Oh well,’ – he sank deeper into the bed and lay almost flat on his back, gazing up at the ceiling – ‘I suppose you’d better tell us all about it. But, for God’s sake, keep it short! We don’t want to be here all night.’

  It was a sentiment to which the station sergeant subscribed, but, on the other hand, the Hamilton affair was the most lurid thing that had ever happened in the whole of Wallerton’s history and it seemed a pity not to make the most of it.

  He looked anxiously at Dover and sought for the right note of breath-taking drama which would force the Chief Inspector to open his new closed eyes. Inspiration dallied. What might have been a grunt or what might have been a snore came from Dover ‘s lips.

  ‘This chap, Hamilton,’ gabbled the station sergeant, uncomfor
tably aware that he wasn’t doing himself justice, ‘he was found dead in his own front garden.’

  ‘’Strewth!’ murmured Dover and rolled over to face the wall.

  ‘With no clothes on,’ added the station sergeant.

  ‘Very saucy,’ mumbled Dover.

  ‘And horribly mutilated.’

  Dover yawned.

  ‘I should have thought you’d have heard about it, sir,’ said the station sergeant resentfully. ‘It was in all the papers. We’d hundreds of reporters milling around. And the television.’

  Dover grunted and pulled the bed-clothes up to his chin.

  The station sergeant looked as though he was going to burst into tears. Once more MacGregor took pity on him. ‘ Perhaps you could give us the details?’ he suggested encouragingly and even went so far as to get his notebook out.

  The station sergeant turned to him gratefully. ‘Well, this chap, Hamilton – he was a middle-aged, married man – went out one evening to our local Country Club. That’s what it’s called though actually it’s on top of a warehouse near the railway station. He spent the evening there until he left about half past twelve. He’d had a fair amount to drink so they phoned up for a taxi for him. Nothing unusual about that. It had happened once or twice before. Well, the taxi took him home and dropped him off at his front door. And that’s the last time he was seen alive.’

  ‘By the taxi-driver?’ asked MacGregor.

  ‘That’s right. He says Hamilton got out and paid his fare. He wasn’t paralytic, you see, just had a few too many, that’s all. Then the taxi drove back off to the garage. The following morning the milkman found the body just inside the front garden. Hamilton’s house has got a bit of a garden in front, you know, and a low stone wall. All his clothes were in a neat pile beside the body.’

  ‘Had he been robbed?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. He’d over fifty quid in one pound notes in his wallet.’

  ‘Hm,’ said MacGregor thoughtfully.

  Deep and steady breathing came from the bed.

  ‘You said Hamilton was married? Where was his wife?’

  ‘She was at home, in bed asleep. They slept in separate rooms, apparently, so she’d no idea that Hamilton hadn’t come home or that anything had happened to him. We don’t even know if he went into the house. The front door was locked but, of course, he’d got a key.’

  ‘Didn’t any of the neighbours see or hear anything?’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit of a funny sort of street, you see. They did used to be posh town houses in the old days, but now they’re mostly offices. There’s six houses right opposite Hamilton’s place all belonging to the Town Council – the Borough Surveyor and the Rating Office and things like that. They’re completely empty at night. The people in the house next but one to Hamilton were away. The house next to him is offices but the one on the other side is occupied. They have their bedrooms at the back, though, and they say they didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘So you drew a blank?’

  ‘Well, not quite. There’s an elderly lady who lives in a top flat down at the end of the street. She says she saw a green van drive along at about half past four that morning and stop outside Hamilton’s house. According to her, she saw two men get out of the van, which was facing towards her by the way, and go round the back. She couldn’t see what they were doing and after a couple of minutes they got back in the van and drove off. It wasn’t much help. She couldn’t give us much detail. We followed it up but we didn’t get anywhere.’

  ‘But it wasn’t murder?’

  ‘No. Everybody thought it was at first, of course. Headquarters descended on us like a pack of ravaging wolves. We haven’t had what you might call a real juicy murder case in the county for years and the Chief Constable went after it like a terrier after a rat. We had everybody in on it. He called men in from the other end of the county, everybody was on overtime and all leave was cancelled. You’d have thought the Third World War had broken out. Well, then we got the path. report and that deflated things a bit. Seems he’d got a clot on the brain or something and it had burst or whatever they do. Could have happened any old time, the doctor said. Well, the C.I.D. poked around for a few days but their heart wasn’t in it and gradually everything quietened down. It wasn’t even a nine days’ wonder in the end.’

  MacGregor closed his notebook. ‘Well, it certainly does seem a bit of a mystery, doesn’t it? He died from natural causes, you say, but the body was stripped and mutilated. Very odd.’

  There was a great heaving and puffing from the bed. Dover’s face, rather pink from his exertions, emerged. ‘What the blazes,’ he demanded bleakly, ‘has all this to do with young what’s-his-name chucking himself into the ruddy sea?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ explained the station sergeant, none too confidently, ‘when all the hoo-hah died down over Hamilton and everybody went off on to other jobs like they always do, the Chief Constable sort of turned young Cochran loose on it. He was a sort of friend of Hamilton, you see, and the Chief Constable thought he might be able to get a fresh lead on the business. He didn’t reckon it would do Cochran any harm, either, him being ear-marked for C.I.D., as you might say. It’d give him some practical experience and, of course, it’d be a real feather in his cap if he solved it.’

  ‘My God!’ snarled Dover, sitting up in bed and showing every sign of actually getting out of it. ‘Do you mean that an ordinary uniformed copper who’s hardly broken his bloody boots in gets handed a murder case like this on a bloody plate?’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly a murder case, sir,’ the station sergeant pointed out.

  ‘Don’t quibble!’ roared Dover, swinging his legs out of bed and revealing long woolly underpants. ‘And shove my trousers over! No wonder we never solve any crimes these days. You country bumpkins, you want to get your fingers out! I’ve never heard anything like it. I’m not surprised you’ve got policemen jumping off cliffs every five minutes.’

  While he delivered himself of this tirade Dover proceeded to get himself dressed. There was the usual tussle to fasten the top trouser button and the usual effort to reach his shoe laces. When all his clothes were finally tossed on he peered at his face in the dressing-table mirror and dabbed at his hair a couple of times with a disgusting-looking hair brush.

  ‘Action!’ said Dover. ‘That’s what you want down here. Action! And drive! And a bit of common sense,’ he added scathingly. ‘Chief Constables’ nephews, my Aunt Fanny! It’s a good thing the public doesn’t know how their money’s being spent, by God it is! Well, come on, MacGregor, you great fool! Don’t just sit there!’

  MacGregor scrambled to his feet. ‘ Where are we going, sir?’

  ‘Where are we going, sir?’ mocked Dover, adding a lisp for good measure. ‘In your case, laddie, I often wonder.’

  ‘Will you want me, sir?’ asked the station sergeant, completely taken aback by this sudden flurry of activity.

  ‘Not unless you’re going to pay for your own dinner,’ growled Dover.

  Chapter Five

  MacGregor and the station sergeant looked at each other. The station sergeant mopped his brow.

  ‘I thought he was up and off to clear the whole business up here and now,’ he said shakily.

  ‘Not him.’

  ‘More of what you might call a thinker, is he?’ asked the station sergeant, still gazing in stupefaction at the open door through which Dover had departed.

  With commendable loyalty MacGregor refrained from making any comment.

  ‘Oh, well,’ sighed the station sergeant, ‘it takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’ He looked glumly at his suitcase. ‘What shall I do with that lot?’

  ‘You’d better leave it here. He’ll want to have a look at it, when he’s had his dinner.’

  MacGregor had some difficulty with his Chief Inspector when he finally joined him in the dining-room. Dover was in an evil temper. For the most part his spleen was directed against the unfortunate station sergeant whom he now referred to
as that ‘fat sponger’.

  ‘Me buying a dinner for a sergeant!’ he grumbled. ‘That’ll be the day!’

  ‘I don’t think, sir, …’

  ‘Well, I do, laddie! I’ve had enough experience of hangers-on like him to spot ’em when I see them. Touch you for any damned thing, they will – cigarettes, beer, the lot. You want to watch him, laddie, or he’ll take a softy like you for a real ride.’

  When he had exhausted the iniquities of the station sergeant Dover turned to women. He was not likely to forget who was the source of all his present troubles.

  ‘Lolling on the beach in a deck chair at Filbury,’ he complained sullenly, ‘that’s what she’ll be doing. Drops you straight in the flaming dirt and then clears off without so much as an apology. Let it be a warning to you, laddie. You feed ’em and clothe ’em and work your fingers to the bone for ’em, and what happens? They shop you. Never get married, laddie, it’s a mug’s game.’

  ‘Oh, come now, sir!’ MacGregor tried to laugh him out of it. ‘Mrs Dover couldn’t have helped seeing what she saw.’

  ‘She could have kept her trap shut,’ said Dover truculently. ‘ I told her: “ Drive on,” I said, “it’s nothing to do with us.” Women! You might as well talk to a brick wall.’

  ‘Things might be worse, sir.’

  ‘I don’t know how,’ snorted Dover.

  ‘I was thinking, sir, if we could – well – get cracking and, you know, find out what drove Cochran to commit suicide, we might still be able to get away on leave. We’d have only lost a couple of days, say, and we might be able to tack them on to the other end.’

  It was delicately put, but Dover bridled instinctively at the implications.

  ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult, sir,’ persisted MacGregor, ‘not if we put our backs into it.’

  Dover regarded him with undisguised disgust. ‘And what,’ he asked sarcastically, ‘do you propose we do? Forge a farewell note? Hey! That’s an idea! If we could get a sample of his handwriting …’