Dover Three Page 9

  ‘He’s being rather a long time, isn’t he?’ asked Dame Alice at last in a voice stiff with fury but tinged with a modicum of anxiety.

  ‘He’s got a very delicate stomach,’ said MacGregor, wishing quite hard that the floor beneath his feet would open. ‘Perhaps I should . . .’

  There was a sound of rushing waters.

  ‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Dame Alice faintly. ‘I think he’s coming.’

  A few moments later Dover lumbered back into the room. ‘That’s better,’ he grunted as he collapsed back into his chair. He turned imperturbably to Dame Alice. ‘You were saying?’

  Then there was Freda Comersall. Dame Alice had tried to get her café closed down on the grounds of hygiene. Freda had appeared to resent this interference with her sole means of livelihood and was reputed to have threatened to punch Dame Alice up the hooter. ‘Such a common woman,’ Dame Alice said. ‘And her café is frequented by a most undesirable type of man. Not the kind of people we want hanging around Thornwich at all hours of the day and night.’

  Then there was Miss Tilley at the post office. Dame Alice had not only suggested that she tampered with the mail but had also offered the near expert opinion that old Mrs Tilley, bed-ridden these many years, would be better off in an old people’s home. Miss Tilley had reacted with surprising venom against these remarks.

  Then there was Mrs Quince, landlady of The Jolly Sailor. Some trouble there about selling drinks to minors. It all turned out to be a storm in a tea-cup but Mrs Quince was reputed to have a jumbo-sized memory.

  Then there was Mrs Belper, the butcher’s wife.

  Then there was Mrs Poltensky, abandoned spouse of one of our gallant war-time Polish allies.

  Then there was . . . The list was well-nigh endless. No detail was too trivial and no reference too obscure for Dame Alice. She spared neither herself nor her unwilling audience.

  The church clock was striking three when at last Dover was in a position to direct an ill-tempered kick at Dame Alice’s hairy dog, but his heart wasn’t in it and he missed.

  He spoke from the bottom of his soul as he hobbled down the drive and began the long limp home. ‘ ’Strewth!’ he said. ‘The things I do for England!’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ agreed MacGregor, trying to keep it on a jocular note. ‘A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.’

  Dover scowled crossly. He couldn’t stand people who always had to cap one Shakespearian quotation with another.

  The dog gave a final snap – from a safe distance – at Dover’s heels and retreated, barking furiously, back to its lair behind the house.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Dover who found the going considerably easier downhill, ‘if you look at it one way, it was all very interesting.’

  ‘Was it, sir?’ said MacGregor, feeling that a new Dover was about to be revealed to him.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dover and indulged himself in a most unpleasant smirk. ‘The old cow was so busy telling us how many enemies she’d got, she didn’t seem to cotton on to what else she was telling us.’

  ‘No, sir,’ said MacGregor whose ability to follow a logical analysis had been somewhat impaired by the experiences of the last few hours.

  ‘They may hate her,’ said Dover, ‘but what about her feelings towards them, eh? She loathes their guts! She thinks they’re persecuting her and trying to run her out of the village. She thinks they’re all ganging up on her. She’s got a chip on her shoulder the size of Buckingham Palace against damn near every woman in Thornwich.’

  ‘Oh,’ said MacGregor as the light began to dawn, ‘I do see what you mean, sir. You mean she’s a sort of megalomaniac.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Dover vaguely, ‘something like chat.’

  ‘And you mean,’ crowed MacGregor as the penny dropped, ‘that she’s got a grudge against all the other women. Of course, sir! You’re right! You mean . . .’

  ‘I wish you’d stop telling me what I mean,’ snapped Dover. ‘What I mean is that Dame Alice What’s-her-name is as good a suspect as we’ve met yet for writing those poison-pen letters herself. Why, she’s tailor-made for it!’

  MacGregor executed a smart mental about turn. He knew the Chief Inspector’s methods of old, and they were enough to make strong men tremble. The usual pattern consisted of a lengthy initial period of masterly inaction, followed by the taking of a violent dislike to one of the vaguely possible suspects. After that there was no holding him. His detective’s instinct, as he liked to call it, told him who the culprit was, and all subsequent evidence which didn’t confirm his usually quite unfounded suspicions, was chucked grandly out of the window, or swept surreptitiously under the carpet. It was a system which certainly produced results but not, unfortunately, those which were acceptable to a judge and jury. MacGregor congratulated himself on seeing the precipice of disaster just in time. Never mind all the clever stuff about Dame Alice unconsciously revealing her true self. All that had happened so far was that Dover had taken a dislike – justifiable, no doubt – to Dame Alice and was going to pin the poison-pen letters on her, or blow a blood vessel in the attempt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dover, chuckling gleefully and quite unaware that he had already lost his assistant’s support, ‘it all fits. Do you remember how keen she was to impress us with the fact that the poison-pen writer was a real smart alec, eh? Now, that sort of bragging’s typical! Straight out of a case-book. She’s a ruddy psychopath, that’s what she is,’ said Dover, prepared to chuck psychological jargon around as glibly and ignorantly as the next man. ‘She was nearly breaking her neck to tell us how clever she’d been.’

  ‘Yes,’ said MacGregor doubtfully.

  ‘Then there was that stuff she said about smoking.’ Dover pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes significantly. ‘Fancy a lady using language like that in her own drawing-room! Breast substitute! That shows what sort of a woman she is. If my wife came out with words like that in mixed company, she’d get the back of my hand, I can tell you. Must have a mind like a cesspool, that woman – Dame Alice, of course, not my old woman. No wonder she’s venting her spite by writing a lot of dirty letters to all and sundry.’

  ‘Oh, steady on, sir!’ warned MacGregor hastily and added a nervous laugh to show that his natural caution should be taken in good part. ‘We’re a long way off being able to say definitely that Dame Alice is the poison-pen letter writer.’

  ‘She’s enjoying every minute of it.’ said Dover. ‘She’s patting herself on the back for outwitting the police. She’s upsetting all her favourite enemies by writing dirty letters to them. And she’s a widow, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor.

  ‘Well, there you are!’ said Dover with relish. ‘Sexually repressed! You can always tell. Oh, it fits her like a glove. I’ll bet she can type, too.’

  ‘But, why should she insist on the case being properly investigated, sir?’ asked MacGregor, trying to preach caution without getting Dover’s goat. ‘She was taking a terrible risk, wasn’t she?’ he added. Well, after all, the Assistant Commissioner might have sent one of his more competent detectives down to Thornwich.

  ‘Satisfies her power complex!’ Once Dover got his teeth into a theory it took more than MacGregor’s cautious bleatings to get them out again. ‘Bigger audience to be shocked by the muck she’s writing. All adds to the fun. Yes, I think we can relax now and take things easy for a bit, laddie. We’ve got our woman. Just a question of tying up a few loose ends and making up a neat parcel for the public prosecutor.’

  In spite of his aching feet and protesting stomach, Chief Inspector Dover achieved the demeanour of a conquering general as MacGregor held the door open for him to sweep into The Jolly Sailor, his latest case as good as solved.

  Chapter Seven

  ALTHOUGH HE put a brave face on it to impress Sergeant MacGregor, Dover wasn’t all that optimistic about the progress he was making. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to pin the poison-pen letters fairly and squarely on Dame Alice, but even he real
ized that there was a formidable gap between the desire and its achievement. He grew more depressed as the evening wore on. The Jolly Sailor wasn’t exactly the last word in luxury, and Dover had got past the age, if he’d ever been at it, when he willingly sacrificed his bodily comforts in the chase for glory. His room was cold, damp and noisy. His bed was lumpy. The food on the whole wasn’t bad, but Mrs Quince thought more about bingo than she did about the needs of the inner man. She’d rushed off again to another session and their evening meal had been brought, once more, across the road from Freda’s Cafe by the ever-willing Charlie Ghettle. It wasn’t really good enough, but any remonstrance floundered upon the rock of Mrs Quince’s already limited sense of obligation. Even after dinner, things got no better. Mr Tompkins didn’t put in an appearance and MacGregor was a remarkably slow drinker, almost as though he wasn’t trying.

  At half past nine Dover decided that nothing ventured, nothing won. He phoned his home. His sister-in-law answered. As soon as he heard her voice Dover replaced the receiver. There was no hope from that quarter. He’d just have to stick it out in Thornwich a bit longer. He hoped his wife would have the decency to let him know the instant it was safe for him to return to his own bed and board.

  Wednesday morning dawned, bright and sunny for a change. It was still quite a nice day when Dover opened his eyes and wondered how he was going to get through the next twenty-four hours. He could, he supposed grumpily, go out and interview a few more of these dratted women, but the prospect was uninviting. It was all so boring and, besides, what was the point? He’d already unmasked the nigger in the woodpile and it was unlikely that anybody else in the village would be able to give him concrete evidence of Dame Alice’s guilt. He turned ponderously over in bed and tried to shut out the sounds of the traffic which was tearing noisily past his window.

  ‘Strewth, thought Dover miserably, what a life! He screwed his eyes up as a sudden ray of sunshine pierced the grubby lace curtains which covered the window. Typical of the blasted place: when it wasn’t soaking you with rain it was blinding you with sunshine! He’d have to do something, damn it. Well, he’d have to look as though he was doing something. Dame Alice had a set-up in Thornwich which could well be the envy of the OGPU or the Gestapo, and until she was safely behind bars or tied up in a strait-jacket – according to the whim of the judge – it would be as well not to provide her with additional ammunition. Dover drifted off on a side speculation as to what the real relationship between Dame Alice and the Assistant Commissioner had been all those years ago. Could they really have . . .? Mind you, they were younger then. Dover wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. Even so . . . Oh well, it was probably like female hippopotamuses. Still, it conjured up a pretty revolting picture all the same. Oh, be fair, Dover, who could spend hours on this sort of thing, told himself, there is a Mrs Assistant Commissioner and there was a Mr Stote-Weedon, so . . .

  A scream of brakes and a roar of vulgar abuse from the road outside brought Dover back to reality. He still hadn’t got the rest of the day organized. He turned over on his back. He could, perhaps, go and see another poison-pen victim. Mrs Crotty, for example. ’Strewth, no! She lived right at the top of the hill, even higher up than Dame Alice, and he wasn’t going to slog up there again for anybody. Who else was there? Mrs Tompkins? She lived right opposite, just across the road. It wouldn’t be so far to walk. Oh, to hell with it, thought Dover with sudden inspiration, he could spend the day in his room studying the file. That sounds reasonable enough, doesn’t it? Or had he already used that one before? Well, whether he had or he hadn’t, he hadn’t actually read the blasted file yet and today was as good a day as any. Dover pulled the sheets up over his head with a grunt of satisfaction. The relief at having found an agreeable solution to his problem was so great that he managed to drop off to sleep again for another blissful hour.

  Eventually Dover settled down to his studies and Sergeant MacGregor was dispatched into the fresh air with the vague instruction to go and ask some questions and see what he could find out. It wasn’t long before Dover discovered, once again, that it is better to travel than to arrive. The Chief Inspector had as healthy an interest in smut as anybody you could name, but these poison- pen letters were a bit too much of a good thing. There were now nearly a hundred of them on the police file and Dover’s initial interest had palled rapidly after he had ploughed through the first ten. They really were amazingly disgusting and, for a moment, his conviction that Dame Alice had typed them was severely shaken. However he gallantly steeled his resolution and his confidence in his ability to spot a wrong ’un and read doggedly on. Compared with Thornwich, Sodom and Gomorrah must have been purer than the driven snow. All the women who had been honoured by this unwanted, one-sided correspondence were accused of a wide range of exotic deviations, the detailing of which left nothing to the imagination. If one-tenth of the accusations were true, the village ought to be a happy hunting ground for students of morbid psychology. It had everything from algolagnia to zoophilism, and a lot of nasty things in between.

  Dover was so punch drunk by this battering of obscenity that he had to take a short nap after lunch to get his strength back. Following his nap he had his tea, then he went on desultorily leafing through the file. The notes made by the local police on the various lines they had investigated were totally uninteresting. All the ideas had crumbled into dead ends and even Dover’s critical eye, ever ready to spot the faults of others, couldn’t pick out anything which ought to have been done which hadn’t.

  Dover blew fretfully down his nose and scratched his head. He got up from the table and went to look out of the window. The sky had clouded over and it looked as though the rain would start again at any minute. Dover sighed hopelessly. What a life! He watched the stream of lorries thundering by. He had been pursuing his studies in the bar parlour. There was nobody else about at this time of day, and it was a locale less open to malicious misrepresentation than his bedroom. It was even, fractionally, less depressing. He went on staring through the window. The shops opposite, Arthur Tompkins’s grocery store and a scruffy little sweetshop and tobacconist’s, had blinds lowered across their windows. Wednesday afternoon. It must be early-closing day. Dover leaned his elbow on the window-sill. The place was like a bloody morgue. He had just started wondering what MacGregor was up to, when he saw a small black saloon car pull up and park on the other side of the road. For want of something better to do, he watched it. The car door opened and Arthur Tompkins, looking quite natty in a swagger overcoat and light-coloured driving gloves, got out and carefully locked the door behind him. As he was turning away from the car, he glanced across the road at The Jolly Sailor and saw the pathetic figure of Dover standing in the window. Arthur Tompkins waved. Hopefully Dover waved back. Arthur Tompkins crossed the road, having looked carefully in both directions, and a few moments later joined Dover in the bar.

  ‘Hallo, Mr Dover! I wondered if I’d find you in here. I’d heard you were spending the day catching up with your paperwork.’

  ‘We can’t afford to leave any stone unturned,’ said Dover. ‘Every little detail is important on a job like this.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it is,’ agreed Mr Tompkins. ‘I must say, you make me feel quite guilty. Here you are, stuck indoors, and there I am, gadding off enjoying myself.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ asked Dover enviously.

  ‘Oh, well, just into Cumberley, as a matter of fact,’ admitted Mr Tompkins, ‘doing a bit of shopping. They close early on Saturday so it’s quite convenient, really.’

  ‘You didn’t take your wife with you?’ observed Dover, who had reached the stage when he was grateful for anybody to talk to.

  Mr Tompkins frowned. ‘No, she wasn’t feeling at all herself. She got another of those blessed letters this morning and she seemed really upset about it. I tried to laugh it off but you know what women are like. She seemed to take it really to heart, this one. Even more than the others and, heaven knows, those played enough havoc with he
r nerves. I was really worried about her this morning and I said I’d stay at home this afternoon, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Said she’d have a nap after dinner and that she’d be all right by tea-time. Well, now,’ – Mr Tompkins put a brave face on it – ‘I mustn’t bore you with my troubles. I’ll bet you’ve got enough of your own, eh?’

  Dover nodded his head. He had.

  ‘What I really popped across for, Mr Dover,’ said Mr Tompkins, lowering his voice, ‘was to see if you’d like to come back to the shop with me and have a cup of tea, or maybe something a bit stronger. It’ll be nearly an hour before they open up here and, although I’m not claiming our place over there is any palace, it’s a damned sight more comfortable – if you’ll pardon my French – and warmer.’

  ‘Well, that’s very nice of you, my dear fellow,’ said Dover, already half-way up the stairs to collect his hat and coat. ‘Very nice of you indeed. I shan’t be a jiffy.’

  Solicitously Mr Tompkins piloted Dover across the road. ‘We don’t want you to get run over and killed, do we, Mr Dover?’ he joked as they nipped between a couple of lorries.

  ‘Nice little car you’ve got,’ remarked Dover politely as they reached the opposite pavement.

  ‘Oh, that!’ Mr Tompkins’s tone was contemptuous. ‘Nothing but a blooming soap-box on wheels. And about as fast. I’d like one of those nice little Mercedes sports. A white one. Lovely jobs, they are. But’ – he fished in his pockets for his keys – ‘Mrs Tompkins doesn’t like going fast and, of course, an open car’s quite out of the question with her neuralgia. Shall I go first, Mr Dover? It’s a bit tricky unless you know your way about.’

  Dover followed Mr Tompkins into the shop and carefully shut the door behind him. Then he stood and waited while Mr Tompkins walked across to the light switch.