by Joyce Porter
Dover looked up casually. ‘There it is!’ he snapped, a split second ahead of Sergeant MacGregor, who had swerved to avoid a large eyeless Teddy bear abandoned in the middle of the road. ‘You want to get your eyes seen to, my lad!’ he said patronizingly as he climbed out of the car.
Sergeant MacGregor carefully repeated the same rude word to himself ten times as he followed his chief up the path to the front door. He could only hope that the chief inspector’s petty little success would put him in a better frame of mind than he had been so far.
Lunch at the village pub had not been an entirely happy affair. Dover’s amour propre was still quivering from its encounter with Colonel Bing, or rather with Colonel Bing’s revolting dog, and he continued to harp fretfully on his favourite theme: there was no case here, there never had been a case and there never would be a case. At any moment the blasted girl would turn up safe and sound and everybody would blame everybody else for making a lot of fuss and palaver about nothing. It was disgraceful that the time of an experienced senior police officer like himself should be wasted on such trivialities. He’d a good mind to put in a formal complaint about it. But, nevertheless, if Sergeant MacGregor wanted to waste his own time and that of other overworked branches of the police organization, he could get them to trace the owner of the car which Colonel Bing was purported to have seen parked outside on the road. For all he, Dover, cared, Sergeant MacGregor could stand on his hands and wiggle his toes in the air. He, Dover, for his part, was hungry and was now going to have his lunch, to which he had been looking forward ever since he had eaten that abortion of a breakfast which to his amazement British Railways had had the nerve not only to serve, but to charge for as well.
The village pub was called The Two Fiddlers, a name which was not inappropriate when the character of the landlord and his wife were taken into consideration. The landlord, Mr Jelly, had complacently assured Dover that his house knew its limitations. There was none of that fancy foreign muck, all written in French, here. Good plain English cooking at its best, that’s what they offered.
Dover sat down with a glass of beer and high hopes.
After a repast of tinned tomato soup, congealed shoulder of New Zealand lamb, which might well have been cooked and carved in that distant country, soggy potatoes and bright green cabbage, his face had sunk even deeper into its habitual, sullen scowl and his stomach was rumbling ominously. Through gritted teeth he refused the lump of off-white ice-cream which it was proposed to inflict on him as a sweet, and finished off his meal with a slab of unripe Danish blue cheese and two limp water-biscuits. The coffee was quite undrinkable.
Dover rose from the luncheon table with a face like thunder, and Sergeant MacGregor sighed miserably. All the signs were set for a stormy afternoon.
Dover was, in fact, looking at his most boot-faced and terrible as he ignored with a sneer the small bell-push adorning the front door of Ingoldisthorpe. He raised a large meaty fist and crashed it three times into the top left-hand panel. The row was satisfying. He stood, with Sergeant MacGregor close behind him, glowering balefully at the door. Nothing happened. Dover cursed and thumped again, even more energetically. Neighbours four houses away peeped curiously out from behind their curtains.
‘Fer Gawd’s sake,’ came a weary, lacklustre voice, ‘I wonder yer don’t use yer boots on it! Gawd knows, they look big enough.’
A small thin woman with stringy, peroxide blonde hair had appeared from the back of the house. She was wearing a faded grubby overall and a pair of down-at-heel shoes. A cigarette dangled permanently out of the side of her mouth.
Dover glared at her. ‘Mrs Rugg?’ he queried.
She looked him contemptuously up and down. ‘Y’ll have to come round the back,’ she said, ‘that door’s stuck.’
Dover and MacGregor followed her meekly round the comer of the house and into the kitchen. Mrs Rugg resumed her ironing, pausing only to blow the ash off the end of her cigarette, a feat which she performed without removing it from her mouth.
Sergeant MacGregor rapidly cleared a couple of chairs of a mixed collection of toys, articles of clothing, a pile of nappies and an old newspaper, and he and Dover sat down by the kitchen table. Dover’s nose wrinkled in distaste as he looked around the room. Mrs Rugg was a slut. The room had a most unpleasant smell which he squeamishly refrained from trying to identify, and the table was covered with the unwashed crockery of several meals. A squadron of corpulent bluebottles hovered like miniature helicopters over an uncovered dish of crumb-bespeckled butter’ He turned his eyes back to Mrs Rugg as the lesser of the two evils.
Mrs Rugg was not a very enthusiastic witness, but she confirmed what Dover had already gathered about her daughter’s movements on the day of her disappearance.
‘Did she come and visit you every week on her day off?’ he asked, his one thought now being to get outside and draw some clean air into his lungs.
‘Usually,’ said Mrs Rugg without much interest. ‘Her ladyship used to bring me her washing to do.’ She jerked her head at a vast, unidentifiable article which was draped over her ironing board. ‘This is hers.’ She got another cigarette out of a packet in her overall pocket, lit it from the one which by now must have been burning her lip, and dropped the mangled-looking stub into the sink. She picked up her iron again, spat experimentally on it, and added in a grudging afterthought, ’
‘Course, she come to see the baby as well.’
‘Oh, you’ve got a baby, have you?’ said Dover, now concentrating on trying not to breathe.
‘Not me!’ replied Mrs Rugg shortly. ‘Her!’
‘Her?’ yelped Dover. ‘Wadderyemean, her?’
‘It’s her baby, not mine,’ explained Mrs Rugg impatiently.
‘Her baby? Do you mean your daughter, Juliet, has had a baby?’
‘’Sright!’ agreed Mrs Rugg coyly. ‘Wouldn’t think I was a grannie, would yer?’
‘But nobody told me she had a baby!’ howled Dover, glaring at Sergeant MacGregor.
‘Well, p’raps yer didn’t ask. Yer can take it from me, it’s no secret round here, though I must say, she didn’t hardly show at all, with her being so fat, you know.’
Dover was spluttering with fury. ‘And how old is this child?’
‘’Bout seven months or so. She had it just before she went to work up at Irlam Old Hall..’
‘But, is your daughter married then?’ demanded Dover, promising himself a good old dust-up with the local boys about this one.
‘’Course not!’ Mrs Rugg gave him a sardonic look out of eyes screwed up against the cigarette smoke. ‘Yer don’t have to be married to have a baby, yer know.’
‘But, who’s the father?’
‘Search me, mate!’ Mrs Rugg shrugged her shoulders and went on with her ironing.
‘Now look here, Mrs Rugg,’ Dover got a grip on himself, ‘let’s just get this straight. Seven months ago your daughter had a baby and then she went to work for Sir John Counter. What was she doing before that?’
‘Oh, she’s tried several things since she left school. She worked in a shop for a bit in Creedon, then she had a job with a hairdresser. Then she helped out at The Two Fiddlers, serving lunches and things. But none of them suited her, really. She couldn’t do with a lot of standing, not with her legs and being such a size, yer know, and, of course, she always had to wear them damned high-heel shoes which didn’t make it any better.’
‘She was living at home during this time?’
‘Oh yes, and that was a bit of a nuisance, too, having a girl of that age hanging round the place all the time.’
‘I see,’ said Dover, who wasn’t in fact seeing much at this stage. ‘And what about Juliet’s father, Mr Rugg?’
Mrs Rugg removed her cigarette from her lips and elaborately flicked the ash on the floor.
‘Well, which one do yer want to know about?’
‘They aren’t the same person?’
‘Fred Rugg and me got married in 1946. Juliet was a
bout two then. Her dad was a corporal in the army and I never did know his surname, so when I got married I just called Juliet “Rugg” like the rest of us. I thought it looked better, like. Well, Fred Rugg hopped it about a year after we’d got married, when the twins was getting on for six months, and I haven’t seen hide or hair of him since. Nor ever likely to.’
‘The twins?’ repeated Dover.
‘Yes, I packed ’em both off into the army soon as they was old enough. Couldn’t do with two grown lads hanging round the place.’
It was at this moment in the conversation that the kitchen door opened and a child about four years old toddled into the room. He stared unblinkingly at Dover and MacGregor who each did a swift calculation, based on the date at which Fred Rugg had abandoned his wife and family to the care of the Welfare State.
‘Gimme some choc, mum!’ demanded the child in an earpiercing voice.
‘No!’ The maternal reply was short and to the point.
‘Aw, mum, gimme some choc!’ The child’s voice rose to a whine.
‘No, I shan’t! I haven’t got any. And you go and put yer trousers on – coming in here like that, showing all you’ve got! Go on, hop it!’
She speeded the child on its reluctant way with a resounding $lap on its bare bottom.
‘That’s Barry,’ she said as he disappeared back through the door.
‘Well,’ said Dover, ‘we were hardly likely to think it was Gwendoline !’
Mrs Rugg looked blankly at him.
The chief inspector sighed deeply. He was getting very bored with the whole thing. ‘I take it, Mrs Rugg,’ he went on with an effort, ‘that your daughter left her child here with you to look after?’
‘’Sright!’ said Mrs Rugg. ‘She had it all worked out, she had. She was going to pay me so much a week for looking after the kid, only, of course, everything went wrong and I’ve hardly seen a penny piece for all me trouble. I told our Juliet, there’s many a slip, I said, but, of course, she knew better.’
‘She was going to make you a weekly payment out of her wages?’ suggested Dover, who was beginning to flounder.
‘No!’ said Mrs Rugg impatiently. ‘She thought Mrs Chubb- Smith would go on footing the bill!’
‘Mrs Chubb-Smith? What the devil has Mrs Chubb-Smith got to do with it?’
‘She was very good to our Juliet when the baby was coming, paid for her to go to a proper hospital and everything. ’Course, our Juliet counted on her going on helping after die kid was born but, naturally, she didn’t, like. Not, rnind you, that our Juliet is one to lose heart! She’s a trier, I will say that for her. Only on Tuesday she was saying that everything was going to be all right again. Who she was going to touch for a bit of the ready this time I don’t know. Mrs Chubb-Smith again, far as I could gather, but I don’t hardly think that can be right, do you? ’Course, she’d been very good to her before but. . . ’
‘Now, just a minute,’ roared Dover, ‘this Mrs Chubb-Smith-is she the one up at Irlam Old Hall?’
‘’Sright,’ agreed Mrs Rugg. ‘She’s the lah-di-dah old cow that runs the place.’
Dover breathed deeply through his nose. ‘And why should she help your daughter?’
Mrs Rugg smiled shrewdly. ‘Search me,’ she said, ‘p’raps she’s got more money than sense,’
‘And why did she stop helping after the baby was born?’
Mrs Rugg looked at Dover with a mixture of exasperation and pity. With an irritable gesture, she slammed her iron down on its stand. ‘I can see I’m going to have you two here all bloody day !’
she muttered crossly. She eyed the two policemen up and down. ‘And they say crime doesn’t pay!’ she snorted scornfully. ‘You’d better come outside and have a look at the kid. P’raps you’ll be able to answer yer own damn-fool questions then.’
The baby was fast asleep in its pram in the back garden. Dover and Sergeant MacGregor bent down cautiously to examine it. It looked like any other sleeping baby except, perhaps, for the fact that it was coal black.
‘Oh,’ said Dover in a somewhat inadequate comment.
Mrs Rugg stalked silently back to her ironing.
The two policemen trailed after her.
‘Have you got any questions?’ Dover hissed at MacGregor. ‘If you have, ask ’em and let’s get the hell out of here!’
‘Mrs Rugg,’ said the sergeant with a friendly smile designed to differentiate his technique from the surly, growling approach favoured by the chief inspector, ‘did Juliet have any boy-friends?’ Mrs Rugg slowly placed her hands on her hips. ‘Are you kidding?’ she demanded wearily. ‘How the hell do yer think she got that out there?’ She jerked her head in the direction of the garden. ‘By correspondence course?’
Sergeant MacGregor blushed in discomfort and Dover smirked. ‘I meant any special boy-friends,’ the sergeant tried again, ‘anybody she’d be likely to run away with, for example?’
Mrs Rugg laughed shortly. ‘If you’d seen our Juliet you wouldn’t talk about running away, sonnie! She could hardly walk a hundred yards without stopping for half an hour’s rest. Something the matter with her glands, the doctor said, but I used to tell her, if she didn’t spend so much time flat on her back she might lose a bit of weight. ’Course she’d got gentlemen friends, dozens of ’em, I shouldn’t wonder. Our Juliet was a great one for anything in trousers. She liked having a good time and you’re only young once, I always say.’
‘But you don’t know the names of any of them?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Rugg enigmatically, ‘I’ve got enough troubles of me own!’
Chapter Four
HALF an hour later Dover collapsed exhausted into one of the leather armchairs in Sir John Counter’s study and sulkily prepared himself to ask another lot of damn-fool questions about nothing.
Everybody was swamping him with information, every item of which, he was sure, would turn out to be a complete waste of time. All sixteen stone of Juliet Rugg would appear on the scene again at any moment and he, Dover, would thankfully catch the next train back to civilization. Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover of New Scotland Yard wasn’t, however, a complete fool. He was only pig-headed. So far he had managed to shut out a niggling doubt as to the correctness of his theory about Juliet Rugg’s disappearance. He still clung obstinately to his original views on the subject, but he was uneasily aware that none of the evidence, if you could call it that, which he had so far received gave him much support.
Juliet Rugg had been last seen at eleven o’clock at night, making her way, on foot, up the drive to the Counters’ house. But, she’d never arrived there. If she’d left the grounds of Irlam Old Hall – and, of course, she must have done – how had she managed it? She obviously wasn’t capable of walking far, certainly not the two miles into the village, and it wouldn’t have done any good if she had. All the buses had stopped hours ago and the last train from Creedon, which was another six miles away, left at 10.10 p.m. The railway staff were quite convinced that nobody of her description had left by any of the early morning trains the next day, and they would certainly not have overlooked a girl whose appearance was as bizarre as Juliet’s was.
That left a car as the only solution. But if the Hall gates were locked at night, presumably no car could get in or out of the grounds. Blast it-he’d have to check about those gates! Of course, she could have walked back to the road after Colonel Bing had gone inside again, but why should she? All the signs seemed to indicate that she’d had her evening out and was just going back, quite normally, home to bed. Oh dear, and then there was that black baby! Dover wondered fretfully if that was a clue to anything. He’d certainly have to look into this Mrs Chubb-Smith business, not that it wasn’t pretty obvious why she’d stopped playing Lady Bountiful as soon as the baby was born. Oh blast the whole damned case! He could think, without trying, of a dozen explanations for everything, and he contemplated all the tedious work of checking which was the right one without any enthusiasm at all.
The chief in
spector was brought back to his surroundings by the sound of Sir John Counter’s voice. He was addressing his daughter. He spoke in a tone far curter than Colonel Bing would ever have thought of using to her dog.
‘We shan’t want you! I’ll ring when they’re ready to leave.’
Eve Counter shrugged her shoulders faintly and left the room.
‘Insipid specimen, isn’t she?’ Sir John addressed the question to the company at large. ‘Fancy being practically confined to your room, like I am, and seeing nothing but that walking zombie day in and day out! I wish to God you people would get a move on and find Juliet before I go stark raving mad through sheer boredom!’
Dover sniffed. He didn’t care much for Sir John’s manner of speaking. He sounded like a captain of industry addressing a shareholders’ meeting, polite enough but with a thinly concealed contempt for all those not lucky enough to have been born Sir John Counter. If Dover hadn’t been feeling quite so lethargic he might have tried a bit of heavy-handed bullying himself, but at the moment listlessness and boredom had settled on him like a black cloud, and his stomach didn’t feel too good either. Must have been the cheese.
‘I understand, Sir John,’ he began, ‘that you and your daughter live here alone?’
‘That is quite correct,’ said Sir John briskly in his sharp, clipped, old man’s voice. ‘Now that Juliet’s not here, we have no servants living in at all. My daughter, Eve, claims that you can’t get ’em these days, a statement which I find hard to believe.’
‘And Miss Eve Counter is your only child?’
‘My only legitimate child, yes. However, I flatter myself that there are a goodly number of what we might call Fitz-Counters scattered around, don’t you know.’ Sir John bared his artificial teeth in a well satisfied grin and helped himself to a sweet from a large bag which lay on a table by his elbow. ‘Toffee, Inspector? Constable?’