by Joyce Porter
‘Yes, well,’ said Jim Oliver as Miss Wittgenstein paused for well-earned breath, ‘it’s Mr Chantry we’re interested in at the moment, my love. We don’t want to keep the police here all night, do we?’
‘Why the hell not?’ asked Miss Wittgenstein aggressively. ‘At least they break up this dreary menage a trois.’
Lloyd Thomas got up and went to perch himself astride the rocking horse. ‘The door’s never locked, duckie,’ he said. ‘And you can bugger off any old time you feel like it.’
‘Oh yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ Miss Wittgenstein tossed her head angrily.
‘Three’s none,’ observed Lloyd Thomas with infuriating composure. ‘Anybody with a drop of sensitivity in their veins would have noticed they were highly redundant weeks and weeks ago.’
Miss Wittgenstein bared her teeth in a snarl. ‘That’s what you think! If Jim wasn’t such a soft-hearted slob, he’d have given you your marching orders before you even came.’
‘Children, children!’ Jim Oliver flashed a few warning glances around. ‘Shall we save the dirty linen for later, eh?’ Miss Wittgenstein, determined to exercise her feminine prerogative, collared the last word. ‘The only dirty linen round here,’ she snapped, ‘is on that great hairy brute!’
MacGregor hastened to call the meeting to order before Dover began getting nasty and the three artists were persuaded to continue with their story. To give him his due, Dover was not exhibiting any of his usual signs of impatience. He had, after all, achieved his nirvana: a comfortable chair, free booze and fags. He asked little more from life and the bickering going on around him wasn’t really troublesome because he’d stopped listening some time ago. He roused himself now only to empty the last of the wine from his bottle into his glass.
‘Well, there’s really not much more to tell you, dear,’ said Jim Oliver, taking up the tale once more. ‘In the darkness we passed quietly by on the other side and left Chantry and the Piles to it. We went off down to the far end of North Street and then Wittgenstein found this boy staggering about with blood pouring down his head. She brought him back here to the Studio to try and fix him up and a few minutes later I came back to get a spade. The Piles were still out in the road talking to Lickes and his wife. Then, Colin Hooper appeared and said that all hell was let out round the Sally Gate and could somebody go along there and give them a hand. Well, I said it wasn’t too choice at the far end of North Street, either, and that I was going back there.’
‘Did Colin Hooper mention his father-in-law?’ asked MacGregor.
‘I think so. To tell you the truth, I can’t honestly remember but I certainly assumed that Chantry and Hooper had been working together. I must admit I wasn’t paying much attention. I was in too big a hurry to get back to Lloyd Thomas with my spade.’
‘And you and Mr Lloyd Thomas spent the rest of the night in each other’s company?’
‘Well, not every minute, of course.’ Jim Oliver threw his hands up in a gesture of despair. 'Good heavens, you don’t seem to appreciate what it was like! Buildings were falling down and people were lying injured and trapped all over the place. L.T. and I were like everybody else – we were just rushing around doing what we could. It was all pretty chaotic. After a bit Wing Commander Pile turned up and tried to start throwing his weight around but nobody took much notice. Well, with somebody screaming in pain a couple of yards away, you don’t break off for a staff meeting, do you?’
MacGregor sighed. 'Were either of you in the Sally Gate area of North Street at all?’
Both men emphatically shook their heads.
‘We were up at the other end,’ said Lloyd Thomas. ‘There was more than enough to keep us busy there, believe you me. I never got nearer to the Sally Gate all night than this house – and that was only when I was bringing people along here for Wittgenstein to minister to.’
MacGregor scratched aimlessly in his notebook. This case was developing into a real stinker, and no mistake. Nobody would admit to more than the vaguest idea of where they were or at what time. Whoever had murdered Walter Chantry was hiding in a most effective smoke-screen of general, and genuine, uncertainty. Damn it all, how could you be expected to solve a murder when you couldn’t lay your hands on the slightest shred of evidence? For once, thought MacGregor with a kind of warped charity, they were going to have a failure for which Dover’s blundering incompetence couldn’t be held entirely responsible.
He collected his wandering thoughts and addressed himself to Miss Wittgenstein. ‘Did you see Mr Chantry again, miss?’
Of course she hadn’t. ‘It was us having those oil lamps that did it, you see,’ she said as Jim Oliver officiously opened another bottle of wine for Dover. ‘I lit them before I started to patch up this boy we’d found. Before I knew what was happening I’d everybody swarming in like moths round a candle. Scutari wasn’t in it! We’d the homeless and injured three deep in the kitchen. Some of the women gave me a hand with bandaging people up and things but, really, most of the time I was just run right off my feet. Chantry may have come in but, if he did, I didn’t notice him – and he wasn’t the sort of man who’d lurk modestly in a comer. Have you asked any of the others who were here if they saw him?’
MacGregor nodded. He had, and they hadn’t.
Dover belched loudly and then, with diminishing enthusiasm, poured himself out another glass of wine. ‘Not much kick in this stuff, is there?’ he asked, screwing up his face in an expression of distaste.
‘Well, no,’ admitted Jim Oliver apologetically, ‘but then it’s not really supposed to . . .’
‘Not gone off, has it?’ said Dover, sniffing suspiciously.
‘Off? Oh, no, I don’t think so.’
‘Well, you could have fooled me!’ Dover forced another tumblerful down his gullet, thought for a moment and then dragged himself to his feet. ‘Tastes like bloody vinegar! 'he muttered crossly. ‘And it goes right through you! Where’s the lavvy?’
‘The . . .? Oh,’ – Jim Oliver leapt forward to open the sitting-room door – ‘the first on the left, chief inspector, dear. The light switch is outside on the landing.’
Dover grunted and lumbered out, leaving an uneasy silence in his wake.
Jim Oliver went across and examined the dregs remaining in Dover’s second bottle. ‘I think this is all right, really, don’t you?’
‘Depends,’ said Lloyd Thomas pointedly, ‘how much you drink.’
Seven
To Dover the bathroom appeared as a haven of peace and he settled down there for a well-earned rest, staring blankly at nothing in particular. The evening had turned sour on him. Almost as sour, he reflected, as that blooming red ink they’d had the cheek to give him to drink. If that didn’t rot his guts for good and all, he’d like to know what would. He ran his tongue round his mouth. Left his dentures all furry, too! Drunken orgies! That fool, Pile, wanted his brains seeing to, building up people’s expectations like that.
After a while Dover found it was getting chilly, just sitting there. He got up with a sigh, adjusted his clothing and wandered disconsolately over to the wash basin. A prolonged examination of his tongue in the mirror did nothing to raise his spirit. True, it didn’t look any more unsavoury than usual but that wasn’t much consolation. He’d still got a deuced funny taste in his mouth. Maybe, if he could . . . He opened the bathroom cupboard and poked around until he found an antiseptic mouthwash. Oh, well, try anything once.
The resultant marriage of cheap Algerian wine and mouthwash was not a success and Dover spat it out disgustedly into the washbowl. ’Strewth! Perhaps, if he cleaned his teeth . . .
Too . . .
Toothbrushes and toothpaste lay conveniently close to hand but Dover was not a complete barbarian. He knew better than to go shoving somebody else’s toothbrush into his mouth, thank you very much! Carefully he selected the most upright set of bristles and covered them with a thick layer of paste. Then he removed his top and bottom set, gave them a good scrubbing, rinsed th
em under the tap and munched them back into place. Ah, that felt better!
Once having started, Dover saw no reason for not going on and he spent the next five minutes desultorily inspecting the contents of all the jars and bottles he could find. The pickings were disappointingly meagre, Dover – as his best friends could have told him – not having much time for deodorants and such-like effeminate cosmetic muck. Soap and water was good enough for him and he couldn’t see why it wasn’t good enough for everybody else. Thinking of soap reminded him that his own bar could do with replenishing. Unfortunately the tablet on the wash basin was too thin and slimy to be worth the nicking and he began to look around for where they kept their reserve supplies. A pile of cardboard cartons on the window sill looked promising and he strolled across to investigate further. While he was fumbling to get the first lid off, a light flashed on outside and caught his eye. It was coming from the bedroom of the house opposite and, as Dover watched, a young woman came into view and drew the curtains.
Dover got the lid off his box with a jerk. Bloody talcum powder! He dusted himself down and tried again. Now, that house straight across the road – that’d be Chantry’s place, wouldn’t it? He frowned slightly as he tried to recall the odd snippets of topographical information that had drifted his way since he’d arrived in Sully Martin. The second carton was abandoned and, craning his head, he peered right and left through the window. Signs of earthquake damage in one direction and the village church in the other. Yes, it must be Chantry’s house and the young woman was, presumably, Chantry’s daughter.
Dover had another look through the window. A good-sized house, well maintained, standing detached in a nicely laid-out garden. You wouldn’t get that for fourpence ha’penny! The envy on Dover’s podgy features faded and was replaced by a scowl of annoyance. If there was one cause dear to the chief inspector’s heart it was Crime Prevention. Not that he wanted to do himself out of a job completely but he would like to see the work load reduced to more reasonable proportions. Like three days a month. He became a little less despondent when he remembered that a burglary at the Chantry house would drop into the lap of the local police and not in his but it still irritated him to see people simply asking with both hands to be done by the first villain that walked by. A kid of two could get into that house. Garden wall to shed roof to that bedroom window in three easy strides.
Dover propped his elbows on the window sill, lowered his chins on to his hands and relapsed into a good brood.
Meanwhile, back in the sitting-room, those matters which should have been Dover’s urgent concern had ground to a complete standstill. MacGregor had no more questions to put on his own account and he was damned if he was going to put them on Dover’s when the old fool wasn’t even there.
‘He’s taking a long time,’ said Jim Oliver, softening the implied criticism with a feeble grin.
MacGregor concentrated on trying to look as though it had nothing to do with him.
‘More than likely he’s in there sleeping it off,’ said Lloyd Thomas who had not taken to Dover.
‘Nonsense!’ Jim Oliver was determined to nip that sort of seditious talk firmly in the bud. ‘He’s not had more than the merest soupgon.’
‘True, blue! If you call the best part of two bottles the merest soupgon.’
Miss Wittgenstein returned to her place on the hearthrug. ‘Oh, for God’s sake,' she begged, ‘don’t you two start spitting at each other again! The fuzz’s got trouble with his waterworks and, if he wants to spend all night in the bog. I’m damned if I can see what business it is of yours.’
‘Trouble with his waterworks?’ howled Lloyd Thomas, giving vent to a maniac scream of laughter. ‘Where on earth did you get that gem from?’
‘Oh, drop dead!’
‘No, seriously, duckie, I’m interested. Did he tell you?’
‘Of course he didn’t! If you must know, it was Mrs Lickes from the Blenheim Towers. She was regaling the queue in the grocer’s this morning when I was drawing the rations for you ravenous brutes. No sordid detail was spared us and, since I met up with her again in the post office. I had it all twice over. Poor little Millie Hooper looked positively sick.’
MacGregor’s faint heart sank. He was used to having Dover’s professional incompetence the subject of ribald gossip from one end of the country to the other but if they were now going to have the disgusting old pig’s bodily functions bandied about. . .
Miss Wittgenstein was continuing with scant regard for MacGregor’s finer feelings. ‘. . . and pulling the chain all night long. None of the poor old things can get a wink of sleep. Mrs Lickes said she was afraid there’d be the most terrible shindy if he didn’t stop it.’
MacGregor’s ears glowed a bright pink.
‘The whole village is buzzing with it. Well, you know, Mrs Lickes – the biggest mouth this side of the Pennines. Honestly, in the post office, I thought she was going to start drawing diagrams.’
‘Of the waterworks?’ guffawed Lloyd Thomas.
Miss Wittgenstein began to giggle helplessly. ‘Of course not, you grotty tassel from the Celtic fringe! Though I must say that wouldn’t have surprised me. No,’ – Miss Wittgenstein wiped the tears from her eyes – ‘it was just where everybody’s room was in relation to the drains!’ Having with difficulty got this last sentence out. Miss Wittgenstein gave herself up to uncontrolled mirth, floundering around on her hearthrug.
Jim Oliver glared at her, and at Lloyd Thomas, too. Irresponsible idiots! Why couldn’t they restrain themselves until the cops had gone? He tried to distract MacGregor’s attention. ‘You don’t think he could have been taken ill or anything, do you, dear? I should hate to think of him lying dead or unconscious on the bathroom floor while we were just sitting here.’
It was a solution that had not occurred to MacGregor. He couldn’t imagine why. In his mind he had disposed of Dover in some very sticky ways but, somehow, he’d never thought of him just.. .
The sitting-room door burst open.
MacGregor’s rosy future turned to dust and ashes. ‘Oh, there you are, sir!’
‘Where did you think I was, moron? Up the bloody Zambesi?’ Dover scowled round at the assembled company. What a way to spend your days, eh? Hobnobbing with a scruffy mob like this! Damned good bath and a haircut all round wouldn’t come amiss. No wonder their bathroom was stocked with a ton of bloody cosmetics and only one measly bit of soap. He let fly at MacGregor again. ‘You finished here?’
‘Yes, I think so, sir. If you have, that is.’
‘Me?’ Dover’s eyes popped indignantly. ‘This shower were on your list, laddie, not mine. I got all my interviews done before supper.’
‘Well, all except the Hoopers, sir,’ said MacGregor before he could stop himself.
Dover’s fists clenched longingly. One day this pup was going to go too far and Dover would then arise in righteous wrath and pulverize him! For two pins he’d do it now, if it weren’t for the sobering restraint imposed by the presence of three hostile witnesses. A more devious revenge must be temporarily wreaked. ‘All right, we’ll go and see ’em now,’ said Dover, forgetting in the passion of the moment that his sergeant didn’t regard overtime as a punishment.
Plagued by the niggling suspicion that he’d been outwitted somewhere along the line., Dover was in no mood to put up with any nonsense from Colin Hooper. That harassed-looking young man had barely got the front door open before he found that one of his unexpected callers was halfway down the hall.
‘Here,' he protested as he recognized MacGregor, ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to want to see us until tomorrow?’
‘Supposed wrong then, didn’t you?’ Dover called back over his shoulder.
Colin Hooper hurried after him. ‘But it’s not more than an hour since the sergeant here called round and said . . .’
Dover had already found the lounge. ‘He must have made a mistake. It wouldn’t be the first, believe me.’
MacGregor shut the front door with
a slam and strode down the hall, breathing heavily. By the time he entered the lounge, Dover had already taken possession of the greater part of the settee in front of the fire and was placidly ignoring Mr Hooper’s feeble objections.
Mr Hooper turned sulky. ‘Oh, make yourself at home then!’ he muttered crossly and flung a reproachful glance at MacGregor.
Dover didn’t need any invitation. He was at home, spiritually speaking at any rate. The pink roses on the wallpaper could have come from his own living-room. And so – mutatis mutandis – could the floral pattern of the curtains, the cretonne loose covers and the traditional Axminster carpet. None of your artistic trash here, thank God! Why, if Dover had put his mind to it (which he had no intention of doing) he could probably have given you the brand name of every article of furniture in the room. And if nation-wide advertising isn’t a proof of fine quality, what is?
‘You’ll need a bit more coal on that fire,’ said Dover, opening his overcoat and removing his bowler hat.
‘It’s been banked up for the night,' moaned Mr Hooper. ‘We were just going to bed.’
‘At this time?’ Dover, secure in the knowledge that he could eat two of young Hooper for breakfast and not even notice, squinted at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘ ’Strewth, it’s only . . .’ He squinted again but the shiny old gold dial, the elaborate black numerals and the delicate filigree of the hands combined to defeat him. . . early,' he said.