Dover Two

by Joyce Porter

  ‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘Can you remember how long it was between hearing the shots and actually reaching Miss Slatcher?’

  Rex shook his head. ‘No, not really. They asked me that at the time – the police, I mean. Two or three minutes, I think. It’s quite a long walk down Church Lane from the corner where I was waiting to where Isobel was.’

  ‘And you weren’t hurrying?’ The sarcasm passed unnoticed.

  ‘No, not specially.’

  Dover wrinkled his nose. ‘Round about the time you heard the shots, either before or especially after, did you see anybody in this place, er, Church Street?’

  ‘Church Lane, you mean. No.’

  ‘You didn’t see anybody running away, for example, after the shots were fired?’

  ‘No. There were one or two people quite a way off in Corporation Road, but I didn’t see anybody at all in Church Lane – not until the Vicar came out again, that is.’

  Dover indulged in another dramatic pause while he thought this lot out. This was the boyo all right, no doubt about it! He shot the girl, dodged out of sight when the Vicar ran out, came back to see if she was dead, and was interrupted by the Vicar again. He comes back on leave eight months later, reads in the paper that the girl is going to recover consciousness, whips round to the hospital and croaks her. Simple as pie!

  Dover beamed happily at poor Rex Purseglove. This was one case that Chief Inspector Wilfred (Wonder Wilf) Dover was going to get all nicely solved in no time at all. He’d show ’ em that Percy Roderick wasn’t the only one who could get results!

  ‘Just one last question, sir,’ he said as he reached for his bowler hat. ‘I suppose in the Air Force you’ve been taught how to use fire-arms?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Rex in a thin voice, with a horrified look at his mother, ‘but only a rifle! I’ve never fired a pistol in my life.’

  Dover smiled. ‘ Oh, quite, sir! I was just asking, you know. Well, I think that’s all. I won’t be troubling you any more – for the moment, that is.’

  ‘Well,’ remarked Dover smugly when he and MacGregor were outside again, ‘not often you find a chap helpfully putting the noose round his own neck and tying the knot for you, is it?’

  ‘Do you really think he’s our man, sir?’ asked MacGregor doubtfully.

  ‘Think?’ snapped Dover. ‘ There’s no thinking about it. I know damned well he did it! Stands out a mile. He knows how to use fire-arms, he’s hanging round the scene of the first attack and he’s no blooming alibi for the time the shots were fired. He comes back on leave, reads the paper, rushes round and smothers her with a pillow. My God, he’s admitted he was alone in the room with her for three-quarters of an hour just about the time she was killed.’

  ‘But we’ve no proof, have we, sir?’

  ‘Oh, proof!’ snorted Dover contemptuously.

  ‘Well, we won’t get a conviction without it, will we, sir?’ asked MacGregor, reasonably enough.

  ‘I know we won’t get a conviction without it!’ howled Dover. ‘I don’t need you to teach me my job, Sergeant! God damn it, I’ve only been on the case five minutes. I’ll get the proof all fixed, don’t you bother!’

  ‘But,’ persisted MacGregor, who occasionally couldn’t leave ill alone, ‘oh, I dunno, sir, he doesn’t look like a murderer, does he?’

  Dover raised his eyes appealingly to heaven. ‘ My God,’ he exclaimed, ‘I don’t know how some of you young coppers ever get on the force, straight I don’t! He doesn’t look like a murderer. What bloody murderer does, eh? You tell me that!’

  ‘But what about motive, sir? Why should he kill her?’

  ‘I don’t have to prove motive,’ snapped Dover.

  ‘No, I know, but it helps to have one, doesn’t it, sir?’

  Dover breathed heavily through his nose. ‘All right,’ he said with mock patience, ‘we’ll go along and see Miss Violet Slatcher. Maybe she can fill in a bit of the background for us. Maybe we’ll find a motive for Mr Rex Purseglove. You play Doubting Thomas if you want to, my lad, but I’m telling you here and now that Pilot Officer Purseglove of the Royal Air Force, God help ’em, murdered Isobel Slatcher.’

  MacGregor imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  Chapter Four

  Violet slatcher, the dead girl’s sister, was not taking this latest tragedy, as they say, lying down.

  ‘I’ve tried to get her to put her feet up,’ whispered Mr Bonnington as he let Dover and Sergeant MacGregor into the house, ‘or just rest a bit on the sofa, but there’s no doing any good with her.’ His dog collar gleamed whitely in the darkness of the hall. ‘ I’m so glad you’ve come. I think it’ll do her good to have a chat with you. Once she’s got it all off her chest she may be able to calm herself down a bit.’

  He smiled unctuously, and Dover sighed. He’d had a hard day and no sleep last night and he didn’t look forward to trying to drag some sense out of a hysterical woman. But Miss Slatcher wasn’t hysterical. She was militant, eloquent and thirsting for revenge.

  ‘This, dear lady,’ said the Vicar in suitably hushed tones, ‘ is Chief Inspector Dover from Scotland Yard. He just wants to ask you a few …’

  ‘Thank God!’ said Miss Slatcher, loudly and fervently. ‘ Thank God! Now, at last, we shall get something done.’

  Dover began uncomfortably to mutter some trite expressions of condolence and sympathy, but Violet Slatcher impatiently swept them aside.

  ‘There’s no need to try and spare my feelings,’ she exclaimed irritably. ‘I shed my tears eight months ago, when all this started. Isobel died then for me, not yesterday. What’s been lying up there in the hospital all this time, that wasn’t my sister – that was just a medical experiment. I’ve been telling the Vicar here – not that it seems to have sunk in yet – I’ve got past wanting sympathy. I want justice! I want the brute who murdered my poor Isobel caught and punished. And if you can’t do it for me’ – she glared fiercely at Dover – ‘I’ll take the law into my own hands and do it for myself!’

  Mr Bonnington smiled uneasily. ‘Come, come, dear lady,’ he remonstrated without much hope of success, ‘this is not a very Christian attitude. We are told to have charity, you know, and to forgive our enemies …’

  Miss Slatcher brushed the Christian ethic to one side. ‘I hope,’ she said, still directing her attention to Dover, ‘I hope that you don’t share that milk-sop attitude. I’ve been waiting for a long time to have them find my sister’s murderer and I warn you, I don’t intend to wait much longer. You’re not another snivelling Papist, I hope?’

  ‘No,’ said Dover, ‘I’m …’

  ‘Thank God for that! The Lord is being merciful, at last. It’s taken Him a long time to answer my prayers, but I never as much as wavered in my faith that He would do what I asked. Praise be to the Lord!’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Dover.

  Mr Bonnington looked a trifle embarrassed and Sergeant MacGregor stared blankly at the virgin page of his notebook.

  ‘Well, now, madam,’ Dover started firmly, feeling it was about time he took control of the interview, ‘there are just one or two questions I should be very glad if you’d answer. Do you know if your sister had any enemies, anybody who would be likely to do her serious harm, or even kill her?’

  ‘I do!’ declared Violet Slatcher in ringing tones. ‘She had a hundred, a thousand – nay, ten thousand enemies in this town. She was a great fighter in the Lord, you know. Every Pope worshipper in Curdley was her deadly foe. They knew she was constantly on the watch, ready to stamp out any attempts they made to spread their idol-worship even further afield than they have managed to do already. Isobel …’

  Dover cut this tirade short. ‘Are you suggesting that she was the victim of some Catholic plot?’ he asked sourly.

  Violet Slatcher hesitated for a moment. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she observed sourly, ‘but, as a matter of fact, on this occasion the murderer is one whom we have nursed in our bosom! Mind you,’ she
added quickly, ‘it’s because of the Catholics that he’s not yet been brought to justice. Obviously that son of Satan, the Chief Constable …’

  ‘Now, just a minute,’ said Dover, ‘are you telling me that you know who the murderer is?’

  ‘Oh, I know all right,’ said Miss Slatcher with a bitter laugh.

  ‘All right then, who is it?’

  Mr Bonnington leaned forward, a worried frown creasing his urbane face. ‘My dear Miss Slatcher, I do beg you once again to be careful. You must not go around making these wild accusations – for which you have not one iota of proof or justification. I’ve warned you before, there is a law about slander, you know.’

  ‘I know that everybody is against me!’ snapped Violet Slatcher. ‘Even you, Vicar! I am a poor weak woman but in the end justice will prevail and the Lord will cast down all mine enemies.’

  ‘Miss Slatcher!’ roared Dover with a venomous glance at Mr Bonnington for his interference. ‘ Who is it that you think murdered your sister?’

  ‘My lips are sealed. As Mr Bonnington says, I have no proof. I can only put my trust in the Lord, and you,’ she added generously.

  ‘All right!’ snarled Dover. ‘Well, I’d like to ask you a few questions about your sister. What exactly was her relationship with Rex Purseglove?’

  ‘They were engaged to be married.’

  ‘Mr Purseglove claims that there was only some vague understanding between them.’

  ‘Mr Purseglove is a liar. He is also a debauched libertine, a shameless womanizer and a man who gives his promise only to break it.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dover.

  ‘I can imagine what sort of lying story you have had from Rex Purseglove and his precious mother and father. Well, I’ll tell you the truth! For some time before Isobel was shot Rex Purseglove had been paying court to her. He was only a corporal then and he used to come over to Curdley most weekends. Isobel saw quite a lot of him and we both thought that although he hadn’t much to offer at that time he was, nevertheless, a decent, clean-living young man with good prospects. We were wrong, of course, tragically wrong, but at the time his true nature was not revealed to us. Isobel, with my encouragement, returned his affection. You have not been privileged to know my sister, Chief Inspector, but she was a girl of the very highest moral standards. Ask the Vicar here and he will tell you the same thing. Isobel loved Rex Purseglove, but she would never have permitted anything underhand or, well, nasty, in their relationship. She was not one to give her heart lightly, as Rex Purseglove well knew. Naturally, she assumed that his intentions were as honourable as her own.

  ‘You can imagine what a shock it was when this Purseglove man suddenly announced that he wished to break off their association. Isobel was heartbroken when she discovered that what for her had been something noble and sublime was, for him, merely a sordid interlude, a cruel trifling with her affections. I was not prepared to stand idly by and see him slide out of his obligations in this disgusting manner. I told him quite roundly that I was not going to see my sister callously jilted and made the laughing-stock of the whole district. I gave him a straight choice. Either he stood by his sacred obligations or we would see what redress the law of the land would give to an innocent girl. And I pointed out to him that it was unlikely that the Air Force would require the services of an officer who had been the subject of a breach of promise case.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘And what did he decide to do?’

  ‘There wasn’t time for him to decide anything. The Saturday evening that poor Isobel was shot, he and his mother came round to see me in an effort to get me to change my mind. They were unsuccessful.’ Miss Slatcher smiled grimly. ‘When they left I understood that Rex was going to meet my sister when she came away from the vicarage and see if he could get her to change her attitude. According to him, this meeting never took place, but even if it had Isobel would not have weakened in her resolve.’

  ‘I see,’ said Dover again. ‘So Rex Purseglove would have got out of a very difficult situation if your sister had died, eh? As, come to think of it, he’s got out of it now.’

  ‘That is correct,’ agreed Miss Slatcher, and pursed her lips.

  ‘And you really meant to sue him for breach of promise if he didn’t marry your sister?’

  ‘It would have been my duty.’

  Dover sighed gently and sat staring at the dead girl’s sister. He felt quite amiable towards her. After all, she’d just handed him, on a plate, exactly what he wanted – a nice fat juicy motive for Mr Rex Purseglove. She wasn’t, Dover was quite sure, the kind of woman to back down, either. Rex Purseglove must have known exactly where he stood: either he had to marry Isobel or see his chances of becoming an officer in the Air Force trickle gently down the drain.

  Violet Slatcher was older than Dover had expected. He guessed her to be in her early forties, although her greying mousy hair, make-up-less face and dowdy clothing would have made a less expert observer put her at over fifty. She had a thin, peaked face with a tight little mouth and sharp, slightly protruding eyes. She seemed very tense and on edge, a woman living on her nerves, but, allowing for a bit of religious fanaticism here and there, she’d told a coherent, and very acceptable, story.

  Dover sighed again and picked up his bowler hat. This was a favourite trick of his. He liked to make his witnesses think the interview was over and then, as they relaxed and were perhaps slightly off their guard, he would fire a parting salvo – if he had one. He certainly had one for Miss Slatcher.

  He rose heavily and reluctantly to his feet. Sergeant MacGregor and the Vicar got up too, and Miss Slatcher let her back come in contact with that of her chair for the first time since Dover had entered the room. She dabbed unconvincingly at her eyes with a small lace handkerchief, a gesture which failed to conceal the flinty triumph on her face.

  Dover swung ponderously round on her. ‘ Why did you tell the Custodian that your sister was on the point of recovery?’ he demanded.

  Miss Slatcher’s eyes protruded even further and she was so astonished that it was a second or two before she could speak.

  ‘Who told you that?’ she asked in a faint, choked voice.

  ‘Never mind who told me!’ said Dover harshly. ‘ Why did you do it?’

  Miss Slatcher looked helplessly at the Vicar, who avoided her eyes, and then back at Dover’s unpleasantly scowling face. She found no help anywhere.

  ‘Oh dear!’ moaned Mr Bonnington plaintively. ‘It wasn’t you who put that ridiculous story in the paper, was it? That really was very wrong of you, Miss Slatcher. You know it wasn’t true. How could you be so heartless?’

  ‘Heartless?’ repeated Miss Slatcher and took refuge in a trapped woman’s last resort – tears. ‘ Heartless? You’re the ones who are heartless. I just couldn’t bear it any longer. There was my poor Isobel, lying unconscious in that hospital week after week, and outside everybody was going on just as usual, as though nothing had happened. You were all beginning to forget her. She was still alive but you were all beginning to forget her, what had happened to her, what she’d suffered. Oh, everybody was upset about it at first. They said it was disgraceful that nothing was being done to find the devil that shot her but nowadays, why some people who knew her quite well don’t even ask me how she is. I couldn’t bear it! Just to forget her, casually, like that – it was worse than killing her a second time.’

  Sobbing almost uncontrollably now, Violet Slatcher swung back to Dover. ‘ I wanted to make them remember her again. I wanted to make them remember that the man who shot her was still walking about, unpunished! Dear God,’ she almost shouted, ‘ I wanted revenge!’

  ‘Oh dear!’ said Mr Bonnington again. ‘ Dear lady, do try to reconcile yourself to what has happened and clear your heart of this bitterness. As Christians, we must resign ourselves to the will of God, you know.’

  ‘She was my sister, not yours!’ Miss Slatcher blew her nose and pulled herself together. ‘And don’t you accuse me of being a bad Christ
ian! I know my Bible as well as you do and it says there– “An eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth”…’

  ‘It also says – “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord”,’ Mr Bonnington pointed out.

  ‘It also says – “The Lord helps those who help themselves”!’ retorted Miss Slatcher.

  Mr Bonnington smiled helplessly and Dover broke in before he could produce another quotation.

  ‘Miss Slatcher, you gave this completely fictitious story about your sister’s recovery to the Custodian just to stir the whole thing up again? Is that it?’

  Violet Slatcher nodded her head fiercely. ‘Yes, I did. I am a poor helpless woman and I had to use what weapons the good Lord placed to hand. And after all,’ she said complacently, ‘my efforts have not been in vain. You are here!’

  ‘Er, yes,’ said Dover.

  ‘He will hang, won’t he? The man who did it, I mean? Shooting – that’s capital murder, isn’t it? All right, Vicar, you want me to resign myself to the will of God – well, on the day that murdering beast hangs, I will!’

  The three men left Miss Slatcher’s house together and all of them felt a wave of relief as the door was shut smartly behind them.

  ‘She was very devoted to her sister,’ Mr Bonnington observed. ‘Very devoted. This has been a great blow to her, you know.’

  ‘If you ask me,’ said Dover unkindly, ‘it seems to have knocked her clean off her rocker. Did she always go on like that?’

  Mr Bonnington smiled apologetically. ‘Well, she’s always been a very fervent churchwoman – rather inclined to over-dramatize things a bit, but a sincere believer none the less and, in many ways, an example to all of us.’