by Joyce Porter
‘I see,’ said Dover. ‘ Er, this Mr Purseglove you mentioned – is that Rex Purseglove’s father?’
‘Yes, that’s the one. He’s been attending that Bible Class for years. I should think his wife’s glad to get him out of the house.’
‘And this chap, Ofield? I’ve an idea that Mr Bonnington mentioned his name.’
‘Quite likely. He used to play the organ quite a bit for us. He was in the church practising the night Isobel Slatcher got herself shot, but of course he didn’t hear anything. Funnily enough he and Isobel both used to work at the library. He’s chief librarian, you know, though I did hear he was leaving to take a job somewhere else.’
‘Is there any chance of getting a list of all the men who were at the Bible Class that particular evening?’
Mrs Smallbone looked at the chief inspector in surprise. ‘I suppose so. I think they keep a register. Anyhow, you’d better ask the Reverend. That’s him just coming in now.’
Mr Bonnington was not overjoyed to find that he had two visitors waiting for him in the snug warmth of his kitchen. After all Sunday was, as he pointed out rather testily, his busy day, and while he appreciated that the police had their duty to perform he would like to stress that he, too, had his.
‘You’re late as it is,’ added Mrs Smallbone as she dished up a man-sized helping of cottage pie and placed it, steaming and odoriferous, before the Vicar.
Dover’s mouth watered and his stomach rumbled quite audibly. MacGregor frowned slightly but neither Mrs Smallbone nor Mr Bonnington answered this cri de cúur. They didn’t even offer Dover and MacGregor a cup of tea.
‘I know I’m late,’ Mr Bonnington went on, liberally daubing his cottage pie with tomato sauce. ‘Oh dear, I sometimes wonder whether Sunday schools aren’t really more trouble than they’re worth.’ He smiled to show that this was just his little joke.
Mrs Smallbone sighed and pushed a large plateful of bread and butter towards her employer. ‘What’s happened now?’
‘It’s that young Miss Beeby again. She’s an excellent worker and very devout but, really, she is a fool! She told her class last week that they could learn any six verses from the Bible they liked. I ask you, fancy telling a class of ten-year-old boys that! You can imagine what happened today. The class was in an uproar and she was in tears and it was ages before I could find out what had happened. She was far too embarrassed about the whole thing to give me a coherent story. I wouldn’t have thought a girl of her age these days could be quite such a prude.’
‘You’d better give her the girls’ class next week.’ Mrs Smallbone poured out another cup of tea for the Vicar and put the sugar in for him.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr Bonnington ruefully, ‘what makes you think that the girls have any less knowledge of certain passages in the Bible than our young gentlemen have. Oh well,’ he smiled bravely, ‘I shall just have to work something out before next week. After all, that’s what I’m here for.’
With a sigh of repletion he wiped his lips on his table napkin and pushed his chair back from the table.
‘An excellent meal, Mrs Smallbone,’ he beamed. ‘As always. Well now, Inspector, what can I do for you? I’m afraid I haven’t much time to spare. Evensong begins at half past six.’
‘I’d just like you to show me, sir,’ replied Dover grumpily, ‘where you were and what you did the night Isobel Slatcher was shot. Just so we can get a picture of what actually happened.’
‘Well, as I told you, I was in my study,’ began the Vicar.
Dover rose ponderously to his feet. ‘Perhaps you’d show us, Mr Bonnington,’ he said.
Under the somewhat jaundiced eyes of the two detectives Mr Bonnington acted out his part. He sat down at his desk in the study.
‘I was working here,’ he said, ‘when I heard the shots. I hesitated for a moment or two, not really being sure what it was, and then I got up and hurried outside.’
‘Time it, Sergeant,’ said Dover as he followed Mr Bonnington out of the study.
On the pavement outside the front door Mr Bonnington stopped again. ‘I hesitated a bit here, too,’ he said, ‘trying to orientate myself. Then I hurried in this direction and found her just here on the corner.’
‘Did you close the front door?’ asked Dover, staring blankly at the spot where Isobel Slatcher had fallen.
‘No, I never thought to. I left it open.’
‘You examined the girl and thought she was dead?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘But you knew who it was?’
‘Oh, I recognized her, of course. Her clothes as well as her face. I’d only said good night to her a couple of minutes before, you know.’
‘Then you went back inside and phoned the police. The phone’s in your study? Hm, how long would all that take – three or four minutes? No longer, anyhow. Then you came back and found young Purseglove. Was he standing or kneeling by the body, or what?’
‘He was just standing there, looking down at her.’
‘You used the front door again, did you, the second time you came out?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t think of using this gate in the garden wall?’
‘Oh, that? No, it hasn’t been opened for years. I imagine it’s completely rusted up by now. I’ve never used it myself. It’s always kept locked.’
‘I see,’ said Dover, and sighed. ‘And you didn’t see anybody at all coming away from this corner in the direction of the vicarage?’
‘No, nobody at all.’
‘Just one more small point, Mr Bonnington,’ said Dover, happy in the knowledge that if he was getting wet – the rain was falling quite heavily now – the Vicar, coatless and hatless, was getting absolutely soaked. It would serve the skinny old devil right! ‘The church door – this one here leading out into Church Lane – is it kept locked?’
‘Oh, dear me, yes. Always. Except when there’s actually a service on.’
‘Was it locked on the Saturday night when Isobel Slatcher was shot?’
‘Definitely. The only key is kept in the vicarage and I would have known if anyone had taken it. And now, Inspector, if that’s all, I really think…’
‘Just a minute, Mr Bonnington,’ said Dover blandly. ‘Didn’t you tell me that this fellow – what’s-his-name? – Ofield was practising on the organ in the church that night? How did he get in?’
‘He used the vestry door, of course,’ snapped Mr Bonnington, turning his collar up. ‘We’ve two or three keys for that – so that the cleaners and people can get in. It’s round on the other side of the church. There’s a path leading from Corporation Road through the graveyard. That’s why Mr Ofield not only didn’t hear the shots but didn’t see the police and the ambulance and all the rest of it when he left the church. He didn’t come out into Church Lane at all.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover, and sought desperately for some more questions. ‘Is the church hall door kept locked?’
‘When the building is not in use. Perhaps we could go back inside the vicarage, Inspector? I see no point in us standing out here in the dark getting soaked!’
Dover pulled MacGregor to one side. ‘ You got any questions to ask him?’ he hissed. ‘Because if so, now’s your chance.’
As it happened MacGregor had a few theories of his own and was delighted, and surprised, to be given a chance of exploring them. Usually Dover liked to do all the talking.
Mr Bonnington pointedly didn’t ask them back into his study but remained, frequently consulting his watch, in the hall of the vicarage. Three small pools of water from their dripping clothes began to form on the polished linoleum.
‘Mr Bonnington,’ began MacGregor, throwing himself into his part with all the snap and decision of an American lawyer on the telly, ‘can you tell us anything a bit more definite about the relationship between the deceased Isobel Slatcher and Rex Purseglove?’
The Vicar shot him a look of loathing mingled with a certain amount of surprise. ‘What precisely di
d you want to know, Sergeant?’ he asked with another impatient look at his watch.
‘Were they engaged to be married?’
Mr Bonnington sighed. ‘ Rex certainly never gave me to understand that they were, as I think I told you before. However Miss Slatcher, Violet that is, did come round to see me with some rather vague preliminary inquiries about the ceremony. I intimated that I thought the whole business was a little premature and that the banns would naturally have to be put up by the engaged couple. She seemed rather annoyed and implied that I was being unnecessarily unhelpful.’
‘When was this?’
‘Oh, a week or two before Isobel was shot.’
‘And Rex Purseglove never mentioned his engagement to you?’
‘No, he didn’t. But when Isobel was lying unconscious in hospital Violet Slatcher mentioned the matter to me again. She wanted to know if it were possible to marry the young couple by proxy, or while Isobel was still in a coma. Naturally I told her it was completely out of the question.’
‘This was rather an odd request, wasn’t it?’ probed MacGregor with a shrewdness worthy of a better cause.
‘Quite ludicrous. But Miss Slatcher was really rather fanatical about getting Isobel married off. Her anxiety would have been amusing if, of course, it hadn’t been so tragic under the circumstances. I don’t know the reason for her attitude – perhaps some unfortunate experience in her own past. Naturally I have never inquired. And now I really must ask you to go. If I don’t hurry I shall be late as it is.’
‘One last question, sir, if you don’t mind. When this story appeared in the Custodian about Isobel Slatcher being on the point of recovery, did you believe it?’
‘Of course not, Sergeant. I happen to be the Church of England chaplain at the hospital and I was fully conversant with the state of Isabel Slatcher’s health. I knew that, short of a miracle, she would never regain consciousness and that if she did, she would never be a rational person again. The brain damage was too severe. I didn’t know where the Custodian had got its information from but as soon as I read the article I half suspected that Violet Slatcher was behind it. Grief can drive the best of us to do some very odd things.’
Thirty seconds later Dover and MacGregor were standing in the rain outside the vicarage front door which had been shut firmly in their faces.
Dover summed up his impression of their afternoon’s work.
‘I don’t know about you, MacGregor,’ he said, ‘but I’m damned hungry!’
Chapter Eight
During The time they had been together MacGregor had blushed on many occasions for his impervious chief inspector, but never quite so rosily as now when he found himself following Dover into, of all places, a fish and chip shop. Remonstrations had proved in vain. Dover had scornfully brushed aside his sergeant’s genteel objections and had thumped resolutely into the shop. MacGregor found a grain of comfort in the fact that they were the only customers. As he stood miserably at the high counter he wondered if that paragon of detectives, Superintendent Roderick, had ever been so careless of his own social standing (and so indifferent to the finer feelings of his subordinates) as to set foot in such an establishment, unless of course it were in the strict line of duty.
‘Two plates of fish and chips, with peas,’ demanded Dover, who clearly knew his way around.
The man behind the counter shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got a dining-room here. I only sell’em to take out.’
MacGregor blenched and began to think hopefully about the ground opening up and swallowing him.
‘But,’ the fish and chip man went on, ‘you’re welcome to eat ’em here at the counter, if you don’t mind standing up.’
‘All right,’ agreed Dover amiably, ‘we’ll do that.’
The two detectives peered in silence over the high counter as the proprietor bustled about, dipping slabs of white fish in batter and tossing them into the near boiling oil, neurotically shovelling the chips about as they cooked and restlessly sliding the roll-top covers backwards and forwards over his smoking cauldrons. Dover licked his lips. MacGregor, his face set and his expression grimly blank, prayed quite hard that nobody would come in.
When they had been somewhat unceremoniously turfed out of the vicarage, Dover, in a rush of enthusiasm which did not occur very frequently, decided to have a look at the church hall which was just next door. There wasn’t much to be seen. The windows which gave out on to Church Lane were small and set high in the otherwise blank wall. They were also barred. The front door was locked and what with the rain and the poor street lighting MacGregor felt that they could well have saved themselves their twenty-yard walk. Dover stopped and contemplated the building with a damp, disparaging sniff, and it was then that his nostrils caught the unmistakable aroma of fish and chips. From then on there was no holding him.
Two large newspaper bundles were slapped down on the counter.
‘Four and sixpence, if you please, sir!’
Dover immediately became engrossed in unravelling his packet and MacGregor, with a resigned shrug, handed the money over. Fastidiously he watched his chief inspector scattering salt and vinegar with an expert hand over the compressed pile of smoking fish and fat pale chips. With a delicate shiver he saw him grab a handful, curse because they burnt his fingers, and stuff them with a grunt of satisfaction into his mouth.
‘Come on, lad.’ Dover spoke through a mouthful of chips. ‘Don’t let ’em get cold!’
The proprietor of the shop leaned companionably on the counter.
‘You the chaps they’ve had sent down from London?’ he asked.
‘We are,’ admitted Dover grandly and dashed MacGregor’s last hopes of remaining anonymous.
‘Scotland Yard, isn’t it?’
‘It is,’ said Dover.
‘I suppose you know this big detective fellow – Super Percy?’
‘We do,’ replied Dover with a marked lack of warmth.
‘Well, I reckon it’s about time they called the experts in up here,’ remarked the fish and chip man, thoughtfully wiping his vinegar bottle. ‘ Our lot couldn’t solve a crossword puzzle in a kids’ comic – not even if you give ’em a dictionary. Stupid lot of bastards they are! Do what the priest tells ’ em, you know, and that’s all. Soon as we heard what had happened to that Slatcher girl I says to the wife, well, I says, that’s one crime Curdley police’ll never solve – that’s for sure. With her being strong Church of England, you know, and always letting fly about confessions and indulgences and worshipping the Pope. They’d got it in for her all right!’
‘You’re a Protestant, I take it?’ said Dover, manoeuvring a large lump of fish into his mouth.
‘I’m a free thinker, I am!’ The fish and chip man drew himself up proudly. ‘I don’t hold with any of that superstitious twaddle, meself.’
‘Really, Mr, er …?’
‘Dibb’s my name. Alfred Dibb.’
‘Really, Mr Dibb? Well, I imagine you’re rather an odd man out in this town?’
‘Not half!’ agreed Mr Dibb sadly. ‘You can say that again, mate! I’ve got both lots of ’em against me. Affects me trade too, you know. Why, if I was to sacrifice me principles I could make a fortune in this town. But, as I always says to the wife, a man’s got to be true to his beliefs.’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Dover.
‘You wouldn’t credit the prejudice in this town against a chap who thinks for himself, you wouldn’t really. Take the night this Slatcher girl was shot. Only happened just round the corner, but did they ever come and ask me if I’d heard anything? Not bleeding likely, they didn’t! Not Curdley cops! All right, I says to the wife, if that’s the way they want it, that’s the way they can have it. I’m not the sort to go pushing meself in where I’m not wanted. I’m probably the only impartial witness in the whole bleeding town, the only man who’s got the guts and intelligence to think for himself, but if they can’t come to me I’m buggered if I’m going to them!’
Dover nodded absentmindedly, his attention absorbed by MacGregor’s pile of fish and chips.
‘Aren’t you going to eat those, Sergeant?’ he asked.
‘I’m not really very hungry, sir’ said MacGregor primly. ‘Oh well’ – Dover reached out an eager hand – “there’s no point in wasting ’em. Now then, Mr Dibb.’ He turned back to the fish and chip shop owner. ‘So the local police didn’t question you about the shooting of Isobel Slatcher?’
‘No,’ said Mr Dibb resentfully, ‘ they didn’t.’
‘Well, you’re dealing with Scotland Yard now. Suppose you tell me what happened.’
Mr Dibb beamed happily. ‘I should be very glad to tell you,’ he said pointedly. ‘At least I know that you won’t be reporting every word I say to Rome or Canterbury.’
‘Quite,’ said Dover. ‘Now then, what did happen? Did you hear the shots?’
‘Well, it was like this. I was here in the shop getting everything ready like, because we get the rush round about nine o’clock on Saturdays.’
‘You were alone? There weren’t any customers in?’
‘No, I was here by meself. The wife was in the back. Well, I’d got the door open because it was quite warm in here with all the cooking and so on and I heard the London express go by. I just glanced up like you do, you know, at the clock and I see he was dead on time – same as usual. Very reliable that train is.’
‘And what time was it?’
‘Eight five – on the dot. And that clock of mine’s a very good time-keeper. Well, just after he’d gone through I heard these two bangs, you see, one after the other. For a minute I thought it was those fog signals they put on the lines sometimes, but then I says to meself, no, I says, that can’t be right because there isn’t any fog, see? And then I thought to meself, in any case, I thought, the bangs came after the train had gone through, you see, which they wouldn’t have done if they’d been fog signals.’