by Joyce Porter
Well, there it was. Bonnington was certainly a possible candidate for the shooting of Isobel Slatcher as far as certain aspects of the case were concerned. But what about the actual mechanics of the attack? Could he have shot Isobel, and could Dover prove it if he had?
The main point which had proved a stumbling block for the chief inspector almost from the beginning of the case, was how the attacker had got away from the scene of the crime. The two most obvious routes had been under surveillance. Rex Purseglove was standing at the Corporation Road end of Church Lane and Mr Dibb outside his fish and chip shop was on guard at the other end. That left the possibility of somebody climbing the high wall over on to the railway track – a feat Dover considered quite out of the question – or taking temporary refuge in one of the three available buildings: the church, the vicarage or the church halL All the evidence seemed to show that the church and the church hall were securely locked – and you didn’t leave the doors of public buildings open in Curdley. In any case no one could have entered the church without Mr Ofield being aware of it. The more you came to look at it, thought Dover unhappily, the more obvious it became that the intending murderer could have gone most easily into the vicarage. If the man were some third person though, why hadn’t Mr Bonnington caught him breaking into his own house? If the man were Mr Bonnington himself, then all became relatively simple.
Dover pulled out a large, greyer-than-grey handkerchief and mopped his brow. He felt there was something rather blasphemous about measuring up a clergyman like this. Dover had quite clear-cut, if erroneous, ideas about what criminals looked like and from what sort of background they came: These preconceptions did not include clerks in Holy Orders.
He sat there in the hotel lounge sweating and grumbling to himself as he reviewed in his mind what had happened outside St Benedict’s vicarage at eight o’clock on the night of Saturday, February 17th.
He was still sitting there, gazing stupidly before him, when Sergeant MacGregor came hurrying back to the hotel. The chief inspector’s eyes were wide open, so he was obviously awake, and his pasty flabby face was even whiter than usual. MacGregor assumed that his stomach was bothering him again.
Dover stared vacantly at MacGregor, his rosebud of a mouth drooping petulantly downwards and his jowls hanging in ample folds over his collar. His tiny black moustache, worn in the style which Adolf Hitler made so unpopular, twitched slightly in acknowledgement of his sergeant’s presence. MacGregor interpreted this as indicating permission to speak.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said, perching despondently on the arm of a near-by armchair, ‘it’s absolutely hopeless. The doctors wouldn’t even let me see her.’
Dover blinked.
‘They don’t know if she’s ever likely to recover, but apparently she’s retreated into a sort of daydream world of her own and she doesn’t respond to any questions or anything. It seems she thinks she’s a little girl again. It’s all rather pathetic, really.’
There was a pause.
Dover’s body heaved in a slight sigh. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said sadly. ‘I know who did it.’
‘Really, sir?’ MacGregor was apprehensive.
‘Came to me all in a flash, it did,’ Dover went on miserably. ‘Can’t think why we didn’t see it before. Obvious, really, once you know.’
‘Who was it, sir?’
‘The Reverend Roland Bonnington, Vicar of St Benedict’s.’
‘Oh no!’ MacGregor’s voice rose in a howl of protest. Really, the old fool ought to be put out of his misery! It would be a kindness, honestly it would. He might have been all right in his day, possibly, but it was time now to get him pensioned off.
Dover was not pleased by MacGregor’s horrified reaction to his stupendous news. He chose to forget that he had already made two similar announcements during the course of his investigations and neither had proved correct.
‘It’s all right screaming, “Oh no!”’ he snapped. ‘I don’t like the idea of it any more than you do, but he’s our man. There’s no doubt about it.’
‘Look here, sir,’ said MacGregor, trying hard to keep calm, ‘don’t you think we’d better discuss this thoroughly before we go any further? I mean, we’ve already accused an Air Force officer and a head librarian of shooting Isobel Slatcher. We don‘t want to pick on every notable in the town, now do we, sir?’
‘Bonnington shot her,’ said Dover obstinately.
‘He couldn’t have done, sir!’ MacGregor took his courage in both hands. Somebody had got to do something or Scotland Yard would become the laughing-stock of the place. ‘Do you remember Mr Dibb at the fish and chip shop? He saw Mr Bonnington leaving the vicarage after the shots were fired. He was quite clear about it. He heard the train go by, he heard the shots and he went outside his shop and then he saw Mr Bonnington leave the vicarage and rush round the corner of his garden to where Isobel was lying.’
‘Well?’
‘Mr Bonnington must have been in the vicarage when the shots were fired. If he’d shot Isobel and then run back into the vicarage, Dibb would have seen him.’
‘Only if he’d returned to the house through the front door.’
‘But how else could he have got in? We’ve already agreed he couldn’t climb the wall of the vicarage garden – it’s just too high and there’s all that broken glass stuff on top.’
‘He didn’t use the front door and he didn’t climb the wall,’ retorted Dover impatiently. ‘He used that side gate in the garden wall. That gate is only two or three yards from where Isobel Slatcher was shot.’
MacGregor sighed heavily. ‘ We looked at that gate, sir, right at the beginning of the case. It was locked and bolted and every bit of metal on it, including the hinges, was solid with rust. It hadn’t been used for years.’
‘Oh, I grant you,’ agreed Dover generously, ‘that it looked in a pretty bad way, but, with patience and plenty of penetrating oil, don’t you reckon a determined man could get it open again, if his life depended on it?’
‘Well, yes, sir, I suppose you’ve got a point there. You probably could get it in working order, given enough time. But you’d need to pour pints of oil on to it – the hinges, the bolts and the lock. Surely to goodness we’d have seen some traces of all that when we examined it?’
‘You’re forgetting, MacGregor,’ said Dover, not unwilling to score a minor point off his sergeant, ‘that we didn’t examine that gate until nearly nine months after the shooting. Let’s just suppose that somebody did go to work on it. There was no hurry about it, he could take his time. We know from the way that gun was found and kept that the whole business was premeditated. Our man didn’t have to get everything ready overnight. Now then, once he’d shot Isobel, all he’s got to do is lock the gate up again, probably wipe off any surplus oil and then simply leave the weather to do the rest. It wouldn’t be long before all the metal was as rusty and stuck together as it was before.’
MacGregor thought this over. ‘What do you think actually happened, sir?’ he asked.
‘Too easy, really,’ said Dover. ‘ Got a cigarette, laddie? I think Isobel Slatcher found the letter from Cuthbert Boys in the vicarage. These bossy self-righteous women are usually pretty nosy as well and I imagine she was into everything she could lay her hands on. She takes the letter – having realized its implications. Don’t forget she may have seen the envelope as well and that may have given her a clue. Then she tells Mr Bonnington that she’s got it and threatens him with it in some way. He decides to get rid of her. Finding that gun was probably an unexpected windfall, but he was bright enough to see how valuable it was going to be to him. Then he gets the gate ready so that he can get it open easily and quietly. When Isobel leaves the vicarage on the Saturday night as usual he nips out through his garden and through that gate. He’d meet her face to face just as she came round the corner. He grabs her and fires both bullets into her head. Then he whips back through the gate again, locks it, rushes back across the garden, through the house, ou
t of his front door-when he’s lucky enough to be seen by Dibb – and round to where Isobel is lying, dead, he hopes, on the pavement. From then on he behaves like any normal, responsible citizen, phones for the ambulance and the police and so on.’
‘Risky, sir,’ mused MacGregor. ‘Suppose the local police had examined that gate thoroughly?’
‘You can’t commit murder without taking some risks,’ Dover pointed out, ‘and I reckon if Isobel Slatcher had been killed the local boys might have poked about a bit more than they did. But you know what it’s like. Why flog yourself to death searching for clues when, in a few days, the victim herself’ll be able to give you the name, address and telephone number of the fellow you want? I expect they did look at the gate in a casual sort of way and then accepted Bonnington’s statement that it hadn’t been opened for years.’
‘It was still a bit careless, sir,’ said MacGregor reprovingly.
‘Well, you know what these provincial CID chaps are like,’ agreed Dover with a very patronizing air. ‘They do their best, I suppose, but they just haven’t got the experience. Besides, suppose they had discovered that the gate would open, that doesn’t pin the shooting on to Bonnington, you know. Somebody else could easily have done the oiling, hid in the vicarage garden until Isobel came past, shot her and then gone back in the garden. When the Vicar ran out to see what the hell was going on, Mr X could have slipped into the house and casually walked out of the front door when everybody else was flapping away over the supposed corpse round the comer. The local police had no reason to suspect Bonnington, of all people. I don’t know as I would myself, except that he fits the bill as Bigamous Bertie’s brother so well – and none of the other suspects do.’
MacGregor tried to find some flaw in Dover’s unexpectedly intelligent piece of reasoning, but the chief inspector had a plausible explanation for everything. Much against all his experience and better judgement, MacGregor gradually found himself accepting the idea that Dover might, on this his third attempt, actually be right.
‘There’s not much in the way of proof so far, sir,’ he warned cautiously. ‘We’re just supposing all the time, aren’t we?’
‘We should be able to prove that Bonnington is the brother of Bigamous Bertie easily enough. You can get on to the Yard straight away and have ’em put somebody on checking at Somerset House or wherever it is. Now we know what we’re looking for it shouldn’t be too hard to find – given time: a boy who changed his name to Bonnington any time in say the last thirty years. Simple routine. Then we can do a real investigation into Bonnington’s past, just in case he didn’t do the change of name business by deed poll. At some stage we’re bound to come to the point where Bonnington disappears and a young Boys is there in his place. Once we can connect the two we’re on an easy wicket. We’ve got the letter and we can prove Isobel Slatcher had it in her possession.’
‘We can’t prove that she was blackmailing or threatening him with it, though.’
‘No, but with the evidence of Rex Purseglove and Mr Dibb we can prove, I reckon, that Bonnington was the only one who could have done the shooting and then got away unnoticed from the scene of the crime. Then the circumstantial evidence about the gun she was shot with isn’t too bad. I think we’ll get a case good enough for a conviction.’
‘It’s going to take some time, sir.’
Dover scowled. ‘Well, that’s as maybe. Frankly I don’t intend to stop up here in this godforsaken hole a minute longer than I have tol Anyhow,’ he added casually, scraping a bit of dried egg off his waistcoat, ‘there’s one way we might speed things up a bit.’
MacGregor’s heart sank. Surely they weren’t going to go through all that again for the third time? Weren’t Rex Purseglove and Mr Ofield enough for anybody? ‘How do you mean, sir?’ he asked faintly.
‘Oh, we can go along and have a chat with Mr Bonnington himself,’ said Dover, with admirable nonchalance. ‘See what he’s got to say for himself, eh? Put a bit of pressure on, you know, and he might crack and confess everything. Save us a lot of trouble all round. Bit of the old third degree stuff, without going too far,’ he hastened to add.
MacGregor knew it was no good arguing. The chief inspector wanted to get home as soon as possible. The fact that his proposed short cut might well ruin everything by putting Mr Bonnington on his guard was neither here nor there. Bringing the case to a successful conclusion ranked in Dover’s mind a bad second to getting away from Curdley on the earliest available train.
MacGregor was sent off to put the more elaborate and lengthy inquiries into motion. If Mr Bonnington were the brother of Cuthbert Boys it shouldn’t, given time, be too difficult to prove. While the sergeant got on with the telephoning Dover ordered himself a large cup of coffee and remained comfortably ensconced in the lounge – ‘ working out his tactics’ as he explained later to MacGregor. An hour later he had got no further than deciding to confront Mr Bonnington with the theory he had built up, claim that it was constructed of provable facts and, if he didn’t break down and confess on the spot, thump him in the face until he did. There was, at times, a classic simplicity about the way Dover’s mind worked.
Chapter Fourteen
As they stood outside the front door of St Benedict’s vicarage both Dover and MacGregor felt, in spite of certain twinges of apprehension, that the end of the case was in sight. Mr Bonnington was the man all right, though MacGregor would have been happier if they had been calling on him properly armed with a warrant and a substantial backing of real evidence. So, as a matter of fact, would Dover, now that it came to the point, but he recognized with a sigh, you couldn’t have it both ways. He was fed up with the whole blasted case and he wanted to be done with it. It might be weeks before they unearthed the evidence he wanted. This way might be risky but at least it would produce quick results – and anyhow it would be more fun. Dover quite enjoyed a bit of heavy-handed bullying every now and again.
The door was opened after some considerable delay by Mrs Smallbone.
‘Well?’ she snapped.
‘We want to see Mr Bonnington,’ said Dover putting a corresponding amount of antagonism into his voice.
‘You can’t. He’s having his lunch. You’ll have to come back at two o’clock.’
‘I’m afraid,’ said Dover, moving inexorably forward like a Centurion tank, ‘that won’t do. We’ve got to see him now.’
Mrs Smallbone yielded to superior force and let them into the vicarage. ‘You can wait in the study,’ she announced with a toss of her head. ‘I’ll tell him you’re here.’
‘Oh, no need for that,’ said Dover smoothly. ‘We can talk to him while he’s finishing his dinner.’ And without giving Mrs Smallbone time to argue he lumbered off in the direction of the kitchen.
Mrs Smallbone was outraged. ‘The Reverend’s in the dining-room. Just because once a week he has to have a quick snack in the kitchen doesn’t mean he lives there, I’ll have you know!’
Mr Bonnington, sitting at one end of a huge mahogany table, looked as though he’d had a rattling good lunch. He was reading a book and stuffing biscuits loaded with butter and a crumbly white cheese into his mouth. He looked up when Mrs Smallbone came in.
‘Them policemen are here again,’ she proclaimed flatly.
Mr Bonnington frowned, but before he had time to make any comment Dover and MacGregor were already in the room.
Dover pulled out a chair at Mr Bonnington’s end of the table and sat down, grimly tipping his bowler hat to the back of his head. For a moment nobody said a word and then, with a sniff and another toss of her head, Mrs Smallbone went out, all but slamming the door behind her.
‘Well now’ – Mr Bonnington produced a bleak smile – ‘ to what do I owe the honour of yet another, er, unexpected visit?’
Dover ignored him. He spoke over his shoulder to MacGregor. ‘Sit yourself down, Sergeant, and get your notebook out.’ He turned back to Mr Bonnington. ‘ I hope you’re not going to keep us here too long, sir,’ he
said.
‘I must confess I share your aspirations,’ said Mr Bonnington tartly, ‘ but I fail to see how the length of your inquisition is going to depend in any way on me.’
‘Don’t you, sir?’ asked Dover with a sneer. ‘ Well, perhaps you will in a moment. Now then, sir, would you mind telling me your full name?’
For a second the Vicar pursed his lips, then he shrugged his shoulders and answered, unperturbedly, ‘Roland Bonnington.’
MacGregor carefully inscribed this in his notebook.
‘And your age, sir?’
‘I’m forty.’
‘Have you any brothers or sisters, sir?’
Mr Bonnington’s eyes flicked rapidly from Dover to the silent MacGregor and back again. ‘No.’
Dover grinned evilly. ‘Had you any brothers or sisters, sir?’
‘Now look here, Inspector, I really cannot see the point of your questions. They seem to me to be quite irrelevant to any investigation you are authorized to make.’
‘Are you refusing to answer them, sir?’ asked Dover. ‘They seem to me to be harmless enough. Of course,’ he added, keeping his fingers crossed, ‘ if you feel that you are putting yourself in jeopardy by telling me whether you ever had any brothers or sisters, there’s nothing to stop you engaging a solicitor to advise you. Always wisest, I reckon, when you’ve got something to hide.’
‘I have nothing to hide,’ retorted Mr Bonnington. ‘Kindly don’t make insinuations of that kind! If it’s so important to you, you may as well know that I did have a brother who is now dead.’
‘An elder brother, sir?’