by Joyce Porter
‘How did you get the gun?’ asked Dover faintly.
‘I found it in the church hall when I went in to help clear up after the battle. Been kicked behind one of the lockers.’
‘But you don’t know how to fire a gun,’ protested Mr Bonnington.
‘I got a book out of the library and learnt!’ snapped Mrs Smallbone.
‘And the garden gate?’ asked Dover.
‘I got that open too.’ Mrs Smallbone laughed wryly. ‘ Fancy you thinking he could manage a job like that. He wouldn’t know how to work an oil can if you gave him from now until Doomsday!’
‘And you didn’t go home that night as usual?’
‘Of course not! I said good night to him and he thought I’d gone – if he ever thinks about anything. I waited in the kitchen in the dark. When I heard Isobel leave I ran out through the garden and opened the gate. It didn’t make a sound. When she came round the corner I grabbed her and fired the gun into her head. Then I went back inside the vicarage and hid in the kitchen again. I waited until about midnight when everybody’d gone and it was all quiet. Then I took a tin of petrol out and cleaned all the oil off the gate. I soaked all the hinges and things in water, and then I went home. I told the police I’d left at seven o’clock, same as usual, and nobody bothered any more about it. Every now and again I’d go out and give that gate another soaking. You won’t find a spot of oil anywhere on it now.’ She proffered this bit of information proudly.
‘And you’re seriously asking me to believe that Mr Bennington didn’t know?’
Mrs Smallbone shrugged her shoulders. ‘We never discussed the matter,’ she said primly. ‘I’d told him to leave Isobel to me and not to worry about it – and that’s exactly what he did do. He’s a great one for pushing his burdens off on to someone else’s shoulders – delegation of responsibility, I think he calls it. Anyway, he pretended not to know who shot Isobel and I certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him. Least said, soonest mended, that’s my motto.’
Mr Bonnington was naturally anxious to confirm his housekeeper’s statement ‘My dear Inspector, of course I had no idea that Mrs Smallbone had done anything so dreadful. I just thought she was going to talk to Isobel and persuade her to see reason. And I knew nothing about the gun. How was I to know that she’d found a gun, of all things, in the church hall? I mean, that sort of thing just doesn’t happen, does it?’
Dover sighed heavily and avoided MacGregor’s eye. ‘’Strewth, if he had much more of this he’d go barmy himself I He dragged himself to his feet. ‘I think you’d better come down to the station,’ he said.
Mr Bonnington relaxed in his chair, his hands clasped piously together.
‘Both of you!’ snapped Dover.
‘So that’s how it was, sir,’ said Dover, waving a casual hand in the direction of the Chief Constable.
Colonel Muckle’s eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘Brilliant,’ he cooed. ‘Just brilliant! My, it’s a real education to watch you fellows at work.’
Dover smirked modestly and held out his whisky glass for a refill.
‘And you knew all along that Mrs Smallbone was the guilty party, eh?’
MacGregor was not present at this rather high-level get-together so Dover was free to discuss the case without an accompaniment of disbelieving gasps from his sergeant.
‘That’s right,’ he admitted with a wise little smile. ‘ I spotted her right from the start. A sort of detective’s instinct I suppose you’d call it. But, of course, as you know, sir, it’s one thing to know who the villain is – and quite another to prove it.’
‘My word, yes!’ said Colonel Muckle. ‘How right you are!’
‘So,’ continued Dover, lying peacefully back in his chair like a trooper, ‘I had to conduct my investigation in an indirect way.’
‘Ah,’ said Colonel Muckle, as though that cleared up a number of points which had been puzzling him.
‘And, of course, I had to keep my suspicions strictly to myself. I daren’t confide in anyone – in case they inadvertently gave the game away. Couldn’t risk breathing a word, even to my own sergeant.’ Dover smiled briefly. That’d spike young MacGregor’s guns!
‘Ah,’ said Colonel Muckle again, indicating that it had.
‘I let it become known,’ Dover went on, getting rather pompous, ‘that I thought one person had been responsible for both crimes, the original shooting last February and then the final murder in the hospital. That was just to put the guilty parties off their guard – lull them into a false sense of security, you know. Meanwhile, I pursued my investigations under cover, as you might say.’
‘I thought at first you were going to arrest young Rex Purseglove.’
‘That,’ retorted Dover smugly, ‘is what you were meant to think. Actually I was after a very important bit of evidence from him but I didn’t want to have that gossiped about all round the town. What he did, in short, was to stop up the Corporation Road end of Church Lane. When I found the man in the fish and chip shop who could stop the other end up, I knew I was on the right lines. Incidentally, I can’t think how your men missed questioning Mr Dibb. His evidence that nobody passed his shop after the shooting was absolutely vital, you know.’
‘My chaps aren’t very experienced, I’m afraid,’ apologized the Chief Constable. ‘That’s why I called the Yard in.’
‘Very wise,’ said Dover. ‘Well then, I decided to show my hand a bit by arresting Violet Slatcher. She was such an obvious suspect for the actual murder of Isobel that I thought it would look queer if I didn’t get her under lock and key.’ He wondered if the Chief Constable was naïve enough to swallow this. He was.
‘A sort of mercy killing?’ asked Colonel Muckle, who had been playing a bit too much golf lately to keep fully abreast with what was going on in his own force.
‘Not really,’ said Dover. ‘Violet was devoted to Isobel – she was, after all, her own daughter. She’d made a mess of her own life, or at least thought she had, and she’d pinned all her hopes and ambitions on Isobel. Above all, she wanted to see her respectably married. But when Isobel was shot like she was, I think Violet went a bit off the old rocker. As time went on she knew there was nothing more that she or anybody else could do for the girl, except see she was avenged. She wanted the chap who had, in effect, murdered Isobel brought to book and hanged, and when she thought nobody was doing anything to catch him and people were beginning to forget about what had happened she decided to help things on a bit. She checked up on the law. If Isobel died, it’d be capital murder and a job for the hangman, but Isobel had to die within a year and a day. Violet made sure that she did.’
‘Bit grim,’ said Colonel Muckle.
‘Yes, but it worked. The whole case took on a new lease of life and you sent for me. It was just what Violet wanted. She thought Rex Purseglove had shot Isobel and she did her best to make us think so too. She wanted Isobel’s death to look as though it was the delayed result of her original injuries, but in case we weren’t taken in by that, she fixed it up that young Purseglove was the Number One suspect. Luckily,’ observed Dover with an irritatingly complacent smile, ‘ I saw through her little game fairly early on.’
‘Fascinating,’ said Colonel Muckle.
‘Just routine,’ said Dover.
‘And you knew all the time that Mrs Smallbone was the real culprit?’
‘Well, let’s just say I strongly suspected it,’ lied Dover modestly. ‘Couldn’t have been anybody else, really.’
‘Not Mr Bonnington, himself? After all, he was the one with the motive, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’ Dover pursed his lips judicially. ‘I suppose that’s what an amateur might have thought, but I flatter myself I’m a bit of a student of human nature. I couldn’t see Mr Bonnington attempting cold-blooded murder. Just wasn’t in keeping with his character.’
‘But you accused him of the shooting, didn’t you?’
‘Oh yes, but only to make Mrs Smallbone talk. I knew she’d done it all rig
ht, but we hadn’t any proof and didn’t look like getting any either. I was pretty certain Mr Bonnington knew what had been going on, and by threatening him with the crime I thought he might well try and save his own skin by telling us the truth. As you know, he was on the point of doing just that when Mrs Smallbone herself burst in and saved him the trouble. She made a full confession. Very satisfactory.’
‘And he and Mrs Smallbone had actually been – well – er, lovers?’ asked the Chief Constable, not averse to having a little gossip over some juicy Protestant peccadilloes.
‘Apparently so,’ sniffed Dover, ‘though I reckon Mr Bonnington might say with some justification, “ The woman tempted me.” Isobel Slatcher wasn’t the only one in Curdley who wanted to take a walk up the aisle. Mrs Smallbone was determined to marry Bonnington and be the first lady of the parish. She managed to get him to seduce her, and I reckon she’d nearly got him to agree to lead her to the altar when this letter came from Cuthbert Boys and Isobel threatened to blow the whole show sky high. Bonnington just wrung his hands and turned to prayer, but Mrs Smallbone got cracking. She never actually told Bonnington that she’d shot the girl, but he must have had a pretty good idea that she was behind it. When Isobel didn’t die, the pair of ’em were afraid of arousing suspicion if they got married and, much to Bonnington’s relief, they just carried on same as usual, waiting until all the fuss and bother died down.’
‘But they reckoned without you, eh, Chief Inspector?’ The Chief Constable beamed at Dover.
Dover beamed and basked a little longer in this, to him, unusual atmosphere of admiration and approbation. When he finally left to catch his train, Colonel Muckle jovially insisted on accompanying him to the waiting car.
Outside the police headquarters three little girls were grimly intent on playing some elaborate game with an old tennis ball to the accompaniment of a shrilly chanted song:
‘I’m Bigamous Bertie,
I rise at seven thirty
And off to the altar I go.
I’m marrying my seventh,
Or is it eleventh?
I’m Bigamous Bertie the beau!’
Dover scowled and ignored them as he shook hands with Colonel Muckle, a ceremony which was recorded by a gentleman of the local Press.
And that was that History, in the form of the chief inspector’s own report, tells us that the murder of Isobel Slatcher was solved by Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover in less than a week.
As for the gun which Dover had promised to return to the Pie Gang, they never did get it back. Freddie Gash used to wax very bitter about it. ‘Coppers!’ he would complain poignantly. ‘You can’t believe a ruddy word they says!’
Copyright
First published in 1965 by Cape
This edition published 2013 by Bello
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Copyright © Joyce Porter, 1965
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