by Joyce Porter
‘You played Cordelia, I suppose?’ said MacGregor, doing a bit of showing off as he reached for the photograph.
‘Cordelia!’ trilled Miss Doughty, drawing herself up in full majesty. ‘Damn it, darling boy, I played Lear!’
Awe-struck MacGregor looked at the photograph. Beneath the Father Christmas beard and woolly eyebrows, the face was undoubtedly Miss Doughty’s. ‘How very, er, interesting,’ he gulped.
‘There are no star parts for women in Shakespeare, darling boy. Sarah Bernhardt knew that – you’ve heard of her, I suppose? No, if a real actress wants to do Shakespeare she’s got to do it in tights.’ She chose another photograph. ‘That’s me as Macbeth. Tartan trews, you see. Very fetching. And this is me as Richard the Third. Not my part, really. I’ve far too good a figure to play a hunchback. And this is me as’ – she laughed archly – ‘ Othello. What you might call a black-face part, eh? And this is me as Hamlet. How’s that for a calf? James Agate called my performance as the Dane the most astonishing thing he’d ever seen in forty years of theatre going. How’s that for a compliment?’
‘You concentrated on the tragedies, did you?’ asked MacGregor, clutching frantically at the photographs which were being showered upon him.
‘Had to, darling boy,’ said Miss Doughty ruefully. ‘That’s me as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. There were only five of us, you see. You can’t possibly do a Shakespearian comedy with only five actors. Be reasonable, darling boy!’
‘I should have thought it was pretty difficult to do a Shakespearian tragedy,’ said MacGregor.
‘Practically impossible, darling boy! Couldn’t be done in these days, not with these so-called actors you see preening themselves in the soap advertisements. Catch them playing eleven parts in one evening, but that’s what dear Ethel did, night after night. That’s her playing Juliet to my Romeo.’ MacGregor accepted yet another photograph. ‘ Oh, it took some doing, I can tell you. We had to cut the play down to its bare essentials but we were true to the spirit. I always insisted on that. That’s me as Coriolanus. We did that for ENSA in 1942. Do you know, a soldier boy came up to me after the performance with tears in his eyes. He could hardly speak, the poor child. He said that for the first time since the war began he really knew what he was fighting for. Wasn’t that sweet? A corporal in the Pay Corps, I think he was.’
Dover’s stomach rumbled. He yawned widely, scratched his head and took over. ‘Hamilton,’ he said. ‘ What’s all this about a green van on the night he was chopped up?’
‘Oh, you’ve come about Hamilton, have you?’ Miss Doughty’s deep voice sank into black tragedy. ‘Such a tedious business.’
‘What exactly did you see?’ asked Dover. ‘There’s no need to go into detail. Just give us the essential facts.’
Miss Doughty assumed a doleful expression. Then she smiled. ‘How about a little snifter, darlings, just to keep our peckers up? You fetch the glasses and the tonic from the kitchen, darling boy. I’ve got the gin here.’ She gave the little table by her elbow a coy tap.
MacGregor dutifully played the part of a waiter. ‘Tonic for you, Miss Doughty?’
‘No, thank you, darling boy, I’m slimming.’ Miss Doughty dispensed a generous quantity of gin for herself and considerably less for her guests. ‘Bottoms up, darlings!’
‘The green van,’ prompted Dover wearily.
‘Ah, yes.’ Miss Doughty fortified herself with another draught from the tumblerful of gin, sat up straighter in her chair and gazed into the middle distance. ‘ Usually I sleep like a log, darlings, but on this particular night my slumbers were somewhat disturbed,’ she declaimed. ‘About four o’clock. I arose to make myself a warm drink. Instead of returning to bed I took my drink and sat in a chair by the window, thinking to refresh my soul with the sight of the dawn breaking over the roof tops. Imagine my surprise when, glancing down into the street below, I saw a small green van coming towards me down the street. Usually at night we have virtually no traffic in this quiet backwater.’
Dover caught MacGregor’s eye and nodded.
Unobtrusively the sergeant got up and went to the window. ‘You were sitting here. Miss Doughty?’
Miss Doughty flapped his question aside. ‘Don’t interrupt me, darling boy’, not when I’m in full spate. Now, where was I? … coming towards me down the street. Usually at night we have virtually no traffic in this quiet backwater. Naturally, there being nothing else to watch, I watched the van. It stopped just about by the Hamiltons’ house. All the lights were put out on the van and then I saw both doors open and two men got out. They went round to the back of the van and opened the rear doors. I couldn’t see clearly what happened then but I had the impression that they carried something heavy out of the back of the van and put it over one of the garden walls. I couldn’t tell which one. Then the men got back in the van and it drove off. I did not make a note of the number. The van was small and green and I did not see any writing on the side of the van. When the van had gone I went back to bed. There.’ Miss Doughty blinked triumphantly. ‘ How’s that for a statement?’
‘Very good,’ said Dover sourly. ‘Sounds almost as though you’d learned it off by heart.’
‘Read a thing twice and I’ve got it off pat. Up here,’ replied Miss Doughty, tapping her head with one hand and treating herself to a stiff gin with the other. ‘Mark of an old pro. Besides,’ she looked solemnly at Dover, ‘it’s about the sixth time I’ve gone through it. I did it four or five times right at the beginning and then that young man came round again a week or so ago, and now you two.’
‘Young man? Was his name Cochran?’
‘I think so,’ said Miss Doughty, not enunciating quite so clearly. ‘Don’t really remember. Handsome boy, though. Bit of a devil if you ask me, but very handsome. If I’d been fifty years younger … Well, gentlemen,’ she gathered her kimono round her and reached yet again for the bottle of gin, ‘if you have no further questions, it’s time for my luncheon.’
It suited Dover, who’d had more than enough of the silly old coot.
‘There are one or two questions,’ began MacGregor.
Dover scowled malevolently at him. ‘Later, laddie, later!’ he said. ‘Miss Doughty wants her lunch and I want mine.’
‘I’ll see you out,’ announced Miss Doughty with blurred dignity. Her eyes acquired a slight squint and she stood bolt upright. MacGregor grabbed her as she swayed. ‘Whoops! Steady, ye Buffs!’ she giggled and sat down abruptly.
‘Oh, leave the old soak alone,’ snapped Dover, already half way to the door. ‘She’s over three parts sozzled.’
‘But we can’t leave her like this, can we, sir?’ MacGregor looked anxiously at Miss Doughty who was now sleeping peacefully, a faint smile on her lips.
There was no answer. Dover had gone.
Chapter Seven
‘What a dump!’ grumbled Dover.
They were sitting in the hotel lounge having their after-dinner coffee. Dover, his injured foot resting on a stool, had some justification for his comment. The room was bleak, shabby and cold. The other guests had either already retired to bed so as to build up their strength for the ozone-impregnated rigours of the morrow, or were in the television room watching whatever the B.B.C, chose to provide them with. Only the very lowest people in Wallerton watched commercial telly.
The leaves of a plastic palm tree quivered in the draught which blew continually through the entire hotel.
‘What a day!’ said Dover gloomily.
MacGregor was inclined to agree with him. The morning had been bad enough but at least something had been happening then. The afternoon had been unbearably dreary. Dover, of course, had retired to his room to think about the case and rest his toe. MacGregor had been left to kick his heels around as best he might, and Wallerton on a wet July afternoon was not a place over-burdened with amusements. The cinema didn’t open until six o’clock and MacGregor considered it beneath his dignity to patronize Wallerton’s sole Amusement Arcade.
‘Perhaps you could convince the Chief Constable of that, sir?’ said MacGregor, always an optimist.
‘I’ve tried,’ said Dover, his jowls wobbling miserably. ‘I rang him up just before dinner. I told him we were stuck up a gum tree.’ He sighed self-pitying. ‘It was no good. He told me he’d promised his wife he’d leave no stone unturned to find what had driven his nephew to suicide. Stupid devil.’
MacGregor nodded and thought longingly of his ruined holiday.
‘It’s me that’s got to turn the stones up, you notice.’ Dover pointed out truculently. ‘Not him. Oh, dear me, no – not him.’
‘If only we knew which stones, sir.’
‘Quite,’ said Dover vaguely.
‘Do you think we’re getting anywhere at all, sir?’ asked MacGregor.
‘Do you?’
‘Not really, sir.’
‘Let’s begin at the beginning. You never know, we might have overlooked something. Now then, young Constable Cochran – blast him – commits suicide …’
‘We think he did, at any rate, sir.’
Dover’s face fell. ‘Don’t start that! If that young blighter turns up out of the blue all bright and smiling, I’ll boot him off Cully Point myself, so help me! No, he’s a goner. He must be.’
‘Now all we’ve got to do is find out why, sir,’ said MacGregor with a merry laugh. It was meant as a joke.
Dover scowled blackly and continued as though MacGregor’s interruption had never taken place. ‘ Motive for suicide. His private life?’
MacGregor shook his head. ‘Not that girl anyhow, sir. Somebody might swing for her but nobody’d commit suicide over her – not unless they were completely crackers.’
‘Which Cochran, as far as we can judge, wasn’t. Well, what about his fellow coppers? He wasn’t popular at the station, you know. The Chief Constable might be right. They might have all ganged up on him and given him hell till they drove him to it.’
MacGregor shook his head even more firmly. Not without justification he considered himself an expert on what would or would not drive a young policeman to take his own life. ‘He could have told his uncle, sir, or,’ MacGregor grew starry-eyed, ‘asked for a transfer. The Chief Constable’s nephew; why he could have pulled every string in the book.’
‘Well, that just leaves us with something to do with his work. But even if he’d stumbled on to something that was pure dynamite, I still don’t see why he should kill himself. If he’d been bumped off – well, that’d make some sort of sense, wouldn’t it?’
‘You don’t think there’s any tie-up with this Hamilton business then, sir?’
Dover pursed his tiny rosebud mouth and wrinkled his little black moustache. ‘Well, it’s odd, and so’s Cochran’s suicide. I’m buggered if I can see any other connection. Damn it, Hamilton wasn’t even killed.’
‘Suppose it was a gang of some sort, sir,’ – MacGregor had not wasted the entire afternoon – ‘and they meant to kill him for revenge or something. Well, before they can, he has this attack and dies, so they just go on and mutilate the body and dump it in his front garden as an awful warning.’
‘To who?’ asked Dover sceptically. ‘ That stupid old cow, Mrs Hamilton?’
‘Maybe to Cochran, sir. They were friends, you know.’
‘Garn! Who says so? Only that old sponger of a station sergeant and he’s probably talking through the back of his fat head. Still,’ – Dover scratched his jaw – ‘you may be right about somebody intending to croak Hamilton and he thwarted ’em by dropping down dead. Not that that gets us much further.’
‘The two men in the green van, sir?’
‘You don’t think that sodden old biddy could see a barn door across the room, do you?’
‘She told a very coherent story, sir, and she’s stuck to it. I checked her original statement in the file. As far as I can tell it’s word for word exactly the same as the one she told us.’
Dover blinked. ‘Is it really?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Dover moved his bulk uneasily in his chair. ‘ By the way,’ he asked with elaborate casualness, ‘do you know if that Doughty woman is a member of this blooming Ladies League or whatever it is?’
‘Oh yes, definitely, sir. She’d got one of those blue bows pinned on her kimono.’ MacGregor regarded Dover suspiciously. ‘Why did you ask, sir?’
‘Oh, just wondering.’ Dover gazed with interest at the ceiling. ‘Just that they seem thicker on the ground in this godforsaken town than leaves in autumn. That animal doctor woman is one. So’s her girlfriend assistant. Those two women who damned near killed me with their first aid are. So’s Miss Doughty, and Cochran’s landlady. There can’t be much that goes on in this town that they don’t know about.’
MacGregor yawned. ‘That’s what the station sergeant said, sir. He said they practically run the place. No wonder it’s not exactly jumping with life.’
‘There must be something to do somewhere,’ complained Dover, scratching his stomach this time. ‘ Here, didn’t Hamilton spend his last evening in some night-club or other?’
‘Yes, sir, the Wallerton, er, Country Club, I think, though it doesn’t sound very likely, does it?’
‘It sounds a damned sight better than here,’ said Dover, hauling himself to his feet. ‘Come on!’
‘Where are we going, sir?’
‘To this Club, you damned fool! Where else?’
‘Now, sir?’
‘Well, not if you’re too worn out with your exertions, of course,’ said Dover caustically. ‘We don’t want to over-tire you.’
‘Oh no, sir, I’m all for it,’ said MacGregor, not considering it polite to point out that if anybody dragged their feet in the partnership it wasn’t him.
‘Good,’ said Dover, sitting down again. ‘ Well, you go and phone for a taxi and then nip upstairs for my hat and coat.’ He settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘ Tell me when you’re ready.’
When the taxi dropped the two detectives outside the Wallerton Country Club their hopes for a gay evening took a severe battering.
‘Where the hell is it?’ demanded Dover crossly.
MacGregor peered round. The taxi had abandoned them in an insalubrious part of Wallerton. They seemed to be surrounded by decrepit garages, untidy builders’ yards and mouldering warehouses. The street lights were few and far between, and a cat ran squawking out from under MacGregor’s feet as he picked his way through old cabbage leaves and broken bricks towards a partially open doorway. The yellow light which oozed through the crack was just sufficient to allow him to read the shoddy, handwritten board hanging on the door.
‘I think this is it, sir!’ he called to Dover.
Dover, limping markedly to emphasize the inconvenience he was patiently suffering, groped across the street to join his sergeant. ‘You’re joking, of course,’ he observed in his surliest tone.
‘Oh no, sir. This is it, I’m afraid.’
‘Wallerton Country Club,’ said Dover firmly. ‘ Wallerton Country Club, that’s what you said.’ He surveyed the masses of brick and concrete which hemmed them in. ‘ This isn’t what I call a country club.’
‘It isn’t what I call a country club, either, sir,’ MacGregor pointed out with commendable patience. ‘But I’m afraid this is it. Are we going in?’
‘Might as well,’ said Dover gloomily. ‘ Oh no, laddie,’ – as MacGregor pushed the door open and stood back politely ‘after you.’
MacGregor imperceptibly shrugged his shoulders and stepped across the threshold. Somewhat to Dover’s disappointment nobody smacked him across the head with a pick-axe handle or inserted a flick-knife between his ribs.
MacGregor found himself in a small square entrance hall. The floor was not only uncarpeted but unswept as well and the walls were blank slabs of concrete relieved only by some illegible graffitti. In the right hand wall was a minute lift, its ornate bronze gates bl
ackened with dirt and dust. MacGregor, urged to proceed further by the toe of Dover’s boot scraping down his heel, took another step.
‘And what do you want?’
The hoarse, unfriendly voice had come from the dim recess on the right, an area of Stygian shades partially concealed by the opening door. Hesitantly MacGregor moved forward and peered into the gloom.
An enormously fat man, sitting on a kitchen chair in the corner, sullenly returned his gaze. Apart from the fact that the fat man was completely bald, was tieless and collarless and had a pair of old white tennis shoes on his feet, there was nothing especially remarkable about his appearance.
‘Er, good evening,’ said MacGregor, uncomfortably aware that the smile that had the old ladies swooning was going to get him nowhere here.
‘What do you want?’ repeated the fat man with an asthmatic wheeze.
‘The Wallerton Country Club?’
‘You a member?’ said the fat man, hardly moving his lips as he spoke. He appeared to be conserving his energy for more strenuous exertions, like breathing.
‘Well, not exactly,’ began MacGregor. Dover, having judged that there was going to be no violence, elbowed him aside.
The fat man registered the new arrival with the faintest jerk of his head. ‘ Cops,’ he remarked and for a moment seemed as though he was going to follow this condemnation with the traditional expectoration. However, he refrained, apparently thinking that it wasn’t worth the effort. Instead he turned ponderously to his right, raised a heavy hand and, before either MacGregor or Dover had realized what he was doing, slowly pressed a bell push in the wall three times.
With a glint of satisfaction in his eyes, he waited for the detectives to make the next move.
Dover scowled furiously at him. ‘Where the hell is this club?’ he asked. It always put him in a bad temper to see other people sitting when he had to stand.