by Joyce Porter
Unlike MacGregor, he scornfully pooh-poohed the idea that Arthur Armstrong was a sadistic thug, or had even been used by a gang of sadistic thugs for their own necrophilic purposes. That left the problem of why Arthur Armstrong had said that he had seen the number of Hamilton’s house when, obviously, he could have done nothing of the sort. With typical perverseness Dover decided to believe that Arthur Armstrong was speaking the truth. That meant that he had seen the number of Hamilton’s house. But how?
Suppose – a beatific smile, which reduced the still waiting waiters to paroxysms of rage, spread over Dover’s pasty features – yes, that was indeed a possibility. Could be done easily, too. Bit of sticky paper, say, and the light left on, that’s all you’d need. Quickly set up and quickly taken down again without leaving any traces. And it was most unlikely, at that time of night, that any casual passer-by would notice it or bother his head about it if he did.
Ho, ho! Now they were getting somewhere! Dover chuckled to himself. But where, exactly? The Chief Inspector’s bottom lip jutted out sulkily. Oh well, he’d have a think about that later. What else was there?
MacGregor thought that Hamilton had died while some gang was in the process of murdering him. That seemed reasonable enough, so Dover duly wracked his brains to think up some other explanation. Suppose they weren’t trying to kill Hamilton? Well, if they were just giving him a beating-up, it all came to much the same thing. What else could they, whoever they were, be doing to him, for God’s sake? Dover mused for some considerable time over those mutilations. They just didn’t fit it. There were plenty of East End gangs of thugs who frequently chived up the opposition, but Dover could not recall a case in which they had exercised their art on an already dead body. Besides, in Dover’s experience, the face was the usual target and Hamilton’s face, unlike the lower part of his body, hadn’t got a scratch on it. Dover sighed. It was all very confusing. However much somebody might have had it in for Hamilton, would they really go to the extent of stripping him – dead or alive? The accepted method was a few artistic waves with a razor and a few swift kicks where it would do the most harm. And could anybody in their right senses, including that insufferable young nitwit MacGregor, really see Wallerton in the height or depth of the tourist season as the scene of gang warfare of this sort? London, Liverpool, Brighton even – but not Wallerton.
The subject of one dead body naturally led Dover on to think about the other; or rather the lack of it. Cochran’s. Dover was tired of wondering why Cochran had killed himself, unless he found out he looked like remaining in Wallerton for the rest of his natural. Jumping off Cully Point was a funny way to go, though. Not at all what he, Dover, would have chosen. He wondered why Cochran had. Of course, it did save the cost of a funeral, there being no body. Suicides get some very queer ideas at times. I wonder when, thought Dover, Cochran actually made up his mind to jump? Perhaps he did it on the spur of the moment and that’s why he chose Cully Point. If you hadn’t got a gas stove or an overdose of sleeping pills handy, it was probably as good a way as any. Dover wrinkled his nose. But, surely, Cochran hadn’t made up his mind on the spur of the moment? What about that week’s leave he’d spent in bed? Personally, Dover couldn’t think of a better place, but he was broadminded enough to realize that it wouldn’t be everybody’s idea of bliss.
Funny, he thought, how everybody in Wallerton seemed to do things for a week. There was Cochran going to bed for a week. There was that Chauncey whatever-his-name-was having amnesia for a week. There was Arthur Armstrong going away for a week’s treatment and coming back cured.
Dover dropped his cigarette end into his coffee cup. Oh well, he pushed his chair away from the table, no use sitting here all day. He’d be much more comfortable in his own room. Quite worn him out, it had, all that thinking.
The head waiter was holding the dining-room door open for him. Dover acknowledged the service with an absent-minded grunt.
‘Goodnight, sir!’ snarled the head waiter.
Dover yawned.
Twenty-four hours later he was still yawning, but his heart was no longer in it. There was a limit to the amount of sheer inactivity that even Dover could endure. He was moreover feeling lonely, even neglected. He missed having somebody to talk to. MacGregor, with a lack of consideration which was so typical of the younger generation, had completely abandoned him. The selfish young swine hadn’t even been on hand at mealtimes. God knows what he was up to. He appeared from time to time, bright-eyed and excited, gabbled incoherently about being hot on the trail and then dashed off again before Dover could ask him any questions. The only consolation left to the Chief Inspector was an unshakable conviction that his sergeant was heading straight up a gum tree and doing no harm to anyone. Still, it would be nice to know exactly what the young fool was up to, even if it was only to pour cold water on his boyish enthusiasm. There is no doubt that if Dover had not sunk so far in black lethargy this is precisely what he would have done.
He sat glumly in the hotel lounge, an exile while they made his bed and dusted his room. The receptionist appeared.
‘There’s a telephone call for you, Mr Dover.’
‘Who is it?’ said Dover scowling. He had no intention of answering the phone if there was somebody like that potty Chief Constable puffing and blowing down the other end.
‘Somebody called Veitch, I think,’ said the receptionist who prided herself on her total indifference to everything and everybody connected with her work.
‘Never heard of ’em,’ grunted Dover, sinking back in his chair and closing his eyes.
‘Oh, charming, I’m sure!’ The receptionist tossed her head haughtily and minced away.
In a few moments she minced back again. ‘ He says, he’s Sergeant Veitch from the police station. He said to tell you he’s the station sergeant.’
‘I don’t care if he’s the Queen of Sheba,’ retorted Dover. ‘What does he want?’
‘He didn’t say, dearie.’ The receptionist’s tone sharpened. ‘I expect he’s waiting to tell you that himself.’
‘Tell him I’m not in.’
‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’ve already told him you said you didn’t know who he was.’
Dover regarded her sourly as she tripped off. ‘Stupid cow!’ he muttered and dragged himself resentfully to his feet.
At the reception desk in the entrance hall he picked up the telephone. ‘Well?’
‘It’s Sergeant Veitch here, sir …’
‘I know that, you damned fool! Wadderyewant?’
There was a slight hesitation at the other end. ‘Well, sir, I was wondering if you’d like to come round and have tea with us this afternoon?’
Dover regarded the telephone receiver with mixed surprise and suspicion. ‘Who’s us?’ he demanded cautiously.
‘The wife and me, sir.’
‘Where do you live? I’ve damaged my foot pretty badly, you know, and I can’t …’
‘Oh, I’d come and fetch you from the hotel in the car, sir. And bring you back afterwards.’
‘What time?’
‘Well, how about, say, a quarter to five, sir?’
Dover thought it over. It’d make a change if nothing else. But, tea? There was a funny thing for one copper to invite another to. Doubtless it was a tactful euphemism for something a sight stronger.
‘All right,’ said Dover. ‘A quarter to five.’ He put the phone down.
The receptionist shuddered. If there was one thing she did like to see in a man it was nice manners.
The station sergeant presented himself at a quarter to five on the dot, which was just as well as Dover was a great stickler for punctuality in others. With a depressing lack of graciousness the Chief Inspector allowed himself to be shepherded out to the waiting car. It was big and new and the heater was going full blast.
‘Glad to see you can afford to run a car like this,’ he remarked. ‘It’s more than I can on my pay.’
The station sergeant managed a smile and gave
Dover a cigarette.
Unmollified, Dover slumped back in his seat and unburdened himself of a carping and endless commentary on the station sergeant’s driving. The station sergeant was a good driver, which is probably why they reached his house all in one piece. A less controlled man would have headed the car straight for the nearest lamp-post out of sheer vexation.
‘Well,’ said Dover as they slid to a gentle halt before a neat-looking semi-detached, ‘maybe I’ve been a bit too hard on the wife. She isn’t the worst driver in the world after all.’
Chapter Eleven
By the time Dover was installed in the place of honour at the tea-table several things were becoming dearer. Judging by the tea-table itself, covered by a lace cloth and dripping with doilies, nothing stronger than tea was going to be offered. Indeed, if the pious pictures on the walls and the seven missionary collecting boxes on the mantlepiece were anything to go by, this was, regrettably, a strictly teetotal household.
The second point, which even Dover grasped, was in its way equally repugnant. He hadn’t been in the house thirty seconds before he realized that Mrs Veitch was the one who wore the trousers. Not literally, of course. The mere idea of Mrs Veitch in slacks would have been enough to make strong men tremble. Another fifteen seconds passed and Dover was grimly forced to recognize that she was also the one, metaphorically speaking, wearing the police uniform. And a grisly old bogy she made, too.
Sergeant Veitch was hardly given time to get his coat off before he was directed into the kitchen to brew the tea and told to finish off laying the table.
‘I can’t abide sandwiches and bread-and-butter left out on plates and going all dry and curly at the edges,’ said Mrs Veitch as she placed Dover at the top of the table nearest the fire. ‘ Can you?’
‘No,’ said Dover.
Sergeant Veitch scuttled in with the teapot.
‘For goodness sake, Sydney,’ his wife rebuked him sharply, ‘why don’t you put an apron on? If you get that suit marked again …’ Out of deference, no doubt, to the presence of their visitor she left the threat unfinised.
The Veitchs kept a good table and were hospitable. Goodies of every description were piled liberally on Dover’s plate. Each offering was accompanied by a short history of how its ingredients had been acquired, at what cost, and how they had been transformed to their present state by Mrs Veitch’s own hands, usually according to a formula which had been handed down in her family for generations.
This domestic gloss was contributed exclusively by Mrs Veitch. In twenty-five years of connubial bliss Sergeant Veitch had learnt the hard way not to open his mouth in his wife’s presence, except for the insertion of her culinary triumphs. When on occasion Mrs Veitch appealed to him to support her assertation that her home-made veal and ham pie, for example, was the best he had ever tasted, he contented himself with nodding his head enthusiastically.
Dover was amazed, remembering the sergeant’s bullying manner at their first encounter in the police station. It was obviously the only chance the poor devil got to assert himself, Dover thought with, if not affection, at least satisfaction, of his own lady wife. She’d have got the back of his hand very smartly if she ever showed the faintest sign of developing into a second Mrs Veitch. By God, she would!
They had reached the trifle, completely non-alcoholic, when Mrs Veitch abruptly stopped talking about how good a cook she was and got down to the basic motive behind the invitation to Dover.
‘How’s your investigation going?’
Dover spluttered through a mouthful of soggy cake and cream, a fair proportion of which splattered all over Mrs Veitch’s clean table cloth. It says a great deal for her single-mindedness that she refrained from comment.
‘You don’t seem to have been overworking yourself lately,’ she remarked reprovingly.
Dover choked on a bit of purple stuff with which the trifle had been liberally decorated. ‘My foot,’ he explained.
Mrs Veitch sniffed.
Dover tried again. ‘It’s a very tricky case.’
‘Remorse,’ said Mrs Veitch.
‘Eh?’
‘Cochran committing suicide. Remorse for an ill-spent and dissolute life.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover. ‘We thought there might be some tie-up with that Hamilton business,’ he added casually.
‘Did you? No, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there. Some raspberries and cream, Mr Dover?’ Dover’s eyes bulged but he nodded his head. ‘They’re our own raspberries, picked straight from the garden. We’ve got some very good bushes, haven‘ t we, Sydney?’ Sergeant Veitch offered his usual silent agreement. ‘The best bushes we’ve ever had, the ones we’ve got now. The cream’s fresh, too. I always buy it from Hutchinson’s; that’s a farm a couple of miles down the road. Of course, I can get it from the Dairy but I like Hutchinson’s better. They’ve got Jersey cows, you see. Of course, the Dairy’s handier but Sydney doesn’t mind getting the car out and popping down to Hutchinson’s, do you, Sydney?’
Sydney, musing gently about wife-murderers who had got away with it, missed his cue and nodded his head. His wife, ever sensitive to the possibility of worms turning, glared at him. Sergeant Veitch smiled weakly and obediently shook his head.
Dover accepted his dishful of raspberries and cream. ‘The Hamilton affair’s giving us a real headache,’ he observed.
It wasn’t giving Mrs Veitch any. ‘That Country Club, that’s where you ought to be looking. Disgusting place. I can’t think why they don’t close it down.’ She stared accusingly at her husband.
Dover struggled on through the raspberries. ‘ Hamilton was all right when he left the Country Club. In fact, he reached his own front door quite safe and sound, as far as we can tell.’
Mrs Veitch frowned. ‘You’re not thinking of accusing his wife, I hope? Not but what she wouldn’t have been justified in murdering that brute a dozen times over.’
Dover belched gently.
‘Have some of this Madeira cake, Mr Dover. I can thoroughly recommend it, even if I do say it as shouldn’t. I baked it myself and if there’s one thing I do pride myself on it’s my cakes. They’re really very good, aren’t they, Sydney?’ She was already wielding the cake knife.
Dover’s eyes glazed over. He was near bursting point but it went strictly against the grain of his nature to refuse. ‘Just a small piece,’ he gasped.
‘No,’ said Mrs Veitch, ‘not Mrs Hamilton. Well, it wasn’t a woman’s crime in any case, was it? She’s only a poor, thin mite of a thing. She couldn’t possibly have coped with lugging that great lump around, never mind chop him up like that.’
‘She’s got a very hasty temper,’ said Dover with feeling.
Mrs Veitch dismissed this. ‘ I expect you frightened her.’
Dover slowly forced another mouthful of cake down. Although appearances might belie it, he was really thinking quite hard. ‘ I’ve got a theory about Hamilton,’ he began. Then he changed his mind. ‘My sergeant has a theory about Hamilton.’ He watched Mrs Veitch carefully. ‘You see, young Arthur Armstrong, the taxi-driver, swears that he found Hamilton’s house out of all those houses in that great long street on a dark night. Now, I expect you know Armstrong. He’s as blind as a bat.’
‘Huh!’ said Mrs Veitch non-committally.
‘Now my sergeant – Sergeant MacGregor, that is – he thinks he can explain how Armstrong found Hamilton’s house so easily.’
Sergeant Veitch and his wife were all ears, much to Dover’s gratification. He always expected to be the centre of attention and got very shirty when, as frequently happened, he wasn’t. He paused to let the tension build up.
‘All right,’ snapped Mrs Veitch impatiently. ‘How did he find it?’
‘Dead easy,’ smirked Dover. ‘He didn’t!’
‘He didn’t?’
‘No, he just thought he did.’
‘Clear as mud,’ observed Mrs Veitch. ‘Have one of these maids of honour. They’re …’
Dove
r raised a heavy hand and broke the habits of a lifetime. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Well, finish off those cream cheese sandwiches. I don’t like having things left hanging around.’
Dover shook his head and returned the conversation to less painful channels. ‘Sergeant MacGregor reckons that somebody in one of the other houses – and they all look the same, don’t they? – he reckons that somebody put the number of Hamilton’s house up nice and clear on another house.’
There was a moment’s silence. ‘And how did they do that?’ asked Mrs Veitch quietly.
Dover shrugged his beefy shoulders. ‘It wouldn’t have been too difficult. You could cut out the number nice and big in a sheet of cardboard, for instance, and then stick it up on the fanlight over the front door. If you left the light on in the hall, the number’d stand out so clearly that even Armstrong would see it.’
‘Well; swelp me!’ said Sergeant Veitch with unflattering astonishment. ‘That’s clever.’
‘Sydney!’ His wife’s voice brought him promptly to heel. ‘You’d better start clearing the table.’
But Sydney had got the bit between his teeth now and, possibly thinking that Dover’s presence provided him with at least temporary protection, ignored his wife’s hint. ‘Do you mean, Mr Dover, that Hamilton was lured into another house and cut about there?’
‘That’s Sergeant MacGregor’s theory.’
‘It’s an idea. They’d just have to carry his body out when it was all over, and his clothes, and pop ’em over the garden wall. Yes,’ – Sergeant Veitch nodded his head – ‘it’s an idea all right.’
‘Rubbish!’ Mrs Veitch rattled her tea cup in the saucer. ‘ What about those two men in that little green van that Doris Doughty saw? It’s obvious that whatever happened to Hamilton happened a long way from Minton Parade.’