by Joyce Porter
It came as no surprise to Dover to find that Mrs Veitch knew as much, if not more, about the Hamilton business than he did. ‘Miss Doughty may have been mistaken,’ he said mildly.
‘What, Doris Doughty? Never on your life! I’ve known her for years. We’ve served on Ladies’ League committees together since I don’t know when.’
‘My sergeant,’ said Dover, watching Mrs Veitch from under eyelids which, weighed down by sandwiches and cake and trifle, were growing heavier every minute, ‘my sergeant thinks there’s something fishy about Miss Doughty’s story.’
‘Oh, does he, indeed? And I’d like to know what he knows about it when he’s at home.’
‘He’s a very astute detective,’ said Dover, choking slightly over the words.
‘Oh, is he?’ Mrs Veitch was scathing. ‘Well, handsome is as handsome does, if you want to know my opinion. And what does this paragon of yours think is wrong with Doris Doughty’s story?’
‘He says,’ said Dover slyly, ‘that it sounds as though she’d learned it off by heart. Most witnesses, you know, tend to change bits and pieces every time they tell their story. They remember some details they’ve never mentioned before and they forget others. Now, your Miss Doughty, according to my sergeant, doesn’t change a single word.’
For a split second Mrs Veitch looked disconcerted. Then she turned viciously on her husband. ‘ I thought you were going to start clearing this table, Sydney? We don’t want to be sitting here surrounded by empty pots all night. Another cup of tea, Mr Dover?’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said Dover, passing his cup.
‘Sydney, go and brew a fresh pot!’
Reluctantly Sydney withdrew to the kitchen.
‘You want,’ Mrs Veitch said unpleasantly, ‘to keep an eye on this sergeant of yours. I hear he was at that Country Club again last night.’
‘Was he now?’ murmured Dover in wide-eyed astonishment.
‘Didn’t you know?’
Slowly Dover shook his head. ‘He doesn’t have to tell me what he does in his free time.’ He smiled suggestively. ‘He’s a big boy now, you know.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t have thought that Country Club was the place for any young policeman unless he was on duty. And not even then, come to think of it.’
‘Oh, I think he took a bit of a fancy to one of the girls.’ explained Dover indulgently. ‘We were there the night before, you know. On duty, of course. I seem to remember he was getting very chummy with one of the, er, hostesses, I think they call them.’
‘I know what I call them!’ Mrs Veitch spat the words out. ‘Dirty little trollops, that’s what I call them! Dressed up as chickens, too – disgusting! We’ll have to tackle the Council again. They must close that place down.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dover casually, ‘it seemed harmless enough to me.’
‘To the pure all things are pure,’ was Mrs Veitch’s somewhat inappropriate rejoinder. ‘I must say, though, I’m surprised at your sergeant. Really surprised. He looks such a nice, decent, clean-living boy.’
‘Who? MacGregor?’ Dover began to laugh and then, since the exercise was so unusual for him, to cough. ‘Oh dear,’ he spluttered, ‘you should know him as well as I do! Talk about a girl in every port! He’s a proper young devil, he is, where women are concerned. He’ll come a cropper over it one day, you mark my words. Why, he’s had maintenance orders made out against him from one end of the country to the other.’
Mrs Veitch’s face froze. ‘He ought to be thrown out of the police.’
‘I agree, but you want to try getting it done. There’s no law against leading a loose and immoral life, is there? Besides, he’s dead clever. And, as I told you, he’s a first-class detective and we don’t want to lose him if we can help it. Chaps of his ability are few and far between these days.’
Mrs Veitch piled up a few plates to help her husband who was trotting patiently in and out of the kitchen, wearing his apron. ‘Has he had any more bright ideas about this Cochran case?’
‘Oh, he’s full of ’em. He thinks it’s tied up with the Hamilton business and then he’s spotted one or two other points. Did you know you’d had a sort of epidemic of people here in Wallerton dropping out of circulation for about a week and then coming back different?’
Mrs Veitch was sitting very still. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there’s a man called Chauncey Davenport and there’s Arthur Armstrong.’
‘I don’t call that an epidemic. Chauncey Davenport had amnesia and Arthur Armstrong went for psychiatric treatment. Everybody knows that.’
‘Young Cochran spent a week in bed before he committed suicide.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘Here!’ Sergeant Veitch paused dramatically in the midst of his labours. ‘You might be on to something there, Mr Dover. We’ve had more of these temporary disappearances. Nobody’s taken much notice because the chap’s always turned up again. In fact, usually I’ve just picked it up on the old grape vine. We haven’t been told about it officially. Now, let me see, there’s that fellow – what’s his name? – works as a van-driver for Pilkingtons and has ten or eleven kids. Now he sheered off for a week just after Christmas. And then there was …’
‘Sydney, is that the hot water tap you’ve left running? I don’t want all my good hot water going to waste.’
‘No, dear,’ said Sergeant Veitch, effectively deflated.
‘You’d better just get this table cleared and then leave the washing-up. You can do it when you get back, but time’s getting on and Mr Dover won’t want to be late for his dinner.’
With some difficulty Dover extricated himself from behind the table and got to his feet. His stomach, usually loose and flabby, was blown up as tight as a football.
‘Of course,’ he remarked as he graciously permitted Mrs Veitch to help him on with his overcoat, ‘I’ve just been telling you what my sergeant thinks. He gets these daft ideas from time to time.’
‘Oh, so you don’t share his views, Mr Dover?’
‘Well, they sound pretty far-fetched, don’t they? And what do they add up to? Damn all, if you ask me. No, I’m sure there’s a much more straightforward solution somewhere. The trouble is’ – he accepted his bowler hat from Mrs Veitch – ‘young MacGregor’s like a blooming terrier. Once he gets an idea he won’t let it go, however crazy it seems. Of course, once in a blue moon, he comes up trumps.’
Sergeant Veitch drove slowly and carefully through the rain-lashed, deserted streets of Wallerton. It was several minutes before he spoke. ‘ Mr Dover,’ he said in a low voice, ‘ you’re up to something, aren’t you?’
Dover, his stomach beginning to feel a trifle uneasy as his digestive juices fought it out with Mrs Veitch’s high tea, was non-committal. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘Oh, I can tell. I wasn’t born yesterday. You’re up to something all right, though I’m blowed if I can see what it is.’
‘Nothing for you to worry your head about,’ said Dover smugly.
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it? You’re one of these lone wolves. You keep it all to yourself and work it all out and then come up with a solution that’s been staring the rest of us in the face all the time but we couldn’t see it.’
‘Something like that,’ Dover admitted modestly. Sergeant Veitch had seen more detectives on the telly than he had in real life and was more than ready to believe that the scions of New Scotland Yard moved in a mysterious way.
‘But what’s it got to do with my wife?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Dover, over-heartily.
‘Come off it! You can’t kid me!’
‘Just tell me one thing,’ said Dover. ‘Is your’wife really a big bug in this Ladies’ League?’
‘Not half! She’ll be a vice-president in four years if old Mrs McKenzie kicks the bucket this winter. One of the leading lights in the Ladies’ League, my wife is. And has been ever since we were married. Makes life v
ery difficult for me at times, I can tell you.’
‘More fool you,’ said Dover unsympathetically.
‘Oh well,’ – Sergeant Veitch’s loyalty sounded a bit forced – ‘she’s not so bad, really. Very good-hearted woman underneath.’
‘Humph,’ said Dover.
‘Is there anything I can do, Mr Dover?’ asked Sergeant Veitch, not unmindful of the fact that a generous commendation from a senior Scotland Yard officer wouldn’t do his career any harm.
‘Yes, there is one thing. Young Cochran, just before he rode off on his bicycle to Cully Point that morning, what had he been doing in the nick?’
The sergeant, much to Dover’s annoyance, removed one hand from the steering wheel and scratched his head. ‘Well, he’d just been pottering about, really. Reading the force orders and glancing through the books and what not. Generally seeing what had been happening while he was on leave, and getting up to date with what was going on. You know the sort of thing.’
‘Right,’ said Dover, moving uncomfortably in his seat and wondering if perhaps it wouldn’t be wiser to skip dinner. ‘Now, first thing tomorrow morning, I want a copy – not just a list – a copy of everything Cochran looked at that morning. And not just the stuff in the files. I want all the stuff pinned up on the notice boards as well.’
Sergeant Veitch’s face fell. ‘But, it’ll take hours and hours.’
‘I don’t give a twopenny damn if it takes years and years,’ said Dover who got a real kick out of making life miserable for other people. ‘I still want it first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘What do you call first thing?’ asked Sergeant Veitch dolefully. ‘I don’t go on duty till six.’
‘Ten o’clock,’ said Dover, naming the hour at which he considered the day to break.
‘I still don’t see how I’m going to do it,’ grumbled Sergeant Veitch. He was already picturing his constable assistant sweating away over the task. He might even take one of the brighter lads off patrol for an hour or two to lend a hand. ‘ I mean, it’ll be very difficult to sort out what was new and what wasn’t, won’t it? I suppose that’s what you want; the stuff that had come in while he was away?’
Dover nodded.
‘It’s going to be some job,’ Sergeant Veitch said again in an attempt, which he knew was hopeless, to soften Dover’s heart.
‘Well, that’s your problem,’ Dover pointed out comfortably. ‘And do it yourself. I don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry in the place knowing what’s going on and gabbling about it.’ This was a good example of how Dover endeared himself to his subordinates. He didn’t care two hoots whether every man, woman and child in Wallerton was conversant with the task he had off-loaded on to Veitch’s cringing shoulders. He was well aware that Mrs Veitch would be informed in any case, especially if it looked as though the information was confidential. And what you told Mrs Veitch you told the world. Dover knew, too, how Sergeant Veitch’s mind worked: lumber somebody else with it. It was, after all, the system on which Chief Inspector Dover himself relied. In insisting that the Sergeant performed the task single-handed, Dover was merely being thoroughly bloody-minded.
His spirits perked up considerably after this ignoble little triumph and he wished the sullen sergeant a cheery goodnight when the car dropped him at his hotel. Still buoyantly bouncing on the crest he strode into the dining-room and polished off a dinner that would probably have kept an Asian family for a week. His good humour sagged a little when he found that, once again, MacGregor was not in attendance. He repaired hesitantly to the bar after dinner to have a brandy to settle his stomach. It was the first time for many years that he had entered such a place unaccompanied. It made him feel naked. History was about to be made as he fumbled in his pocket for the exorbitant sum that the bartender, quite brazen-faced about it, appeared to be demanding. But fate, in the person of a dear old lady who’d been propping up the bar since opening time, intervened.
‘Have it on me,” she said unexpectedly.
Dover’s gratitude made him speechless. Gallantly, however, he moved along the counter so as to keep in touch with his new found benefactor and finished up by passing the remainder of the evening in her company. She was a motherly old soul, treating Dover like a son to such an extent that for the Chief Inspector to have offered to stand his round would have been insulting. She was clearly very wealthy and more than a little tipsy. What more could you ask? Dover was disconcerted to find, after an hour or so’s rather incoherent conversation, that she was under the impression that he was a sanitary inspector, but he didn’t hold it against her and, indeed, gave her some very detailed and quite unsound advice on her plumbing problems.
When the old lady became totally paralytic and was removed from the bar by the united effort of three of the hotel staff, Dover decided it was time for bed. MacGregor was still not in his room. Dover poked around amongst MacGregor’s private possessions without finding anything he hadn’t seen before and left a note instructing his assistant to contact him at the earliest opportunity. He propped the note up on the dressing table, and withdrew to his own room.
He was snoring like a pig when MacGregor poked him gingerly. Dover heaved over on to his other side.
MacGregor poked again, harder.
With a snort Dover opened his eyes and immediately closed them again. ‘Warisit?’ he mumbled.
‘It’s me, sir. Sergeant MacGregor.’
Dover screwed his mean little eyes up against the light.
‘Watimeisit?’
‘A quarter to four, sir.’
Dover moaned, and rolling over, buried his head in the pillow. ‘You bloody fool! What do you want to go waking me up at this time for?’
MacGregor sighed, unobtrusively of course. He seemed to have spent his entire professional life carrying on exchanges of this nature. ‘Your note, sir. You said you wanted to see me urgently.’
Dover lay flat on his back and pushed the bed clothes away. ‘Trust you!’ he said bitterly. Trust you!’ He lapsed into thought for a moment. ‘I shall have to go down the corridor now, you damned fool!’
Grunting and groaning he got out of bed and groped for his overcoat. ‘If I catch my death,’ he muttered accusingly, ‘it’ll be all your blasted fault. A quarter to four! ’
He plodded resentfully out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
MacGregor sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the distant but unmistakable sounds of his master’s progress. At last the Chief Inspector came thumping back. He looked more wide awake now but was as bad-tempered as ever.
‘You still here?’ he demanded sulkily as he dropped his overcoat on the floor and clambered back into bed.
‘You did say you wanted to see me, sir,’ protested MacGregor who was very tired.
‘Not at a bloody quarter to four in the morning, I didn’t,’ snapped Dover, pulling the sheet up over his head. ‘Whereveyebin?’
‘The Country Club, sir.’
Dover uncovered one eye and glared. ‘It’s all right for some,’ he observed sarcastically. ‘Push off! And put that damned light out before you go.’
Chapter Twelve
MacGregor returned to Dover’s bedroom at nine o’clock the following morning. The precise hour had been carefully selected. MacGregor combined his own refined instincts with the reports he received from the dining-room staff to the effect that that fat old bounder was having his breakfast in bed. MacGregor was also the unwilling recipient, via the manager, of complaints from a large number of the other residents about the noise Dover had been making throughout the night.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t hear him yourself,’ said the manager peevishly. ‘ Bang, crash, wallop it was for hours.’
‘I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,’ said MacGregor, although he did, only too well.
‘I thought you might have a tactful word with him; ask him to show a bit of consideration. He wouldn’t like it if it was somebody else, would he?’
‘No,
he certainly wouldn’t,’ agreed MacGregor. ‘He’d be the first to complain. But,’ he added stoutly, ‘he’d do it himself and not expect somebody else to do it for him.’
‘Oh well, if that’s your attitude!’ said the manager and walked off in a huff.
Despondently MacGregor mounted the stairs to his Chief Inspector’s room. If the old fool had had a disturbed night he was likely to be even more obstreperous than usual. If his blasted stomach was as bad as he was always claiming it was, it was a pity they didn’t invalid him out with it.
Dover, propped up in bed and brooding over the remains of his breakfast, certainly didn’t look very bright. His eyes were bloodshot and his complexion even more pasty-coloured than usual.
‘I had a nasty bilious attack last night,’ he informed MacGregor pathetically. ‘It was you waking me up that brought it on.’
‘Perhaps it was something you ate, sir.’
‘Awful, it was,’ said Dover. ‘I was up half the blooming night.’
‘So I heard, sir.’
‘I ought to see a doctor, really,’ said Dover gloomily. ‘Not that they seem to be able to do much for me.’
‘Well, I could perhaps get the local police surgeon to call in, sir.’
Dover poked disconsolately around on his tray to see if there were any scraps of sustenance that had been overlooked. Suddenly his face cleared. ‘That’s a good idea, laddie! I could do with some expert advice. Yes, you tell him I’d like to have a word with him tomorrow morning. Round about ten o’clock’ll suit me. Tell him it’s urgent.’
‘Tomorrow morning, sir?’ MacGregor raised his elegantly shaped eyebrows.
‘That’s right.’ Dover nodded. ‘Tomorrow morning. You fix it. Now, what have you been up to lately, apart from just buggering around?’
‘Well, sir,’ – MacGregor drew up a chair – ‘I really think I may be on to something. I got this lead at the …’
‘Yes,’ said Dover, ‘well, never mind that now. Here, take this tray! Ooh, that’s better. I keep getting cramp in my legs. At least I hope it’s cramp. It may be something worse. You never know. Now then, there’s a few things I want you to do for me, if you can spare the time, of course.’ Dover’s irony was, as always, heavy-handed. ‘Now, did you go to that Country Club place last night?’