by Joyce Porter
‘We?’
‘I’ll want half a dozen of your stoutest lads to back me up,’ said Dover hastily. ‘Your authority on the front door step would be a help, too.’
The Chief Constable chewed his lip unhappily. ‘I still don’t like it. It’s all highly irregular. Miss ffiske is a very influential member of the community.’
‘Suit yourself,’ said Dover sinking back in his corner, folding his arms and closing his eyes. ‘I reckon MacGregor’ll understand.’
‘Oh dear!’ said the Chief Constable. ‘Well, I suppose we’ve got no choice. I just hope to goodness they really are castrating MacGregor in there, otherwise we shall all have some very tricky questions to answer.’ He opened the car door. ‘Well, aren’t you coming?’
‘No point in us all getting wet,’ Dover pointed out reasonably. ‘I’ll wait here while you check your men. Be sure to tell ’em they’re to stop anybody leaving that house, whoever they are.’
Rather irately the Chief Constable got out of the car and strode off into the darkness and rain. Dover settled back to wait, wondering idly if perhaps they weren’t already too late. He took it philosophically. A chap couldn’t do more than his best, could he?
‘Excuse me, sir.’ Dover reluctantly opened his eyes. ‘ I wonder if you’d mind if Sukey waited in the car with you? She can’t stand the wet.’
Before Dover could utter a word an enormous, vicious-looking and extremely damp Alsatian dog climbed on to the seat beside him.
‘What the blazes!’ exploded Dover. ‘Here, get it out of here!’
‘Don’t push her, sir! She can’t stand being … Well, I did warn you, sir.’
Sukey, Wallerton’s one and only police dog, was almost as fat and lazy as Dover himself, and even more bad-tempered. Even in her prime she had seen her role as more ornamental than useful. Now that she was approaching retirement it was as much as her handler could do to get her to pose for the photographers before retreating to her warm kennel and leaving the master race to get on with the work.
When Dover tried to push her out of the car, she resented it. Dover found himself pinned in his corner with Sukey breathing in his face. Her hard brown eyes squinted malevolently and she bared her yellowing teeth.
It took them seven and a half minutes to extricate Dover from Sukey’s damp and smelly clutches. Her handler exhausted his entire vocabulary of canine commands to no avail. It could have been Greek for all Sukey knew or cared.
Eventually it was the Chief Constable, as befitted his superior rank, who found the solution and cut the Gordian knot. Since Sukey wouldn’t move, Dover would have to. Gingerly the Chief Inspector edged himself out of the car. Sukey was mildly gratified to find that she was now in full possession of the entire back seat.
‘Bloody animal ought to be shot!’ snarled Dover, brushing disconsolately at the muddy paw marks on his coat. ‘If she comes near me again she’ll get the toe of my boot in her guts! I don’t know what people want these damned great dogs for anyhow. I’ve never heard of one of ’em doing anything to earn its keep. We could all get a rise if they didn’t waste their money on those over-fed, pampered brutes.’
‘Chief Inspector Dover!’ The Chief Constable cut ruthlessly into what looked like being a lengthy tirade. ‘May I remind you that Detective Sergeant MacGregor may at this very moment be in great personal danger? And also that a large number of the members of my force have been hanging round in the pouring rain for hours? Some of them are not as young as they used to be and a little consideration, on your part for the inconvenience of others would not be out of place.’
Dover scowled, muttered some inaudible vulgarity under his breath and stumped off resolutely up the nearest flight of steps. It was unfortunate that, once again, it was the wrong house.
When he was at last confronted by the right front door he knocked loudly on it. He rang the bell. He thumped the door. He kicked it.
‘There’s nobody at home,’ said the Chief Constable, man-fully restricting himself to this simple observation.
‘They’re just not answering,’ retorted Dover. ‘ We’ll have to break in. Anybody got an axe?’
The Chief Constable groaned. If this ever got into the papers! ‘There’s a window open at the back. I’ll send somebody in that way.’
Constable Perkins, an eager and innocent young man, agreed to place his future career in jeopardy and volunteered for the job.
‘I won’t forget you, Perkins!’ said the Chief Constable, clapping the lad encouragingly on the shoulders and rapidly planning how to leave the young nit holding the baby should there be any unfortunate repercussions.
Constable Perkins methodically searched the house from attic to cellar. There was a general air of gloom as he made his report. Everybody looked expectantly at Dover.
Dover blew his nose, turned up his coat collar and resettled his bowler hat.
‘Well?’ demanded the Chief Constable.
‘They must have taken him somewhere else,’ said Dover.
‘Where?’
Dover scratched his head. ‘God knows,’ he admitted. ‘What time is it?’ Fourteen assorted policemen consulted their watches and produced fourteen versions of the hour. Dover shrugged his shoulders. ‘If you ask me it’s too late anyhow. We might just as well pack it in now for all the good we’ll do. MacGragor’ll turn up in due course and maybe we can persuade him to prefer charges. After all, he won’t be able to keep what’s happened a secret, not with all us knowing. He might just as well go the whole hog and then we can nab ’ em.’
The Chief Constable could hardly believe his ears. ‘Are you seriously suggesting that we just abandon Sergeant MacGregor to his fate and go home to bed?’ he howled.
Dover had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Well,’ he said grudgingly, ‘I suppose we could go on looking if you feel like that about it, but I thought you were worried about your men and the overtime they were knocking up.’
‘Where,’ the Chief Constable said grimly, ‘a man’s, er, health is concerned, I don’t allow trivial considerations of that sort to influence me.’
Dover scratched his head again. He wasn’t much of a one for flogging lost causes but he sensed that the general consensus of opinion was against him. ‘We could try Mrs Jolliott’s,’ he suggested without enthusiasm. ‘They might possibly have taken him there.’
The Chief Constable burst into frenzied activity. Orders were barked out, men rounded up, cars and vans marshalled once more into action. In a remarkably short space of time the whole cavalcade was roaring off to Mrs Jolliott’s house. Sukey still reigned supreme on the back seat of the Chief Constable’s car and, since neither the Chief Constable nor Dover felt up to arguing with her, they crowded into the front with the driver.
Mrs Jolliott’s house was as dark and deserted as Miss ffiske’s had been. The rank and file were looking bewildered and fed up. Most of them hadn’t the remotest idea of what was going on and, very sensibly, stolidly discounted the ridiculous story that Sergeant MacGregor had been kidnapped. In Wallerton? Don’t be daft!
Dover himself was desperately anxious to concede defeat but the Chief Constable, glancing at his watch every two minutes, meanly refused to let him off the hook. ‘Think, man, think! You started all this. Where else could they have taken him to?’
‘How the hell do I know?’ grumbled Dover.
‘We must do something!’
‘Maybe you could grill that taxi-driver, Armstrong? They must have taken him somewhere. If you thumped him around a bit it might make him remember.’
‘We haven’t time!’ wailed the Chief Constable.
Yet another sodden uniformed figure approached the car. This time it was Sergeant Veitch. He touched the peak of his cap perfunctorily with one finger and sneezed. ‘Will you be wanting us much longer, sir? The men are …’
The Chief Constable ignored him. ‘ You must have some idea,’ he said to Dover. ‘We can’t just leave it like this.’
‘It’s no
t my fault,’ protested Dover. ‘We’ve tried Miss ffiske’s and we’ve tried Mrs Jolliott’s. You can’t blame me if they’re not there.’
‘Was you wanting Miss ffiske or Mrs Jolliott then, sir?’ asked Sergeant Veitch, sneezing again.
The Chief Constable clutched at him like a drowning man reaching for the lifebelt. ‘Do you know where they are, Sergeant?’
‘Well, of course, sir. It’s the monthly meeting of the Ladies’ League. They’ll be in the Civic Hall, same as usual.’
‘Monthly meeting?’ gasped the Chief Constable. ‘In the Civic Hall?’ The colour drained from his face.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said Sergeant Veitch. ‘They usually take the Beatrice Bencher Memorial Room, seeing as how there’s getting on for a hundred of ’em attend regular, even on a stinking night like this.’
‘A hundred of ’em? Oh, my God!’ The Chief Constable turned an ashen face to Dover. He cleared his throat. ‘You don’t think they’re going to make a sort of ceremony out of it, do you?’
‘’Strewth!’ said Dover, feeling distinctly queasy.
‘A sort of horrible orgy?’ breathed the Chief Constable in a shaky voice. ‘ One hundred self-righteous, middle-aged, middle-class harpies, all gloating while your poor sergeant’s lying there bound and helpless …’
‘Here,’ said Dover, ‘steady on!’
‘What else can it be?’ the Chief Constable demanded, his eyes popping. ‘ Sergeant MacGregor’s missing, you’ve uncovered what these she-devils have been doing to every man with a spark of life in him in the town, and now we know that they’re all gathered together in some unholy conclave in the Civic Hall – and in the Beatrice Bencher Memorial Room at that. My God! I remember that boot-faced old battle axe, and her husband, too, poor swine. I should think he’d have volunteered for castration if he’d been given the chance. I know I would in his shoes.’ He shivered. ‘Well, don’t just sit there like a great lump, Dover! We’ve got to get cracking!’
‘Now, don’t let’s be too hasty, sir,’ said Dover, jibbing, not unnaturally, at the thought of tackling the flower of Wallerton’s womanhood en masse and on the rampage.
‘Hasty?’ snorted the Chief Constable, his face now red with excitement. ‘ We haven’t a moment to lose! Sergeant!’
Once again the orders flew in all directions. The Chief Constable prided himself on being a man of action and he welcomed every opportunity to live up to his reputation. Disgruntled constables moved unwillingly out of the doorways where they had been sheltering from the rain. Unkind remarks were made about silly old buggers who changed their minds every five minutes and who ought to get out of that bloody car and see what it’s like hanging round all bloody night in a cloud-burst. In spite of confused and contradictory instructions and a widespread lack of enthusiasm, the Chief Constable managed at last to get his troops on the move.
The sound of the car roaring into life roused Dover. He regarded his surroundings miserably. It hadn’t been a nightmare, after all. This was for real. Sukey was snarling to herself on the back seat and the Chief Constable was bouncing about like a cat on hot bricks on the front. By now Dover had got round to blaming the whole business on MacGregor. Serve him damned well right if he got what was coming to him!
‘Faster!’ roared the Chief Constable, setting the siren wailing.
Much to Dover’s relief the journey was a short one. He got out of the car and wrapped his overcoat round him. In a few seconds the rest of the party assembled and were placed strategically round the Civic Hall, a gaunt building decorated with two strings of coloured lights and standing exposed to all the elements in the centre of the promenade.
‘Right!’ said the Chief Constable, squaring his shoulders. ‘Forward!’
Dover shambled after him as the Chief Constable strode up the wide ceremonial steps, his chin jutting out and a little swagger-stick tucked militantly under his arm. Sergeant Veitch and half a dozen dripping policemen feil in behind. Sukey and her handler marched proudly in the rear. The Alsatian had an unerring instinct for the limelight? and had insisted on being let out of the car. Even now, ears pricked and eyes alert, she was looking around for the gentlemen of the press.
They all tramped into the entrance hall. Posters advertising jumble sales and classes in flower arrangement flapped frantically in the gale which blew through the open door. A man in shirt-sleeves and a peaked cap emerged from a cubicle. The Chief Constable charged across to him with a yelp of delight.
‘The Ladies’ League, my man! Are they still here?’
Sullenly the caretaker nodded.
The Chief Constable slapped his swagger-stick on the side of his leg. It hurt him but he stiffened his upper lip and took it like a man. ‘Lead us to them!’
The caretaker shook his head. ‘Can’t. Got me orders. Nobody’s to be allowed in.’
‘This is a police matter.’
‘They’d scalp me.’
‘I take full responsibility.’
‘You can take a dose of salts, mate, it makes no odds to me.’
The Chief Constable bristled and drew himself up even straighter. ‘I am the Chief Constable of this county.’
‘And I am the Custodian of the Civic Hall and I’ve got my orders.’ The caretaker had but recently retired after twenty-five years service as a private soldier in the army and was inclined to avail himself of every opportunity to get his own back.
The Chief Constable’s eyes narrowed and he prepared to launch himself into a modified and intimidating version of the Riot Act when Sergeant Veitch tugged gently at his sleeve.
‘This way, sir,’ said Sergeant Veitch.
They all trooped off. The caretaker returned to his cubicle. ‘Think they’re the flipping Lords of Creation,’ he remarked sourly to the young lady who had ducked discreetly out of sight when the posse had burst in. ‘Here, what you put your clothes on for? You’re not going, are you?’
‘With five hundred coppers thumping around the place, I’m certainly not staying,’ retorted the young lady and flounced off into the night, her honour by an inexplicable quirk of fate still intact.
Meanwhile the hue and cry was wending its way along empty, dimly-lit and seemingly endless corridors. Dover and Sukey were both showing a marked tendency to lag behind. Dover was beginning to develop some very profound doubts about the advisability of the forthcoming activities, and Sukey’s paws were hurting her. As they scurried round yet another corner Dover saw salvation loom in sight: a dimly-lit sign with the word ‘Gentlemen’ written invitingly on it.
‘I shan’t be a minute,’ said Dover to the nearest constable. ‘Just tell the Chief Constable to carry on without me. I’ll be along in a couple of shakes of a lamb’s tail.’
So saying he pushed open the door of the Gents and disappeared inside. Sukey, for reasons best known to herself, followed him. Together they remained in these somewhat insalubrious surroundings for five minutes, after the elapse of which Dover judged it safe to emerge.
His luck was out. The Beatrice Bencher Memorial Room was less than a stone’s throw away and, to Dover’s great disgust, the whole damned shoot of them were still huddled outside the door.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ hissed the Chief Constable, who might also have begun to have second thoughts.
‘You shouldn’t have waited,’ said Dover.
The Chief Constable snorted and consulted his watch. ‘My chaps should be in position now. You can go ahead.’
Dover surveyed his companions sullenly and picked the one least likely to start answering back. ‘You open the door,’ he said with what was meant to be a fatherly smile.
The bright-eyed young policeman nodded smartly and stepped forward. The door was locked.
‘What else did you expect?’ snapped the Chief Constable. ‘Come on, you lads! Get your shoulders to it!’
The local constabulary may not have been noted for their brains but nobody could question their brawn. Six stalwart men charged the door. It burst as
under with remarkable and unexpected ease, hinges and locks giving way at the same moment. The six stalwart men tumbled into the Beatrice Bencher Memorial Room in a scrabbling confusion of boots and caps.
With a courteous gesture and a touching deference to superior rank Dover motioned the Chief Constable to precede him over the prostrate bodies.
Chapter Seventeen
After the collapse of the door there had been a moment of comparative and, in retrospect, blessed quiet while nigh on a hundred members of the Ladies’ League recovered, from the shock. Then it started.
There were screams and shouts and yells. Some ladies fainted, others collapsed into hysterics. Those made of sterner stuff bawled orders and instructions and demanded at the tops of their stentorian voices to know what was happening. Chairs and tables were overturned and a minor stampede developed towards the fire exit at the far end of the room. Even the Chief Constable’s resolute advance faltered.
The room was in darkness, lit only by an odd flickering patch of brightness on one of the walls.
Dover, peering vaguely about him, fastidiously repelled a covey of ladies who were fluttering, like moths, towards the light which streamed through the demolished doorway.
‘Lights!’ roared the Chief Constable. ‘Somebody switch the bloody lights on!’
Much to his surprise, somebody did. In the harsh glare of the fluorescent strips the two sides gawped in astonishment at each other.
The Chief Constable’s eyes swept the scene before him. With a sinking heart Dover looked round, too.
‘Well?’ demanded the Chief Constable, clearly preparing to bite the hand which had led him thus far by the nose.
Dover looked again. He would have given a great deal to see an anaesthetized MacGregor laid out on an operating table with a fiendish veterinary surgeon, scalpel in hand, bent over him. Nothing so gratifying met his eyes. The body of the hall was still filled with milling, clutching, squealing, swooning females while, at the far end, was a low platform holding only a long table and a dozen or so empty chairs. On the wall over the table was a large screen on which a film was still being projected.