Dead Easy for Dover

by Joyce Porter

  The surly, slovenly Shame of Scotland Yard — Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover — is back on his best murder case yet, with the reluctantly loyal Sergeant MacGregor at his side. When the body of a pregnant young woman is found in an alley, Dover is uncharacteristically eager to pursue the case rather than sleep in the back of his car. A large industrial firm is looking for a new Security Chief and he wants to be that man. Why? For that most solemn of reasons: there’s more money in it.

  But first he needs a resounding success with which to dazzle his prospective employers. The murder of this unknown, unimportant girl doesn’t look very promising, but Dover flings himself into the investigation with a verve and enthusiasm that brings tears to the eyes of his long-suffering sergeant.

  In the process of tracking down murderer and motive, insulting the local constabulary, and dining to excess in the village inn, Dover and MacGregor run roughshod through the neighborhood where they uncover secret drinkers, perverts, heiresses, and demagogues with skeletons in their closets. The solution emerges through an atypically astute bit of detective work which Dover attributes to genius and Sergeant MacGregor to dumb luck. DEAD EASY FOR DOVER is a witty, unpredictable, and uproarious murder mystery of the highest order.

  JOYCE PORTER is a British mystery writer who has written many times before of Dover’s misadventures. British critics are unanimous in their praise of Ms. Porter’s talents:

  “Ms. Porter’s irrepressible inventiveness fizzes the story along, with some wickedly three-dimensional characterisations.”

  —Evening Mail

  “. . . reminiscent in parts of Wodehouse at his best.”

  —Evening Citizen

  “Black farce, written with loads of zip.”

  —Sun

  Also by Joyce Porter

  Dover One

  Dover Two

  Dover Three

  Sour Cream with Everything

  Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All

  The Chinks in the Curtain

  Dover Goes to Pott

  Neither a Candle Nor a Pitchfork

  Rather a Common Sort of Crime

  It’s Murder with Dover

  Dover Strikes Again

  Only With a Bargepole

  A Meddler and her Murder

  The Package included Murder

  Dover and the Claret Tappers

  Who the Heck is Sylvia?

  DEAD EASY FOR

  DOVER

  a novel by

  JOYCE PORTER

  To

  Mary and Harry Brazier,

  with much affection

  Copyright © 1978 by Joyce Porter

  First printed in the U.S.A. in 1979 by

  St. Martin’s Press

  All rights reserved. For information, write:

  St. Martin’s Press, Inc.,

  175 Fifth Ave., New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Porter, Joyce.

  Dead easy for Dover.

  I. Title.

  PZ4.P8464De 1979 [PR6066.072] 823'.914

  ISBN 0-312-18492-1 78-3970

  I

  The inhabitants of Frenchy Botham were not best pleased one blustery March morning to find that they had got a murder on their hands. The few remaining ‘real’ villagers (those with the peeling paint and the front gardens full of rotting cabbages) didn’t want packs of bloody bobbies poking about for any reason whatsoever, while the townees hadn’t spent all that money on their country retreats just to have dead bodies dumped in their well-kept shrubberies.

  The Chief Constable gazed despondently at the tarpaulin-covered bundle at his feet and slapped his swagger stick anxiously into a leather-gloved palm. ‘Are you sure there’s no identification on the body?’ he asked for the fifth time.

  Detective Inspector Walters was a big man with a matching supply of patience. He stuck placidly to the formula which had served him well on four previous occasions. ‘Nothing we’ve been able to find so far, sir,’ he said. ‘Mind you, we haven’t been able to strip her yet, but there’s nothing in the pockets and there’s no sign of a handbag.’

  ‘But you’re still looking?’

  ‘For the handbag, sir?’ Inspector Walters indicated a posse of policemen who were meticulously examining every square inch of the garden, the drive and the roadway outside. ‘Yes, we’re still looking.’

  The Chief Constable gnawed industriously at his bottom lip. ‘Damn and blast!’ he said.

  f You’ll be calling in Scotland Yard, sir?’ The Inspector already knew the answer and accepted the implied slur on his capabilities with admirable resignation.

  ‘I rang London before I came out here,’ muttered the Chief Constable, a man who avoided responsibility like other people avoid the plague. ‘They should be here in a couple of hours.’

  ‘Oh, well, we can’t move the body till they’ve seen it, I suppose,’ observed Inspector Walters, talking as much to save embarrassing pauses as for any other reason. ‘I’ve already commandeered the Memorial Hall for use as a Serious Incidents Room. It’ll all be properly fitted up and staffed by the time the Murder Squad chaps get down here.’

  ‘If she’d been a local girl,’ said the Chief Constable miserably, ‘I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. We’d have tackled it ourselves. But she isn’t.’

  ‘Apparently not, sir,’ agreed Inspector Walters stolidly.

  ‘It’s well on the cards that Frenchy Botham’s connection with this murder is purely accidental. The girl was probably just dumped here from a passing car or something and there’ll be ramifications stretching way beyond our area of jurisdiction. It’s got all the hallmarks of being the sort of case that Scotland Yard can cope with standing on its head.’

  ‘Quite so, sir.’

  Inspector Walters’s tone was soothing but the Chief Constable was still in the grip of an overwhelming need to justify himself. ‘We just don’t have the facilities,’ he pointed out. ‘Nor the experience. Nor the man-power. This flu epidemic has really hit us, you know. I see our overall strength figures every morning and, believe me, they’re frightening. Quite frightening.’ He lashed out at a nearby rhododendron bush with his swagger stick and sought for a change of conversation. ‘How long did you say she’d been lying here?’

  Inspector Walters shook his head. ‘I didn’t, sir. But, going by the state of her clothing, it’ll be days rather than hours. Doctor Maxton thought it could be weeks, but that was after only a superficial examination. We’ll have a bit more of an idea, perhaps, after the p. m.’

  ‘Had she been ..?’

  ‘Didn’t look like it, sir. The clothing isn’t tom or even disarranged, come to that. And those jeans she was wearing are so blooming tight I reckon you’d need a tin opener to get her out of them, if you follow me.’

  It was starting to rain again. The Chief Constable turned up his coat collar and asked another question. He was anxious not to appear to be beating too hasty a retreat back to the warmth and dryness of his office while the men under his command were obliged to continue with their search, however inclement the weather.

  Inspector Walters shook his head again. ‘No, she wasn’t strangled, sir, and I suppose you could take that as another slight indication that we’re not dealing with a case of rape or sexual assault. As a matter of fact, she seems to have been struck across the back of the head with the proverbial blunt instrument. The skull’s crushed, apparently. The doctor reckons there would be very little bleeding. He’s got half an idea that she was still alive when she was dumped here, but he’s only guessing at the moment.’

  ‘She definitely wasn’t killed where she was found?’

&nbs
p; ‘Seems not, sir.’

  The Chief Constable could feel the rain trickling down the back of his neck but he carried on bravely. ‘It seems an odd sort of place to have hidden her.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, sir.’ Inspector Walters surveyed the terrain thoughtfully. ‘I’ve noticed these biggish detached houses with their own bits of driveways before. They nearly always leave the gates wide open. Too much trouble to keep nipping in and out of their cars, otherwise. To say nothing of tradesmen and such like.’

  The Chief Constable shifted his weight from one sodden foot to the other. ‘What about keeping children in – or dogs?’

  ‘Usually confined to the back gardens, in my experience, sir. Besides, you can see for yourself.’ Inspector Walters began moving in the direction of the Chief Constable’s car, and gesticulated along the road. ‘Every house here in The Grove has got its drive gates pushed more or less permanently open. To say nothing of the fact that they don’t have any kids or pet animals here at Les Chenes.’

  The Chief Constable was a mite over-sensitive. ‘You’re not trying to suggest that the murderer had local knowledge, are you, Walters?’

  ‘Not really sir,’ came the imperturbable rejoinder. ‘Though I think it’d be a mistake to rule out a local villain entirely. With reasonable luck, you know, that body could have lain there out of sight behind the open gate for months. It was virtually hidden by those bushes.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think we can use that sort of speculation as the basis for anything, old chap.’ The Chief Constable was growing bolder as he found his car almost within touching distance. ‘It’s only a few feet away from a public thoroughfare, for heaven’s sake! And what about gardening?’

  Inspector Walters had his own theories and was massively unmoved. ‘You’d be surprised, sir,’ he said, ‘how very few people walk along The Grove on foot. Or peer over quite a high stone wall when they do. And there isn’t, sir,’ he pointed out heavily, ‘all that much in the way of gardening to be done under a clump of overgrown rhododendron bushes.’

  The Chief Constable was determined not to have this labelled a local crime if he could help it. ‘But the body was discovered!’ he insisted with ill-concealed triumph. ‘That proves it can’t have been hidden away as cleverly as all that, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It was only discovered because old Sir Perceval Henty-Harris died, sir.’

  The Chief Constable scowled at his driver who was displaying a marked reluctance to get out of the car and open the door. ‘What do you mean, it was only because old Sir Perceval died?’

  ‘If he hadn’t finally kicked the bucket, sir, his niece wouldn’t have been going off for a bit of a holiday, would she, sir? That’s why she closed the gates. She said she thought it made the house look less unoccupied, and she’s scared stiff of burglars breaking in at the best of times.’

  The police driver had finally emerged and was standing resentfully out in the rain with the door open. The Chief Constable determined to teach him a lesson. ‘So it was Miss Henty-Harris who discovered the body?’

  Inspector Walters had himself briefed the Chief Constable on this particular point, but he scorned to show even a flicker of surprise at the question. ‘That’s right, sir. She decided to postpone her holiday and phoned us.’

  The Chief Constable nodded his approval at this piece of co-operation on the part of the general public and decided that his driver had now suffered enough. ‘Oh, well, back to the paperwork, I suppose!’ he lamented unconvincingly. ‘You’ve no idea how much I envy you chaps out in the field.’ He got into his shiny black official car and pressed the switch which lowered the window. ‘I can leave you to look after these people from the Murder Squad, can I, Walters? Every courtesy and consideration, you know. Total support. Well, we’re all on the same side, aren’t we?’

  Detective Inspector Walters inclined his head. ‘So they tell me, sir.’ He got a last question in as the driver revved his engine impatiently. ‘Who are they sending us, sir? Have you any idea?’

  ‘A chappie called Dover,’ said the Chief Constable, spreading himself happily over the real leather. ‘One of these young, up-and-coming, high-flying types, I imagine.’

  ‘What makes you think that, sir?’

  ‘Well, he’s only a chief inspector and he’s supernumerary – so the Commander was telling me. Obviously some bright young spark they’re anxious to hang on to till he’s ready for promotion and they’ve got a vacancy. I reckon we’ve drawn a real whizz kid.’ Something in Inspector Walters’s face gave the Chief Constable pause. ‘You don’t know him, do you?’

  ‘I must be thinking of somebody else, sir.’

  ‘Oh, well, bring him over to see me as soon as you’ve got him settled in.’ The Chief Constable flapped an imperious hand. ‘Drive on, Harvey!’

  Inspector Walters sighed. The only Detective Chief Inspector Dover he’d ever heard of up at the Yard was old Wilfred – and whizz kid he was not. On the contrary, he was a middle-aged down-and-out who, if rumour was to be believed, had only got within a hundred miles of the elite Murder Squad because nobody else in the rest of the Metropolitan Police would have him. And, far from awaiting further promotion, it was generally accepted that he’d reached his professional ceiling years ago as probationary constable.

  Inspector Walters watched the Chief Constable’s car disappear down the road. Oh, well, it was probably all a bit exaggerated. Old Wilfred couldn’t be as bad as all that or he’d have been booted out years ago. Surely? Of course, they did say if there was one thing the old fool was an expert at it was saving his own skin. And then his sergeant was reputed to be pretty much on the ball, and that probably enhanced Dover’s powers of survival. Inspector Walters frowned. Now, what was the lad’s name? A handsome young buck, by all accounts, and something of a snappy dresser. Supposed to write a letter once a week to the Commissioner begging for a transfer. It didn’t matter where to – dog handling or traffic or the bornb squad – just as long as it was away from Wilfred Dover. Inspector Walters searched his memory. Ah, MacGregor! That was it. Sergeant MacGregor. Poor devil!

  Inspector Walters contemplated what lay before him during the next few days and sighed again. Oh, well, he reminded himself with typical lack of originality, a policeman’s lot was not a happy one and the only way to deal with life’s little problems is to grin and bear them. He squared his shoulders and, turning away, marched off to see how his men were getting on with their search.

  As it so happens, Inspector Walters had been doing Detective Chief Inspector Dover a gross injustice. True – the old Dover had indeed been a fat, lazy, unhealthy, unintelligent and none-too- honest slob of the first magnitude, but all that had now changed.

  Dover himself, his filthy boots resting disgustingly on the opposite seat, explained the metamorphosis to his sergeant as they journeyed down in the train to the scene of this latest murder. The explanation was necessary because, to Sergeant MacGregor’s jaundiced eye at least, outward appearances seemed much the same as usual. The little black eyes appeared as malevolent as ever, the face as podgy and the complexion as pasty. That dreadful overcoat with its dandruff-encrusted shoulders was stretched as tightly as before over the swelling paunch and that greasy bowler hat was still brooding as squalidly over its owner’s ignoble brow – a long way over, actually, as Dover had reverentially deposited it on the rack for the duration of the trip.

  No, MacGregor could see no evidence of any physical change whatsoever.

  ‘Commerce,’ explained Dover when he’d managed to extricate a bit of his pie crust from behind his upper set. ‘Trade. Industry. Big business. That’s where it’s all happening. A seat on the board of directors and’ – his eyes grew quite misty at the prospect – ‘unlimited expenses.’

  MacGregor had had his hopes blasted too often in the past to start counting chickens now. Still, the question had to be asked. ‘Are you thinking of – er – leaving the police, sir?’

  ‘Got beyond the thinking stage, laddie!’ boaste
d Dover whose bows were rarely drawn on the short side. ‘Virtually all over bar the shouting.’

  ‘Really, sir?’

  Just in case British Rail’s carriages had ears, Dover edged closer to the shrinking MacGregor and lowered his voice. ‘Haven’t told Them yet, of course,’ he grunted. ‘Why the hell should I?’Strewth, I don’t owe Them anything. And to hell with the pension!’ He paused before adding somewhat illogically, ‘Besides, I don’t want to give Them the opportunity of talking me out of it.’

  MacGregor was an articulate young man who had been educated at one of our minor Public Schools. He was not often at a loss for words. Nor was he on this occasion. ‘Oh, quite, sir,’ he said from a very dry throat.

  ‘Pomeroy Chemicals Limited,’ said Dover, expelling the magic formula in a spray of soggy pie crust. ‘Chief Security Officer. Salary subject to negotiation so the sky’s the limit, eh? Here’ — he tossed the packet of cheese and pickle sandwiches into MacGregor’s more capable hands — ‘get this bloody thing open for me!’

  MacGregor forced his way through the plastic. ‘And you’ve actually got this job, sir?’

  ‘Got the application form,’ said Dover, stuffing an entire cheese and pickle sandwich into his mouth so as to leave his hands free for grubbing through his pockets. ‘Don’t reckon I’ll have much to fear in the way of competition.’ He chuckled complacently. ‘There won’t be many applicants with a record like mine!’

  MacGregor thought that this was probably true and waited with interest while Dover first found and then flattened out with fingers still greasy from the cheese sandwich a dog-eared and ruinous wad of paper.

  ‘It’s this bit I want to talk to you about,’ said Dover, handing over one of the sheets.

  MacGregor accepted it, grateful that he’d kept his gloves on against the cold.

  ‘That bit there,’ said Dover. ‘Where it says: List what you consider are the highlights of your professional career (with dates).’