Dead Easy for Dover

by Joyce Porter

  All MacGregor could do was pray, for the umpteenth time, that the earth beneath his feet would open up and swallow him. He gestured helplessly towards the back of the house. ‘Oh, sir, you haven’t?’

  ‘Gam!’ blustered Dover. ‘Don’t be such a bloody little namby-pamby! Besides, I read somewhere it is supposed to be good for cabbages. Now, how far have we got here?’Strewth’ – he paused to listen to the shrill battle cries and Red Indian war whoops which were proceeding unabated from behind the still-closed door of Number Twenty-seven – ‘he’ll be doing himself a mischief if he keeps on like that!’

  ‘And we’ll be accused of police brutality,’ agreed MacGregor bitterly.

  Dover was always ready to cut his losses. ‘He probably doesn’t know anything anyhow. Let’s leave him to it.’

  MacGregor didn’t like admitting he was beaten but, on this occasion, he was inclined to agree with Dover. ‘I don’t suppose Pearl Wallace would have got any information out of him, either, sir,’ he observed as he trailed behind his lord and master back to the car. ‘I think we can assume that Mrs Kincardine is no longer living at this address and, if the old boy in there does know where she is, he’s not telling.’

  Dover began to squeeze himself into the back seat of the car.

  ‘Told you it was a waste of time.’

  ‘Maybe if I just asked around, sir?’

  Dover was concentrating on making himself comfortable.

  ‘Nobody’ll know anything. It was all nearly twenty years ago.’

  ‘Was you inquiring about Mrs Kincardine?’

  The female neighbour, who had previously been accosted by the police driver, had returned from the corner shop with her loaf of sliced bread and had been standing, unnoticed by our eagle-eyed detectives, listening to the greater part of their conversation.

  MacGregor turned to her eagerly. ‘Yes, we were, as a matter of fact. Did you know her?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The female neighbour rested her shopping basket companionably on the bonnet of the police car. ‘We’ve lived at Number Eighteen for nigh on thirty-two years. I knew Mrs Kincardine quite well. Like I told that girl, we were never what you might call close friends, but we never missed speaking. She moved ten years ago. No—I tell a lie—it must have been eleven.’ MacGregor chivalrously restrained himself from grabbing the good woman and shaking the information out of her. ‘What girl?’

  ‘I don’t know what girl, do I? She never told me her name and I didn’t ask. Well, you don’t, do you?’

  MacGregor whipped out his picture of Pearl Wallace and handed it across with absurdly trembling fingers. Were they really going to be lucky at last? ‘Is this the girl you’re talking about?’ The female neighbour – her name was Mrs Shackleton – agreed that it was. ‘But she didn’t look like that. Here’ – Mrs Shackleton pushed the photograph back into MacGregor’s hands with a shudder of distaste – ‘she’s not dead, is she?’

  ‘I’m afraid she is.’

  ‘Well, I’ll go to our house!’ Mrs Shackleton swayed a little on her feet. ‘I think I’d like to sit down,’ she said unsteadily. ‘I’ve come over all faint.’

  They put her in the back seat next to Dover who was persuaded with considerable difficulty to reduce his occupancy of the available space to a mere two-thirds.

  Mrs Shackleton, it transpired, was in the habit of carrying a small flask of British Ruby Sherry for just such emergencies. When she had ‘wet her lips’, as she put it, and, much to Dover’s fury, tucked the flask away in her handbag, she pronounced herself fit and willing to continue with her story.

  ‘She was just like you lot,’ she began. ‘Hammering away on that silly old devil’s door and getting nothing but whistles and howls and bangings for her pains. His brain’s gone, you know. Senile decay, my husband says it is. They ought to put him away, really. The Welfare keep calling but they never seem to do anything much. Of course, like I said to Mrs O’Brien, as long as she keeps going round and doing for him, they never will. Shame, really, because there’s many a young married couple that I know of who’d give their right arms for that house. It wants a bit of doing up, of course, but . . .’

  ‘This girl,’ said MacGregor. He was forced to stand outside the car and lean in awkwardly through the window.

  ‘She was calling at all the houses in the street but, like I told her, I’m probably the only one who’d remember her at all. These houses have nearly all changed. Well, Mrs Kay at Number Twenty-five might have remembered, but she’s away in Benidorm for the week. Lucky for you, eh?’ Mrs Shackleton gave Dover a friendly dig in the ribs. ‘She lives next door and if she’d seen you relieving yourself in that back garden from her bathroom window she’d have had your guts for garters. Very particular is Mrs Kay.’

  ‘Mrs Kincardine,’ prompted MacGregor. ‘What did you tell the girl about her?’

  ‘Here, was that girl murdered?’ Mrs Shackleton was already fumbling for the sherry in anticipation of the shock. ‘What happened?’

  ‘She was struck over the head,’ said MacGregor, wondering as the flask rose once again to Mrs Shackleton’s pallid lips if she was going to remain sober enough to answer his questions.

  ‘Was she . . ?’

  ‘No,’ said MacGregor, relieved at being able to convey some good news.

  But any pretext would do for Mrs Shackleton. ‘Thank God for that!’ she gasped and took another swig. Dover was nearly in tears. ‘Now, what was we talking about? Oh, yes, Mrs Kincardine! Well, like I said, I remember her all right. A nice woman, on the whole. We did have that bit of an up-and-a-downer one time about her ginger tom and our budgie but . . .’

  MacGregor was now past caring what he did to Mrs Shackleton’s nerves. He flourished the picture of Pearl Wallace under her nose. ‘What did this girl want to know about Mrs Kincardine?’

  ‘Well, nothing, really,’ replied Mrs Shackleton, wondering what this good-looking young fellow was getting so aeriated about. ‘It was this niece she was really asking about. She had dates and everything but I was blowed if I could think which one she meant. It’s all so long ago, isn’t it? Mrs Kincardine often had people staying with her. Relations and things. When they’d been ill or bereaved or something like that. I fancy it was in the way of being a little bit of a business for her because her husband can’t have left all that much. Mind you, I wouldn’t have let such an idea so much as pass my lips at the time.’ She turned trustingly to Dover and patted him on the arm. ‘It’s the Rates, you see, dear. They put ’em up something cruel round here if they even suspect you’re using your home for business premises.’

  MacGregor’s knuckles on the edge of the car window were beginning to turn white and Dover would have blown his top ages ago if he hadn’t been hopeful that the British Ruby Sherry would, eventually, be passed round. MacGregor got his cigarettes out in the hope of keeping Dover quiet a bit longer and found that Mrs Shackleton, while not exactly being what you might call a smoker, didn’t mind accepting one just to oblige.

  As the occupants of the back seat of the car disappeared in a cloud of tobacco smoke, MacGregor resumed his efforts.

  ‘Well, of course she told me she was trying to trace her mother!’ said Mrs Shackleton indignantly. ‘I don’t go around handing out confidential information about my neighbours to every Tom, Dick and Harry that asks, thank you very much!’

  ‘And you couldn’t help her?’ asked MacGregor, desperate to get at least one solid fact established.

  Mrs Shackleton was sufficiently nettled by his tone to give a straight answer. ‘No.’

  MacGregor was thankfully on the point of declaring the interview closed when the amazing Mrs Shackleton forestalled him yet again.

  ‘Not about her mother, that is. Actually, I do sort of remember her vaguely, with her being in the family way and everything, but I never spoke to her. She kept herself very much to herself. Wore a wedding ring, of course, but you could buy them for next to nothing in Woolworth’s in those days. Mrs Kincardine wasn’t ver
y forthcoming, either. Of course, you’ve got to remember they didn’t have all these pills and things then.’

  MacGregor no long wondered that Dover was frequently tempted to use his fists on witnesses. ‘What exactly did you tell Pearl Wallace?’

  ‘About her mother?’

  ‘About anything?’ wailed MacGregor.

  ‘Well, I told her where to find Mrs Kincardine.’

  At that MacGregor finally stopped standing on ceremony with an alacrity that would have warmed Dover’s heart, had he been awake to see it. Mrs Shackleton was induced to shell out what she had told Pearl Wallace and was then bundled unceremoniously out of the police car and into oblivion. She didn’t have time even to get her flask out before the departing police car enveloped her in a cloud of exhaust fumes.

  ‘The Isle of bloody Man?’ yelped Dover, floundering around like a stranded whale as the police driver got rid of his inhibitions and kept his foot well down. ‘You must be joking! And you, you bloody maniac’ – he leaned forward to deliver a resounding smack on the back of the police driver’s head – ‘slow down! You’ll have us all in the bloody ditch!’

  The police driver eased up on the accelerator. ‘I thought you were in a hurry, sir,’ he muttered sullenly.

  ‘Not to get to the bloody Isle of Man, I’m not!’ retorted Dover, indulging his rapier wit yet again. ‘So, if you’re thinking of driving us there, forget it!’

  Even though he knew that arguing with Dover usually made him still more pig-headed, MacGregor felt he had to try. Murder Squad detectives aren’t encouraged to get personally involved in their cases but, whatever the rules, MacGregor felt strangely sorry for Pearl Wallace. In her short life, she had been neither beautiful nor happy nor even lucky. She’d never had much of a break. The least one could do for her now, thought MacGregor, was to put her murderer behind bars. And nothing, MacGregor promised himself, not even the massive inertia of Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover was going to stop him.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t see any alternative, sir.’

  Dover scowled. ‘Well, I bloody well do, laddie!’

  MacGregor gritted his teeth. ‘We must follow this through, sir.’

  Dover could be equally mulish.? There’s not an atom of proof that the girl’s murder had anything to do with her being illegitimate.’

  ‘Sir, we can’t ignore the fact that, immediately before her death, Pearl Wallace was trying to trace her real mother. We must follow in her footsteps. If she leads us to a dead end and she didn’t find her mother – all right! Then we’ll have to start looking elsewhere. But until then . . .’

  The real trouble was that Dover – to paraphrase the words of that fine old song – was tired of living but scared of flying. He didn’t like boats, either. All of which made the prospect of a trip to the Isle of Man look most unattractive.

  Naturally Dover marshalled his objections under a horse of a very different colour. ‘We can’t go haring off to the other end of the world on a wild-goose chase, just like that,’ he muttered. ‘Think of the expense. We’ve got the tax-payer’s money to think of. These are hard times.’

  MacGregor didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Pearl Wallace,’ he said patiently, ‘came to Norrisbridge searching for her natural mother. The person she thought could help her was her mother’s aunt, Mrs Kincardine. Mrs Kincardine no longer lives in Norrisbridge, but a neighbour, Mrs Shackleton, tells the girl that she left some ten or eleven years ago to live with her son in the Isle of Man. Mrs Shackleton can’t remember the address after all these years, of course, but she’s pretty sure it wasn’t Douglas. She thinks it might be Ramsey. Now, with clues like that Pearl Wallace had every chance of tracking Mrs Kincardine down. The Isle of Man is a comparatively small place and Kincardine’s by no means a common name. All I’m saying, sir, is that we must do the same.’

  ‘We can get the Isle of Man police to do it, can’t we?’ whined Dover.

  ‘Naturally we’ll call on them for help in tracing Mrs Kincardine, sir, but I really do feel we ought to conduct the interview with her ourselves.’ Grimly MacGregor sought for something that would spur Dover on to greater heights. ‘What about Pomeroy Chemicals, sir?’

  But Pomeroy Chemicals was now so far back in Dover’s past that he’d almost forgotten who they were. The incident of the grossly misused application form seemed to have wiped them completely from his mind.

  ‘Or,’ MacGregor went on, seeing that Pomeroy Chemicals had failed to do the trick, ‘what about me popping over there quickly by myself while you consolidate the main lines of the investigation at Frenchy Botham?’ MacGregor was rather pleased with the way he had phrased that.

  It worked like a dream.

  ‘How long does it take to fly?’ demanded Dover, capitulating to the green-eyed god of jealousy without a qualm.

  16

  A tactful veil will be drawn over the precise circumstances of how they brought Dover to the Isle of Man. Suffice it to say that Detective Sergeant MacGregor, British Airways, a very broadminded air hostess and a considerable amount of malt whisky were all involved. It was agreed by those concerned that, such was Dover’s euphoria, he could probably have made the journey without the assistance of powered flight, if pushed.

  The Isle of Man police, whose co-operation had been requested both as a matter of courtesy and in order to save time, had done their job and the right Kincardine had been found without much difficulty. This was the son of the Mrs Kincardine they had been trying to trace, and an appointment was made for Dover and MacGregor to see him. The Isle of Man police had also kindly placed a car at the disposal of their distinguished visitors from Scotland Yard.

  The young police driver helped decant Dover into the back seat. He was a fresh-faced, innocent lad who had come from a rather sheltered home. His Inspector, who had heard about old Wilf on the police grape-vine, had specially selected the boy for the job, feeling that it would be a good idea to let him see something of the seamier side of life before the tourist season got into full swing.

  It was a comparatively short drive from the airport, which was just as well as Dover wouldn’t have the windows open and the young police driver was in grave danger of vicarious intoxication from the fumes.

  Dover was in great form. Feeling happier now that he had got his bottom on terra firma, he gesticulated sketchily at the passers-by. ‘I thought everybody’d have three legs!’ he quipped merrily. ‘And the cats!’ He turned to MacGregor. ‘I thought all the bloody pussy cats’d have no tails and all the bloody people’d have three legs, eh?’

  MacGregor pushed Dover back into his own comer and tried to make out that they weren’t together.

  Mr Kincardine turned out to be a man of noteworthy mediocrity. He ran a small ironmonger’s shop and only managed to make ends meet by being amazingly unbusinesslike about Value Added Tax and other fiscal matters. He took Dover and MacGregor through to a back room while his wife took charge in the shop. She was congenitally incapable of adding two and two together but, since her mistakes were rarely in the customer’s favour, Mr Kincardine didn’t mind letting her stand in for him occasionally.

  The back room was really more of a store room but it contained a couple of chairs and a table and Mr Kincardine thought it would do. MacGregor picked out the sturdier looking chair and dumped Dover on it before getting down to brass tacks.

  ‘Oh, I expect it’s her,’ said Mr Kincardine obligingly. After all, they had come all the way from the mainland to see him.

  MacGregor pushed the photograph of Pearl Wallace back into Mr Kincardine’s clammy hands. ‘Don’t you know?’

  Mr Kincardine was apologetic. ‘These young ladies all look much of a muchness, don’t they. Long hair and great green circles round their eyes.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Dover, clawing his way up to the surface for a moment’s unpleasantness, ‘you were paying more attention to her figure than her face, you dirty devil!’

  Mr Kincardine blenched. The shrewdness of the bleary-eye
d fat man terrified him. God knows, there’d been enough trouble about that other girl without. . . He tried to smile at MacGregor.

  ‘Yes, it’s her, all right,’ he said, ‘Definitely.’

  ‘And she came here to see you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a couple of weeks ago, maybe three.’ Mr Kincardine consulted a wall calendar which was covered with enigmatic signs. ‘It’d be Tuesday the eleventh.’ He pointed to a thick blue circle round the date. ‘That’s the day they deliver the paraffin. The tanker was just driving off when she arrived. She asked if she could have a few words with me so I invited her into the sitting room upstairs.’

  Dover, who seemed to have sex on the brain, interrupted again. ‘Upstairs, eh?’

  ‘The smell of the paraffin,’ explained Mr Kincardine with an ingratiating smile. ‘This room was reeking with it. Otherwise I’d have talked to her in here, of course.’

  Dover leered. ‘Of course! Was your wife in?’

  ‘Er, no, she was out.’

  ‘Fancy!’ sneered Dover, finding Mr Kincardine guilty as charged and with no extenuating circumstances. ‘You do surprise me!’

  ‘I kept the door open at the top of the stairs,’ gabbled Mr Kincardine, anxious to demonstrate that all the proprieties had been observed. ‘In case a customer came into the shop.’

  But Dover was no longer listening, being once again obliged to lend an ear to the urgent promptings of one of his inner men. There was a message coming up that it would be injudicious to ignore. Dover broke into Mr Kincardine’s feeble apologia. ‘Where’s your toilet?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, upstairs!’ Mr Kincardine pulled himself together. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘Don’t bother!’ Dover much preferred exploring other people’s houses in the absence of their owners. ‘I’ll find it.’

  Mr Kincardine and MacGregor waited in respectful silence as Dover thumped his laborious way up the stairs to the living quarters above the shop. MacGregor, fastidiously anxious to hear no more, put the whole sordid little incident right behind him and went on with his questions.