by Joyce Porter
‘Did she tell you her name?’
Mr Kincardine thought, ‘No, I don’t think she did. She just said she was the representative of this organization that traces your family tree sort of thing, and could I give her some information about our family.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘Why not? I was a bit surprised, of course, because our family’s nothing special. Ordinary working-class people on both sides, as far as I know. Mind you, the girl did strike me as a bit – well – unprepossessing. I’ve had a fair bit of experience over the years, what with salesmen and reps and wrhat-have-you. There’s a certain style about them. They want something out of you and they turn on the charm to get it. Now, this girl hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. There she was, trying to get me to give her some information or whatever for free, and she didn’t even look clean. And as for trying on a bit of the old sex appeal . . . No, I should have been on my guard.’
‘Did you give her the information she wanted?’
‘Well, not exactly,’ said Mr Kincardine. ‘You see, she explained that her company or society or whatever-it-was was particularly interested in my mother’s side of the family. In fact, what it all boiled down to was that, if I could put her in touch with my mother, she wouldn’t need to trouble me at all. Well, that’s when I had to tell her that my mother had passed away four years ago. And then she asked me if I knew anything about any nieces my mother had had – my cousins they would be, of course. She was especially interested in one called Jones – Muriel Jones.’
MacGregor felt a warm glow of satisfaction flood over him. At last – and in spite of Dover’s best endeavours – they were beginning to get somewhere. Some pieces, at least, of the jig-saw puzzle were beginning to slot into place. ‘Muriel Jones,’ he echoed encouragingly. ‘And have you got a cousin called Muriel Jones, Mr Kincardine?’
‘No, not called Jones. I’ve got one called Muriel, of course. She’s the daughter of one of my mother’s younger sisters. Mind you, I haven’t laid eyes on her since we were kids, though I’ve got an idea my mother kept in touch with her a lot longer.’
‘And you told the girl all this?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And what was her reaction?’
‘Well, she seemed quite pleased. Excited, almost. She asked if she could have this cousin’s address so that she could get in touch with her direct.’
‘And you gave it to her?’
‘No.’ Mr Kincardine shook his head. ‘Well, in any case, I haven’t got her address but I was beginning to get a mite suspicious. I mean, it could have been for anything, couldn’t it? Bad debts, tax evasion . . .’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I told the girl I hadn’t got my cousin’s address, but that I thought I could get in touch with her. If she – that’s the girl – would like to send me a proper letter from her firm, I’d do my best to get it forwarded to my cousin who could then reply or not as she wanted. That seemed to me the most satisfactory way of dealing with the problem.’
‘Very business-like!’ approved MacGregor. ‘And the girl – Pearl Wallace – she was equally happy about the arrangements?’
Mr Kincardine grinned ruefully. ‘Not exactly. She got a bit agitated and rather aggressive. She started spinning some fantastic yarn about this being her big chance to earn a fat commission from her firm and the client was a rich American who wanted quick results and they hadn’t time to go through all this rigmarole and couldn’t I just tell her where she could get in touch with my cousin, Muriel, even if I hadn’t got the exact address.’
‘And eventually you succumbed to her blandishments?’ MacGregor had heard that some men were constitutionally incapable of refusing a young woman anything. Privately he fancied that he would have found Pearl Wallace highly resistible, but Mr Kincardine’s tastes might be different.
‘No, I didn’t, as a matter of fact.’ Mr Kincardine grinned and treated MacGregor to a sly, sideways glance. ‘I won’t say that we couldn’t have reached some mutually satisfactory agreement, given time,’ he admitted. ‘What with the wife being out for the day and me not owing Cousin Muriel anything, when you came to think about it. The kid wasn’t all that bad looking, and she was young. However’ – Mr Kincardine sighed deeply – ‘the best laid plans of rats and men . . .’
‘What happened?’
‘The bloody shop bell went, didn’t it,’ said Mr Kincardine crossly. ‘I had to go down. I get enough stock nicked when I’m standing there watching’em without leaving the place unattended. I was probably away five minutes. When I got back, she’d scarpered. Vamoosed. Done a bunk.’
MacGregor stared hard at Mr Kincardine. ‘Just like that?’ he queried.
‘Well, no,’ said Mr Kincardine reluctantly, lowering his voice just in case his wife was behind the door listening, ‘she took fifty quid with her.’
‘Fifty quid?’
‘From the cash box in my desk. I keep it up there for bloody safety,’ he added bitterly.
MacGregor was mildly irritated. When he requested co-operation from the local police, he expected to get it. The Isle of Man coppers had found Mr Kincardine for him efficiently enough. Why hadn’t they also briefed him about this theft? It had been very remiss of them, unless . . .
Mr Kincardine, who had seated himself on a packing case, squirmed uneasily. ‘No, I didn’t report it to the police,’ he whispered. ‘I didn’t want to get the girl into trouble, did I?’
MacGregor’s elegant eyebrows shot up.
Mr Kincardine decided that honesty might well be his best policy. ‘It was just a sort of little nest egg I was hiding from the Income Tax people,’ he hissed. ‘If I’d told the police about it, it might have led to more damned trouble than it was worth.’ He managed a sickly smile. ‘I mean, what’s fifty quid these days? Chicken feed, eh?’
MacGregor was more concerned with the fate of Pearl Wallace than with Mr Kincardine’s financial shenanigans.‘And you’ve no idea why she left so abruptly?’
‘I concluded that she’d got what she came for – the cash.’
‘So all this stuff about tracing ancestors and your cousin’s address – you think that was simply part of the con?’
Mr Kincardine shrugged his shoulders. ‘It doesn’t sound very likely, I’ll admit. Too elaborate by half. But what other explanation is there? If she really wanted to get in touch with Muriel, she’d have stuck around until I got back, wouldn’t she?’
‘Unless she’d already found the information for herself,’ said MacGregor, ‘while you were in the shop. Well, she obviously went hunting around in your desk.’
‘But, I told you,’ protested Mr Kincardine, ‘I haven’t got Muriel’s address!’
‘There must be something,’ said MacGregor.
‘There isn’t! Definitely not!’ Mr Kincardine was adamant. Then his face changed. ‘Unless . . .’
Meanwhile Chief Inspector Dover had been answering a rather lengthy call of Nature up in the Kincardines’ blue and gold bathroom. As befits the establishment of an ironmonger, the place was full of expensive accessories and gadgets, most of which were securely bolted to the wall. Dover absent-mindedly pocketed a piece of soap that seemed to be going spare and then went foraging around the rest of the flat.
The first room he came to was the lounge and, since it seemed quite a promising proposition, he went in, moving with remarkable stealth for a man of his age, weight and general clumsiness. It would, of course, be grossly unfair to suggest that Dover was going to steal anything. It was just that sometimes in his line of business, in the stress of the moment, people simply forgot to offer the usual hospitality. It slipped their minds. In such circumstances self-help was almost obligatory.
It didn’t take a detective of Dover’s calibre and experience long to find out that the Kincardines didn’t smoke. Nor did the stingy devils keep a few for their friends. The biscuit barrel on the mantelpiece contained nothing more exciting than a couple of cream crack
ers, both of which were soggy. Dover, disgruntled, moved across the room to have a look at the desk, and it was at this point that the photograph caught his eye. Well, not so much the photograph, perhaps, as the frame it was in. Which was silver and highly portable.
Highly, Dover corrected himself as he picked it up for a closer look, pocketable, actually. He wondered, idly, what such a small, silver frame would fetch these days on the open market. Not enough, he concluded sadly, to make it worth his while risking his pension. He was putting the photograph back on the top of the desk when he belatedly realized just what it was he was looking at. It was the rather stiffly posed picture of a young woman. The hair style was different, the make-up looked old fashioned and the marks of some twenty years of living were missing from the face, but Dover knew who it was. By God, he did! He’d seen that face within the last few days. So recently, in fact, that he hadn’t had time to forget it. That – he would stake his life on it – was What’s-her-name!
In an absolute tizzy of exaltation and excitement, Dover read the inscription. It was scrawled in a bold hand across the bottom comer of the photograph: To dear Aunty Flo, with much love, Muriel.
Dover tossed the photograph back on the desk and went hurtling down the stairs with all the dignity and restraint of a bull elephant in rut. He burst into the little back room where the interview between MacGregor and the mildly dishonest, mildly libidinous Mr Kincardine was about to reach its climax.
Inspiration and sudden recollection had, as careful readers will remember, just struck Mr Kincardine. He had realized that there was something upstairs in his lounge which was connected with his cousin Muriel and which the dead girl might have seen. He was about to reveal all to MacGregor when Dover arrived.
‘Come on!’ roared Dover, in such a bustle that he didn’t even bother to sit down.
MacGregor scrambled to his feet, the chill hand of apprehension already clutching at his heart. ‘Come on where, sir?’ he enquired.
Dover was already on his way. ‘Back to civilization, laddie!’ he bawled over his shoulder. ‘I’ve solved the case! No point in mucking around this dump any longer.’
MacGregor felt everything begin to go black before his eyes. The shock of having his worst fears fulfilled was almost too much for him. Could that old fool, Dover, really have solved the case? MacGregor would have rather had a dozen murderers walk away scot free than . . . No! MacGregor pulled himself together. He mustn’t even allow himself to think such subversive thoughts.
Pausing only to snatch up his notebook, MacGregor chased through one of the most interesting selections of ironmongery in the Isle of Man and was just in time to see Dover clambering into the waiting police car. There had actually been a slight delay as the young police driver was unaware that Dover didn’t open doors for himself if there was some underling there to do it for him. The young police driver knew better now, of course.
‘Sir!’ MacGregor shoved the driver aside before he could shut the door. ‘We can’t leave now, sir! I haven’t finished questioning Mr Kincardine.’
‘Tough,’ said Dover who watched an awful lot of American cops-and-robbers on the telly.
‘You don’t understand, sir.’ MacGregor made a conscious effort not to sink begging to his knees. ‘While she was here, Pearl Wallace must have found some clue to her mother’s whereabouts. That’s why she left without waiting for Mr Kincardine to come back.’
Dover grinned like a particularly nasty-minded Cheshire Cat.
MacGregor swallowed his tears of frustration. ‘Mr Kincardine was just about to tell me what it was, sir.’
‘You don’t say!’ said Dover, still grinning.
‘Just five minutes, sir! Please!’
Dover settled himself well back. ‘Get in, laddie!’ he said. ‘This case is all over bar the shouting.’
MacGregor glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got at least a couple of hours before the plane leaves, sir. Surely we .. .’
Dover’s beady little button eyes peered spitefully out from under the brim of his bowler hat. ‘They’ve got a bar at the bloody airport, haven’t they?’
MacGregor made one last effort. ‘Suppose I hang on here for a few more minutes, sir – just to get a proper signed statement from Mr Kincardine and tie up a few loose ends? Then I could get a taxi and join you later at the airport.’
Dover’s glance was almost pitying. MacGregor must be going bloody soft in the head if he thought a trick like that was going to work. ‘Get in, laddie!’ he grunted again. ‘There’s a hell of a draught with that door open.’
17
Now that he was in position to place his grubby hand on the shrinking shoulder of the murderer of Pearl Wallace, Dover had every intention of making a full-scale spectacular out of it. It so rarely happened that he brought a case to a successful conclusion that he was determined everybody should know about it when he did. He wanted the full VIP treatment waiting for him at Frenchy Botham – red carpet, TV cameras, brass band, civic welcome and a motor cycle escort. It was MacGregor’s unenviable task to organize this august reception, working from a public telephone in Ronaldsway Airport while Dover held court in the cocktail lounge.
Wearily MacGregor picked his way through the crowd of admirers and interrupted some yarn about how Dover (single-handed) had arrested a champion middle-weight wrestler who was running amuck in a Soho vice den with a meat cleaver. ‘I’m afraid it’s as I expected, sir,’ he said, wasting his irony on the smoke and whisky-ladened air. ‘The magistrates won’t issue a warrant without the name of the person involved. Of course, sir, if you could just tell me who it is, we could have the warrant all ready and waiting.’
Dover’s wits hadn’t been dulled that much by free drink. ‘You’ve got What’s-his-name standing by, though?’
MacGregor nodded. ‘Inspector Walters will be there, sir. I’ve just been speaking to him personally.’ MacGregor tried to get some consolation from the knowledge that he’d finally got it into Dover’s thick skull that the actual arrest had to be made by a member of the local police force. Dover didn’t seem to be aware of this and had been looking forward to slipping on the handcuffs, himself. He had not taken it well when he had been told that this moment of glory would belong to Inspector Walters. ‘And I’ve laid on supper at The Laughing Dog, sir, for after the arrest.’
Dover took that in all right. ‘After?’
‘There’s a dining car on the train, sir. I thought we could have something to eat on the way down and then . . .’
‘Yes, yes! All right!’ Dover was anxious to get back to his open-handed chums and finish off his tale of valour, derring-do and fiction. ‘That it?’
MacGregor consulted his list. ‘Car at Chapminster . . . local TV people warned . . . local newspaper people warned . . .’ He looked up. ‘There is just one thing, sir. It’s going to be rather late by the time we get to Frenchy Botham. Wouldn’t it be better to postpone the whole thing till tomorrow morning? We could keep the suspect under surveillance and . . .’
‘Get lost, laddie!’ said Dover, and returned to pinning back a few more credulous ears.
It was indeed rather late before British Rail disgorged Dover and MacGregor back to Chapminster. Inspector Walters was patiently waiting for them with a car. He had been rather taken aback to find that ‘his’ murder had been solved, apparently on the Isle of Man, but he had decided not to raise his Chief Constable’s hopes until they’d got the whole thing cut and dried. Somehow Inspector Walters couldn’t quite rid himself of the notion that Chief Inspector Dover really was the fat, stupid, lazy slob he looked. This made it difficult to believe that he could do anything properly and Inspector Walters, rather foolishly, preferred not to involve his superior officer until he was quite sure.
If Inspector Walters had been looking forward to some sort of comradely reunion, he was sadly disappointed. Both the Scotland Yard men were weary and travel stained, and one of them was apparently still suffering from train sickness. When Dover eventually emerg
ed from the gents’ lavatory on Chapminster station the police car set off for Frenchy Botham.
At first the atmosphere was one of expectant silence. Then Inspector Walters was obliged to ask the question. ‘Where to in Frenchy Botham, sir?’
‘The Grove,’ grunted Dover.
‘Any particular house, sir?’ Inspector Walters fished with more hope than MacGregor had done, but with an equal lack of success.
‘Nope,’ said Dover who was determined to stretch out his moment of glory as long as possible. ‘Tell the driver to stop at the top and we’ll walk from there.’
And walk they did, their footsteps lit by the light of an evasive moon and the stronger beam of Inspector Walters’s electric torch.
‘That’s Lilac View, sir,’ said Inspector Walters, illuminating a gatepost and a short stretch of gravelled drive. ‘Mr de la Poche. I suppose we’re hardly likely to be calling there looking for the mother of the Wallace girl – not with him being a bachelor and everything.’
‘You never know these days,’ growled Dover, his feet making him disinclined for conversation. ‘Who lives in this one?’
‘This is Fairacre, sir.’ Inspector Walters played his torch on a clump of hydrangeas and the little cortege veered slightly in this new direction. ‘That’s the bank manager, sir. Mr Talbot. He and his wife are the ones who dabble in all this spirit nonsense. Could Mrs Talbot be the one you’re after?’
Inspector Walters paused interrogatively, but Dover plodded painfully on.
Remembering the incident of What Had Happened to the Bowler Hat, Inspector Walters left it to MacGregor to do the honours at the next house. After all, the Sergeant knew as much about the inhabitants of The Grove as anybody did. MacGregor duly poked Dover’s failing memory into life with the utmost care. ‘Otterly House, sir. That’s the youngish couple – Peter and Maddie Bones – with the French au pair girl and the three small – er – children, if you remember.’