by Joyce Porter
‘Coward!’ jeered Dover.
MacGregor watched this performance with apathetic resignation. He’d seen Dover making a public spectacle of himself too often to get all hot and bothered about a minor incident like this. He pushed his teacup away. ‘What were you intending to do exactly, sir?’
‘Go and ask a few questions, of course! What else, moron?’
MacGregor rested his head on his hands and thought about death. ‘Who were you thinking of tackling first, sir?’
‘Good God!’ roared Dover. ‘ Do I have to make all the bloody decisions round here?’
MacGregor flinched at the noise but he pulled himself together. ‘I think that perhaps the Tiffins are the ones we should interview first, sir. With Miss Tiffin being engaged to …’
A sensible suggestion was all Dover had been waiting for. ‘Well go and see that spinster aunt!’ he announced. ‘Fetch the car round to the front while I nip into the gents!’
Miss Milly Marsh’s cottage was only a few minutes drive away so Dover consented to sit in front next to MacGregor. He was in a very sociable mood that morning. ‘Do they still hang lords with a silken rope?’ he asked chattily as MacGregor slipped the car into gear.
MacGregor stiffled a groan. Of all the damn-fool things to say! ‘No, sir. And, frankly, I doubt if they ever did. I think it’s just one of these myths, you know.’
Dover scowled. Toffee-nosed young pup!
‘In any case, sir,’ – MacGregor turned the car at the top of the village street – ‘nobody gets hanged with any kind of rope these days.’
‘More’s the pity!’ grunted Dover. ‘The country’s gone to the dogs since those gibbering idiots abolished capital punishment. Every spotty-faced yobbo that goes robbing telephone boxes carries a gun. Why shouldn’t they? Ten measly years in the nick doesn’t worry anybody. No, the only language those murdering bastards understand is the good old eight o’clock walk and the knot tucked behind their left ear. Not a deterrent? You should have seen their faces in the old days when the judge put the black cap on! That’d have shown you whether hanging put the wind up ’em or not! And then there’s the cat!’ Dover’s eyes misted over nostalgically as he thought about the cat. ‘That’s something else that wants bringing back. A dozen or so lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails and some of these young thugs we have to deal with would soon … What the hell!’ The brim of Dover’s bowler fetched up with a sharp smack against the windscreen.
Totally unrepentant, MacGregor dragged on the hand brake and switched off the ignition. ‘We’re there, sir,’ he said.
Miss Marsh was a short, heavily built woman with a discontented face. Twenty years ago she might have been pretty but it was hard now to see in her the girl the landlord remembered. She was dressed in black and received the visit of the police with the same tight-lipped stoicism with which she met all the other misfortunes that life inflicted upon her.
Dover and MacGregor were conducted into the front parlour. It was a cold, musty room. The curtains were drawn too but Miss Marsh made no move to open them. Evidently she considered that the eerie gloaming was more than good enough for her callers and, in any case, there was plenty of light for them to make out their surroundings. The furnishings of the room struck a suitably lugubrious note. A large, highly polished table had been dragged into the middle of the room and its top cleared of all encumbrances. It stood there, empty and all too obviously waiting. Two somewhat premature wreaths were propped one on either side of the fireplace while, on the mantelpiece, the framed photograph of a callow-looking youth was already draped with crepe.
Miss Marsh surveyed the scene with bleak satisfaction. ‘He’d sooner go from here,’ she announced.
‘Er – quite,’ agreed MacGregor, looking almost as awkward as he felt.
‘I shall give him a good funeral. I didn’t skimp him in life and I shan’t skimp him in death. And folks needn’t think it’s coming out of his insurance money, either. That’s all going towards his headstone. I’m not going to have them saying round here that I didn’t do right by him, even though he did bring shame on my name both coming into this world and going out of it.’
MacGregor didn’t fail to notice that Dover seemed to have suddenly lost his tongue. The chief inspector was just standing there, gazing longingly at a couple of stiff-backed chairs pushed up against the wall but, for once in his life, not daring to go and sit down on one of them uninvited.
MacGregor drew what little pleasure he could out of that situation and turned back to Miss Marsh, feeling that her rather enigmatic remarks could not be allowed to go unchallenged. ‘ How do you mean,’ he asked hesitantly, ‘brought shame on your name?’
Miss Marsh peered sourly at him in the twilight. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know Gary was illegitimate,’ she said. ‘ I’ll bet they couldn’t wait to let you know all about that down in the village. Not that I ever made any secret about it. It was something Gary had to learn to live with and the sooner he started the better. I don’t hold with sweeping things under the carpet. Gary used to come home from school sometimes, crying because the other kids had been calling him names. I always told him how lucky he was. He’d got the chance to find out right at the beginning of his life what suffering shameless immorality brings in its wake. “ You’re learning your lesson early,” I used to tell him. “Just see that you profit by it and I shall be more than satisfied.”’
‘But, what was shameful about his death?’ asked MacGregor, more than a little put out of his stride by Miss Marsh’s grim philosophy.
Miss Marsh bristled with astonishment. ‘You don’t call being murdered a shameful way to go? Well, young man, I certainly do! All the gossip, things in the newspapers and on the television, policemen tramping in and out and poking their noses into everything! It’s an ordeal I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I can tell you, since this business happened I’ve prayed every night for a decent and respectable death when my time comes.’
MacGregor took a deep breath. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, Miss Marsh, I wonder if you could tell us something about your – er – nephew. What sort of a person was he?’
‘A miserable sinner,’ said Miss Marsh mechanically, ‘like the rest of us.’
Whatever control MacGregor had ever had on the situation was beginning to slip. ‘ You mean he’d been in trouble with the police?’ he asked stupidly.
‘I certainly do not! He’d have found no shelter under my roof if there’d been any goings on of that kind!’
MacGregor managed an apologetic half smile and tried again. ‘I believe he worked in Dunningby?’
Miss Marsh nodded. ‘He was learning the hotel business, working his way up from the bottom. I wasn’t happy about him being away from Beltour but needs must when the devil drives. It was only temporary, anyhow. A year or two and he’d have got married and settled down here again.’
‘I shouldn’t have thought there was much scope for a hotelier in Beltour,’ ventured MacGregor.
Miss Marsh examined him with cold, hostile eyes. ‘Lord Crouch is planning to open a motel on the Claverhouse road. Not that his lordship’s affairs are any business of yours.’
‘And your nephew was going to get a job there?’
Miss Marsh nodded again. ‘ He was going to be manager.’ She sighed. ‘The best laid plans of mice and men,’ she quoted with gloomy relish.
‘Do you know if your nephew had any enemies in Dunningby?’
‘In Dunningby?’ Miss Marsh stared in unflattering astonishment at MacGregor. ‘ I hope you’re not going to waste your time and public money looking for his murderer in Dunningby.’
‘You think it was somebody local?’
‘I know it was somebody local,’ said Miss Marsh flatly. ‘We’ve never been accepted in the village, not really. And there are plenty who were jealous of Gary. They’ve not got a spark of ambition themselves but they just can’t bear it when they see somebody else working hard and getting on.’
‘Have you anyone par
ticular in mind?’
‘No.’ Miss Marsh seemed pleased to be so unhelpful. She walked over to the fireplace and straightened one of the wreaths.
MacGregor looked across at Dover to see if he was prepared to shoulder some of the undoubted burden of questioning Miss Marsh but Dover’s mind was preoccupied with a more pressing problem. He was calculating the odds of being offered a cup of coffee. They were not good.
MacGregor struggled on. ‘I believe your nephew was engaged to be married, Miss Marsh?’
‘It was announced officially three weeks ago.’
There was something in the tone of voice with which this statement was made that caused MacGregor to look up sharply. ‘You didn’t approve?’
Miss Marsh pursed her lips. ‘ We are told it is better to marry than to burn,’ she said. ‘And he could have done worse, I suppose. At least the Tiffin girl isn’t one of these shameless, fly-by-night little minxes. She’s a good bit older than Gary, of course, but she’s got her head screwed on and there’ll be a bit of money there when Tiffin goes.’
It hardly sounded like the romance of the century and, as seen through Miss Marsh’s jaundiced eyes, Miss Tiffin didn’t sound the kind of girl men fight over. MacGregor, however, was in no position to leave any stone unturned. ‘Was there, perhaps, some other young man who might have been in love with your nephew’s fiancée and …?’
Miss Marsh laughed a short, humourless and scornful laugh.
MacGregor waited to see if there was going to be any further comment, but there wasn’t. He tried yet another tack. ‘Do you think we might just have a look at your nephew’s room?’
‘Hey, hang on a minute!’ Fed up though Dover was with standing there like a lemon, it was still preferable to dashing up and down a lot of blooming stairs. ‘Let’s hear about what happened over the weekend first.’
Miss Marsh bestowed upon Dover a look which would have come better from a hanging judge. She noted, and condemned, the greasy bowler hat, the even greasier overcoat with its dandruff decorated shoulders, the heavy scuffed black boots. After a short pause to underline her total and absolute disapproval she said, ‘Nothing happened over the weekend.’
Dover’s face twitched into the blackest of scowls. If there was anything he hated worse than a garrulous witness, it was one who wouldn’t talk at all. ‘When did he get here?’
‘Friday night. He finished too late to catch the train so he had to come round through Claverhouse and catch the bus. He got here about ten.’
‘And then?’
Miss Marsh turned away to run her finger along the edge of the table and examine it for dust. ‘I gave him his supper and we went to bed.’
Dover’s temper was beginning to fray but in the face of Miss Marsh’s grim indifference there didn’t seem to be much future in blowing his top. ‘And Saturday?’ he queried through a stiffening jaw.
‘Saturday? Well, he did a few jobs for me around the cottage – moving furniture, fetching coal, chopping wood. Then we had lunch. In the afternoon he sat in front of the television watching that sports programme. Then we had tea. After tea he did the washing up for me and then he went over to the Tiffins to watch television at their house.’
MacGregor, seeing that Dover was wilting, chipped in again. ‘Did he seem perfectly normal?’
‘Yes.’
‘He didn’t give you any indication that he was in trouble or danger or that he was worried about anything?’
‘No.’
‘What time did he come home on Saturday night?’
‘I’d gone to bed but I heard him come in. It was twenty past eleven. That’s ten minutes after Match of the Day ended, so that was about right. The Tiffin’s cottage is half a mile from here, just down the road.’
‘Sounds as though he had a right lively time,’ grumbled Dover.
Miss Marsh had no scruples about putting any man in his place. ‘Gary came here for a rest. They worked him very hard in that hotel and he never was one for gadding about. Besides, he was saving up to get married. There was no money for frittering away.’
‘All right!’ snarled Dover, finally kissing all hopes of a cup of coffee goodbye. ‘Sunday?’
‘Sunday morning he had a bit of a lie in. Till half past eight. Then he did a few more jobs for me. He washed the windows and oiled the hinges on the kitchen door. After that he got shaved and changed and went to pick up Charmian Tiffin to go to church.’
‘Regular church-goer, was he?’ asked Dover with a hideous frown. His feet were killing him.
‘Not so’s you’d notice. I always sent him to Sunday School, of course, when he was little. And he was in the choir for a bit.’
Dover wasn’t capable of anything as energetic as pouncing but he did manage to pick Miss Marsh up quite sharply. ‘So going to church was something out of the ordinary?’
Miss Marsh was beginning to look bored. She was a woman who liked to keep busy and hanging around here all morning answering stupid and impertinent questions was a waste of her good time. ‘ Mr Tiffin is the Vicar’s Warden. Mrs Tiffin is a pillar of the Mothers’ Union – or thinks she is. Even Charmian does a bit of teaching in the Sunday School. Gary was marrying into the family. It made for peace and quiet all round if he toed the line.’
There was a long pause. Neither Miss Marsh nor Dover appeared to have anything further to say. MacGregor waited until the silence had got well beyond the stage of being oppressive and then opened his mouth.
Dover was galvanized into action. ‘Shut up, you!’ he snapped and swung round on Miss Marsh again. ‘Right, that’s got us up to going to church on Sunday morning. What happened next?’
‘I don’t know. I was on duty at Beltour all afternoon and I didn’t see him again. He was having his Sunday dinner with the Tiffins and then spending the rest of his time with Charmian. They were engaged, you know. It’s only natural that they should want to see something of each other, isn’t it?’
‘Did you know your nephew was going to see Lord Crouch that evening?’ demanded Dover, his eyes narrowing as he tried to look shrewd.
‘Of course. There was no secret about it. As a matter of fact Lord Crouch asked me to tell Gary he’d like to see him. And now,’ – Miss Marsh moved with determination towards the door – ‘if you want to have a look at Gary’s room, I’d be obliged if you’d get on with it. I’ve got things to do. Life has to go on, you know, painful bereavements or no painful bereavements.’
Chapter Seven
‘I just don’t get it!’ complained MacGregor as he set a large scotch down in front of Dover. ‘Nobody – but nobody – could be that dreary. Not and get themselves murdered.’
‘Aaah!’ Dover came up for air, smacking his lips. ‘ That hit the spot all rightie!’
MacGregor shook his head in disbelief. ‘I mean, that room of his! Have you ever seen anything, sir, so totally dull and completely lacking in character? All his clothes in neat piles, three or four old school books, a fishing rod and a collection of foreign stamps! That – God help us – was Gary Marsh!’
‘Maybe he put all his energy into his sex life,’ suggested Dover, upon whom alcohol tended to have a coarsening effect. ‘Or maybe he kept all the juicy stuff at this place where he worked.’
MacGregor couldn’t help thinking of the time and energy that would be saved if Dover only read the reports from the local police. ‘No, there was nothing there either, sir. Inspector Dawkins sent a couple of men round to have a look. Marsh lived in at this hotel and they said his room was about as revealing as a monk’s cell.’
‘P’raps his auntie cleared away all the incriminating evidence,’ said Dover, feeling better as the whisky got to work.
‘She said she hadn’t touched anything, sir. Just dusted and tidied up a bit. Besides, why should she move anything?’
‘She could have croaked him herself.’ Dover had taken such a dislike to the inhospitable Miss Marsh that he was even toying with the idea of having her replace Lord Crouch as his chief suspec
t. ‘I wouldn’t put anything past that woman.’
‘No,’ agreed MacGregor, who hadn’t cared much for Miss Marsh either. Unlike Dover, though, he wasn’t prepared to let personal prejudice cloud his professional judgement. ‘On the other hand, sir, there isn’t a scrap of evidence of any sort to connect her with the murder.’
‘Instinct!’ said Dover. ‘When you’ve been a detective as long as me, you develop a nose for these things.’
MacGregor had frequently wondered how Dover reached his more asinine conclusions, and now he knew. However, the knowledge didn’t relieve him of the obligation to try and keep Dover’s olfactory fancies within reasonable bounds. ‘She hasn’t any motive, sir,’ he pointed out kindly.
Now Dover didn’t care for being patronized by anybody, and certainly not by a jumped-up young pouf like MacGregor. ‘What about the insurance money?’ he snarled.
‘The insurance money? But, sir, we don’t even know how much it is.’
‘Pity you didn’t ask, then!’ retorted Dover.
‘It’s probably only a few pounds.’
‘I’ve known murders committed for a few pence,’ retorted Dover. It wasn’t true but one had to use what weapons one could in the war against MacGregor. ‘And I don’t reckon there was any love lost between ’em.’
‘Well, no, I don’t suppose there was, sir, but that doesn’t mean …’ MacGregor remembered in time that logical argument didn’t cut much ice with Dover and he abandoned it in favour of a simple statement of fact. ‘We have no evidence that Miss Marsh was anywhere near the Donkey Bridge or Bluebell Wood at the relevant time on Sunday night, sir.’