by Joyce Porter
MacGregor had a full five minutes in which to ruminate on these pearls of wisdom before Dover, looking much happier, clambered back into the cab and they continued their journey. ‘What’s the name of this waitress girl we’re going to arrest?’
‘Well, only question at this stage, sir,’ said MacGregor, hoping to nip that conception in the bud. ‘And she’s called Mary Jones.’
Dover shuddered. ‘Makes your blood run cold!’
‘At least she’s not Irish, sir!’ laughed MacGregor. ‘That should give you some comfort.’
Dover turned to stare at his sergeant. ‘You gibbering idiot!’ he snarled. ‘There’s Welsh Nationalists, isn’t there?’ He slumped back in his seat again. ‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty-two, sir, according to the form she filled in for Mrs Fish. Of course, all the information she gave may be false. Her referees, her place of birth, her age. Her name, too, if it comes to that.’
‘And her address!’
MacGregor sighed unhappily. ‘Well, yes, sir. I didn’t want to phone and ask in case we somehow tipped her off that we were coming.’
‘I hope you haven’t dragged me out here on a wild goose chase,’ said Dover with a certain grimness.
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘This girl may be perfectly innocent and all she says she is.’ Nobody knew that better than MacGregor himself. ‘She’s just the best of a poor bunch, sir. I’ve gone through all the other women who are officially recorded as having been in the Yard on Tuesday evening, but none of them looks as suspicious as this Mary Jones does. Of course, sir, it would be a great help if only you could remember more precisely what she looked like.’
‘I was drugged,’ Dover reminded him indignantly.
‘Not until after you’d drunk the tea, sir.’
If there was one thing Dover couldn’t stand for it was a nit-picker and he was just about to tell MacGregor so when he realised that the taxi had stopped. He peered out of the window. ‘’Strewth,’ he gasped, ‘is this it?’
The Dame Letitia Egglestone Hostel for Single Girls in London looked more like Holloway Prison than Holloway did and its grim, granite fagade alone had driven many an unplucked rose into premature matrimony. When it came to the way in which the two establishments were run, however, there was little comparison as the insidious breath of penal reform had not yet penetrated the heavily bolted and barred portals of the Dame Letitia. Here a valiant rear-guard action was being fought against the permissive society with hard beds, cold baths, inedible food and carbolic soap. The staff of the hostel got little reward for their efforts, apart from the knowledge that they were doing exactly what Dame Letitia Egglestone herself would have wished.
Dover caught sight of MacGregor putting hand to pocket. ‘Don’t pay the taxi off, you fathead!’ he bawled. ‘Tell him to wait!’ He glanced meaningfully at the hostel. ‘We shan’t be long. In fact, tell him if we’re not out in twenty minutes to send for the bloody police!’
Miss Tootle, concealed behind the curtains of her office which overlooked the front door, heard Dover’s little joke and failed bleakly to see the humour of it. ( .losing her book (Witchcraft and The Black Art) with a snap she crossed over to her desk and prepared to receive her visitors. She didn’t hurry. It took a good five minutes for perfectly respectable women to penetrate as far as her office and men naturally had considerably more difficulty. Miss Tootle settled herself in her chair and listened to the rattle and clatter of bolts being drawn and chains slipped. Then came the murmur of voices and this went on for a long time. Finally the slamming of the front door indicated that the callers had passed their entrance examination and it was only a matter of seconds before Annie, the skivvy, was tapping on the office door.
‘It’s the Old Bill,’ said Annie, realistically miming a spit into the nearest corner of the room as she stood back to let Dover and MacGregor enter.
It was not Miss Tootle’s first encounter with the police. No one in charge of a hostel for single girls in London can avoid a series of painful interviews with our boys in blue. Miss Tootle had worked out a technique.
‘Your warrant cards, please!’
Dover and MacGregor exchanged glances but complied meekly enough with the order Miss Tootle had barked out at them.
‘Hm!’ Miss Tootle tapped Dover’s offering with her magnifying glass. ‘This looks highly suspicious!’
‘It’s a temporary replacement card,’ explained MacGregor, getting in with a soft answer before an infuriated Dover resorted to his fists. ‘Chief Inspector Dover is an officer of considerable experience and seniority.’ Dover’s original warrant card was still in the Yard’s forensic laboratory being examined for clues, but MacGregor didn’t see why he should tell this old battle-axe that.
Miss Tootle tossed the cards back across her desk and put her magnifying glass away in a drawer. ‘Make it quick,’ she advised.
Normally Dover left all the sweat and turmoil of an interview to MacGregor but, on this occasion he was clearly afraid of having his sergeant eaten alive – and with that taxi ticking away the pennies outside it was a risk he didn’t care to take. ‘We’re making enquiries about one of your girls,’ he began, half wishing that he’d listened more attentively to MacGregor’s briefing.
‘At this particular moment in time I have eighty-four girl in residence at the hostel. Which one do you mean?’
‘Mary Jones!’ said Dover to MacGregor’s great astonishment. Considering the difficulty the old sieve-head had in remembering his own name at times . . .
Miss Tootle was consulting a small card index. ‘Yes?’.
‘We shall want to have a word with her, of course, but maybe you could tell us something about her first.’
‘What?’
Dover was beginning to go oft Miss Tootle in a big way. ‘Well, how long has she been staying here?’
Miss Tootle inclined her head and read the information oft her card. ‘She arrived just over a week ago.’
‘Wherefrom?’
‘I’ve no idea. She gave me a home address in Birmingham.’ Miss Tootle broke off to administer a stinging rebuke. ‘Would you mind not scuffling about on the carpet with your feet like that, Dover? It takes all the goodness out of the pile.’
Dover’s jaw dropped but, under Miss Tootle’s steely gaze, he kept his feet in their filthy boots under control. ‘Did the Jones girl give any references?’
Miss Tootle looked down her nose. ‘I don’t hold with references. I prefer to rely on my own judgement and the tact that all my inmates pay a fortnight’s rent in advance and no credit. That usually weeds the sheep out from the goats.’
Dover was running out of steam. ‘What about her friends?’
‘What about them?’ Miss Tootle didn’t give an inch.
‘Well, does she have any?’
‘How should I know?’
‘A boy-friend?’ asked Dover hopefully. He looked hard at the chair standing m front of Miss Tootle’s desk but the mental telepathy didn’t work and he still wasn’t invited to sit down.
‘No men are allowed in the hostel,’ said Miss Tootle with an air of such viciousness that MacGregor cringed back involuntarily.
Dover raised his bowler hat slightly and scratched the top of his head. ‘Does she have any phone calls?’
‘Not allowed, except in cases of dire emergency and through me.’
‘Er – do you know where she works?’
‘In a cafe somewhere, I think,’ said Miss Tootle indifferently. She put her card index away. ‘In the evening, I believe. She’s never in for supper.’
Abruptly Dover chucked in the sponge and it was left to MacGregor to carry on with the questioning. ‘Is Miss Jones in the hostel now?’
‘I should be very surprised if she were.’
‘Oh?’
Miss Tootle shrugged her shoulders. ‘She’s skipped. Thursday, I think it was. Annie caught her leaving with a suitcase. She asked her where she thought she was going and the girl
said she was just taking her washing round to the launderette. Naturally, we don’t permit any washing to be done in the rooms or bathrooms here. Of course, the minute Annie reported the incident to me I suspected what had happened. I checked her room. She’d done a Hit all right, but the sheets and blankets were still there and that’s all I was worried about.’
MacGregor was getting quite excited and he even risked a glance of triumph at Dover. ‘We’d like to see Miss Jones’s room,’ he said.
‘You can’t. There’s already another girl in it. A Japanese. Besides, it wouldn’t do you any good, even if our rules permitted it which they don’t. The room was thoroughly cleaned out before re-letting and bears no traces of the Jones girl’s occupancy. Annie has a very heavy hand with the duster.’
‘You don’t waste much time,’ said MacGregor sourly.
‘We have a very rapid turnover,’ agreed Miss Tootle with evident satisfaction. ‘Nobody stays here long.’
‘No?’ MacGregor refused to be down-hearted, though ‘Miss Jones’s stay may have been short,’ he said, ‘but she was here for some time. Didn’t she make friends with any of the other girls?’
‘Miss Jones kept herself very much to herself.’
‘Oh, come now!’ MacGregor chided Miss Tootle in a rather familiar way. ‘She must have chummed up a bit with somebody.’
‘There’s Miss Montmorency, I suppose,’ allowed Miss Tootle, if only to prove that nothing escaped her aquiline eye.
MacGregor rewarded this cooperation with his most dazzling smile. ‘And where can we find Miss Montmorency?’
In for a penny, in for a pound. Miss Tootle consulted the man’s pocket watch which she wore on a bootlace round her neck. ‘She might still be in her room. She works in a supermarket in the mornings and then goes to shorthand and typing classes in the evening. Or so she says. Personally I never believe a word these girls say. Most of them are augmenting their incomes in some disgraceful way or another. If Miss Montmorency is in, you may interview her out in the hall.’ While she had been speaking Miss Tootle had pressed a bell on her desk. Now the door opened and the ubiquitous and omnipresent Annie came shuffling into the room, bearing a tray which contained one – and one only – cup of tea.
‘There was no call to go ringing that dratted bell,’ muttered Annie. ‘I was just bringing it.’ She dumped the tray on the desk and jerked her head at the two detectives. ‘Do they want any?’
‘Yes!’ cried Dover.
‘If it isn’t too much trouble,’ said MacGregor.
‘No!’ said Miss Tootle, and it was her word that carried weight. ‘I wasn’t ringing for my tea, anyhow. I want you to go and see if Miss Montmorency is in her room Fifty-three. Tell her a couple of policemen from Scotland Yard want to see her right away in the hall.’
‘She’ll have a fit if I tell her that!’ protested Annie.
‘Let her!’ said Miss Tootle.
Miss Montmorency, however, was not in the least perturbed by the prospect of two flatties come to see her. She came bouncing down the stairs like a breath of fresh air and the American cavalry. She was a large, happy-natured girl who prided herself on having a really cracking sense of humour. ‘Welcome to Colditz!’ she called as soon as she was within loud-hailer distance. ‘Have they told you you’ve got to share your Red Cross parcels?’
Dover was resting his seventeen and a quarter stone of flab and fat on a wilting umbrella stand. It was not the sort of thing he would have chosen to sit upon but it was the only piece of furniture in a hall chilly with shiny brown tiles and glossy bottle-green paint.
Miss Montmorency acknowledged the introductions with undiminished cheerfulness and listened eagerly as MacGregor gave a very circumspect explanation about the reasons for their visit.
‘Mary Jones?’ she repeated, wide-eyed with wonder. ‘Golly!’
MacGregor was back in the driving seat again and relieved to find that Miss Montmorency was a girl who could give a straight answer to a fairly straight question.
‘Well, yes,’ she said, ‘of course I know her. We’ve sat together once or twice at breakfast. Ugh!’ She screwed her face up into an expression of disgust. ‘The tinned tomatoes they give us! They’re simply nauseating! Much worse than the porridge and that’s saying something!’
MacGregor sketched a brief and insincere smile of sympathy. ‘Can you remember what you talked about?’
Miss Montmorency launched into a series of callisthenics apparently meant to indicate acute shame. ‘’Fraid I didn’t give her much chance to talk about anything.’ She put one linger in her mouth and cast down her eyes. ‘I’m a terrible chatterbox. Give me half an inch and I’ll talk the hind legs off a dozen donkeys!’
Dover leaned forward to make his sole contribution to the proceedings. He gave MacGregor a sharp poke in the back. ‘And don’t say you haven’t been warned, laddie!’
MacGregor pretended he hadn’t heard. ‘Did you talk about boy-friends, perhaps?’
Miss Montmorency assumed the mien of a Jersey heifer which had been crossed in love. ‘Only mine, I’m afraid! Oh, gosh, aren’t I simply awful? I ought to go on a training course or take pills or something.”
‘What about work?’ asked MacGregor, battling on with a brave smile. ‘Surely you discussed your jobs. Did she tell you where she was employed, for example?’
‘If she did, I wasn’t listening,’ moaned Miss Montmorency, who could have confessed to a dozen child murders with very little additional expenditure of emotion. ‘I think she was a waitress or something somewhere – or did she serve behind the counter in one of those posh grocery shops up West? It was one or the other,’ she concluded earnestly. ‘Of that I’m quite sure.’
‘Did she ever mention Scotland Yard?’
‘No. I mean, why should she?’ Miss Montmorency’s smile was warm and only slightly condescending. ‘She’s hardly likely to confide in me if she’s on the run from the cops, is she, sergeant?’
Out of the corner of his eye MacGregor spotted that Dover was beginning to exhibit all the classic signs of boredom. Time was running short. ‘How about her family? Her background? Did Miss Jones ever mention where she came from?’
Miss Montmorency’s ringlets bounced tragically from side to side. ‘Frightfully sorry!’
That was enough for Dover. He rose from his umbrella stand and rubbed his numbed behind with unwonted energy. Once he’d restored the circulation he began waddling off towards the front door. MacGregor grinned sheepishly at Miss Montmorency, thanked her hurriedly for her help and prepared to follow.
‘She’s got a coat she bought in Bath,’ said Miss Montmorency suddenly.
‘Bath?’ MacGregor hesitated. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t Birmingham? According to our – er – information, she might come from Birmingham.’
Miss Montmorency smiled forgivingly. ‘I do know the difference between Bath and Birmingham, sergeant! I’m not that potty. And it was Bath. She’s got a blue suede jacket just like mine, you see. With red and black fringes and big silver buttons. They cost the earth, of course, but they’re really gorgeous. Well, one morning I was in the habitual mad rush and I grabbed her coat oft the hooks outside the dining room. It was only when the label caught my eye that I realised it wasn’t mine. I got mine in London, you see. From one of those groovy shops just off Bond Street. But Mary’s came from Bath. The same shop – Naicewhere, it’s called – but a different branch.’ She looked anxiously from MacGregor to Dover. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Clear as mud,’ said Dover, continuing his struggle with bolts and bars. ‘Can’t see what bloody help it is, though.’
‘It does show that Mary Jones has been in Bath, sir.’
‘Her and a couple of million other morons,’ grunted Dover. ‘And only provided her Aunt Nellie didn’t buy it for her. Talk about clutching at bloody broken weeds!’
MacGregor felt obliged to emphasise the obvious. ‘It’s all we’ve got, sir.’
Dover believed that arguing gave you c
row’s feet and ulcers. He capitulated. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. ‘Borrow the girl’s bloody jacket and let’s get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps.’
‘Not my jacket?’ squealed an aghast Miss Montmorency. ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t!’ The faces that confronted her were adamant. ‘Oh, I say/’she wailed. ‘Must you?’
Dover got the door open at last. ‘Fetch it out to the taxi!’ he ordered. ‘We’ll give you a receipt.’
‘A receipt!’ Whimpered Miss Montmorency.
‘It’ll only be for a few days,’ whispered MacGregor, making a mental vow not to let Dover get his filthy paws on it. ‘And we’ll return it safely, I promise you.’
Miss Montmorency, overcome with distress, seemed rooted to the spot.
Dover broke the impasse with a bellow. ‘Get a move on, girl!’ he yelled. ‘Chop, chop!’
The taxi driver, his eyes blinded by visions of early retirement after a few more jobs like this, actually climbed down and opened the door for his honoured customer. ‘You’ve been a long time,’ he observed gleefully.
‘When I want your opinion,’ Dover informed him, ‘I’ll bloody ask for it! And come on, MacGregor,’ – he turned on his favourite whipping boy – ‘get your cigarettes out! ’Strewth, anybody’d think they were made of gold the way you hang on to ’em.’
But Dover had hardly had time for more than a couple of drags when Miss Montmorency came over the horizon at a hand canter. Once Miss Montmorency got weaving, she wove quickly.
‘I’ve put it in a plastic bag,’ she said as she handed over her prize possession with more good-will than the two detectives had any right to expect. ‘You will take good care of it, won’t you? And let me have it back just as soon as you possibly can?’
MacGregor renewed his promise to guard the suede jacket with his life and handed over a receipt.
‘I say,’ said Miss Montmorency, ‘I’m probably frightfully thick but I didn’t quite get why you are so interested in Mary Jones.’