by Joyce Porter
‘I’m always meaning to have another switch put in by the front door,’ he apologized, ‘but somehow I never seem to get around to it.’
Dover had smelled it as soon as he had entered the shop, but amongst the varied aromas coming from packets of detergents and dog biscuits, it had taken him a second or two to identify it. As soon as Mr Tompkins opened the door into the living-quarters at the back there was no mistaking what it was.
‘Here, can you smell gas?’ asked Dover, sniffing suspiciously.
‘Gas?’ said Mr Tompkins. ‘Are you sure? I haven’t got a very acute sense of smell myself.’ He sniffed too. ‘My God, you’re right!’
Things started happening quickly and, not surprisingly, Dover got rather out of touch. Mr Tompkins, with a shout of ‘Winifred!’ flung himself into the corridor. He rushed up to a door on the left-hand side and seized the handle.
‘Oh my God!’ he shouted frantically. ‘It’s locked!’ He hurled himself at the door, trying to burst it open with his shoulder, but the door was much more stoutly built than Mr Tompkins was. Dover hurried along to help and found Mr Tompkins charging back up the corridor.
‘I’ll go round through the yard!’ shouted Mr Tompkins. ‘We’ll never break that door down. You go into the kitchen and turn the gas off at the meter!’
They did a panic-stricken jig in the narrow passage as each tried to push past the other. Dover flattened Mr Tompkins against the wall. ‘Where’s the kitchen?’ he bellowed.
‘Down there at the bottom of the corridor!’
Mr Tompkins, his hat falling off in the process, belted across the shop. He struggled a moment with the lock before he could get the door open and then he disappeared outside.
Dover headed at a dignified gallop for the kitchen. It took him some moments of feverish searching to locate the gas meter which was concealed in a cupboard under the sink, and then he had to lie down on his stomach before he could find the tap. Panting and groping and cursing he fumbled around in the dark. ‘Matches!’ he muttered to himself, rolling over on the floor to get to his trouser pocket.
‘’Strewth, no! Not matches!’ He rolled back on his stomach.
By the time he’d actually found the tap and turned it off, a white-faced, sick-looking Mr Tompkins came into the kitchen at a run.
‘It’s Winifred!’ he gasped as Dover picked himself up off the floor, wiping his hands on his overcoat. ‘I’ve got to go back to her. Get a doctor, quick!’
‘ ’Strewth!’ grumbled Dover again as he hurried in Mr Tompkins’s wake out of the kitchen. As he went heavily down the hall he glanced into the room from which waves of stinking, choking gas still seemed to be issuing. He got a vague impression of a sofa with Mr Tompkins bending over it.
Dover pounded back through the shop and reached the pavement outside. His hands were filthy and the front of his overcoat was covered in dust from the floor. His bowler hat had disappeared somewhere in the confusion and his hair sprouted in all directions like a golliwog’s. All in all he was not a sight to inspire either confidence or respect.
Naturally there was nobody about. Dover looked disconsolately up the hill. He had a hazy idea that Dr Hawnt lived in the same row of semi-detached houses as Mrs Leatherbarrow. It looked a long way. It would be far better to delegate the somewhat ignominious role of messenger-boy and get back inside to comfort and support Mr Tompkins, especially, as Dover realized with a start, since it was now raining.
‘Is anything wrong, Mr Dover?’
It was Charlie Chettle calling to him through cupped hands from across the road. Dover nodded his head and waved vigorously. Mr Chettle bided his time and then skipped smartly through the traffic with spry expertise.
Dover welcomed him as though he were manna from heaven. ‘Do you know where Dr Hawnt lives?’
Charlie Chettle nodded his head. His exertions in crossing the road had left him speechless. His eyes were watering and his nose was running, but Dover had no time to be bothered with petty details like that.
‘Right! Well, you run up there as fast as you can and tell him he’s wanted immediately. Mrs Tompkins.’
The old-age pensioner’s eyes grew wide and he would doubtless have asked a few pertinent questions if Dover hadn’t given him a hefty shove in the back to get him moving. Coughing and choking, Mr Chettle set off up the hill. It was one thing to be able to cross a few yards of main road without getting crushed under the wheels of a lorry, but quite another to tackle the formidable pull up to Dr Hawnt’s house. Mr Chettle was more of a sprinter than a long-distance man, but he prided himself on being game for anything. He staggered heroically on, his cloth cap pulled well down over his eyes and his muffler tight round his scraggy neck.
Dover watched him disappear into the gloom. Couldn’t the old fool go any faster than that? ‘Get a move on!’ he bawled at Mr Chettle’s slowly retreating back. ‘It’s an emergency! Matter of life and death!’
Mr Chettle half-turned and waved. ‘Right you are, lad!’ he gasped. ‘Leave it to me!’
Dover shrugged his shoulders and went back indoors. Mr Tompkins was still in the little sitting-room which contained the sofa and, Dover presumed, the gas fire. Dover poked his head round the door.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked in a tone which turned out more conversational than he had intended.
Mr Tompkins dropped the hand he had been holding. It belonged to a woman who lay, covered with a hand-knitted shawl, on the sofa.
‘I don’t think it looks too good, Mr Dover.’ Mr Tompkins gulped and shook his head. ‘I don’t think it looks too good at all.’
‘The doctor should be here in a minute,’ said Dover, feeling that under the circumstances he should take as optimistic a view as possible. The odds were strongly in favour of Mr Ghettle taking a trip through the pearly gates himself long before he got as far as the doctor’s house.
Mr Tompkins nodded his head absent-mindedly.
‘Anything I can do?’ asked Dover, looking idly round the sitting-room which, as yet, he had not entered. It was a tiny room and seemed to be packed with furniture, though Dover realized, on reflection, that it contained nothing more than a sofa, two upright chairs, a television set and a low table. Rather incongruously there was a french window set in the wall opposite the door. It led out into a little backyard stacked with empty packing-cases and mouldering cardboard boxes.
Dover shivered. There was a howling gale blowing through the room. ‘Might be a good idea to shut that french window,’ he suggested. ‘I reckon you’ve cleared all the gas out now.’
Meekly Mr Tompkins left the sofa and closed the french window. As an afterthought he drew the curtains. ‘Mr Fewkes is a great one for staring in,’ he explained.
‘What do you think happened?’ asked Dover, still lingering uneasily by the door.
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr Tompkins, who suddenly looked very tired. ‘She came in here to have a lie down after dinner. I suppose the light on the gas fire must have blown out somehow and she’d fallen asleep and just didn’t notice.’
‘Hm,’ said Dover. ‘Well, it’s a very small room, isn’t it? It wouldn’t take long to fill with gas.’
‘All this accommodation at the back of the shop is lousy,’ said Mr Tompkins with an unexpected burst of anger. ‘It’s poky and cramped. There isn’t room to swing a cat round. I wouldn’t have minded if we’d been forced to live here, but we weren’t.’
Dover sighed. ‘Did she usually lock the door when she had a nap?’ he asked.
Mr Tompkins looked at the Chief Inspector in surprise. ‘No, he said slowly, ‘of course she didn’t.’
‘The door was locked on the inside?’
‘Yes. I found the key on the hearth-rug when I broke in. That must mean she locked the door herself, from inside the room, mustn’t it?’
‘Was the french window shut?’
‘Oh yes, and locked. I had to break a pane of glass to get my hand through to open it.’ Mr Tompkins turned to look curiously at
the french window.
‘How about the gas fire,’ asked Dover, ‘have you ever had any trouble with it blowing out before?’
‘No.’ Mr Tompkins, like an automaton, transferred his gaze to the gas fire. ‘It’s as old as the hills. You’ve got to use matches to light it, but it’s always been perfectly safe.’
Unwillingly Dover advanced into the room and bent down to have a closer look. ‘I supposed you turned the gas off?’
Mr Tompkins nodded. ‘It was the first thing I did, Mr Dover. Naturally. Of course, I knew you were turning it off at the meter but it was still coming through when I got in here.’
Dover tried the tap. It turned easily, neither too stiff nor too slack. He straightened up with a grunt and looked at the face of the woman lying motionless on the sofa. Dead as mutton, if he was any judge.
‘What do you think?’ asked Mr Tompkins anxiously. ‘Do you think it would be a good idea to carry her outside into the fresh air?’
There was a sound of voices in the shop, and a few moments later a feebly protesting Dr Hawnt was escorted, somewhat energetically, down the corridor by Sergeant MacGregor.
‘Trust you!’ growled Dover to his assistant as he backed out of the way. ‘You’re never bloody-well here when you’re wanted!’
Dr Hawnt was propelled into the sitting-room and pointed in the direction of his patient. He managed to fling one glance of mute reproach at Dover before collapsing in an involuntary heap by the sofa.
Dover and MacGregor retired to the kitchen while Mr Tompkins, thinking that the doctor would prefer to be left alone, hung miserably in the corridor by the sitting-room door.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here, sir,’ said MacGregor as Dover settled himself on a kitchen chair. ‘I didn’t know anything was wrong until old Mr Chettle asked me if I’d help Dr Hawnt down here. He’s a funny old codger, isn’t he? He kept shouting, “Tell ’em to fetch a doctor!” all the way down the hill. He gave way completely at the knees a couple of times and I thought I’d finish up by having to carry him.’
‘Have you got a fag?’ asked Dover.
‘In here, sir?’ MacGregor sniffed the air doubtfully. ‘Do you think it’s safe?’
‘Well, you go out in the corridor,’ said Dover sourly, ‘when you strike the match. If we don’t get an explosion I’ll have a cigarette.’
MacGregor looked at him to see if he was joking. He wasn’t. With a resigned shrug of his shoulders MacGregor did as he was told. There was no explosion.
Dover dragged the cigarette smoke into his lungs and coughed.
‘’Strewth,’ he remarked, ‘you aren’t half buying some muck these days.’
‘What’s been going on, sir?’ asked MacGregor, restraining an almost overwhelming desire to ram Dover’s dentures down his throat.
‘Mrs Tompkins has croaked herself,’ said Dover in a bored voice.
‘Suicide, sir?’
‘Looks like it. The door was locked on the inside, and from the look of the tap on the gas fire it couldn’t have been turned on by accident.’
‘Oh dear,’ said MacGregor, feeling the remark rather inadequate, but what else could you say? ‘Has it anything to do with these poison-pen letters, sir?’
Dover wrinkled his nose. ‘Might have. Mr Tompkins says she’s been getting very upset about them. She got another one this morning. You’d better collect it later on for the file.’ He flicked the ash off his cigarette on to the kitchen floor. ‘She seems to have been a pretty neurotic type from what I’ve heard.’ He looked round the kitchen with a sniff of disparagement. ‘Fancy living in a slum like this with a hundred and seventy thousand quid in the bank!’
It was a long wait before Dr Hawnt came tottering out of the sitting-room. It was Dover who took charge of the proceedings.
‘Well, doctor,’ he said when they’d got Dr Hawnt balanced on another chair in the kitchen, ‘is she dead?’
Dr Hawnt’s face expressed a horrified astonishment. ‘Gracious heavens!’ he squeaked. ‘I didn’t think there was any doubt about it!’ He made a feeble effort to get to his feet. ‘I’d better go and have another look.’
‘Oh, sit down!’ snapped Dover irately. ‘Of course she’s dead!’
‘Well, I thought so,’ mumbled Dr Hawnt. ‘There’s no pulse and I couldn’t see any signs that she was still breathing. Mind you, we’re all human and if you’d like to call in a second opinion you won’t hurt my feelings in the least. In fact,’ Dr Hawnt added with pathetic anxiety, ‘I’d prefer it, really I would.’
‘How long’s she been dead?’
‘Oh dear!’ Dr Hawnt fidgeted restlessly on his chair. ‘I do wish people would realize that I’m just not up to this kind of thing. I don’t know how long she’s been dead. I’ve been retired for over twenty years. I haven’t got a thermometer these days. And you need the body temperature, I remember that quite clearly. There’s some sort of formula you’ve got to work out but, of course, I’ve forgotten that years ago. Why don’t you get that chap from Bearle? He’d be much more help to you than I am.’
Dover scowled. ‘What did she die of?’ he asked.
‘How should I know?’ retorted Dr Hawnt reasonably. ‘You need a doctor to tell you that sort of thing. I suppose it was an overdose of sleeping tablets.’
‘An overdose of sleeping tablets?’ howled Dover, going quite red in the face.
Dr Hawnt fumbled half-heartedly through his pockets. ‘Well, I found this under the body,’ he said. ‘It fell to the floor when I moved her. Gave me quite a turn, I can tell you. I thought she was coming back to life for one dreadful moment.’ Dover almost snatched the little bottle out of his hand. ‘You can see for yourself, it says sleeping tablets on the label.’
‘Are these hers?’ Dover turned furiously on poor Mr Tompkins. ‘Oh yes, Mr Dover. Definitely. She’s been taking them for some months now. Only one at night, though. They’re very strong and the doctor warned her not to exceed the dose.’
‘Do you know how many there were – last night, say?’
‘It was a new bottle,’ said Mr Tompkins faintly. ‘She gets them fifty at a time so there’d be forty nine left, that’s allowing for the one she took last night.’
Dover counted out the pills which were still in the bottle on to the palm of his hand. ‘Fifteen,’ he announced. ‘That means she’s taken twenty-four.’
‘Er – thirty-four, sir.’ MacGregor corrected Dover’s arithmetic and got a scowl of black fury for his pains.
Dover relieved his feelings by taking it out on Dr Hawnt. ‘Didn’t you even notice she’d been gassed?’ he asked in his most bullying manner. ‘The room was full of gas when we found her.’
‘Well, it wasn’t when I arrived,’ snapped Dr Hawnt with a sudden burst of irritability on his own account. ‘I’m not a magician, you know! 1 shouldn’t have been sent for in the first place, and well you know it. It’s not nice for a man of my age to be confronted with dead bodies just when he’s sitting down to his tea. Still,’ he added fairly, ‘there wasn’t any blood splashed about this time, I will grant you that.’ He turned to MacGregor as being the most hopeful source of sympathy. ‘It’s only accidents and things they call me out for,’ he explained unhappily. ‘When it’s just a nice touch of the ’flu in bed, they send for the chap in Bearle. Besides,’ he said crossly, ‘I don’t approve of suicide.’
‘Oh,’ said Dover with crushing sarcasm, ‘you do agree it was suicide, do you?’
‘There’s no need to be rude, young man,’ said Dr Hawnt haughtily. ‘Why else would she leave a note if it wasn’t suicide?’ Dover took a deep breath to steady his nerves. ‘What note?’ he roared.
Dr Hawnt began fumbling in his pockets again while Dover clenched his fists in a praiseworthy effort to prevent himself tearing the old man apart with his bare hands. The note was found at last, a little crumpled and smelling of peppermints but otherwise just as it was when the doctor had discovered it, tucked under the late Mrs Tompkins’s dead body.
‘What the hell have you been doing,’ snarled Dover, ‘dancing the Charleston with her? I should have thought you could have made the sort of examination you do from twelve feet away!’ Dr Hawnt preserved a hurt but dignified silence. Dover read the note : a few words – ‘I’m sorry but I just can’t go on with this any longer’ – scrawled in blue ball-point pen on a torn piece of paper. The final ‘r’ of the message ended in a long tail as though the pen had jerked uncontrollably in the writer’s hand.
Chapter Eight
AT THIS STAGE in the proceedings Chief Inspector Dover threw up the sponge without a qualm and hurried back to The Jolly Sailor for his dinner. With great consideration he took the dazed, but wealthy, Mr Tompkins with him and left MacGregor behind at the shop to clear up the mess. It meant that the sergeant would almost certainly miss his dinner again, but that was an occupational hazard and if he couldn’t take a joke he shouldn’t have joined. Besides, as Dover pointed out, MacGregor’s dinner wouldn’t be wasted. The newly bereaved Mr Tompkins could eat it. Dover was a great believer in the therapeutic powers of food.
Once he’d been relieved of the Chief Inspector’s presence, MacGregor got down to his various tasks with vigour if not good will. He was used to being Dover’s dog’s-body but this was passing the buck a bit too far. There was old Dr Hawnt to be returned, alive if possible, to his residence but, after his gruelling experience at the hands of Dover, he was clearly incapable of tackling that hill even with MacGregor’s sturdy assistance. Luckily Mr Tompkins had accidentally left his bunch of keys on one of the counters in the shop and MacGregor found them. He felt that, in the circumstances, no harm would be done if he drove Dr Hawnt home in the little black car.
Then there was Charlie Chettle, who’d turned up again out of the blue, to be got rid of. He seemed to think that there had been some financial agreement between himself and Dover to cover the fetching of Dr Hawnt. MacGregor grimly pointed out that this was extremely unlikely, but he gave a grinning Charlie Chettle a couple of half-crowns, just in case. Mr Chettle touched his forelock with old-world courtesy and plunged expertly into the traffic on his way to The Jolly Sailor.