by Joyce Porter
Chapter Eleven
‘I’M SORRY, sir, but I do think we ought to go and see this Comersall woman tonight, before she gets wind of the fact that we’re on to her.’
Dover’s nostrils flared as he breathed heavily down his nose. Young Charles Edward had been asking for it for some time and, by God, if this went on much longer he’d bloody well get it! It had been nothing but argey-bargey ever since they had left Eleanor Smith. There had been a fundamental clash of opinions, and not for the first time. MacGregor wanted to get on with solving their case. Dover just wanted his dinner. The Chief Inspector found himself placed at a most unfair disadvantage: he could hardly be as frank and open about his motives for holding back as MacGregor could be about his for pressing on. The rain dripped off Dover’s bowler as he tried to persuade MacGregor to see reason. The streets of Bearle were dark and deserted. Anybody with any sense was indoors watching the telly or enjoying a convivial drink in a nice warm pub.
‘What you’ve got to consider,’ Dover pointed out fretfully as he stumped along, ‘is that we need a pause at this stage, just to review our findings and plan the next step we’re going to take. What’s the hurry, anyhow?’
‘I should have thought that was obvious, sir. We’ve got to get hold of Freda Comersall tonight before this Smith girl gets a chance to warn her.’ -
‘Chance to warn her? What the hell makes you think she’ll do that? She doesn’t give two hoots what happens to Comersall. I should have thought that was obvious, even to you.’
‘She could easily pick up the phone and let her know we’ve been asking questions,’ said MacGregor obstinately.
‘Well, in that case she could have done it already,’ snorted Dover. ‘If she’s going to warn the Comersall woman she’s got bags of time to do it before we get back to Thornwich, hasn’t she?’
‘I suppose so, sir,’ said MacGregor and let himself be steered towards a dubious-looking Chinese restaurant which was the only place in Bearle where you could get a meal after six o’clock.
Dover spurned the exotic dishes of the East and ordered fish and chips. MacGregor, however, felt it incumbent upon him to look as though he knew his way around and, in consultation with the little Chinese waiter who laughed heartily at everything which was said, was finally served with about ten tiny bowls of smoking and unidentifiable food.
Dover eyed MacGregor’s plate sceptically. ‘What does it taste like?’ he asked.
‘Oh, all right,’ said MacGregor, manfully swallowing a spoonful of fried cornflakes. ‘Very nice, really.’
Dover sniffed. ‘Well, rather you than me, mate! See that?’ he poked a fork at one of the bowls. ‘Cat food, that’s what that is! I wish I’d got a stomach as strong as yours. Must be wonderful to be able to eat anything.’
MacGregor started to talk about the case again. ‘The way I see it, sir, is this. It’s just possible that Mrs Tompkins’s suicide wasn’t suicide at all. I mean, in any case of sudden death we’ve got to be on our guard, haven’t we?’
‘Arthur Tompkins didn’t do it,’ said Dover, resolutely shovelling a forkful of chips into his mouth. ‘He’s got a complete alibi, unless you think that French floosie was covering up for him.’
MacGregor shook his head. ‘No, Mr Tompkins is in the clear, I agree. But what about this three hundred pounds, sir? Mrs Tompkins desperately wants a baby. Eleanor Smith is going to have a baby she doesn’t want. The connection’s obvious, especially with Freda Comersall actually in Thornwich as the go-between.’
‘That,’ said Dover, preparing to tackle a dish of prunes and custard, ‘is pure, undiluted, unfounded speculation. It’s sheer guess-work that Winifred Tompkins was going to buy the Smith baby. Apart from anything else, Mrs Tompkins drew three hundred pounds out of the bank. Miss Smith talked about getting fifty plus a quid a week till the kid was born. What’s the other two hundred odd pounds for? Nappies?’
‘Freda Comersall’s commission for arranging the deal, sir?’ Dover grunted. He wasn’t much of a believer in letting youth have its fling, but since he was MacGregor’s guest he was generously prepared to put up with it. ‘Any chance of a glass of beer?’ he asked the smiling waiter who pattered up with his cheese and biscuits. He gave MacGregor what attention he could spare from his food. ‘All you’ve said so far just strengthens the case for Mrs Tompkins’s suicide,’ he pointed out. ‘She sets her heart on getting this baby, it dies, she can’t have it. Bingo! She croaks herself.’
‘But the three hundred pounds, sir,’ said MacGregor earnestly, moving an imitation Chinese lantern so that he could get a better look at Dover’s face. ‘That money has disappeared. Now, suppose Mrs Tompkins paid it over after the baby was born, but before it died. When the deal falls through and she learns she can’t have the baby, what’s the first thing she’s going to want? She’s going to want her three hundred pounds back. Let’s suppose that whoever’s got it – Freda Comersall, if you like – can’t or won’t hand it over. Mrs Tompkins threatens to kick up a fuss and there’s no way to keep her mouth shut except by murdering her.’
‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover with good-humoured banter – he was feeling much more at peace with the world. ‘With an imagination like that you ought to be writing novels!’ Coming from Dover, this was not a compliment. ‘Yes, coffee for me, sonny, a large cup. Here you are, measuring up this Freda Comersall for the drop when there hasn’t even been a murder committed. All the evidence points to a straightforward case of suicide. There was no sign of breaking and entry – you checked that yourself. The door of the sitting-room was locked on the inside.’ Dover ticked off the points on his fat, stubby fingers. ‘She wasn’t in any two minds about what she was doing, either. The overdose of sleeping pills and the gas show that. She left a typical suicide note, just a few words scribbled on a bit of paper. She picked the right time when she knew she’d have the place to herself and nobody’d come in and save her at the last minute. And, to cap everything, she even had a bath before she did it so’s she’d be all nice and clean for the postmortem. Gawd, I could go on all night! Everything points to suicide.’
‘But what about motive, sir?’ asked MacGregor as he sadly watched Dover selecting the largest cigar from a tray presented, unasked, by the cunning Oriental. Not many people smoked cigars in Bearle and the management were glad of the opportunity to shift some of their surplus stock.
‘Motive?’ said Dover, puffing away. ‘You can take your pick. Maybe the poison-pen letters drove her to it. Maybe it was not getting this baby. Maybe it was her health. Maybe it was any one of a dozen things we’ve never even heard about and never will. Half the time in these suicide cases you never know what finally pushed ’em over the edge. D’you think that Chink’d fetch us a drop of brandy? My stomach’s feeling a bit queer again. A drop of brandy might just settle it.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said MacGregor, looking at his watch and getting the only satisfaction he’d had from the whole meal, ‘we haven’t time. If we don’t go now we shall miss the last bus back to Thornwich.’
On the long cold bus journey MacGregor tried to restart the argument, but Dover wouldn’t budge. He didn’t object to calling on Freda Comersall and seeing what she’d got to say for herself – it was as good a way of passing the time as any – but not tonight. Tomorrow morning, maybe, if he felt up to it – or tomorrow afternoon. Having said this firmly three times he propped his head on MacGregor’s shoulder and fell asleep.
It was about ten o’clock when the bus disgorged them at the bottom of the hill in Thornwich. They were both stiff, tired and bad-tempered.
‘We might just have time for a quick drink before we go to bed,’ remarked Dover as they waited for a gap in the traffic before venturing on the mad dash across the road. ‘Damned soft place to leave a car!’ he snorted, staring at a little blue mini parked outside The Jolly Sailor.
‘Oh, Lord!’ said MacGregor. ‘I think it’s Dame Alice’s. She must be waiting for us.’
Dover didn’t hesitate. At times he had a
remarkable capacity for taking quick decisions. He stepped back from the edge of the pavement, did a quick right turn and strode off in the direction of Freda’s Cafe which stood some fifty yards away in the middle of a vast, muddy lorry park. Freda’s Cafe was open twenty-four hours a day, dispensing cheer and tomato ketchup to the modern knights of the road.
‘Come on,’ he said to MacGregor, ‘we might as well go and get it over with.’
But Freda, unless she had changed her sex and grown a big ginger moustache, was not in the café.
MacGregor bought a couple of cups of coffee and he and Dover sat down at a linoleum-covered table to survey the scene,
‘I told you it was a waste of time,’ said Dover, stirring his coffee crossly with a spoon which looked as though it had been found on the battlefield after Waterloo. ‘If we ask for her it’ll only make her suspicious. We’ve been spotted already.’
A sullen silence had fallen over the large wooden hut in which Freda’s Cafe was situated. There were only some six or seven other customers, big burly men with dirty faces and thick lumber jackets. They all stared suspiciously at the newcomers. One youngish man in a pair of tight jeans swaggered across to a battered juke box and rammed his sixpence into the slot. Under the cover of a raucous, souped-up version of ‘Come Into The Garden, Maud’ rendered by the latest adolescent idol, wary conversations were resumed.
Eventually the song came to a blessed halt.
‘ ’Strewth!’ said Dover, speaking from the heart. ‘I thought my ruddy ear-drums had gone.’
‘What do we do now, sir?’ asked MacGregor.
‘Search me,’ said Dover whose thoughts were now exclusively concentrated on getting back to The Jolly Sailor and bed.
However, in every successful criminal investigation there comes a moment when Lady Luck smiles upon the detective involved. We should have an even higher rate of unsolved crime than we enjoy today if this were not so. Hard work, shrewd assessments, inspired deductions, the wonders of modern forensic science – these things are all very well in their way but, as Chief Inspector Dover’s record shows, they aren’t everything. On many of the occasions when he solved a crime he had employed none of these traditional methods. True~ the little bit of luck which he enjoyed in Freda’s Transport Cafe didn’t exactly permit him to bring his investigation to a glorious and resounding conclusion, but it did enable him to get to bed and, furthermore, provide him with a cast-iron excuse for staying there for the whole of the following morning.
The door of Freda’s Cafe opened and a thin, bald-headed man came in accompanied by a blast of cold, damp air. Several voices invited him to put the wood in the hole.
The man closed the door and returned the homespun banter as he ambled his way up to the counter. ‘Cup of tea and two cheese rolls, George,’ he said.
Dover and MacGregor, sitting near by, could hear every word clearly.
‘Freda not in tonight?’ asked the bald man, sorting through a handful of change.
‘No,’ said George as he pensively watched the tea struggle out of the spout of the tea-pot. ‘Why, was you wanting to see her?’
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ admitted the man.
‘She’ll be in at dinner-time tomorrow.’
‘Oh well, I’ll call in on my way back then. I should be through here about mid-day if my ruddy brakes hold out. Tell her I was asking, will you? She’ll know what it’s about.’
George nodded and swept the appropriate coins into the till.
Dover and MacGregor smiled at each other and felt very clever. They now knew when Freda would be in her café and Freda didn’t know that they knew. It was all most satisfactory. For the first time for some days they felt like detectives. With a light step MacGregor nipped out and ascertained that Dame Alice had raised the siege. Her car had gone from outside The Jolly Sailor. Dover beamed, even at MacGregor. Pippa was passing.
* * *
Dover’s good humour lasted right through lunch on the next day which was a Friday. He had slept solidly through the morning with a clear conscience because, as he carefully pointed out to MacGregor, it was useless to pursue any other lines of investigation until they had cleared this baby business out of the way. They couldn’t do this until they had interviewed Freda and the best time for doing that would be round about half past two when the lunch-time rush was over and the café would be fairly empty, if not deserted.
Lunch at The Jolly Sailor was quite a gay affair. Mr Tompkins seemed to have recovered from the initial shock of his wife’s death and chattered almost gaily about the inquest and the funeral arrangements and the short holiday he was going to take when it was all over. Dover had twitted him about his whereabouts on Wednesday afternoon and Mr. Tompkins had blushed a deep red but had taken the clumsy joshing in very good part.
‘Every man’s entitled to his hobby, Mr Dover,’ he had pointed out with some show of embarrassment. It was a remark which had Dover howling with laughter until the tears ran down his flabby cheeks. After taking a second or two to recover from the shock, Mr Tompkins himself produced a shy smirk.
‘I hope I can rely on your discretion,’ he said to Dover.
‘Of course,’ roared Dover, guffawing like a fool. ‘We won’t breathe a word to anyone, will we, MacGregor?’
MacGregor gave one of his stiff little smiles, shook his head and maintained a prim silence. He wished, not for the first time, that he worked with someone who was a little less philistine in his attitudes. After all, what was so flaming funny about a man wanting to learn French?
Freda Comersall didn’t exactly welcome her two new customers with open arms. ‘I was wondering when you were going to get around to interviewing me,’ she said, standing behind her counter like Boudicca in her chariot.
‘Er – two coffees, please,’ said MacGregor, hoping to soften her up a bit by a modest contribution to the café’s profits. ‘And perhaps you’ll have one yourself?’
‘You’re joking, of course,’ said Mrs Comersall, massively unappeased. ‘I may sell the muck but I don’t have to drink it.’
Feeling that they were in for a sticky time, MacGregor carried the coffees over to a near-by table, and he and Dover waited a little apprehensively for Mrs Comersall to join them. After a few minutes she waddled across to them, clutching a glass of some pale green liquid.
‘What’s that?’ said Dover as she sat down.
‘Cabbage water,’ said Mrs Comersall shortly. ‘It purifies the blood.’ She examined Dover’s pasty complexion. ‘Looks as though a pint or two wouldn’t do you any harm. Gives you a good clear-out.’
Mrs Comersall was colossal. She flowed, unimpeded by any kind of foundation-garment, in all directions. Her arms and legs were enormous and she wore a pair of old carpet-slippers on her feet. She had made the short distance from behind her counter to the table with considerable difficulty and much laborious breathing. Like most plump women, though, she had a beautiful skin, but whether she owed this to the consumption of cabbage water Dover neither inquired nor cared. He decided to treat Mrs Comersall as a hostile witness. There was nothing personal in this. He didn’t dislike Mrs Comersall any more than the majority of people he came in contact with, but things had been pretty boring lately and, in his line of business, you had to take your fun where you could find it.
‘So you were expecting a visit from us, were you?’ he began aggressively, laying a trap with such dexterity that a two-year-old child would have spotted the gaping jaws.
Mrs Comersall had at least fifty years’ experience of police methods, and prided herself on having eaten better men than this fat slob for breakfast in her time. ‘I’ve been expecting you for the past week,’ she said indifferently. ‘Apart from the fact George told me you were snooping round here last night.’
‘Oh, so George warns you when the police come round, does he?’ asked Dover, making it all sound as sinister as he could.
‘Part of his duties,’ said Mrs Comersall calmly. ‘I expect him to report anything tha
t’s likely to have an adverse influence on my trade. Like rats running across the tables and dirty old tramps coming for a free night’s kip.’
‘And what were we supposed to be coming for?’ demanded Dover.
‘Jesus Christ!’ exclaimed Mrs Comersall piously. ‘Don’t you know? You’re supposed to be finding out who wrote these lousy poison-pen letters, aren’t you? I know most people think you’re just in Thornwich for a free fortnight’s holiday, but I told ’em, “You just don’t know the cops,” I said. “That’s just the usual way the lazy bastards” – saving your presence – “work. They’re not having a rest cure,” I said. “They just look as though they are.”’
Dover, blowing furiously down his nose, took this as an open declaration of war. And, of course, it was.
‘Never mind the poison-pen letters for the moment,’ he snarled. ‘We want to ask you a few questions about another little bit of business.’
‘Oh, yes?’ said Mrs Comersall.
‘Do you know a girl called Eleanor Smith – lives in Bearle?’
‘No,’ said Mrs Comersall flatly. ‘Never heard of her.’
‘She knows you,’ pressed Dover.
Mrs Comersall shrugged her ample shoulders.
‘She says she knows you very well,’ insisted Dover.
Mrs Comersall looked at her wristlet watch and started to wind it up.
‘She says you paid her a pound a week for the best part of nine months,’ Dover went on.
Mrs Comersall laughed scornfully. ‘I should co-co!’ she chortled.
‘And offered her an additional fifty pounds for her baby when it was born.’
Mrs Comersall looked pityingly at Dover. ‘Somebody’s been pulling your leg, lad,’ she said kindly. ‘I shouldn’t have thought you were the type to believe everything some empty-headed little tart told you.’
‘Oh?’ said Dover, seeing his opening. ‘And who told you she was an empty-headed little tart?’
A flicker of annoyance crossed Mrs Comersall’s face. I must be getting old, she thought. ‘I was just guessing,’ she said aloud.