by Joyce Porter
‘I don’t know,’ said Dover crossly. He took another sip of brandy. It wasn’t Dame Alice whom Mrs Comersall had phoned. It wasn’t Dame Alice who had been flogging babies at three hundred smackers a go. His lower lip stuck out in a sulky pout. He’d damned near ruptured himself, rushing up that hill. And for what? Not for the pleasure of slipping the bracelets over Miss Thickett’s hairy hands, he could tell you that!
‘You must know something!’ insisted Dame Alice.
Dover scowled ferociously at her. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her to belt up, but diplomacy and a tender regard for his public image restrained him. ‘During my investigations into the circumstances of Mrs Tompkins’s suicide,’ he began with great dignity, ‘my attention was drawn to the fact that she had withdrawn the sum of three hundred pounds in cash from her bank only a few days before her death. We already knew that Mrs Tompkins had earlier been unsuccessful in adopting a baby through the usual channels and when, in the further course of my investigations, I discovered a girl in Bearle who had been preparing to sell her illegitimate and unwanted infant, I naturally put two and two together.’
Dover perked up a bit. Put like that it didn’t sound at all bad. Besides, he reflected maliciously, it might be as well to get the authorized version firmly established before MacGregor got a chance to open his great trap.
‘I discovered,’ he went on, growing more and more pompous, ‘that the girl had entered into negotiations with Mrs Freda Comersall here in Thornwich. Naturally this confirmed my suspicions that there was some connection with Mrs Tompkins, suspicions which up to now had been little more than inspired guesses.
‘When interviewed, Mrs Comersall was evasive, but it was clear from her manner that she knew more than she was prepared to divulge. I therefore,’ said Dover, assuming a cunning look, ‘informed her, casually as if by accident, that we had reason to suppose that Mrs Tompkins was prepared to pay, and, as far as we knew, actually had paid three hundred pounds for the baby. The effect was electrifying! Clearly Mrs Comersall did not know either that the prospective purchaser was – or had been – Mrs Tompkins, nor did she know that a sum of the magnitude of three hundred pounds was involved.
‘Immediately upon vacating Freda’s Cafe, my assistant and I repaired to the sub post office on the other side of the road. There, with the co-operation of Miss Tilley, I overheard a most revealing telephone conversation between Mrs Comersall and someone in this house. It was obvious that Mrs Comersall had got in touch with her fellow conspirator. The two women had been working together to sell Mrs Tompkins the baby recently born to Eleanor Smith.’
‘Mary Thickett!’ spat Dame Alice. ‘How dare she! Living under my roof, how dare she! Of course, she knew all about my dealings with Mrs Tompkins over the legal adoption of a baby. I naturally gave her access to the most confidential material. She must have seen her opportunity to make a profit out of the distress of someone else. I wonder how she got in touch with Mrs Comersall? Miss Thickett has only been in my employ some three or four months and I didn’t even know that she’d even so much as spoken to Mrs Comersall. Of course, I have been keeping my eye on Mrs Comersall for some time. I suspect that she carries out illegal abortions, but it is very difficult to get adequate proof in cases of that kind. No doubt’ – she shivered fastidiously – ‘Mary Thickett considered that background an ideal one for her nefarious machinations. Mrs Comersall could be relied upon to know where to lay her hands on unwanted infants.’
‘Well, there it is,’ said Dover. ‘Mrs Comersall and Miss Thickett were in partnership, and it was your Miss Thickett who was trying to swindle Mrs Comersall out of a fair share of the proceeds. She’s hopped it with three hundred pounds in cash that she got from Mrs Tompkins, presumably before the baby died, or before Mrs Tompkins realized it had.’
Dame Alice frowned. ‘But why should Mrs Tompkins have committed suicide if she was on the point of adopting a baby?’
‘She may have already known the baby was dead,’ Dover pointed out. ‘That in itself might have been the last straw.’
‘And she went to meet her Maker without getting her three hundred pounds back?’ asked Dame Alice incredulously. ‘That doesn’t sound like Winifred Tompkins, I can assure you!’
‘We’re not entirely convinced that Mrs Tompkins did commit suicide, Dame Alice.’ MacGregor, unasked, joined in the conversation. ‘She may have been murdered,’ he added importantly and before Dover could stop him.
‘And she may not!’ snapped the Chief Inspector.
‘Murdered?’ said Dame Alice. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it. Who’s supposed to have murdered her – her husband?’
‘No!’ roared Dover. ‘He’s got a perfectly water-tight alibi and he’s no more motive than any married man.’
‘In view of this baby business and the three hundred pounds,’ said MacGregor, ‘Mrs Comersall and Miss Thickett might have had good reason for getting rid of Mrs Tompkins. They were clearly swindling her over the whole affair, especially so after the baby died.’
‘Balderdash!’ snorted Dover after having started off with a shorter word in mind. ‘Freda Comersall didn’t even know that Mrs Tompkins was the one who was going to buy the baby. She’d have cut this Thickett woman right out of the deal if she had done. And you can see Ma Comersall pussy-footing around, murdering Mrs Tompkins and making it look like suicide? Because I can’t. It’s beyond her physically and mentally.’
‘Well, what about Miss Thickett?’ asked MacGregor hopefully. ‘She had the most to gain and the most to lose. With Mrs Tompkins dead she could hang on to the money, and there was no danger that Mrs Tompkins would start cutting up rough and blowing the gaff on the whole deal.’ He turned to Dame Alice. ‘I suppose you don’t remember where Miss Thickett was on Wednesday, the day Mrs Tompkins died?’
‘I remember very well,’ retorted Dame Alice who prided herself, quite unjustifiably, on having total recall. ‘She spent the whole day with me. We were attending a conference on Venereal Diseases, at Branford, and we didn’t get back here until well after midnight. She certainly couldn’t have had anything to do with Mrs Tompkins’s death, unless it was done by means of some form of remote control which, I presume, is highly unlikely.’
‘Highly,’ agreed MacGregor, looking thwarted.
‘Well,’ said Dover, gingerly lowering his feet to the floor and assuming an upright position, ‘I don’t think we’re going to achieve anything by messing about here any longer. If I was you, Dame Alice, I’d do an inventory of the family silver. Miss Thickett may have helped herself to a few of your heirlooms while she was at it.’ Dame Alice showed no inclination to detain her guests, nor did she show any signs of being willing to wield the brandy decanter again. Dover decided to cut his losses and get back to the haven of rest which he was trying to create for himself at The Jolly Sailor.
He took a step forward, slightly more energetically than he had intended, let out a piercing howl, clutched himself and collapsed heavily on Dame Alice’s Persian rug.
‘My God!’ he howled through lips contorted with pain. ‘I’ve broken my ruddy back!’
Chapter Thirteen
HE WAS, of course, exaggerating. Not even Dr Hawnt, the only medical practitioner he would allow near him, could be inveigled into certifying that Dover had broken his back. Dover was indignant at such professional niceties and insisted on calling MacGregor in for a second opinion.
‘There!’ said Dover triumphantly as his pyjama trousers collapsed into folds round his ankles. ‘Look at that!’ He hoisted up his vest and surveyed himself over his shoulder in the wardrobe mirror.
MacGregor, who had witnessed many gruelling sights since becoming a policeman, closed his eyes.
‘Well?’ demanded Dover impatiently. He was standing in his bare feet upon the cold linoleum.
MacGregor opened his eyes. ‘It looks very nasty, sir. Most unpleasant.’
Dover looked pleased. ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said. ‘That old fool H
awnt kept jabbering on about stiffness resulting from excessive exertion and minor bruising in the lower back. Stupid old cretin! Would you call that minor bruising, laddie?’
MacGregor shook his head.
‘No, and neither would I!’ snorted Dover. ‘ “Rub a bit of embrocation on,” he said. “I’ve got an impacted vertebra,” I told him, but I might as well have been talking to a brick wall. However,’ said Dover, unable to conceal a smirk of satisfaction, ‘I did get him to see sense about one thing.’
‘He wants you to stay in bed for a few days, sir?’
‘Oh?’ said Dover. ‘He told you, did he?’
‘No, sir. I just thought it seemed the most likely course of treatment – in the circumstances.’
Dover was too busy doing a Narcissus to detect any arrière-pensée or maybe it should be double entendre. ‘See that?’ he said, poking at one spot which had a faint circular bruise. ‘D’you know what that is?’
‘No, sir.’
‘It’s that bloody dog’s footprint, where he jumped on me. Somebody ought to get a gun and shoot the brute.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said MacGregor and bent at his crippled master’s behest to haul the pyjama trousers up again.
Dover hobbled back to bed.
It was inevitable that the investigation into Thornwich’s poison-pen case should hang fire for a few days. With the senior detective incapacitated on a bed of pain, nobody could expect that things would progress with their usual élan and verve.
‘I shall have to leave the leg work to you, laddie,’ he had informed MacGregor from his pillows. He groaned pathetically as he reached for his grapes. ‘I’ll just have to lie here and do the thinking.’
Mr Tompkins proved a tower of strength. When he wasn’t engaged on burying his wife or attending the coroner’s inquest on her remains, he sat by the invalid’s bedside and kept him amused. Dover had been reluctantly excused from personal attendance at the inquest. He had been allowed to submit his evidence, duplicating everything that Mr Tompkins had said about the discovery of the body, in writing.
Mr Tompkins, luckily, was one of those people who feel embarrassed if they visit the sick empty-handed, so Dover was kept well supplied with those little luxuries which make all the difference. While Dover smoked Mr Tompkins’s cigarettes and ate Mr Tompkins’s chocolates and drank the occasional glass of Mr Tompkins’s champagne, the two men chatted companionably about many things. Sometimes they even discussed the case of the poison-pen letters. Dover was prepared to talk about this otherwise taboo subject with Mr Tompkins because he had become quite fond of the inoffensive little man. Besides, Mr Tompkins was still talking about establishing his own detective agency and naturally Dover (a detective himself, let it be remembered) was interested. Of course this project, so dear to everybody’s heart, would probably have to wait until Mr Tompkins returned from his world cruise and might even have to be postponed until after the expedition to shoot grizzly bears in the Rockies, but Dover quite understood that the demands of the time of a rich man were many and varied.
Dover scrupulously obeyed the instructions of the physician, who was fetched to see him once a day in spite of his protests, all through Saturday, Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday he was beginning to get a bit bored. Not bored enough actually to get up, but bored all the same. Mr Tompkins was all right but a lot of him went a very long way. And then there was the fact that Dover had, when he’d nothing else to do, been thinking on and off about the case and one small point had struck him. When he’d had his nap after lunch on the Tuesday, he sent for MacGregor.
‘Listen, laddie,’ he said, heaving himself up on the pillows and making a mental note to ask old Hawnt about the danger of bedsores, ‘I’ve been going over the case in my mind while I’ve been lying here. I’m not sleeping very well at night, you know. Insomnia. And I’ve been wondering if you haven’t been tackling this case from the wrong end, as you might say. Now, you’ve been looking at it from the angle of the women who’ve received these letters, haven’t you?’
‘Well, yes, sir,’ admitted MacGregor. ‘If you recall, sir, that was your theory right at the beginning. You said that the woman who was sending these letters would be sending some, probably a lot, to herself as well – a natural precaution. And you said that she’d never burn any of her letters, obviously. She’d make a point of taking them all to the police. And you said . . .’
‘Oh, never mind what I said!’ snapped Dover who was allergic to having his opinions quoted back to him in the light of a subordinate’s hindsight. ‘You’ve been working on those lines, haven’t you? Well, where’s it got you?’
‘Not very far, I’m afraid, sir. I’ve interviewed practically all the women in the village now, sir, and really nothing significant has emerged at all. I concentrated on the ones you originally selected as being the most likely, but I haven’t been able to turn up anything which points to one more than the others. You remember who they were, sir? Dame Alice, Mrs Tompkins, Mrs Grotty – the vicar’s wife – and that girl who tried to commit suicide, Poppy Gullimore. Of course, Mrs Tompkins is dead now.’
‘Of course,’ said Dover who remembered it quite clearly. He remembered Dame Alice and that stupid little nit, Poppy Gullimore, quite clearly, too. ‘What about this Mrs Grotty?’ he asked. ‘Did you get anything out of her?’
‘Hardly, sir,’ said MacGregor with a wealth of feeling. ‘She’s only just got back from hospital. She’d been there a fortnight so it’s quite out of the question that she could have been writing and posting those poison-pen letters.’
‘She’s been ill, too, has she?’ asked Dover with a great show of sympathy.
‘Not quite, sir,’ said MacGregor drily. ‘She’s just been having her eighth.’
‘Her eighth what?’ asked Dover, reaching under the bed and depositing his cigarette-end in the outsize receptacle provided.
‘Child, sir. She’s already got seven under seven, if you see what I mean. Of course, there is one set of twins.’
‘Cripes!’ said Dover who was not fond of children. ‘Hasn’t she ever heard of birth control?’
‘Apparently not, sir.’ MacGregor grinned slyly. ‘They call Mr Crotty Brer Rabbit in the village.’
Dover thought this was funny and chuckled. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I reckon you’re right. She’s obviously been too busy to get up to writing poison-pen letters. Besides, she doesn’t sound the type of woman we’re looking for. Scrub her! Now then, what were we talking about?’
‘You were saying something about me having been wasting my time, sir.’
‘Oh yes. Well, I wouldn’t put it quite like that. We’ve got to explore every avenue and you mustn’t despise dull slogging routine, MacGregor. It’s what solves cases nine times out of ten,’ said Dover pompously. He must have read it somewhere. ‘Now then, to get back to the point. Have you ever considered the women who haven’t been getting these blessed letters?’
‘Well, of course I have sir,’ said MacGregor, who might be bound body and soul with fetters of steel to the Chief Inspector, but who could still call his thoughts his own. ‘Not counting the few teenage girls who don’t seem to come into the picture, there’s only one woman in the entire village who hasn’t had at least one letter.’
‘Two,’ said Dover.
‘Two letters, sir?’
‘No, you fool! Two women.’
‘Are there, sir? I only know of one – old Charlie Chettle’s daughter. She’s had a pretty rough time of it, one way and another. People have been hinting that the poison-pen letters only started a few months after she came to live here, and since she hasn’t had any she must be writing them. You know the sort of thing. Personally, I don’t think she’s anything to do with it. But who’s the other one, sir?’
‘The absconding Miss Thickett.’
‘Oh, yes.’ MacGregor nodded his head and acknowledged this as one up to Dover. It didn’t happen often and MacGregor felt he could afford to be generous. ‘I’d forgotten her. Incid
entally, there’s still no sign of her, sir. She seems to have disappeared completely.’
‘Let’s hope it stays that way,’ grumbled Dover. ‘I’m damned if I know what we’d charge her with if we did catch her.’
‘We wouldn’t need to charge her,’ grinned MacGregor, ‘not if Freda Comersall finds her first. She’s still threatening to make mincemeat out of her. But surely Miss Thickett couldn’t be the letter-writer, could she? I shouldn’t have thought she was well enough up in the local gossip. She doesn’t seem to have mixed very much with the rest of the village – apart from Mrs Comersall and Mrs Tompkins, that is.’
‘No,’ said Dover, trying to look enigmatic. ‘The question you’ve got to ask yourself, laddie, is why neither Miss Thickett nor Charlie Ghettle’s daughter has had a poison-pen letter.’
‘Oh,’ said MacGregor, wondering whether he ought to point out that this obvious question had crossed his mind. ‘Well, as far as Charlie Ghettle’s daughter is concerned, I just put it down to the fact that she’s a comparative newcomer to the village. The same thing would apply to Miss Thickett, wouldn’t it, sir? She’s not been with Dame Alice for more than a few months.’
‘Precisely,’ said Dover, ‘that’s the crux of the whole matter. Now listen, why hasn’t anybody been able to find that typewriter? Why hasn’t anybody heard anybody else doing all that typing – and it’s a fair amount, you know. Why hasn’t anybody been spotted buying large supplies of Tendy Bond notepaper and stamps, too, if it comes to that? Why have no letters been sent to the only two women in the village who have lived here for less than a year?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘Well, I do, laddie! Up to now we’ve assumed that those letters have been written just before they were posted, haven’t we? But suppose whoever wrote them got them all ready, typed, envelopes addressed, stamps stuck on – the lot – and got ready as long as – say twelve months ago?’
‘I don’t quite see, sir . . .’
‘And chucked the typewriter away! That’s why we haven’t been able to find it. That’s why nobody’s drawn attention to themselves by sitting up all hours of the night typing with a pair of rubber gloves on. That’s why Charlie Chettle’s daughter and Miss Thickett alone haven’t had any letters. They weren’t living in the village when the letters were originally written.’