‘Sweating It Out With Dover’ 
JOYCE PORTER

OFFICER: Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover 
FORCE: Murder Squad, Scotland Yard 
TIME: 1980

CASES: ‘Dover One’ (1964), ‘Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All’ (1967), ‘Dover Strikes Again’ (1973), ‘It’s Murder With Dover’ (1973) etc.

PROFILE: The fattest, laziest and most inefficient member of Scotland Yard’s famed Murder Squad, Dover is certainly one of the oddest creations in crime fiction, comparable only perhaps with Rex Stout’s huge, gourmet private eye, Nero Wolfe-indeed Ellery Queen once referred to Dover as ‘the most unlikeable sleuth in the history of crime fiction’. The Chief Inspector is vulgar, harsh to the point of offensiveness to his junior officers, and forever thinking of his next meal-which, ideally, he will scrounge off some unsuspecting person. Only when a sumptuous meal is in the offing will Dover switch his manner to one of gross flattery. There is actually little information available as to how this appalling man has achieved such a high ranking at the Yard beyond the suggestion that as no one wanted him in their department he was constantly being moved up the promotion ladder! Dover is a constant moaner-many of his complaints being about his ill-fitting false teeth or stomach upsets caused by overeating-and when he does solve a case it is either from a sudden burst of shrewdness or the hard work of his much put-upon assistant, Sergeant MacGregor. Whichever is the case, Dover will always look after Number One and take any credit going.

CREATOR: Joyce Porter (b. 1924) is the absolute antithesis of her creation, a gentle lady who served in the Women’s Royal Air Force for many years before producing a brand of crime fiction which is always highlighted by its comedy and exaggeration. Her creations include the inept secret agent Eddie Brown; the grotesque amateur detective the Honourable Constance Ethel Morrison-Burke; and the obese Chief Inspector Dover, who has featured in more than a dozen novels and short stories since his first acclaimed appearance in ‘Dover One’ (1964). Of her gross fatman she has written, ‘The fact that his career as a detective has endured, and even flourished in a mild way, is almost entirely due to the fact that most criminals, incredible as it may seem, are even more inept and stupid.’ In ‘Sweating It Out With Dover’, written in 1980, the combination of a sweltering summer day and a brutal murder make the grunting, snarling, belching Chief Inspector, if anything, even more impossible to bear.

THE STORY:

Every English summer, no matter how awful the weather is in general, is blessed with one gloriously hot, really sweltering day-and in drought years we sometimes have two. The savage murder of young Elvin Garlick took place on one of these exceptional days when the sky was blue and the sun blazed down. So, too, did Detective Chief Inspector Wilfred Dover’s ‘investigation’. Indeed, his conduct of the case and the highly unseasonable weather were not unconnected.
It was getting on for midday when Detective Chief Inspector Dover, chaperoned as always by MacGregor, his young and handsome sergeant, arrived at Skinners Farm. The temperature was already pushing up into the eighties and most people would have been delighted at getting out into the country on such a marvellous day. Chief Inspector Dover, however, wasn’t most people and, in spite of appearances, Skinners Farm was only twenty-five miles from Charing Cross and so not really country anyhow.
Charitable people might have thought it was the heat which had addled Dover’s brains but, in reality, he was just as slow-witted on even the most temperate day. On this occasion he didn’t seem able to get it into his head that Skinners Farm wasn’t actually a farm, but an over-restored Georgian house standing in its own grounds and separated from the hurly-burly of the outside world by a couple of fields full of gently ruminating black and white cows.
‘I suppose they call it a farm, sir,’ said MacGregor, surreptitiously dabbing at the back of his neck with a slightly starched white handkerchief, ‘because it was once the farmhouse.’
‘Bloody fools,’ said Dover, the sweat standing out in beads on his forehead. As a concession to the weather, he had left off his overcoat-but the greasy bowler hat, the blue serge suit, and the down-at-heel boots were the same as ever. ‘Strewth,’ panted Dover, ‘but it’s hot!’
‘Perhaps we could have the window down a bit, sir,’ said MacGregor, who’d been wondering for some time if the peculiar smell in the police car was Dover or merely something agricultural they were spraying on the fields.
‘I hope they’ve shifted that blooming body,’ said Dover querulously as he plucked at his shirt. ‘It’ll be ponging to high heaven else.’
MacGregor glanced at his watch. ‘They may not have moved it yet, sir,’ he warned. ‘It’s only about an hour and a half since they found him, and since I understand he’s lying in some sort of copse and reasonably sheltered from the sun-‘
‘You won’t get me going to see it,’ declared Dover flatly. ‘I’ll bet it’s all crawling with flies. Here’-he roused himself as the car turned into a driveway-‘are we there?’
The married couple who lived at Skinners Farm were, understandably, in a state of some distress and they greeted the arrival of the two high-powered detectives from Scotland Yard as though it was a heaven-sent solution to all the horrors of that terrible morning. Anxiously hospitable, they conducted a profusely sweating Dover through the house and out on to the comparatively cool and shady veranda.
Here they installed him on a cane chaise longue, plied him with cigarettes, and asked him what he would like in the way of a long, cool drink. Dover, having graciously accepted pretty little Mrs Hewson’s suggestion of an iced lager, hoisted his boots up on to the footrest and flopped back. ‘Strewth, this was the life! And it was going to take more than a bloody murder case to dislodge him from it.
When, a few minutes later, Mr Hewson came out with the drinks, Dover was more or less obliged to open his eyes. Having half a pint of ice-cold liquid sloshing around in his stomach had quite a bracing effect on him, however, and for a few minutes he was actually sitting up and taking some interest in his surroundings. The veranda, he discovered, overlooked a large and well-kept garden which fell gently away from the house. In the distance was what appeared to be a clump of trees where several figures in dark blue could dimly be seen moving about.
Dover had no wish to strain his eyesight by peering through the heat haze, so he treated himself to a good look at his host instead. Mr Hewson, he ascertained without much interest, was a man of about fifty, but very fit and youthful looking. He was wearing a pair of powder-blue shorts and matching T-shirt, but his manner was far from being carefree and relaxed. As he explained with an uneasy laugh, he wasn’t accustomed to stumbling over dead bodies in the middle of a Saturday morning.
Dover relieved his own inner tensions with a good belch and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘You found him, did you?’
‘No, not exactly,’ said Mr Hewson. ‘Tansy, here’-he indicated his wife who was happily engaged in refilling Dover’s glass-‘actually found him, but naturally I went down to have a look before I phoned the police. I hoped,’ concluded Mr Hewson with a bleak little smile, ‘that she’d got it wrong.’
‘Still hanging around, are they?’ asked Dover through a yawn which gave everybody a fine view of his dentures.
The local police? Yes. The Inspector’s using the phone in the sitting-room and the rest of them are still down there in the old orchard.’ Mr Hewson pointed toward the clump of trees which Dover had already more or less noticed. ‘They’re searching through the undergrowth. Er-do you want me to tell them you’re here?’
The last thing Dover wanted was a mob of local flatfoots swarming all over him in that heat. He leered encouragingly at pretty little Mrs Hewson. ‘So what happened, missus?’ he asked and rattled his now empty glass.
Pretty little Mrs Hewson grew tearful. She’d told her story four times already and really didn’t want to go through it all again.
Dover had little sympathy for a woman who seemed incapable of recognising an empty glass when she saw one. ‘Oh, get on with it!’ he advised impatiently.
Mrs Hewson gulped, dried her eyes on a wisp of a handkerchief, clutched her husband’s hand, and complied. ‘It’s all my fault, actually. If I hadn’t decided to grub up the old orchard and turn it into a vegetable garden, none of this would ever have happened. Freddie wasn’t a bit keen on the idea-were you, darling? He said he’d do it himself some time but-well, I know how busy he is, so I got hold of this young man from the village to come and do it.’
‘What young man?’ demanded Dover, sportingly moving his empty glass even nearer so as to give Mrs Hewson every chance.
‘The young man who’s been murdered. Elvin Garlick. He works for a firm of landscape gardeners so, of course, he’s able to borrow their equipment.’
‘You mean he was doing the job for you in his own time?’ MacGregor, sipping straight lemonade because he didn’t drink when he was on duty, was taking notes. Well, somebody in that partnership had to behave responsibly, didn’t they?
‘Oh, yes!’ said Mrs Hewson with some pride. ‘And for cash. That way you get it cheaper because nobody has to pay income tax or VAT or anything. The only trouble was,’ she added with a disconsolate little moue, ‘he could only come on weekends and that meant I couldn’t keep it a secret from Freddie. I’d wanted to present him with a fait accompli, you see.’
‘Ugh,’ grunted Dover, just to show he was still awake.
‘Well, Elvin arrived about half-past eight this morning.’ Mrs Hewson raised her pretty little chin defensively. ‘He told me to call him Elvin. He said everybody always did, especially when he was obliging them. Well, I told him exactly what I wanted doing and left him to get on with it.’
‘And where were you all this time, sir?’ MacGregor turned to Mr Hewson.
‘I was still getting up. Saturday’s my day off, too, you know.’ Freddie Hewson felt that further explanation was required. ‘I’m a stockbroker so, of course, I’m in the City all week.’
‘So you didn’t see Mr Garlick?’
‘No. I knew somebody’d come to the house, of course, and then later you could hear his rotivator or whatever churning away down there in the orchard. That’s when this naughty little girl here’-Mr Hewson squeezed his wife’s hand affectionately-‘finally had to tell me what she was up to.’
‘He was ever so surprised!’ simpered little Mrs Hewson happily.
‘And then what, sir?’
‘Well, then nothing, Sergeant. Tansy and I had breakfast out here on the veranda. Garlick was all right then because we could hear him-couldn’t we, darling? After breakfast I went round to the back of the house to work on my car. I’m rebuilding a 1934 Alvis and there were a few things I wanted to get done before it got too hot.’
‘And you, Mrs Hewson?’
‘I was in the kitchen, getting as much as I could ready for dinner tonight. Well, you don’t want to spend a glorious day like this slaving over a hot stove, do you?’
‘The kitchen’s on the far side of the house, too, Sergeant,’ explained Mr Hewson, ‘so neither of us could see anything going on in the old orchard. And, as I told the other policeman, we didn’t hear anything, either. We were both pretty absorbed in what we were doing and, of course, Garlick was a good way off and he wasn’t using his machinery the whole time. Well, at about eleven, I suppose it would be, Tansy brought me out a cup of coffee to the garage. She said she was going to take some down to Garlick, too. I would have gone myself, of course, but I’d just started stripping down the clutch and it was all a bit fraught and I really didn’t want to leave it.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mind, lovie!’ cooed Mrs Hewson. ‘Like I said, I was glad to get out of that kitchen for a few minutes and stretch my legs.’
MacGregor nodded. ‘So you walked down to the old orchard with the coffee, Mrs Hewson?’
That’s right. Well, when I got there, I couldn’t see or hear Elvin anywhere, so I shouted his name. I wasn’t keen to go tramping about down there because it’s waist-high in weeds and nettles and things.’ Mrs Hewson stretched out her shapely bare legs for the general delectation and to emphasise the point she was making.
MacGregor did, indeed, begin to sweat a bit more freely, but it was many moons since any part of the female anatomy had sent the blood racing through Dover’s veins. He merely pushed his bowler hat a bit farther back on his head and inquired if anybody’d got a cigarette to spare.
The murder investigation ground to a halt as the Hewsons obligingly rushed off in all directions to fetch cigarettes, matches, and ashtrays. They finally redeemed themselves by refilling Dover’s glass, and it was only when they’d got Dover happily swilling and sucking away that Mrs Hewson was able to finish her story.
The end proved something of an anticlimax. Having received no answer to her shouts, Mrs Hewson had gingerly ventured farther into the old orchard and found Garlick just lying there, face down, with his own pitchfork sticking out of his back. Pretty little Mrs Hewson wasn’t sure whether she’d screamed, but she was certain she hadn’t touched the body.
‘I didn’t have to,’ she explained unhappily. ‘I just knew he was dead. I dropped everything and came running back up here to tell Freddie.’
Mr Hewson took up the tale. ‘I went tearing down to the old orchard,’ he said, ‘and there he was. I couldn’t see any sign of breathing-Garlick was stripped to the waist, by the way-and with that pitchfork pinning him to the ground... well, I knew it couldn’t be an accident or anything. I left everything just as it was and came back up here and phoned the police.’
‘And we had a patrol car here in less than five minutes.’ A man who had been waiting just inside the sitting-room for a suitably dramatic moment stepped forward. There was an unmistakable drop of the jaw when he got his first clear look at Dover, but he recovered well and introduced himself. ‘Detective Inspector Threlfall, sir. I arrived at eleven twenty-six in response to an urgent summons from the patrol car and I have been in charge of the preliminary investigation since my arrival.’
Detective Inspector Threlfall paused in case the seventeen and a quarter stone of solid flesh stretched out on the chaise longue wished to make some response. It didn’t. With the mercury climbing that high in the thermometers, Dover had no energy to spare for social niceties.
Inspector Threlfall cleared his throat and tried again. ‘You’ll want to see the body, sir.’
That stung Dover into life. ‘I bloody shan’t!’ he growled, the mere thought of venturing out into that hot bright world outside making him feel quite sick.
‘The doctor thought that Garlick had been knocked unconscious with a blow across the back of the head, sir.’ Inspector Threlfall would never have believed that Dover didn’t care a fig either way. ‘Then he was run through with the pitchfork while he was still out. Crude, but effective.’
MacGregor took pity on the Inspector. ‘Are there any signs as to which way the murderer came, sir?’
Inspector Threlfall shook his head. ‘Not so far, Sergeant. Mind you, Buff had been churning things up for a couple of hours before he bought it, so it’s a tricky job trying to sort things out. Mind you, the murderer could have come from almost any direction. Crept down this way past the house or come across those fields or’-Inspector Threlfall waved his arms about in the appropriate directions-‘got into the orchard from the other side. You can’t see it from here, but there’s a road running along there, not fifty yards from where Buff was killed.’
Dover’s chair creaked pathetically as he tried to find a more comfortable position.
‘Buff?’ queried MacGregor with a frown.
Inspector Threlfall shrugged. ‘That was his nickname. I’ve known him since he was old enough to appear before a juvenile court, you know, and he’s been a regular customer ever since. We’re going to miss him. He’d had a go at pretty well everything-pinching old ladies’ pension books, drunk and disorderly, breaking and entering, nicking cars, shoplifting-‘
‘Good heavens!’ gasped Mrs Hewson faintly.
Inspector Threlfall glanced at her with just a touch of contempt. ‘That’s how he got his job with Wythenshaw’s, madam. His probation officer swung it for him. Well, they’d tried everything else. Seems they thought a spell of honest toil might sort him out. I don’t know what old Wythenshaw’s going to say when he finds out Buff’s been “borrowing” all that expensive gear.’
‘But he told me his boss was only too willing to lend him the stuff,’ protested Mrs Hewson, carefully avoiding her husband’s eye.
‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he, madam?’ asked Inspector Threlfall easily. ‘Always had a very smooth tongue, young Buff, especially where the ladies were concerned.’ He turned back to MacGregor. ‘That’s where I’d start looking, if I was you, Sergeant. Buff’s got more girls into trouble than you and I’ve had hot dinners. There must be hundreds of fathers and husbands and boyfriends thirsting for his blood-and that’s not counting any members of the fair sex who might have had it in for him.’
‘It hardly sounds like a woman’s crime,’ said MacGregor doubtfully. He was dying to get down to the old orchard and see things for himself.
‘I don’t see why not. You don’t need much strength to knock somebody out with a chunk of wood or something, and that pitchfork had prongs as sharp as a razor. It would go through him like a hot knife through butter.’
‘Oh, dear!’ moaned Mrs Hewson, clamping both hands across her mouth and going as white as a sheet.
Her husband leapt across, and wrapping his arms protectively round her, helped her to her feet. He smiled apologetically at the three stolidly staring policemen. ‘She’s a bit upset, I’m afraid. I’ll get her to have a little lie-down. You don’t want us any more just now, do you? I think we’ve told you all we know.’
Nobody seemed much concerned one way or the other, though Dover did bestir himself to remark that, if Mr Hewson was thinking of making his wife some tea, he-Dover-wouldn’t say no to a cup.
‘These cold drinks are all right,’ said Dover confidingly to an astonished Inspector Threlfall, ‘but there’s nothing to touch a good hot cup of tea, especially in this bloody weather. It brings you out in a good muck sweat.’
‘Oh-quite,’ said Inspector Threlfall. ‘Er-I was wondering what your plans were, sir.’
‘Plans?’ Dover squinted suspiciously.
‘I thought you might like to pop down to the village, sir, and have a word with the lad’s mother. He lived with her and she might just know something. I’ve got some chaps out making general inquiries around the neighbourhood, but I thought I’d best leave Mrs Garlick for you.’
There was an awkward pause. Not that Dover was hesitating. Wild horses weren’t going to shift him off that veranda until the temperature outside dropped by at least twenty degrees, but there was the problem of conveying this message to Inspector What’s-his-name without too much loss of face. ‘How many people knew he was going to be working here this morning?’ asked Dover in an attempt to give himself time to think.
Inspector Threlfall rubbed his chin. ‘Not many, I should think. Not if he was borrowing the gear without permission. Besides, it’s not the sort of thing you’d expect young Buff to be doing in his spare time. Normally, if he wanted extra money, he’d just nick it.’
MacGregor wiped the perspiration off his upper lip. The veranda was only comparatively cool. ‘Maybe he’s turned over a new leaf?’
‘More likely casing the joint,’ said Inspector Threlfall. ‘The Hewsons must have been mad to let him come within a mile of this place.’
MacGregor fanned himself gently with his notebook. ‘It was more Mrs Hewson, wasn’t it? I don’t think her husband knew anything about it until Garlick turned up this morning.’
‘Seems he wanted that old orchard left just as it was,’ said Inspector Threlfall. ‘Claims it’s a nature reserve or something. I reckon he’ll pin her ears back for her when all this is over.’
Most untypically at this stage in the proceedings, Dover was wide awake and listening intently. It wasn’t, however, the lethargic conversation about the Hewsons’ private life that was claiming his anxious attention, but the more interesting rumbles that were coming from his stomach.
MacGregor laughed a cool, sophisticated, man-of-the-world laugh. ‘Hewson’ll just have to teach her who’s boss, otherwise he won’t be able to call his soul his own.’
‘Hark who’s talking!’ jeered Dover, for whom it was never too hot and sticky to be unpleasant. He left his guts to take care of themselves for a moment. ‘You could write all you know about married life on a threepenny bit, laddie, and still have room for the Lord’s Prayer. Any moron can see that she’s got him by the short and curly. What do you expect when a man goes and marries a flighty young thing half his age?’
‘I don’t think he’s quite as-‘
‘Near as damn it!’ snarled Dover, who didn’t care to be contradicted, especially when he wasn’t feeling too frisky in the first place. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’
‘Speaking of marriage,’ said Inspector Threlfall-but nobody was listening to him.
Dover had tuned in to those ominous visceral splutterings again and MacGregor was frantically trying to work out if Dover had spotted something he’d missed.
‘Do you think it might be a case of jealousy, sir?’ MacGregor asked, eyeing Dover doubtfully.
Dover blinked. ‘Eh?’
MacGregor grew even more worried. ‘The elderly husband, sir, and the attractive young wife? Plus the sexy young man from the village? Do you think there could have been anything between Mrs Hewson and Garlick?’ MacGregor appealed to Inspector Threlfall. ‘You did say Garlick was attractive to women, didn’t you, sir?’
‘Like a honeypot to flies,’ agreed Inspector Threlfall.
‘Or, maybe’-MacGregor was more interested in his own brilliant deductions-‘it was Mrs Hewson! She takes the coffee down to the old orchard, say, and Garlick makes improper advances towards her. She repulses him. He persists. She picks up the nearest fallen branch or what-have-you and-‘
‘Bunkum!’ said Dover, coming out in a hot flush at the mere thought of such an expenditure of energy in that heat. ‘She’d not have the strength. She’s only knee-high to a grasshopper.’
‘Garlick wasn’t all that big a chap, sir,’ said Inspector Threlfall as he remembered that these two Scotland Yard experts hadn’t yet even seen the body. ‘A woman might have done it. But what I wanted to mention, sir, was about the Hewsons.’
‘Well, why don’t you spit it out, then? I haven’t got all bloody day to sit around waiting for you to come to the point.’
The training that Inspector Threlfall had received at the police school all those years ago stood him in good stead now. Otherwise Skinners Farm might have witnessed another and even bloodier murder. ‘They’re not actually husband and wife, sir. Not legally, that is.’
Dover shrugged his ample shoulders and folded his hands over his ample paunch. ‘So what? It’s no skin off my nose.’ He closed his eyes against the glare coming in from the garden, only to snap them open again as the desire to score off a brother police officer proved stronger than the longing for a quiet forty winks. ‘She wears a wedding ring,’ he pointed out, much to MacGregor’s amazement because one didn’t really expect Dover to notice such things. ‘And she calls herself “Mrs”.’
‘That’s as maybe, sir,’ said Inspector Threlfall, nobly swallowing the rejoinder he would have liked to have made. ‘But they are definitely not married-well, not to each other. Hewson’s already got a wife. Or as far as anybody knows, he has.’
‘And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It’s just that I happened to be involved when she did a bunk, sir. The first Mrs Hewson, that is. I was on duty when Hewson came in to report that she was missing. It must be six years ago, now. He wanted us to find her.’
‘But you didn’t?’
‘There’s nothing we can do about a runaway wife, sir. You know that. I carried out a routine investigation but there was nothing suspicious about her disappearance. All I could do was suggest to Mr Hewson that he try the Salvation Army, not that it was her sort of thing, really.’
Working on the principle that ‘talk, talk on the veranda’ was a damned sight better than ‘walk, walk across that dirty great garden’, Dover demanded more details about the first Mrs Hewson and her mysterious disappearance. Inspector Threlfall was obliged to search his memory. As far as he was concerned, the whole incident had been totally unremarkable. It was true that the first Mrs Hewson had cleared out without a word and nobody had heard from her since, but this could be attributed to pure spite.
‘Spite?’ queried Dover, almost as though he was interested.
‘It makes it difficult for Hewson to divorce her, sir. As things stand now, he’s got to wait all of seven years and then apply to the courts for permission to presume that she’s dead. Meantime, his hands are tied. You can’t serve divorce papers on a woman you can’t find. Hewson, himself, reckoned that she’d stay out of sight until the seven years was nearly up and then put in an appearance again, just to be bloody-minded. The marriage was pretty well on the rocks when she left home but she seems to have made up her mind not to let him go without a struggle.’
‘You’re sure there were no signs of foul play?’
‘Quite sure, sir. She’d taken all her clothes and jewellery and her passport. There were a couple of suitcases missing and she’d cleared out their joint banking account. Her car turned up a few weeks later. It had been abandoned in the long-stay car park at Gatwick airport but there were no clues in it as to where she’d gone.’
Dover ran a stubby finger round inside his shirt collar. ‘Strewth, it was hot! He hoped What’s-his-name wasn’t going to be all bloody day with that cup of tea. ‘Was there another man?’
‘Hewson thought there might be, sir, but he didn’t know. She was on her own here quite a bit while he was off working in the City.’
‘What about her friends?’ Dover might not have been the world’s most brilliant detective but, in his long years in the police, even he’d managed to pick up a few bits of technique. ‘Did she mention to any of them she was thinking of running away?’
Inspector Threlfall shook his head. ‘As far as I can remember, sir, she didn’t have any friends. At least, not round here.’
‘Relations?’ Dover had begun thrashing about in his chair like a stranded porpoise.
Inspector Threlfall watched these antics nervously. Was Fatty having some kind of heatstroke or was he merely trying to hoist himself to his feet? ‘Only a sister in Ireland, sir, and they hadn’t spoken for years.’
With a final wheeze Dover managed to stand up. Too hot to move, it may have been, but, when Nature calls, even the least fastidious of us is obliged to go. Especially if we have bladders as weak as Dover’s. ‘Bloody foreign muck!’ he grumbled. ‘It goes straight through you. I don’t know why people can’t give you proper English beer.’ He turned to MacGregor who was trying to pretend that none of this had anything to do with him. ‘Where is it, laddie?’
Long association with Dover had taught MacGregor to give a high priority on every possible occasion to locating where ‘it’ was. ‘I believe there’s a small cloakroom at the foot of the stairs, sir.’
Dover departed at an urgent trot, leaving a thoughtful silence behind him on the veranda.
Inspector Threlfall loosened his tie. ‘He’s a bit of a lad, eh?’ he said at last.
MacGregor responded with a thin humourless smile and changed the subject. ‘Have you any ideas about who killed Garlick, sir?’
‘Some,’ said Inspector Threlfall, seeing no particular reason to be helpful. Left alone he reckoned he could have solved this case in a couple of hours flat.
‘One of his fellow yobboes, sir?’
‘Could be.’
‘Friday is usually payday,’ observed MacGregor carefully. ‘Garlick was a bit of a drinker, I think you said?’
‘He liked his pint.’
MacGregor closed his notebook to show that this was an off-the-record conversation. ‘You often get drunken rows blowing up on a Friday night. Maybe this one didn’t get settled until Saturday morning. I mean, who else-except his mates-would have known he’d be working out here this morning? Apart from Mrs Hewson, that is. He’d have hardly spread the news around, would he? And it would only be a local chap who’d know there was easy access to that old orchard from the road.’
Inspector Threlfall contented himself with raising his eyebrows in an enigmatic sort of way. If that was how the clever dicks from the Yard saw it, good luck to ‘em! Inspector Threlfall wasn’t going to stick his neck out just to show them where they’d gone wrong.
It seemed a very long time before Dover came waddling back. MacGregor tried to get him to continue on down to the scene of the crime while he was still on his feet, but Dover brushed his sergeant’s efforts to one side and flopped back into his chair.
‘I’ve just been out round the back,’ he announced.
MacGregor’s heart sank. Oh, it was all so mortifying! ‘But, sir,’ he wailed, ‘I told you exactly where the cloakroom was!’
Dover flapped an impatient hand. ‘Not that, you fool!’ he growled. ‘I went there first. It was after when I went round the back of the house to have a look. Bloody good thing I did, too. Do you know what? You can’t see the kitchen from the garage and you can’t see the garage from the kitchen.’
‘Sir?’
That means he did it, laddie!’ explained Dover helpfully. He nodded cheerfully at Inspector Threlfall. ‘All we need now is a bulldozer and a warrant.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
Dover’s good humour began to evaporate. If there was one thing that really got to him, it was stupidity, especially on a blooming hot day like this. ‘You got cloth ears or something?’ he asked Inspector Threlfall savagely. ‘I’ve solved your murder for you. ‘Strewth, some people want it with bloody jam on!’
Inspector Threlfall very sensibly clung on to the one bit of this he could understand. ‘You’ve solved the case, sir?’
‘It came to me out there,’ said Dover, not without a touch of pride. ‘I wasn’t just twiddling my thumbs, you know. Then I went round the back and Bob’s your uncle. It all fits. All you’ve got to do is dig up the evidence and charge him with murder.’
‘But charge-er-who, sir?’
‘Well, What’s-his-name, you bloody fool!’ roared Dover. ‘Who else, for God’s sake? Look, this morning he waits until his wife-or whatever she is-is safely shut up in the kitchen. Right? Then he nips out of the garage, round the other side of the house-get it?-and down across the bloody garden.’
The gesticulations which accompanied this vivid account were a little uncertain as Dover had not actually seen the terrain he was describing. ‘He sneaks into this orchard place, finds young Who’s-your-father, picks up the nearest blunt instrument, and knocks him out. OK? After that, all he has to do is finish the job off with the. pitchfork. Easy as shelling peas.’
Rightly deducing that nothing useful was going to emerge from Inspector Threlfall’s feebly gaping mouth, MacGregor himself tried to introduce a note of sanity into the proceedings.
‘Are you saying that Mr Hewson murdered Garlick, sir? But why should he? He didn’t even know Garlick. In fact’-MacGregor riffled officiously through his notebook-‘he claims that he’d never even seen Garlick until after he was dead. That’s a very definite statement, sir, and easy enough to check.’
Dover scowled. Trust MacGregor to start nit-picking! ‘He didn’t have to know Garlick,’ he said sullenly. ‘He’d have croaked anybody.’
‘You mean Mr Hewson is some sort of homicidal maniac, sir?’
Dover’s scowl blackened. If it hadn’t been for the excessively hot weather and MacGregor being such a big strapping chap, Dover might have been sorely tempted to go across and belt him one. Insolent young pup! ‘Hewson,’ he snarled through gritted dentures, ‘would have killed anybody who started digging that old orchard up.’
The penny dropped and MacGregor could have kicked himself. ‘You mean-‘
‘I mean that’s where he buried his first blooming wife!’ snapped Dover, making sure that MacGregor didn’t steal his thunder this time. ‘She didn’t run away. He killed her and then buried her with all her clothes and jewellery and stuff out there in that orchard.’
Inspector Threlfall recovered his powers of speech. ‘But I investigated the first Mrs Hewson’s disappearance, sir, and there were no suspicious circumstances.’
‘Strewth,’ sneered Dover happily, ‘you wouldn’t know a suspicious circumstance if it jumped up and bit you! Hewson was just too clever for you, that’s all.’
‘Well, it’s true the marriage wasn’t a very happy one,’ said Inspector Threlfall, meekly accepting the slur on his professional competence, ‘but we took that as a motive for her leaving him.’ He glanced across at MacGregor for support. ‘I suppose we could have Hewson in again and ask him a few questions.’
Dover reacted to this suggestion with unusual passion. ‘Not yet, you bloody don’t!’ he spluttered indignantly. ‘I’m still waiting for that cup of tea he promised me!’ This must have sounded a bit thin even to Dover’s ears. ‘Besides,’ he added in an attempt to place his policy of inaction beyond all question, ‘I’ve been invited to lunch.
‘Look, why don’t you two just push off and get that orchard dug up? It’ll probably take you two or three hours. Soon as you find the wife’s dead body, you can come and tell me. But not before two o’clock at the earliest, mind! Then we can confront What’s-his-name with the facts and get a confession out of him. There’s nothing to worry about. He’s not the stuff heroes are made of. He’ll soon co-operate if we shove him around a bit. And now’-the Dover eyelids drooped slowly over the Dover eyes-‘why don’t you just bug off and leave me to have a quiet think?’