Dover Three

Tompkins was born and bred here. Most of us knew her and her family when she was a girl, and a pretty poor lot they were, too. Her father drank like a fish and her mother was the biggest slut I’ve ever seen in my born days. Why do you think she came back to Thornwich when she got all that money? Just to rub our noses in it, and she did! Many’s the odd plate of left-overs my mother’s given to Mrs Bragg and her glad to take it. Now, I’m working – or I was – for Winifred. They’re the richest people in the village, you know – and that’s counting Dame Alice who’s not badly off herself. Well, naturally, everybody in Thom- wich’d jump for joy if they came a cropper. I wouldn’t stop laughing myself for a week and I don’t bear them any particular ill-will. Arthur’s not much of a fellow – they like ’em rough and tough in Thornwich – and, of course, all the other men make fun of him. What do you think they say when they hear he’s bought himself a cowboy outfit to wear when he’s shooting his pistols? Oh, Arthur’s learned the. hard way. They’ve pulled his leg unmercifully in The Jolly Sailor about some of the daft things he’s taken up. He keeps his mouth shut about them now.’

*      *      *

‘Well,’ said Dover as he and MacGregor plodded their way back under a sky darkening with cloud to The Jolly Sailor, ‘I hope you’re satisfied. Brrh! This perishing wind’s cold. It’s cutting right through me. If it hadn’t been for your bloody pig-headedness we could have stopped in the pub and kept warm. Damned waste of time, that’s what it’s been!’

‘Oh, I don’t know, sir,’ said MacGregor, pulling his hat down over his ears. ‘I found Mrs Poltensky’s evidence a bit long winded but very valuable. What she had to say about Mrs Tompkins trying to adopt a baby under the counter – that was most interesting, I thought.’

‘Did you?’ growled Dover.

‘Well, don’t you see, sir? It explains the missing three hundred pounds – the money Mrs Tompkins drew, in cash, out of the bank the other day. I’ll bet that was the money to pay for the baby.’

‘Three hundred smackers?’ yelped Dover derisively. ‘You want to grow up, laddie! There’s cheaper ways of getting a baby than shelling out three hundred quid.’ He sniggered.

‘Not for Mrs Tompkins, sir,’ said MacGregor primly, refusing to be drawn into an exchange of bawdy with his superior. ‘It was the only way she could get one, and I don’t suppose in their financial circumstances she considered it was too high a price. And there’s another point, sir. You told me that Mr Tompkins told you that he wanted his wife to burn the poison-pen letters she’d received.’

‘Well?’ snarled Dover.

‘Well, sir, Mrs Poltensky said that it was Mrs Tompkins who wanted to burn the letters and Mr Tompkins who insisted that they should be preserved and handed over to the proper authorities.’

‘Good God!’ Dover rolled his eyes upwards and searched the grey skies for strength. ‘What the blazes are you blethering on about now? Look, laddie, let’s keep a sense of proportion, shall we? All we’re concerned with is this Tompkins woman’s suicide. How she spent her life and what she did with her money and who wanted to burn what is no concern of ours. All right, you go off like a threepenny rocket and say maybe it wasn’t suicide and maybe her husband killed her, and I went along with you. I’m not the man to blunt your enthusiasm, you know that – but enough’s enough! We’ve crossed Mr Tompkins off the list of suspects, not that there ever was a list because it’s an open and shut, text-book case of simple, straightforward suicide if ever I saw one and it’s high time . . .’

‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ – MacGregor interrupted earnestly – ‘but we certainly haven’t crossed Mr Tompkins off the list. This business of the French lessons will need checking. There’s a bus into Bearle in about fifteen minutes, if I remember correctly. We’ve just got time to call in at The Jolly Sailor and get the name and address of this teacher off Mr Tompkins and then catch the bus.’

Dover mounted the two steps leading up to The Jolly Sailor in a grim and moody silence. Some mothers certainly did have ’em! At the top he turned and addressed MacGregor. ‘Not we, laddie,’ he said with that outspokenness which was so integral a part of his character, ‘you!’

There is a saying about the best laid plans of mice and men. It happened to Dover. Mr Tompkins had gone up to the Vicarage and would not be back for some considerable time as he had been invited to dinner.

‘He’s talking about putting up a stained-glass window in memory of Mrs Tompkins,’ Mrs Quince told Dover as he stood warming his bottom by the gas stove in her kitchen, ‘but he’s not sure if old Grotty’ll stand for it — with her committing suicide, you know. Some vicars won’t bury suicides in the churchyard, but, as I said to Bert, if you can’t bury ’em proper, what are you supposed to do with ’em? Have ’em stuffed and keep ’em on the mantelpiece? And, Mr Dover, if you want one of them little cakes, I’d be obliged if you’d ask for it. You can have one and welcome, but there’s no need to try and pinch one when you think I’m not looking. Oh, and a policeman brought this letter for you. It’s the post-mortem report. The police surgeon says all the evidence points to suicide. She must have taken an enormous dose of sleeping tablets first, and then turned the gas on. It was a bit of a race, seemingly, which’ one would kill her, but the police surgeon is pretty sure it was gas poisoning, and he’s