Bello:
hidden talent rediscovered
Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.
At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.
We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.
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Contents
Joyce Porter
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Joyce Porter
Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All
Joyce Porter was born in Marple, Cheshire, and educated at King’s College, London. In 1949 she joined the Women’s Royal Air Force, and, on the strength of an intensive course in Russian, qualified for confidential work in intelligence. When she left the service in 1963 she had completed three detective novels.
Porter is best known for her series of novels featuring Detective Inspector Wilfred Dover. Dover One appeared in 1964, followed by nine more in a highly successful series. Porter also created the reluctant spy Eddie Brown, and the “Hon-Con”, the aristocratic gentlewoman-detective Constance Ethel Morrison Burke.
Dedication
To Kathleen Wood
Chapter One
Crack!
Wallop!
‘’Strewth!’ said Chief Inspector Dover.
Gingerly he put up his hand to that side of his forehead which had just been in painful contact with the windscreen. Then he felt his back. Seventeen and a quarter stone hurtling around in the interior of a Mini-Minor can lead to a man being injured for life. When he was satisfied that everything was more or less intact he turned ominously to his wife.
‘You bloody fool!’ he howled.
Mrs Dover, her hands still gripping the steering wheel, peered white-faced through the rain-soaked windscreen. She had stalled the engine but the wipers were still scraping lazily across the glass.
‘Oh, Wilf!’ she said in a shaky voice.
‘Don’t you “ oh, Wilf” me!’ snarled her husband. ‘You damned near killed me! What’s the matter now, another bloody puncture?’
It had been one of those days, not infrequent in the Dover menage, when nothing had gone right. It was still barely half past nine in the morning but the Chief Inspector and his wife had already managed to stage three blazing rows and were now apparently heading for their fourth. And they were on holiday, too. What should have been a period of exquisite bliss for Dover – temporarily freed from the strain of looking as though he was working – was already turning into one of those nightmares that we would wish only on our worst enemies.
The cloud of impending disaster had loomed up on an otherwise quite sunny horizon some six months earlier. On the day, in fact, when Mrs Dover had finally made up her mind about how she was going to spend her legacy. Mrs Dover was always inheriting odd sums of money. She had an inordinately large number of comfortably off, elderly relations and, as with the passage of time they departed from this vale of tears, it was usually found that they had remembered Mrs Dover before they went.
Up till now Dover had had no complaints. His wife’s little windfalls had been disposed of in accordance with his interested advice and invariably to his greater comfort. But on this occasion, with no less than six hundred and forty-three pounds to play around with, Mrs Dover had gone berserk.
‘I’m going to buy a car,’ she had announced. ‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea, Wilf?’
Wilf did not, and told her so. When at last he’d come hoarsely to the end of his objections his wife proved unexpectedly adamant.
‘I’m still going to buy a car,’ she said.
‘But you can’t even drive!’ protested Dover desperately.
‘I shall learn,’ she replied proudly.
Dover got nasty. ‘You’ll never pass the test, not at your age.’
But she did. Whether the fact that before taking her test she had mentioned casually to the examiner that her husband was a high-ranking, influential detective at Scotland Yard helped or not, no one will ever know. She removed her L-plates with an air of smug triumph which made Dover long to belt her one, and announced that they would travel to Filbury-on-Sea for their annual fortnight’s holiday by car. Dover, completely snookered, could only fight her decision to the last hopeless ditch.
‘And don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he concluded when all other arguments had failed.
‘I won’t, dear,’ said Mrs Dover with a forgiving smile.
From then on the Chief Inspector had firmly washed his hands of motoring and everything connected with it. The car was resolutely placed in his wife’s domain. Hers were the hands that washed it, hers the purse that provided the money for its petrol. She was the one who got out to open the garage doors and worried when bits dropped off the engine. And serve her damned well right, thought Dover.
The holiday had been blighted almost before it had even started. Mrs Dover was still no very great shakes when it came to driving and felt considerably safer when there was no other traffic on the road. They had left the house at five o’clock in the morning. It was pouring with rain and Mrs Dover had hunted for five uncomfortable minutes before she located the switch which worked the windscreen wipers. Thoroughly demoralized and painfully conscious of the sulking bulk of her husband in the seat beside her, she had struggled on through the downpour at an erratic thirty miles an hour.
There had been one break in the monotony. At a quarter to eight they had a puncture. Dover had sheltered under a tree while his wife, now in tears, changed the wheel.
Damp and lowering, he hadn’t spoken to her since. Not, that is, until her thoughtless slamming on of the brakes had awoken him so abruptly from his doze.
‘Oh, Wilf!’ whimpered Mrs Dover again, still staring fixedly in front of her.
‘My God!’ said her husband, a note of panic
