MacGregor had a full five minutes in which to ruminate on these pearls of wisdom before Dover, looking much happier, clambered back into the cab and they continued their journey. ‘What’s the name of this waitress girl we’re going to arrest?’
‘Well, only question at this stage, sir,’ said MacGregor, hoping to nip that conception in the bud. ‘And she’s called Mary Jones.’
Dover shuddered. ‘Makes your blood run cold!’
‘At least she’s not Irish, sir!’ laughed MacGregor. ‘That should give you some comfort.’
Dover turned to stare at his sergeant. ‘You gibbering idiot!’ he snarled. ‘There’s Welsh Nationalists, isn’t there?’ He slumped back in his seat again. ‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty-two, sir, according to the form she filled in for Mrs Fish. Of course, all the information she gave may be false. Her referees, her place of birth, her age. Her name, too, if it comes to that.’
‘And her address!’
MacGregor sighed unhappily. ‘Well, yes, sir. I didn’t want to phone and ask in case we somehow tipped her off that we were coming.’
‘I hope you haven’t dragged me out here on a wild goose chase,’ said Dover with a certain grimness.
‘How do you mean, sir?’
‘This girl may be perfectly innocent and all she says she is.’ Nobody knew that better than MacGregor himself. ‘She’s just the best of a poor bunch, sir. I’ve gone through all the other women who are officially recorded as having been in the Yard on Tuesday evening, but none of them looks as suspicious as this Mary Jones does. Of course, sir, it would be a great help if only you could remember more precisely what she looked like.’
‘I was drugged,’ Dover reminded him indignantly.
‘Not until after you’d drunk the tea, sir.’
If there was one thing Dover couldn’t stand for it was a nit-picker and he was just about to tell MacGregor so when he realised that the taxi had stopped. He peered out of the window. ‘’Strewth,’ he gasped, ‘is this it?’
The Dame Letitia Egglestone Hostel for Single Girls in London looked more like Holloway Prison than Holloway did and its grim, granite fagade alone had driven many an unplucked rose into premature matrimony. When it came to the way in which the two establishments were run, however, there was little comparison as the insidious breath of penal reform had not yet penetrated the heavily bolted and barred portals of the Dame Letitia. Here a valiant rear-guard action was being fought against the permissive society with hard beds, cold baths, inedible food and carbolic soap. The staff of the hostel got little reward for their efforts, apart from the knowledge that they were doing exactly what Dame Letitia Egglestone herself would have wished.
Dover caught sight of MacGregor putting hand to pocket. ‘Don’t pay the taxi off, you fathead!’ he bawled. ‘Tell him to wait!’ He glanced meaningfully at the hostel. ‘We shan’t be long. In fact, tell him if we’re not out in twenty minutes to send for the bloody police!’
Miss Tootle, concealed behind the curtains of her office which overlooked the front door, heard Dover’s little joke and failed bleakly to see the humour of it. ( .losing her book (Witchcraft and The Black Art) with a snap she crossed over to her desk and prepared to receive her visitors. She didn’t hurry. It took a good five minutes for perfectly respectable women to penetrate as far as her office and men naturally had considerably more difficulty. Miss Tootle settled herself in her chair and listened to the rattle and clatter of bolts being drawn and chains slipped. Then came the murmur of voices and this went on for a long time. Finally the slamming of the front door indicated that the callers had passed their entrance examination and it was only a matter of seconds before Annie, the skivvy, was tapping on the office door.
‘It’s the Old Bill,’ said Annie, realistically miming a spit into the nearest corner of the room as she stood back to let Dover and MacGregor enter.
It was not Miss Tootle’s first encounter with the police. No one in charge of a hostel for single girls in London can avoid a series of painful interviews with our boys in blue. Miss Tootle had worked out a technique.
‘Your warrant cards, please!’
Dover and MacGregor exchanged glances but complied meekly enough with the order Miss Tootle had barked out at them.
‘Hm!’ Miss Tootle tapped Dover’s offering with her magnifying glass. ‘This looks highly suspicious!’
‘It’s a temporary replacement card,’ explained MacGregor, getting in with a soft answer before an infuriated Dover resorted to his fists. ‘Chief Inspector Dover is an officer of considerable experience and seniority.’ Dover’s original warrant card was still in the Yard’s forensic laboratory being examined for clues, but MacGregor didn’t see why he should tell this old battle-axe that.
Miss Tootle tossed the cards back across her desk and put her magnifying glass away in a drawer. ‘Make it quick,’ she advised.
Normally Dover left all the sweat and turmoil of an interview to MacGregor but, on this occasion he was clearly afraid of having his sergeant eaten alive – and with that taxi ticking away the pennies outside it was a risk he didn’t care to take. ‘We’re making enquiries about one of your girls,’ he began, half wishing that he’d listened more attentively to MacGregor’s briefing.
‘At this particular moment in time I have eighty-four girl in residence at the hostel. Which one do you mean?’
‘Mary Jones!’ said Dover to MacGregor’s great astonishment. Considering the difficulty the old sieve-head had in remembering his own name at times . . .
Miss Tootle was consulting a small card index. ‘Yes?’.
‘We
