Dover and the Unkindest Cut of All

window. Just as a joke, really. Well, you’d have thought he was organizing sexual orgies on the front line from the row that blew up. Mind you, the Ladies’ League were quite fair about it. They gave him ten minutes to get the whole bang shoot removed from the window. Miss Billson, she’s a retired gym mistress from the High School, she stood outside on the pavement with a stop-watch. Young Morrison, the fool, tried to bluff it out. Said it was a free country and he wasn’t breaking the law and all that sort of rot. And a fat lot of good it did him, too.’
‘What did they do?’ asked MacGregor kindly. ‘ Burn the shop down?’
‘Worse, because that way young Morrison would have got the insurance at any rate. No, they just boycotted him. The word was sent round and not a single woman living in this town so much as put one foot over the threshold. They all closed their accounts and that was the end of young Morrison. Three quarters of his staff handed their notice in and in just over a month he sold out. Dropped a packet on the deal, too, from what I’ve heard. Cleared out of the town, too. Went into a monastery, so they say, but I reckon that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Oh, you’ve got to watch your P’s and Q’s in Wallerton if you want to survive. There was that fellow …’
‘Quite,’ said Dover. He turned to MacGregor. ‘So what it all boils down to is that you’ve buggered around all afternoon for nothing?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t quite put it like that, sir.’
‘No,’ said Dover moodily, ‘I don’t suppose you would. You’d wrap it up in a lot of flowery language, but it wouldn’t change the facts, would it?’
‘Perhaps the sergeant here might be able to give us a lead, sir.’
‘Wadderyermean?’ growled Dover.
‘I was going to tell you about the Hamilton business, sir,’ said the station sergeant eagerly. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of bringing the file along with me in case you’d like to have a look at it.’
‘What,’ said Dover, ‘that?’
The station sergeant looked at the heavy suitcase with considerable pride. ‘It was a very complicated case, sir.’
‘It must have been!’ was Dover’s morose comment. ‘That’s the trouble with you lot these days. Too much damned paper.’
‘Oh well,’ – he sank deeper into the bed and lay almost flat on his back, gazing up at the ceiling – ‘I suppose you’d better tell us all about it. But, for God’s sake, keep it short! We don’t want to be here all night.’
It was a sentiment to which the station sergeant subscribed, but, on the other hand, the Hamilton affair was the most lurid thing that had ever happened in the whole of Wallerton’s history and it seemed a pity not to make the most of it.
He looked anxiously at Dover and sought for the right note of breath-taking drama which would force the Chief Inspector to open his new closed eyes. Inspiration dallied. What might have been a grunt or what might have been a snore came from Dover ‘s lips.
‘This chap, Hamilton,’ gabbled the station sergeant, uncomfortably aware that he wasn’t doing himself justice, ‘he was found dead in his own front garden.’
‘’Strewth!’ murmured Dover and rolled over to face the wall.
‘With no clothes on,’ added the station sergeant.
‘Very saucy,’ mumbled Dover.
‘And horribly mutilated.’
Dover yawned.
‘I should have thought you’d have heard about it, sir,’ said the station sergeant resentfully. ‘It was in all the papers. We’d hundreds of reporters milling around. And the television.’
Dover grunted and pulled the bed-clothes up to his chin.
The station sergeant looked as though he was going to burst into tears. Once more MacGregor took pity on him. ‘ Perhaps you could give us the details?’ he suggested encouragingly and even went so far as to get his notebook out.
The station sergeant turned to him gratefully. ‘Well, this chap, Hamilton – he was a middle-aged, married man – went out one evening to our local Country Club. That’s what it’s called though actually it’s on top of a warehouse near the railway station. He spent the evening there until he left about half past twelve. He’d had a fair amount to drink so they phoned up for a taxi for him. Nothing unusual about that. It had happened once or twice before. Well, the taxi took him home and dropped him off at his front door. And that’s the last time he was seen alive.’
‘By the taxi-driver?’ asked MacGregor.
‘That’s right. He says Hamilton got out and paid his fare. He wasn’t paralytic, you see, just had a few too many, that’s all. Then the taxi drove back off to the garage. The following morning the milkman found the body just inside the front garden. Hamilton’s house has got a bit of a garden in front, you know, and a low stone wall. All his clothes were in a neat pile beside the body.’
‘Had he been robbed?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He’d over fifty quid in one pound notes in his wallet.’
‘Hm,’ said MacGregor thoughtfully.
Deep and steady breathing came from the bed.
‘You said Hamilton was married? Where was his wife?’
‘She was at home, in bed asleep. They slept in separate rooms, apparently, so she’d no idea that Hamilton hadn’t come home or that anything had happened to him. We don’t even know if he went into the house. The front door was locked but, of course, he’d got a key.’
‘Didn’t any of the neighbours see or hear anything?’
‘Well, it’s a bit of a funny sort of street, you see. They did used to be posh town houses in the old days, but now they’re mostly offices. There’s six houses right opposite Hamilton’s place all belonging to the Town Council – the Borough Surveyor and the Rating Office and things like that. They’re completely empty at night. The people in the house next but one to Hamilton were away. The house next to him is