Dover Goes to Pott by Joyce Porter

Author:Joyce Porter [Porter, Joyce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0881501735
Published: 2017-11-05T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

‘IT’S all your blasted fault!’ insisted Dover viciously. ‘Why the blazes you had to go dragging in that bloody doctor is beyond me. Anybody’d think’, he added, squinting suspiciously out of two unlovely black eyes, ‘that you were deliberately trying to shop me.’

‘Oh, sir!’ protested MacGregor and endeavoured to look as though the thought had never ever crossed his mind.

‘And that damned magistrate,’ Dover grumbled on. ‘Fat old cow! They shouldn’t allow women on the bench, I’ve always said so. No judgment, women. And they don’t know when to keep their traps shut.’

‘Are you ready for your sweet, sir?’

‘What is it?’

‘Apple dumplings, sir.’

‘Well,’ said Dover grudgingly, ‘I’ll try and force a few mouthfuls down.’ He handed over his dirty plate, which looked as though it had received a visitation from a plague of locusts.

MacGregor stacked it tidily on the tray on the dressing-table and ladled out a massive helping of apple dumpling. ‘Is that enough, sir?’

Dover scowled at it. ‘It’ll do for a start.’

Nearly two whole days had passed since the incident in the interviewing room and Dover was now beginning to sit up and take notice. Sustenance he had been partaking of all along as, luckily, his appetite had not been impaired. He shovelled down the apple dumpling but he was not in the sunniest of moods.

‘ “Why has the accused got that piece of sticking plaster on his cheek?” ’ he piped, imitating, as MacGregor (who had been through this sixteen times already) knew only too well, the female magistrate. ‘Silly cow! It’s a pity they didn’t let me get a word in. I’d have told her a few home truths instead of yes-your-worshipping and no-your-worshipping all over the damned place.’

In the magistrates’ court itself Dover had had to play a nonspeaking role. It was Inspector Mansion who had risen, rather unwillingly, to his feet and explained to the Bench that the prisoner had attacked a police officer during questioning and had had to be restrained. ‘Only’, said Inspector Mansion, ‘a reasonable amount of force was used.’

The Bench, led by the female magistrate, was sceptical.

A heavily bandaged Dover was produced as evidence.

The female magistrate was scathing. Did the police really expect them to believe that a great hulking brute like Dover had been assaulted and beaten up by the weak and tiny prisoner? The idea was ludicrous! She would like to remind Inspector Mansion that she had been sitting on this Bench, woman and girl, for thirty-five years and she was well aware that thick bandages and sticking plaster on policemen more often concealed disgraceful breaches of the Judges’ Rules than genuine injuries. She was, she was sure, speaking for her brother magistrates when she warned that such flagrant examples of police brutality would not be tolerated in Pott Winckle, that well-known cradle of civil liberty. The police had been warned and had better not let it occur again.

Dover’s attempts to speak up for truth and justice were speedily thwarted by his colleagues and he had been removed bodily from the well of the court before he got himself booked for gross contempt.

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