Dog in the Dark (Three Oaks Book 1), page 11
‘How on earth do you find out that sort of thing?’ I asked. Henry’s snippets were usually very reliable whereas local news seemed to pass me by. Once, I had enquired after the health of somebody who had already died.
‘They found something en route towards her tummy,’ Henry said with an apologetic glance at Beth. ‘In tracing her last movements, they were asking around for anybody who shared tea and biscuits with her. One of the constables was a little more forthcoming than the others, that’s all.’
‘You’re getting away from the other point,’ Beth complained. ‘What’s Ian West done?’
‘Oh yes,’ Henry said. ‘Sorry! Your revered employer asked a couple of irrelevant questions. It seems that Ian had a powerful two-two airgun that he brought back from Germany after the war. He used it for knocking off rats around the back of the shop. When the police called on him at home to ask about the times during which Neill Cory was filling the air with the sound of gunfire, there it was standing behind his front door where anybody could have borrowed it. He’d never got a certificate for it.’
‘But I still don’t understand. You don’t need a certificate for an airgun,’ Beth said. ‘Or do you?’
‘You do if it has more than a certain maximum pressure,’ Henry told her kindly. ‘Fifteen foot-pounds, I seem to recall. Ian’s bad luck was that the policeman who came to his door was an airgun enthusiast. This was one of the pump-up ones with a reservoir. If you pumped it up all the way, it would be about as powerful as a rifle.’
‘More powerful,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen one of those put a slug clean through a telegraph pole. And it was still quieter than a small-bore rifle.’
‘If you have to pump it up,’ Beth said, ‘I suppose it would be slower to reload?’
‘Much slower,’ Henry said. ‘Of course, Ian West hadn’t much use for either of the ladies, but if he was going to knock off the females of the species he’d have started with Olive Cory. She sold him a pup once, in both senses of the term.’
I hardly heard what they were saying. If Ian West’s air-weapon was suspect, I might be off the hook. On the other hand, friends might be falling into trouble because I was too timid to face up to facts.
Henry might advise me. He was a wily old chap and quite capable of holding his tongue. I was on the point of speaking when we recognised the sound of Henry’s car driving up to the house. The dogs must also have recognised it, because although the microphones were alive we heard only one short bark from the kennels. Ben, dozing at my feet, raised his head as if hoping that his owners might have returned for him and lowered it again with a sigh.
Isobel came in and ungraciously accepted coffee. She was peevish but not noticeably hungover. She asked how I was feeling after the previous night’s excitement.
‘I went to see my niece,’ she said, without giving me time to reply. ‘She has a new boyfriend and didn’t want to know. Henry wasn’t at home and he wasn’t in the pub and this is the only other place he ever goes. Anyway, I wanted to do a little homework from my records. What on earth is that object doing here?’ she added suddenly, glaring at Ben. ‘It looks like one of those useless animals they breed down in the village.’
‘His owners came to the Masterclass,’ I explained. ‘They want me to have him put down if I can’t drum some basic obedience into him.’
‘I don’t give much for his chances. One thing about dogs, they don’t know when they’re doomed,’ Isobel said, scratching Ben absently behind the ear. ‘They have no concept of death at all. I’ll be surprised if you can teach that creature to walk without its back legs tripping up the front ones. Anyway, Joe Little wants me to recommend a stud-dog for Aholibah. There’s a touch of hip dysplasia well back in her pedigree so he wants a stud-dog who’s clear, ’way back to the first wolf. I’m exaggerating,’ she explained kindly to Beth, who was looking puzzled. ‘But not very much.’
That reminded me. I fetched the notes which I had taken over the phone. ‘Mr Hordle of the Eye Panel was on the phone,’ I said.
Isobel scanned the notes rapidly and nodded. ‘This fills in a gap,’ she said.
Isobel had kept up her connection with the RCVS and from that and other sources she maintained, in the kennel office, remarkably comprehensive records of congenital faults in all gundog breeds, including even the show strains. Her vast accumulation of paper was a nuisance at times in the tiny and overstressed office; at other times, it was a godsend. Our ability to warrant a pup free from congenital defects brought us a steady trickle of paying customers. Gradually, Isobel was transferring the data to computer discs, consolidating a pool of information often consulted by other breeders.
‘While you’re at it,’ I said, ‘we’ll be needing a stud for Burgundy before much longer. Samson could do the job, but they’re cousins.’
Isobel groaned and looked put-upon, but I knew that she considered her researches to be near the hub of the canine universe, second in importance only to the results of field trials. She would have been lost without her hobby. ‘And the part of the pedigree that they share isn’t the best part,’ she said. ‘I know. I’ll get onto it in plenty of time.’
‘I’m sure,’ I told her. ‘But remember that Burgundy’s seasons come round in less than six months.’
She snorted. ‘And you remember that we decided to run her in a Novice Trial next weekend. You’ve more need to be giving her a final polish than trying to teach me to suck eggs.’ Either Henry had proved to be a disappointment or she was still feeling the effects of the previous day’s indulgence.
‘Sorry, grandma,’ I said.
She smiled reluctantly. ‘I’m not even old enough to be your mother,’ she said, ‘so don’t come it. You three go and leave me in peace. Go down to the hotel and have the drink you didn’t have time to finish last night.’
‘You go,’ Beth said. ‘I’ll stay.’
Isobel gave a ladylike shudder. ‘I don’t really feel much like a drink today,’ she said, ‘for some reason. And I’d like to get some work done. I’ll bring the papers in here, where there’s a fire and plenty of table space. Leave the loudspeaker on and I’ll keep an ear open for the dogs.’
‘Hark a bark and buzz the fuzz,’ Henry said. It was one of his favourite little jokes.
‘Just go.’
When Isobel was in an autocratic mood there was nothing to do but obey. We rose – Henry hopefully, Beth obediently and myself with resignation. ‘You might look in on Samson,’ I said. ‘He’s in the isolation kennel. Beth says that he’s off-colour. Refused his meal tonight.’
Isobel finished putting up the leaves of the gate-leg table before replying. ‘I’ll look at him,’ she said. ‘If that greedy bastard isn’t eating, something’s up. Gastro-enteritis, probably. Now, for God’s sake, go.’
While Henry emptied his delicate bladder, Beth and I paid a call on Samson in the isolation kennel. Samson was looking rather sorry for himself and swallowing at irregular intervals. He had sicked tidily in a corner of the run and Beth insisted on cleaning up the mess and returning to the house for a wash before we set off.
I took Ben with me on a leather slip-lead. It was a good opportunity to start training him to heel. Almost as an afterthought, I fetched Scoter to accompany us. She was a motherly little soul and, if they got to know each other, I could kennel them together with a fair chance of a night’s sleep undisturbed by howling from an unhappy newcomer. A newcomer would usually be banished to the isolation kennel, but Samson was already in occupation. Anyway, Ben’s owners had gone overboard with inoculations. And he seemed remarkably free of parasites. Either that, or he was too stupid to scratch.
Chapter Ten
Ben was determined to forge ahead, but when he found that he achieved nothing but to choke himself in the slip-lead he steadied down. A few good jerks on the lead reminded him how to walk at heel. Gentleness is usually a virtue in training, but Ben’s owners, I decided, had tried to handle him too softly.
We took the path through the fields. It was dark and the moon was only a faint promise in the eastern sky, but Beth led the way with a torch. As we passed behind the Corys’ house, a dog growled from the kennel at the bottom of the garden.
‘If she lost another dog last week,’ I said, ‘she’ll be down to the one young bitch she kept from the last litter. Too young to breed from just yet. Or has she been shopping for replacements?’
‘She’s been asking around,’ Beth said, ‘but I haven’t heard that she found anything suitable yet. She seems to want championship stock at a “good home” price. And you’ve got to be careful with show spaniels if you want to breed. Other breeders tend not to part with the good ones.’
‘That’s for sure,’ I said. I always tried to keep the best for myself.
‘Olive wasn’t always so fussy,’ Henry said out of the darkness.
‘She’ll hear you,’ Beth whispered.
But we could have stood in Mrs Cory’s front garden, slandering her at the tops of our voices, without her hearing a word of it. Before we had even entered the hotel I could hear her unmistakable voice, both shrill and penetrating, raised in furious argument.
‘We could go somewhere else,’ Beth said.
‘There isn’t anywhere else,’ I pointed out. ‘And if there were, I wouldn’t let that harpy drive me away.’
As we entered, Mrs Cory finished a tirade which seemed to be directed mainly at Laurie Duffus. She turned away and found herself face to face with me. Her pointed face was pink with temper. ‘And as for you . . .’ she began.
General conversation, which had resumed, broke off again. Her husband, Neill, tried to fade away. His back suggested that he had never seen the woman before. Henry and Beth vanished into a corner.
‘What about me?’ I asked gently. I guessed that she was only looking for a victim.
Perhaps I looked amused – something in my face seemed to infuriate her. ‘You think you’re bloody clever, but you’re not. Poor Laura was right. You breed hideous, cruel dogs.’
‘But clever,’ I said. With the late Mrs Daiches, who had on occasions been capable of almost reasonable discussion, I would have pointed out that, so far from being cruel, one of the prime purposes of a gundog was the quick recovery of wounded game for immediate despatch. But Mrs Cory had never been ready for a two-sided debate.
She snorted and changed the subject. ‘I’ve seen you shooting from an upstairs window,’ she said. ‘And I could see that window from the place where Laura was killed.’
‘That would be an incredible shot at the distance and in the dark,’ I said.
‘You’d have had . . . I didn’t mean from there and you know it!’ She was winding herself up into fury but there were real tears in her eyes. ‘None of you really gives a damn that Laura’s gone. You hated her and she hated the lot of you and now you’re laughing up your sleeves. Nobody cares except me. You’re . . . unfeeling, the lot of you,’ she told the company in general. Then she switched back to me. ‘I know what I know. And that girl’s making a fool out of you. Get out of my way.’
She pushed past, thumping me with the heavy handbag which was always over her arm, and stumped out of the hotel. Her husband emerged from a hiding place behind a pair of large farmers. ‘John, I’m sorry about that,’ he said. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’
‘I’m with the others,’ I said. ‘I’ll buy them. How do you put up with her? Or is she different in the house?’
‘Just the same,’ he said. He managed a smile. ‘Consistency is a great virtue in a woman.’ He was a short man, rotund and balding, with an air combining amusement with determination. I supposed that he needed both. On most weekdays he commuted to St Andrews where he had an office dealing in property.
At the bar, I found myself standing alongside Laurie Duffus. He was soberer than he had been the night before and nodded a non-committal greeting. He had a full glass, to my relief. I felt disinclined to buy him a drink after his insults of the previous evening. I caught the eye of Flora the barmaid – an opulent young lady with bright hair and a toothy smile. I bought poor Neill a whisky – he was always thought of and referred to as ‘poor Neill’ – and took drinks to Henry and Beth who had settled at a table.
Back at the bar for my Guinness, I asked Neill, ‘What the hell was she getting at?’
‘Damned if I know,’ he said. ‘She gets bees in her bonnet sometimes.’
‘Was she insinuating something about Beth and me?’
‘Forget it, John. She was just havering.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want to know.’
He hesitated and then shrugged. ‘She thinks Beth’s after you for your money.’
The idea was so silly that I laughed in his face. ‘You can tell her from me,’ I said, ‘that I don’t have any and that Beth wouldn’t be after it if I did. She works for me, full stop.’
‘I’ll tell her. But she won’t believe it. She aye believes the worst of others – which I suppose is only fair,’ he added. ‘Folk are always ready to believe the worst of her. She has a heart, you know.’
I nodded. Something had to keep the acidulated blood circulating in her crabby veins. But the expression had another meaning. ‘You don’t mean heart trouble?’
‘Nothing like that,’ he said earnestly. ‘I mean that she cares. She’s feeling Laura’s death deeply. Put it down to that and forget it. Please, John.’
Some crony invited Neill for a game of pool in the back room. He made a half-hearted attempt to return my drink but I let him escape. From what I had heard, his business had suffered with the slump in property values and he was saddled with the expenses of his wife’s imminent lawsuit.
Scoter had taken her favourite place before the fire, displacing by force of personality an elderly couple who had been warming their joints. Ben was leaning against my leg, holding onto his only sheet-anchor in a strange world.
‘She must be bloody good in bed,’ Laurie said suddenly, turning round on the stool beside me.
‘Who must?’ I thought that he was referring to Beth, or possibly to Isobel, and I was quite ready to resume our quarrel of the previous evening.
‘Neill’s wife.’
‘You think so?’ I was puzzled. Mrs Cory had a face like a spadeful of raisins and the rest of her could have been mistaken for a sack of dogfood. The intolerance which she showed to local lovers suggested that she had never regarded sex as anything but an aberration.
‘Why else would he have put up with her for all these years?’
It was a tenable theory, but I had been told that Neill’s business had been wholly financed by his wife’s money. As a marriage, in fact, it was more of a business partnership. But it seemed a pity to disabuse Laurie of illusions which were certain some day to rebound to Mrs Cory’s discredit, causing that disseminator of malicious and unfounded gossip extreme annoyance and embarrassment.
‘As a matter of fact . . .’ I said.
‘Aye?’
I assured him, on good authority but in confidence, that she was notoriously expert in certain sexual practices which are not usually referred to in polite conversation, and hoped to God that he would never mention me as the originator of the rumours which were bound to follow.
Laurie nodded, seeming pleased to have his supposition confirmed, and no doubt filed the information away for future use as ammunition. ‘You only got the backlash of her tongue,’ he said. ‘It started when she got the wrong change. Then she turned on me. The old bitch tried to suggest that I’d killed her bosom buddy, although I’d been out in my garden the whole time. The neighbours were complaining about the noise I made.’
‘Did you hear a shot?’ I asked idly.
‘No. But I wouldn’t. I was hammering. And you know how echoes come back from other houses. I did hear her voice, once, though I didn’t hear what she said. Likely she was only speaking to her dogs. I told the police, and if they’re satisfied I don’t see why she has to stir it up.’
‘She’s a born stirrer-up.’ I could have added that in my opinion Mrs Cory’s only useful function in the world was as a topic of conversation.
‘You’re not wrong. I’ll tell you something else I told the police. About a week ago, I heard Ma Daiches’ voice. I don’t know who she was speaking to, she was round the corner from me, but it surely wasn’t the dogs. She said “Just don’t come near me again until this is settled”.’
He seemed to be expecting some reaction so I said ‘Golly!’ in a respectful tone. ‘Why does Mrs Cory have her knife into you?’ I asked.
‘When did she ever need anything to go on about? I gave her a slanging a fortnight ago for taking a kick at one of my dogs and she’d been waiting for a chance to get even. This time, she started narking at me for keeping ferrets, said that the smell upset her dogs and that they were vicious little brutes and rabbits never did anybody any harm. And me a market gardener! I’d be eaten out of my livelihood by rabbits if I let them be. Her trouble is, she doesn’t think any neighbour this side of Balmoral would be good enough to live next door to her or her bloody friends.’
‘She wouldn’t get on with the neighbours, living next door to Balmoral Castle, if she’s in the habit of kicking Labradors,’ I said.
Laurie laughed and looked as though he might be on the point of offering to buy me a drink. ‘The stupid old cow had taken one of her bitches out in high season,’ he said. ‘Thought that a good spray around the hindquarters with air freshener was adequate birth control, for God’s sake! At least Mrs Daiches kept her buggers under control. When Nova wandered over for a good sniff and a climb aboard, she gave him a boot in the ribs.’
I would probably have done the same, but there seemed to be no percentage in saying so. ‘Personally,’ I said, ‘I’m sick and tired of asking people not to be nice to my dogs. How can you keep a dog’s full attention when it thinks that any human figure is a heaven-sent source of petting and tidbits?’
He grinned maliciously. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But you’re going to have to try.’ I followed his eyes. The elderly couple were feeding Scoter potato crisps. ‘You still want to back your dogs against mine at retrieving, for a hundred quid?’
