He was the last person I would have expected to shoot a spaniel or even to tolerate the presence of a shotgun, but when I turned the car between the high hedges of honeysuckle and rambling roses that surrounded the Old Manse – hedges which were a picture when in flower but looked unkempt in early winter – there he was on the gravel with a cheap over-under trap-gun in his hands, looking nervous but determined. In my astonishment I nearly forgot to brake. I pulled up short of him with no more than a slight slither on the gravel but he made an exaggerated leap to the side and jerked the gun in a threatening and dangerous movement that would have got him sent home in disgrace from almost any well-run shoot.
A bonfire of good compostable materials was blazing merrily just where I would expect it to do most damage to the overhead limbs of a fine beech.
Ellingworth was a tall man and almost as thin as I was. His nose was narrow and pocked with enlarged pores. A straggly beard failed to conceal pouting lips, a weak chin and an Adam’s apple that bobbed around like a boxer on the ropes.
Even allowing for the older children being at school, the place seemed quiet. There was no sign of Mrs Ellingworth, who usually appeared to greet visitors. She was a quiet woman, very feminine and with the smile of a happy angel when she had cause to produce it. As I got out of the car, the fat cocker bounced towards me with a greeting and circled round me. I could see no puffiness in her hinder parts, so her season was over.
Ellingworth approached, bristling. He was not one to pass up a chance to make a justifiable complaint about my driving. I decided to strike first. ‘Either shoot me,’ I said, ‘or point that thing somewhere else. You don’t have to protect the virtue of your daughters from me.’ One of his few virtues, in my eyes, was that he was very protective of his family. To him, every man was a potential molester.
He had the grace to drop his barrels. ‘What the hell do you want?’ he asked.
The cocker spaniel was standing up with its paws on my knee – a habit which I would usually have discouraged, but on this occasion it seemed politic to demonstrate that I could count on at least one welcome. I bent and pulled her ears while I replied. ‘Somebody put some shot into Mr Lansdyke’s springer a couple of days ago,’ I said. ‘For my own reasons, I’d like to know who. I thought I was wasting my time coming here. You left me in no doubt that you disapproved of shooting.’
‘I do, in general,’ he said. ‘At least of animate targets.’
‘Then how come all the armament?’
He glanced down at the gun, made a small movement as if he would have liked to hide it and then combined a sigh and a shrug. ‘Sometimes you have to compromise,’ he said defensively. ‘A fox has been taking my chickens.’
I was hardly surprised. Beyond the house, I could see his chickens in an enclosure surrounded by a wire that a fox could have cleared with ease.
‘You needn’t expect a fox to come in the middle of the day while you’re moving about the place,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to sit up for him.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘Got one shot at him but I think I missed.’ He pointed to a gap in the hedge. Beyond I noticed a line of dark furrows where the Sievewrights had made a start to ploughing their set-aside land. ‘And when there’s one there’s more. The gun’s only a borrow and it’ll have to go back by this afternoon. The man who lent it to me is fussy about the law.’
The legal period during which a shotgun could be borrowed without variation of either party’s shotgun certificate, I seemed to recall, was seventy-two hours. So Ellingworth held a new-style shotgun certificate and the gun had been in his possession before Mr Lansdyke’s dog had been peppered. ‘You’re sure that it was a fox?’ I asked him.
‘I can tell a fox from a spaniel even if you can’t,’ he said indignantly.
‘Even in the dark?’
‘It wasn’t as dark as that. There was a moon. Anyway, it couldn’t have been Horace; this only happened last night.’
I did not believe him. The previous night had been heavily overcast. ‘What size of shot are you using?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t think to look. I’ve only shot at clay pigeons before now, and then I used whatever they gave me.’ He produced an empty cartridge from his coat pocket, glanced at it and then held it up. The letters BB were printed on it.
‘And that’s the only shot you’ve fired?’
‘Yes.’ He suddenly remembered not to be defensive. ‘I don’t have to answer your questions,’ he said.
‘What questions?’ I asked, turning back to the car.
I left him gobbling indignantly, trying to think of a retort that did not entail answering another of my questions. He was very easy to take a rise out of.
*
Pulling out of the Ellingworth’s driveway, I looked at the dashboard clock. The vet’s part-time technician would be coming on duty but I still had time in hand. There was another road to Cupar, an even smaller backroad which followed the other boundary of the Easter Colm land. I decided to return to Cupar by that route. I had only passed that way once or twice but I remembered a house by the roadside, a house that I had also half-noticed in the distance during my training walks. And there might be foresters or other workmen who had seen or heard something.
The other road was narrow. It rose, twisted, fell to cross a hump-backed bridge, then climbed and emerged from a pine-wood to skirt the Sievewright’s stubbles. I slowed to let a hen pheasant get clear. A host of pigeon took fright at the sudden appearance of the car and rose, whirled for a moment and then streamed off towards a safe roost in the woods.
The house was where I remembered it, set on a treeless rise among the fields. It was a neat, square, modern bungalow built of artificial stone and with a brightly tiled roof. It would have looked at home on the edge of a small town, but here it was out of keeping. The garden was precise and tidy – another good display in summer no doubt, but this time the disappointment was in the sterility, with the flowers gone and the earth bare, as against the unkemptness of Ellingworth’s hedge. The whole place shouted out the owners’ pride and I would not have lived there if I had had it as a gift. But it had a view over most of the Easter Colm land.
I parked and got out of the car. A drizzle had started while I was arguing with Ellingworth and the air, which had felt warm and almost friendly on the more sheltered ground, was carrying it across the crest on a chilly wind so that it was twice as wetting and three times as cold. I hurried up the concrete path to the front door. Somebody was watching me from the picture window but it seemed politer to avoid eye-contact.
The woman who came to answer the chimes was middle aged, and, at first, suspicious of the stranger on her doorstep. I explained that I was trying to find out what had befallen a dog two days earlier and her face cleared.
‘I was busy about the house on Saturday,’ she said. The mention of the house was enough to bring a thrill of pride into a voice that fell somewhere in the middle range of Scottish voices, neither as broad as a farmer’s nor as BBC as the professional class. ‘And my husband was away at the football. I took the bairns a walk but we went into the wood. We didn’t see any dogs. My dad was in the front garden, the day being fine. Would you like to speak to him?’
I stepped over the threshold. Somewhere at the back I could hear the voice of a child. I guessed the woman’s age at fifty and thought that it was probably a grandchild. ‘Saturday was a pig of a day in Aberdeenshire,’ I said.
‘It was nice here. Not very warm, but dry and sunny.’ She opened the door to the front room. ‘Dad, this gentleman’s trying to find out something about a dog. Can you help him?’
The elderly man in the armchair by the window smiled. ‘I will if I can,’ he said. His accent was slightly broader than that of his daughter. ‘Come and sit down.’
I joined him at the window. A walking frame stood between the two chairs. The woman offered us tea or coffee or beer and removed herself in a mild huff when we both refused.
‘Tell me the problem,’ he sai
d.
‘Mr Lansdyke at Kilcolm – you know him?’ I broke off to ask.
‘We’ve never met, but Kilcolm . . . that’s over there?’ His hand, gnarled by arthritis, shook slightly as he pointed towards the fold in the ground that hid Arthur Lansdyke’s house. Looking at him, I decided that he must have been an upstanding figure of a man before the years and arthritis took their toll. His face was subsiding, as old faces often do, but there was still a quiet dignity in the bones beneath.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘His spaniel went for a wander on Saturday and came home with two different sizes of shot in him. He brought the dog to me. I breed and train spaniels not far from here and I’d be happier in my mind if I knew that this was an isolated incident. Also, I’m curious.’
He nodded gravely. ‘I can see how you might be worried. Sometimes a gun dog can follow a line too far and lose touch. That’s when they’re at risk. But how can I help?’
‘I wondered whether you’d seen a spaniel or heard shots on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Both,’ he said.
‘Oh? Tell me.’ For a moment, I thought that I was nearing the end of my quest.
He chuckled, although it was only a whisper in his throat as though he had almost forgotten how to laugh. ‘Not the spaniel you’re interested in. Nella – my daughter – helped me out into the garden. I like to feel the sun when I can. I was looking over the farmland. Not much else to do, these days. But my eyes still work, a damn sight better than the rest of me, and I have a, good pair of binoculars. You see the small trees where the hedges meet up against the grassy bank?’
When I picked it out, I realised that it was a place I knew well on the ground. A rabbit could often be shot on the banking where a dog was unsighted, giving a young dog its first chance of an easy blind retrieve of something more interesting than a dummy. ‘I see it,’ I said.
‘A man was shooting pigeon and he had a spaniel with him. He started with a hide between those trees. I could tell what was going on. Used to shoot woodies myself before my legs gave out on me.’ His voice was becoming stronger as he remembered the joy of days now gone. ‘He’d placed himself under a flight-line and he was trying to draw them with decoys. Didn’t do any good, though. His presence shifted the flight-line and it never returned. I could see them dropping in this side of the crest, but that was out of his sight. If he’d moved, he could have been in among them. As it was, he got about three birds from mid-morning until he gave up a little before three in the afternoon. That was for about a dozen shots, I think, but I couldn’t be sure. There was one of those gasbangers popping away in the distance.’
‘You could see them fall?’ I asked. The place was nearly half a mile away.
‘Not to be sure. I’m judging by the number of times I saw the spaniel go for a retrieve.’ He made a sound between a sigh and another attempt at a laugh. ‘If you find him, tell him to speak to me before he goes out next time. I usually know where they’re feeding and which way they’ll fly.’
‘I’ll speak to you myself,’ I said. ‘I sometimes shoot there.’
‘I’ve seen you. About once a fortnight you come and do some training, first one dog, then another, sometimes a third, usually spaniels. That is you, isn’t it?’
I said that it was.
‘Come back any time. Come and talk dogs. I used to train and work spaniels. Best days of my life. Hope you catch the bastard who peppered Mr Lansdyke’s dog. Is the little chap going to be all right?’
‘We hope so.’ I got up to go. ‘I have to go and pick up his X-rays now. I don’t know your name,’ I said.
‘Charles Buccleugh.’
He said the name without any emphasis but I recognised it immediately. He had bred one of Lucy’s ancestors. ‘You were one of the great breeders and handlers of the sixties and seventies,’ I told him, as though the news would come as a surprise to him.
‘Once upon a time,’ he said sadly. ‘I had to retire a while back. Then I lost my wife and couldn’t look after myself. Nella gives me a home now. It’s good of her and I’m glad to be in the country still although’ – he paused and looked over his shoulder, lowering his voice – ‘it’s not quite what I’d have chosen for my last years. But,’ he said more cheerfully, ‘some of the blood-lines I started are still going on.’
‘I have a great-granddaughter of your Cetebos Stanley,’ I told him. ‘A clever little bitch but the line stops there. She had to have a hysterectomy. You’ve probably seen me working her, where the man was decoying pigeon. I’ll bring her to visit you some time.’
I shook his hand gently, so as not to hurt his old bones, and went out to the car. I was glad to escape. The despondency of the old man, once a vigorous power in the gun dog world but now exiled, lost to the old life and waiting to die, was a reminder that the same fate might be awaiting any of us.
There was one other landowner I could have visited, but time was running out. I headed for Cupar.
Chapter Three
Isobel and Beth had already eaten before I got back to Three Oaks. Beth was playing on the lawn with some of the younger pups – not so much for pleasure, although I knew that these were among her favourite moments of the day, as to begin the process of humanising and teaching the first elements of responding to the human voice and discipline. She kennelled the pups and joined me as Isobel came out of the house.
‘You have the X-rays?’ Isobel asked.
When I feel less than sunny, I’m inclined to resent the sort of question which assumes that I might have forgotten to perform some elementary task. I bit back the sarcastic answer that came too easily to my tongue and handed her the large envelope. ‘He didn’t seem to see anything much wrong,’ I said.
I opened the back of the car. Somewhere along the way, Horace had wetted the dog-bed. I called him out but he lay in his own mess, shivering. Beth soothed him until he was calmer. She moved him onto the grass in case he still had something in his bladder, took out the dog-bed for washing and then gathered Horace up tenderly in her arms and carried him inside.
Isobel tapped the envelope and sighed. ‘We’ll see for ourselves. Not that I hope to see much. Dogs are very like people. The fear of pain can be as off-putting as the pain itself. Give him some more time and then, if he’s still not responding, invite him out for a jaunt with the gun. It’s amazing how the prospect of a little sport helps them to forget their woes. Very like people,’ she repeated. I thought that she was probably getting in a dig at me.
She had been doing the month’s accounts in the kitchen. She cleared her tidy groups of papers from an end of the table and I sat down with the snack lunch that Beth had left for me in the oven.
Beth came back from the surgery and began to wash her hands at the sink. ‘All he wants to do is to lie there and feel sorry for himself.’
Isobel was holding up the X-rays to the window. ‘Shock, fear and bruising,’ she said. ‘That has to account for it. At first glance, I can’t see anything more serious. But you can never be sure. Nerves don’t always lie exactly where the books say they should.’
Beth brought me a mug of tea. ‘You were gone a long time. Where else were you?’ she asked me.
I gave them a detailed account of my morning.
‘You didn’t think of visiting Aubrey Stoneham?’ Isobel asked.
‘I thought of it,’ I said. ‘I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Anyway, you’ll probably see him at the weekend. Catch him in a good mood after he’s put out some poor sod’s dog for squeaking.’ Stoneham owned a tract of land, including several farms, to the south of Easter Colm. He was also a pillar of the gun-dog world and an experienced trial judge. He was the wrong man to dislike but I disliked him intensely.
‘I think you should do the puppy trial on Friday,’ Isobel said. ‘Sunbeam still works better for you than for me. You can stay overnight. I’ll mind the shop.’
‘All right,’ I said. Dogs, like humans, have their preferences and although Sunbeam (registered name Sunbeam
Second of Throaks) was a willing young bitch she would sometimes stop dead and look as though she was wondering just who Isobel thought she was to order her about. ‘My traipsing around didn’t get us very far,’ I added.
‘It may have done more good than you think,’ Beth said. ‘You may have reminded somebody that he can’t go shooting at spaniels without questions being asked. And Horace has been very clean up to now. He holds on to it until somebody carries him out onto the grass. I’m wondering if it wasn’t nerves that made him let go in the car. Perhaps you went past the place where he was shot.’
‘More likely he’s just a bad passenger,’ Isobel said. ‘Being shot, taken away from home and then bumped around by a stranger in a strange car would be enough to make me let go, let alone a nervous dog. Could you make a guess who the pigeon-shooter might have been?’
‘It could have been almost anybody,’ I said tiredly. ‘The Sievewrights don’t often refuse permission to shoot pigeon or rabbits. Farmers are so vulnerable when somebody takes a spite against them.’ I yawned. The long illness which had ended my career in the army had left a residue of weakness and the old exhaustion was creeping over me.
Beth looked at me sharply. Despite my attempts to cover up, she can always tell when I am under the weather. ‘I’ll find out,’ she said. ‘You go and have a lie-down.’
It would have done no good to argue. Beth might look like a pretty teenager but she was an adult woman with a will of iron and, if she decided that I needed a rest, a rest I would have whether I wanted it or not. In fact, I wanted it.
So I went to the couch in the sitting-room and dozed for an hour. I woke refreshed and in a fever to go and catch up with my training schedule which, for the moment, seemed to have slipped out of gear.
Give a Dog a Name (Three Oaks Book 4) Page 3