‘We’ll quote you on that,’ the distant voice said.
‘You’d better.’ I had never realised that Beth’s voice, usually as soft as a spaniel’s mouth, could become so hard. ‘If you use the story at all.’
‘And that’s your only comment?’
‘Not by a mile. Where are you speaking from?’
‘Edinburgh,’ said the voice.
‘If you publish without sending somebody here to establish the facts,’ Beth said, ‘we will sue. And, what’s more, we’ll get very substantial damages. And I have three witnesses to this conversation.’
‘Have you finished?’
Beth ignored the question. ‘On the other hand, if you have a reporter and a photographer here tomorrow morning with copies of all the photographs, we’ll not only give you proof. We can also give you a much bigger and better story.’
I saw Henry and Isobel exchange an agonised glance. I nearly grabbed again for the phone, but Beth had already committed us.
‘Exclusive?’ The voice sounded more interested.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Very well,’ said the distant voice. ‘They’ll be there. But if this is no more than a delaying tactic, it won’t achieve anything. We can still meet our deadline.’ His tone of voice would have suited a judge passing sentence on a child-abuser. Evidently we had already been judged and found guilty.
‘That’s good,’ Beth said firmly. She got off my knee, hung up the phone and looked around defiantly into a shocked silence. ‘Well?’
‘You haven’t left us much room for discussion,’ Henry said.
‘Because there isn’t any. What else could I say? “Publish and be damned”? How else could I have bought us any time at all?’ Beth was scared but defiant.
‘You couldn’t,’ Isobel said. ‘Only two things will stop a paper publishing – a writ or the promise of a bigger story. But, Beth. What tale are you going to spin them tomorrow?’ Isobel, usually the staunchest of the three of us, sounded almost plaintive.
‘I don’t know yet,’ Beth said slowly. ‘I’m beginning to get ideas but I need time to think them through. Give me a hand with the dogs’ feed,’ she said more briskly. It seemed that there were still only two fixed points in the universe – death and the dogs’ dinners. ‘Then you two may as well go home. I want John to repeat every word anybody’s said to him since this started and everything he’s seen and done. There’s something in there, only I haven’t got it sorted out yet. There has to be.’
‘God!’ Isobel said. ‘I hope so!’
‘We could stay,’ said Henry. ‘We might be able to help.’
Beth shook her head violently. ‘Just this once, leave it to me. You’d only muddle me with questions.’
We prepared and delivered the feeds together. Beth was withdrawn and silent. We had seen this mood before. Usually, just when she seemed to have lost her marbles, she turned out to have out-thought the rest of us. I hoped that this was one of the times. If not, our comfortable little business was doomed.
When all was tidied away for the night, Henry and Isobel prepared to go. Isobel caught me out of earshot of Beth. ‘She’ll have to have something for those reporters in the morning,’ she said. ‘Does she have something in mind? Or was she bluffing?’
‘Beats me,’ I said. ‘Maybe Beth herself doesn’t know yet. If we start throwing accusations around, we’ll find ourselves defending a libel action as well as starting another one, on top of our other worries.’
‘That’s what I thought. Just in case Beth doesn’t come up with something, I’m going to go home and have a damned good think, with Henry’s help. You’d better do much the same. Somebody’s got to have something to say by morning.’
‘Believe me, I will.’
‘If anything occurs to you, give me a ring.’ She looked anxiously into my eyes before turning away.
The door had hardly closed behind them before Beth picked up the phone and dialled a number. I pointed to the amplifier and she turned it on. Charles Buccleugh’s voice came on the line.
‘It’s all coming to a head,’ Beth told him. ‘We had a threat over the phone and now one of the Sunday papers is sending a reporter to see us tomorrow. We’ve got to come up with the best answer we can find in a hurry. I wondered whether you’d picked up any more news.’
‘Not a thing. And, believe me, I’ve tried. How did you get on over William Randall?’
‘We’re sure that he did it, him and a friend,’ Beth said. ‘But there’s no evidence as to who’s behind it.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Buccleugh said. ‘I’ve nothing more to contribute.’
‘You might have. When you came over here, you said that your daughter was looking after Tony Ellingworth’s children. Is Mrs Ellingworth ill?’
‘Not that I know of.’ There was a pause on the line. ‘I believe that she’s left her husband.’
News of marital rifts always interested Beth. ‘How long ago?’ she asked.
‘That I don’t know. Young Tony started dumping his brats on us the morning after the big thunderstorm, almost a fortnight ago now. He’s been trying to keep it quiet but tongues are wagging.’ I heard him sigh. ‘Can’t say that I blame her. Nice woman and she didn’t have a life of it. But I shouldn’t be gossiping like this.’
‘Yes you should,’ Beth said. ‘This is the time for gossip. We’ve nothing to lose now. Would you phone your friends? We want to know of a connection between Mr Randall, or his friend Tony Jarrow, and our neighbour Mr Williamson, the farmer.’
‘I’ll try,’ Buccleugh said. ‘I’ll call you back if I have any luck. I’m sorry to be such a broken reed on the other thing.’
‘You’re not a broken reed at all,’ Beth said. ‘You put us on to Mr Randall. That may turn out to give us exactly the link we need. When this is over, you must come again and spend the day with us and let us pick your brains about something easier, like raising spaniels.’
‘I’d enjoy that,’ Buccleugh said. ‘What brains I have are yours for the picking.’
Beth hung up. The phone rang again immediately. This time, it was Hautry from the SSPCA to say that the newspaper had contacted him for a quote. ‘I told him that I had some knowledge of the allegations,’ Hautry said, ‘and that the evidence I’d seen so far was open to other interpretations. I also said that I’d know more within the week, if they cared to wait for the lab report on the hair samples.’
‘They won’t, of course,’ Beth said.
‘No. They’d prefer to print their story while they’ve still got it, rather than wait for it to be disproved. I’m sorry. I thought that I should let you know.’
Beth thanked him and hung up. She sat down opposite me. ‘Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if there were no more newspapers,’ she said wistfully. ‘No more lies. No more minor problems blown up into world disasters.’
‘And nothing to light the fire with. But we might even save one or two rain-forests.’
Beth locked her eyes with mine. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Tell it all again . . . Oh, for God’s sake! Who’s this? You go.’
The lights of a car blazed across the kitchen curtains. We heard it pull up at the front of the house. A door slammed. When I opened the front door she already had her hand raised to press the bell. She was a well-built lady of slightly more than my age and beginning to turn plump, well turned-out from her shiny pale hair to her fashionable yet country shoes. She was already speaking loudly in a high, nervous voice before her hand reached her side again – indeed, I had the unlikely impression that she had been speaking before I opened the door.
‘Mr Cunningham? I hope you don’t mind my coming without phoning first and I do hope that I haven’t caught you at a bad time but I was on my way back from seeing the dentist in Dundee and it occurred to me that I was passing within a mile of here and when I spoke to my husband last night he asked me to come and see you.’
‘Not at all,’ I said feebly. It was too late to invite her inside. I had been backing dow
n the hall away from her voice and her obtrusive femininity and she had pushed the door closed behind her and followed me.
‘I’m Mrs Lansdyke – Helena Lansdyke née Fording-bridge – and Arthur’s still stuck in Switzerland so he phoned me last night and asked me to come and see Horace, although what I can tell him that you couldn’t I don’t know, and he knows that I’m not really into dogs anyway. But he said that he’s made up his mind that he doesn’t want Horace to linger if he’s suffering and that if he isn’t going to get better he’ll have to be put down and he’ll go along with whatever I decide.’
She paused. While I disentangled all the he’s and made sense of what she had said, I was watching to see-whether she drew a deep breath. There was no sign of it. Either she had trained as a singer or any movement of her ribs was lost behind a rather formidable bosom.
Her voice had fetched Beth out of the kitchen like a puppy on a check-lead. I tried to introduce her but Mrs Lansdyke was off again. ‘It isn’t a decision I’d want to make. I reminded Arthur that Horace and I have nothing in common but he said that he can’t make the decision all the way from Switzerland and if he was going to have to start a new dog I should ask you to set one aside for him and make a start to the training. So I asked Duggie Henshaw—’
‘He’s still at home, is he?’ Beth asked from behind Mrs Lansdyke’s back.
‘Oh, hello, my dear.’ Mrs Lansdyke accepted Beth’s presence without a blink. ‘Yes, he’ll be going back offshore in a day or two, always comes and goes on a Friday. I thought I’d get his opinion, because he does know about dogs and he’s such a useful person to have about the place when he’s there and not out shooting pigeons or doing odd jobs for people like Aubrey Stoneham. And he said that it’s been ten days since Horace was shot, and none of us can think how that happened, but if he isn’t walking again after ten days he probably never will. And if he does snare the occasional fox, good luck to him say I, coming round raking in the dustbins!’
I was dazed by the sudden flood of information, much of which seemed to be relevant when I could unscramble it. I decided that I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if I had sought out Mrs Lansdyke a week earlier.
‘You’d better come and see him,’ Beth said – meaning Horace, not Aubrey Stoneham, Dougal Henshaw or the fox. She led the way through the house and opened the door to the surgery.
Mrs Lansdyke swept inside and bent over Horace, who was still lying passively on his bed in the corner. He raised his head and looked at her without showing any sign of pleasure. ‘So there you are, you lazy devil!’ she said cheerfully. ‘Serves you right for chasing off after the ladies or scrounging food from the neighbours. They must think we never feed you.’ She put a hand down to pat Horace’s head. He raised himself onto his forelegs and licked it. She turned away, wiped her hand on her skirt and then slapped a meaty thigh. ‘Come on old chap. We’re going home.’ And she marched out of the surgery again while looking over her shoulder. Horace tried to rise, gave a feeble yelp and lay down again.
Beth closed the door.
‘That settles it,’ Mrs Lansdyke said. ‘Put him down.’
‘My partner, the vet, thinks that he’s got into the habit of thinking of himself as crippled,’ I said. ‘She still hopes that he’ll snap out of it.’
‘If she wants him she can have him. Otherwise put him down.’
‘We have a very good spayed bitch available,’ Beth said. ‘A field-trial winner on her second outing. And she’s never wandered in her life, so you needn’t worry about her going to visit the neighbours. Not that you’ll have many neighbours left, soon.’
I had already wondered about disposing profitably of Lucy to a good home but had decided that any house where the man was often away and his wife disliked dogs could hardly be counted as ‘good’. But Beth, it seemed, had introduced the subject in order to lead to another.
Mrs Lansdyke had arrived at the front door and prepared to open it for herself before I could get in front of her bulk. She stopped. ‘They do seem to be melting away,’ she said. ‘I shan’t miss that George Sievewright, smarming around the women and God alone knows how many of the babies in the district are his. Would you believe he even made a pass at me?’
Disbelief would have been appropriate but hardly flattering. Beth found a better formula. ‘That seems just like the man,’ she said.
‘Doesn’t it just? I’ll miss Doris Ellingworth. We used to do our shopping together on Fridays and have lunch. But I must say I thought better of her than to go off without a word. There I was, the Friday before last, waiting in the hall with my hat on for her to come with her husband’s car – Arthur had taken his to Glenrothes with him – and she never turned up. Of course, I thought that the woman who usually took Wanda – that’s her youngest – had let her down, and it’s no fun trailing around a supermarket with a child in tow. I couldn’t get an answer on the phone so I thought that she must be taking Wanda to somebody else. It was the next day before I heard that she’d run off. Leaving her husband I can understand, the man’s an idiot, and she could hardly take the children if she was going off with a lover, although I don’t think it’ll last, but she could at least have let me know that she wasn’t coming, and nothing in the house for Arthur’s dinner.
‘How much are you asking for the bitch?’ she continued, without any change of tone. When I told her. (adding a margin as a deterrent) she pursed her lips as if for a kiss. I nearly stepped back. ‘Outrageous!’ she said. ‘But it’s his own money and if he wants to spend it on his dog instead of his wife that’s up to him. I’ll let him know. And now I must run, I’m going to dinner at the Stonehams and it’ll take me an hour to get ready. Thank you so much for showing Horace to me. You know what to do.’
I took her to her car. She was still talking as she drove off but I couldn’t hear a word. I went back to Beth.
‘You know what that means?’ Beth said.
‘It means that we’re stuck with Horace’s keep from now on.’ I knew that we would not put him down as long as there was the least hope of a recovery.
‘That too,’ Beth said. ‘Now, come and sit down and tell it all to me again.’
I followed her into the kitchen and put on my most patient and hard-done-by expression, although in fact I was quite ready to go over it again. Saying it all aloud might give us the clue we so desperately needed. And, more, if Beth were to spot something, her questions might give me a hint which would save me from having to admit that my reasoning was a long way behind hers. A man has his pride.
We had progressed as far as my visit to the Old Manse when the phone rang. Beth grabbed it before I could get near it, but she had the grace to switch on the amplifier again.
It was Isobel’s voice this time. ‘We’ve just got home,’ she said. ‘You might like to know that Williamson’s Land-Rover is tucked in behind the hedge at the bottom of the farm road. He always puts it there when he’s heading for the pub and one of his real binges. If you want to catch him with his guard down, now’s the best chance you’re likely to get.’
Beth thanked her and disconnected. ‘We may as well walk down,’ she said. ‘At least we can have a bar meal. My mind’s too busy to think of cooking tonight.’
‘I thought you wanted me to spill the rest of the story,’ I said.
‘You’ll tell it better over a pint,’ she said. ‘Come on. We’ll just look in on the new pups first and see that Sunspot has enough milk for them.’
We wrapped up against the cold, paid a respectful call on mother and pups in the whelping kennel, switched on the microphones and the radio link and set off on foot. Beth was quiet and I matched her silence. There could be ears in the darkness.
‘What time does the moon come up?’ she asked suddenly.
I thought about it. I usually have a mental picture of the phases of the moon, thanks to wild-fowling trips to the foreshore which are as regular as I can make them and Beth will allow. Adding on about forty minutes a day . . . ‘Between
midnight and one,’ I said.
She only grunted.
We had reached the lights of the village street. In the hotel porch, she stopped. ‘There’s no reason now why we can’t ask Mr Stoneham who gave him the photographs.’
‘And he’ll have no more reason to tell you than he had before. Somebody will have fed him a good story. In his mind, we’re probably blackmailers or witches or something.’
She nodded. ‘Leave it. We may have more leverage soon.’
The rambling bar of the old hotel was warm, cosily lit and nearly empty. Andrew Williamson was squatting malignantly on a stool at the bar. Beth would usually have gone to a table while I fetched drinks and a bar menu, but she followed me as I went to stand beside the farmer.
Florrie took my order. At the sound of my voice, Williamson looked round and focused on me. He was swaying slightly but otherwise seemed to be in control of his faculties. I tried to think of some inoffensive gambit to open a conversation.
He resolved my dilemma for me. ‘Want to talk to you,’ he said suddenly.
‘Go ahead,’ I told him.
‘You can tell me something.’
I had been expecting abuse or complaint. In my relief I nearly asked whether he wanted anything specific, but I had the sense to hold my tongue.
‘You ken my Brent?’
‘Yes.’ Brent was one of his working collie bitches, an evil-tempered animal but a clever worker. They had taken some prizes together at the sheepdog trials.
‘The last day or two, she’s not wanted to get out of her basket. Just wants to sleep. And drink.’
‘She’s not eating?’ I asked.
‘Not a damn thing.’
‘How old is she?’ I asked.
‘Seven next May. What I want to know, could it be serious?’
Mid-life is a dangerous time for bitches. Remembering Lucy’s pyometra I said, ‘It could be very serious. And urgent. You’d better take her to a vet as soon as you can.’
Give a Dog a Name (Three Oaks Book 4) Page 11