Fair Game

by Gerald Hammond

  She nodded. ‘I can’t help but hear. They – they were talking about us at lunchtime. I wasn’t meant to hear it, but I did. I was seen leaving the inn. At first they thought it was your friend I’d been with.’

  Mr Enterkin was a little piqued that Keith should have stolen his thunder, but he put it behind him. ‘Do you mind them guessing about us?’ he asked.

  She considered the question. ‘Not as long as you don’t,’ she said. ‘If you were ashamed, then I would be too.’

  ‘Ashamed? If it weren’t for your sake I’d put an advertisement in The Times, proclaiming my triumph to the world. But that wasn’t what I meant to ask about. What did the village gossip make of Mr Grass’s death?’

  ‘Well. At first there was some that thought he was up to one of his jokes but that he’d gone a bit too far this time and he’d get himself into real trouble that he couldn’t buy his way out of. But there was only one or two thought that, and soon they all accepted that he was dead, and there was one or two said that he’d been done in.’

  Mr Enterkin put down his knife and fork. ‘That was delicious. Quite delicious. Why yes, if there’s any left . . . Was there any comment about Joe Merson vanishing at the same time?’

  ‘Yes. But then there was a lot of foolishness talked. Joe’s always going off, poaching or thieving. Once he got caught, up in Aberdeenshire, and went inside for six months under some other name. And then Harry Pratt – he’s our local Bobby – said as he’d seen old Joe in the ’phone box outside the post office, a couple of days after Mr Grass got shot, so they forgot about it. There was plenty else to talk about, like whether Mr Grass was murdered.’

  ‘Who was first favourite for the culprit?’

  ‘You mean the murderer?’ She shivered, not unpleasurably. ‘Sounds awful when you say it like that. Makes it sort of real and evil. Mind you, it was nearly all just talk, and only a few of them carried on about it. But some was for blaming Joe Merson, and some said it was old Bert Yates (because him and Mr Grass was about at daggers drawn) and somebody else said it’d surely be an angry husband, and there was plenty of names suggested but not seriously. Then they heard about the legacies, and everything said after that was just in fun. Every time the news got out that somebody had something coming there’d be suggestions about what he’d do with it or she’d done for it. All kinds of fanciful things were thought up, you know how people are.’ (Mr Enterkin nodded thoughtfully. His mouth was full.) ‘And then word got round about the memorial service and the things people have got to do, and they’ve not talked about much else since.’

  They did they washing-up together – a chore of which Mr Enterkin, the confirmed bachelor, had become heartily sick, but which he found a pleasure, almost a game, when shared with an attractive woman in flirtatious mood. Then they sat on the couch and held hands.

  ‘I’ve got to go up to London tomorrow,’ Enterkin said at last.

  ‘Will you be back before the weekend?’

  He was tempted, but he stood firm. ‘I’d better get back and clear my desk,’ he said. ‘I’d rather be here, but duty calls. I’ll see you without fail on Monday.’

  He had thought that, after spending himself with such prodigality the night before, it would be a few days before he could rouse the devil again. He had reckoned without the effects of previous celibacy, good food and the singular effect that Penny’s plump charms had on his elderly hormones. It was fortunate that he had taken the precaution of obtaining a key to the inn.

  Chapter Eleven

  In the morning, while Mr Enterkin was being carried to Renfrew Airport in a comfort and dignity to which he would dearly have liked to become accustomed, Keith and Brutus set off again. One of Keith’s objectives was to learn a little more about the lie of the estate, so he chose a fresh route. It had rained in the night, to the relief of the farmers, but the sun was out again. Brutus pranced beside him, happy that Keith was happy, glad to be walking again, puzzled that his instincts impelled him towards actions that he did not understand.

  They were half-way to Winter’s cottage when a macintoshed figure stepped out of a bush. Miss Wyper was carrying Mr Grass’s Darne, the sliding breech open as custom demanded. ‘Any luck?’ Keith asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ She sounded depressed. ‘I never find them sitting, and when they run they’re too quick for me.’

  ‘And all the while, you’re scaring them into cover,’ Keith said. He sighed. His morning was in danger of going up the spout. ‘We’ll walk on, not by the way you’ve been. You’d have more chance at dawn or dusk, but they may be sitting out taking the sun. The trick is to walk very quietly through cover and then to peep out at the far end.’

  They followed a ride across the middle of a small wood, past a release-pen waiting for the new broods of pheasant poults. They walked very softly with Brutus, resentful but curious, at heel. Keith put his mouth close to Miss Wyper’s ear. ‘Go forward gently and look both ways.’

  His advice was good. A rabbit was sitting up, thirty yards away. She fired, and it toppled. Instantly, another bolted almost from underfoot and Keith bowled it over in the open and then swung up to catch a startled woodpigeon that clattered out of the branches overhead and kill it dead in the air.

  It was a moment of earthy triumph.

  Miss Wyper would have run forward but he stopped her. A rabbit with a kick left in it may teach a dog to be hard-mouthed, so he waited a full minute and then sent Brutus. The rabbits resembled the dummies of his training and he brought them to hand at once. Then, to Keith’s delight, he went for the pigeon, lifted it gently but firmly and fetched it back, pride in achievement shining around him.

  If Keith was delighted, Miss Wyper was overwhelmed. This was her first introduction to the truly fulfilled dog, the working dog doing the job for which it was bred. Just as Brutus had experienced a revelation of his purpose in life, she, as a woolly minded doggy-lover, caught a first glimpse of the true relationship between man and dog.

  Brutus accepted their praises as being no more than his due, but within his black frame great emotions were stirring. From now on he was to be a devotee, an addict, a fanatic. Keith could read the signs, but there was nothing to tell him that this new enthusiasm was soon to become crucial to his own survival.

  Alice Wyper, however, was less enthusiastic about receiving her furry victim. Shrinking back with a small squeal, she said that she couldn’t, she just couldn’t.

  ‘Bill would want you to,’ Keith pointed out, but she shuddered and shook her head. ‘For ten thousand quid?’ She put her hand out and drew it away again. ‘Why not, for God’s sake?’

  ‘It’s still warm. If it wriggled, I think I’d die.’

  ‘Look, if it wriggles I promise I’ll die too.’

  ‘I can’t be sure.’

  Keith sighed. He seemed to be doing a lot of sighing around Miss Wyper. Using his pen-knife, he paunched the two rabbits and passed the left leg of each through the right. ‘If it moves again,’ he said, ‘I’ll come round to believing in universal resurrection.’

  Miss Wyper, green but determined, picked up her bunny by the back legs, using two fingers. ‘Can’t I put it in your bag?’ she asked.

  Their relationship, Keith thought, was becoming more and more like something dreamed up by D. H. Lawrence in fevered mood, but he was not inclined to exploit it in a damp wood with midges dancing in the sunlight. Besides, he would be with Molly soon. ‘You’re going to have to skin it,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Of course,’ she said disdainfully.

  They followed a thick hedge to another ride where feed-hoppers had been set up in readiness; out of that wood and into a small spinney. There was a sudden eruption under their feet. A furious cock pheasant exploded into the air, something white shrouding its head. Blind and angry, it screeched and beat its wings against the undergrowth until it shook off its blindfold and soared on blurring wings, up into the sunlight. A small hen pheasant had fallen foul of the same trick but was taking it more passively, cro
uching in the grass and only rushing blindly away from their footsteps. In the end, Brutus retrieved the bird unhurt. Keith gently removed the paper.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said. ‘An old poacher’s trick. A paper cone with something sticky and tasty inside – in this case, treacle and raisins. I suppose our poacher’s away by now, with us blasting off in the next field, but we’d better get rid of these things.’

  They searched, but the little cones were hard to find in the grass. Brutus’ long nose, a thousand times more sensitive than that of a man, had already identified the other visitor to the spinney and soon searched out another five of the cones. Brutus ate them, paper and all.

  *

  While Alice Wyper, with all the concentration of a surgeon, skinned her rabbit in Mrs Winter’s kitchen and under that lady’s kind but firm direction, Keith found Winter out at the pheasant pens and made the acquaintance of his two sons, a pair of enormous but inarticulate youths who faded quietly into the background as soon as attention was removed from them.

  ‘I meant to ask you about the local rules,’ Keith said.

  Winter nodded. ‘I just thought I’d wait and watch you,’ he said. ‘Mostly, the rules are just common-sense and good behaviour and you’ve been complying with them.’ (Keith nodded in acknowledgement of what he recognised as high praise.) ‘There’s just one more thing. You will pick up your cartridges and take them home with you. I will not abide spent cases left lying. We had a young bullock killed last year by swallowing one. Stupid beast! It did a lot of damage to relationships with the farmers.’

  Keith nodded humbly. ‘I don’t know what vermin you want taken and what left,’ he said.

  ‘Aye. You’ll not shoot down by the loch while the duck are breeding, but if you see any evidence of predators down yonder you’ll tip me the wink. The loons can aye set traps. I ken you’ll not shoot at birds of prey – I saw you let a wind-hover go by. But if you can get a crack at a carrion crow or a magpie, tak’ it, there’s o’er many of the buggers come in from beyond the march. Leave stoats and weasels to me – I like to have just enough about the place to keep the rats down. Now, come awa’ in and see the map.’

  A large map was hanging on the parlour wall, protected by a sheet of perspex which was scrawled with notes and arrows. The estate, Keith saw, was shaped much like a human left ear, about two miles wide and rather more in length. At the southern end, just above the lobe, was a lake of about thirty acres. The village was strung out along part of the eastern edge. Whinkirk House occupied a position corresponding to the tragus of the ear. Other houses were strung out around the perimeter, backed by the solid woodland that occupied the higher ground and sheltered the estate. The rest was farmland, laced by the many coverts and dotted with occasional cottages or groups of farm-buildings.

  Winter laid his finger on a red star drawn on the perspex. ‘You’ll oblige me by giving this corner the go-by,’ he said. ‘There’s a Dusky Thrush nesting there, a great rarity. Maybe you could get your wife to come and take its photo? We’ve rigged a wee hide.’

  ‘Maybe I could,’ Keith said absently. While he spoke, he was memorising the features and boundaries and the locations and ownerships of the buildings. ‘And we’d better tell Miss Wyper things like to keep moving and not to linger in the one place and unsettle your birds.’

  ‘What is this about her?’ Winter asked plaintively. ‘Yon lawyer-mannie you was wi’, he phoned me and said she was to be allowed to shoot coneys. Well, I knew fine that she’d never do that, there was more chance of her coming naked into the kirk, the way she feels.’

  ‘Funny you should say that. With her, it’s the one or the other.’ He explained to Winter the terms of Miss Wyper’s legacy.

  To Keith’s surprise, the dour keeper let go a shout of laughter. ‘You canna’ help but hand it to the man,’ he said. ‘Most of the terms and conditions in his will sound daft, but there’s aye a degree of wisdom behind them. Miss Wyper, now. If she’s helped over her prejudices she’ll be that much happier in her work here.’

  Winter’s view was the exact opposite of that expressed by the general’s daughter, but Keith was beginning to agree with the keeper. ‘I gave her as much advice as I thought she could absorb,’ he said. ‘But you’d better take her in hand. And if you see her coming, either wave a red flag or get your head down.’

  ‘Maybe I’ll take to wearing a white macintosh,’ Winter suggested.

  ‘I don’t think she’s likely to be as dangerous as the general.’ Mention of dangerous behaviour reminded Keith of something else. ‘By the bye, do I remember Mr Roach saying that Mr Grass’s other dog got shot during the winter?’

  ‘That wisna’ carelessness with a gun. Carelessness with the dog, maybe. Mr Yates at North Farm shot her. Worrying sheep, he said. Now, I dinna’ ken the facts of the matter and I didna’ see the corpus. He said as he never recognised the dog, and the one spaniel can look awful like another, except maybe to its owner. They say there was wool between its teeth. Mr Grass was a bittie unreasonable but, as he said, it’s no’ unknown for a farmer to put a wee bit wool in the dog’s mouth after the event.’

  ‘Spaniels don’t start sheep-chasing unless another dog leads them into it,’ Keith said.

  ‘Aye. That’s what Mr Grass said. And Yates himself has a half-bred collie with a good bit of the devil in him, and he was out that night, so they say, although he lives most of his life on a chain, being o’er wild.’ They were still standing in front of the map, and Winter shuffled his feet uncomfortably. ‘They say that Mulberry ran off from outside a certain lady’s house. She was a good young bitch, too, and coming along well.’

  ‘Mulberry was?’

  ‘Aye, Mulberry. I reckon that’s why old Yates wants to see either you or yon lawyer mannie. He’ll be anxious to ken that the will says nothing about ending his tenancy. Mr Grass was having a blue fit, right up to the day he died.’

  ‘I’ll find out,’ Keith promised, ‘and pay him a call. You wouldn’t care to tell me which lady’s house was rumoured to be the one that Mulberry ran off from?’

  ‘I wouldn’t care to bandy a lady’s name,’ Winter said carefully. ‘But you canna’ bandy a house, now can you? When you come to the one with the yellow paint, the lady’ll not be very far awa’.’

  Shortly thereafter, Miss Wyper emerged from the kitchen and gave the keeper a nervous greeting. However, instead of seeking revenge for past arguments, Winter smiled and nodded and enquired after her progress with the skinning-knife.

  Miss Wyper, who was still looking pale and distraught, shuddered in a ladylike manner. ‘I managed it,’ she said. ‘Mrs Winter said that I did it very well. But I’m not sure that I could do it again.’

  ‘You’ll be a sensation if you don’t,’ Keith pointed out. ‘I’d better be on my way. Good hunting!’

  ‘Time that I was moving and a’,’ Winter said. He came to the door with Keith and took his own gun down from a pair of hooks above the coat-rack.

  ‘I see you like a repeater,’ Keith said.

  ‘Not to say like. It’s handy for five quick shots when you’re among the vermin, and a damned pest when you’re searching the brambles for five empty cartridges. It’s no’ everybody’s choice. The general was trying one earlier in the year, and he couldn’t get along with it at all.’

  *

  Keith set off again. He had hoped further to advance the training of Brutus, but the pigeon were elusive and to settle down in one place to shoot would have disturbed the nesting gamebirds. He reached the general’s house with still only one bird in the bag.

  There was a delay before the general answered the bell. He took Keith inside, leaving Brutus and his own cocker spaniels in the garden.

  ‘I’ve brought your gun back,’ Keith said, ‘with many thanks for the loan. I’m away home until next week and I’ll fetch my own gun back with me. Yours needs a clean, but I hadn’t any tackle at the inn.’

  ‘Quite all right. No problem. Come through.’ The general
led him into the gun-room. ‘Drink?’

  ‘I could use a beer,’ Keith said.

  ‘So could I. Get some. Fridge.’

  At that particular combination of ideas, Keith’d bladder began to send him urgent messages. ‘Perhaps I could pay a call while you do your fetching?’ he suggested.

  ‘Call? Oh, yes. Of course. This way.’

  Coming out of the general’s dark cloakroom into a darker passage, Keith was aware of a draught and a sudden flood of light as the general opened a door from a sunlit kitchen. Juggling a tray of bottles and glasses, the general closed the door carefully behind him.

  They had a beer together in the gunroom and chatted for a few minutes. The general seemed nervous. His voice and gestures, always larger than life, were larger still and he seemed relieved to escort Keith to the front door and fling it open.

  Brutus was sitting on the doorstep. The general’s two cockers were standing well back, waiting to enjoy the fun. Brutus was bearing up under the weight of an enormous cock pheasant. He delivered it into Keith’s hand. Keith passed it on to the general.

  ‘From your kitchen, I’m very much afraid,’ he said.

  The general laughed wildly. ‘Frozen. Bought in. Dinner party,’ he said. He sounded ready to choke.

  In the hope of eradicating, or at least reducing, the memory of the gaffe, Keith stopped a few yards short of the inn and handed Brutus the pigeon. Brutus accepted the, by now, somewhat tatty bird and carried it right into the public bar, showing himself with pride to the assembled drinkers. He was duly made a great fuss of, and rewarded with potato crisps which he ate with great relish all mixed up with pigeon feathers.

  Chapter Twelve

  Keith and Brutus, after an early lunch, were collected from the inn by Bert Hayes. The Rolls made easy going of a road that twined through hills sometimes wooded, often green, with heather sometimes spilling down from the high ground. Keith passed the time looking out of the car’s dark windows at the countryside under the persistent sun, and playing his favourite game of ‘If I had the shooting, what would I do here?’ By the time that they were descending towards Newton Lauder he had identified eight sites for duckponds, miles of potential grouse-moor and more than he could count of places where only a modicum of work was needed to create habitat for pheasant or partridge or snipe. He heaved a mental sigh for such a waste of natural resources.