The Worried Widow

by Gerald Hammond

  *

  On Thursdays, when the shop was closed, Wallace James, obsessively conscientious, often spent much of the day sorting stock and doing the books but Keith, who worked to live rather than lived to work, put another much needed hour into the garden and then, after muttering some inaudible excuse to Molly, whistled up the young dog and escaped in the Japanese jeep which was their second car.

  On setting out, he had no more firm intention than to combine a little shooting with a lot of training of the young spaniel. Herbert, a liver-and-white springer, had a much longer name on his pedigree; but he was nicknamed, by way of Herbert Hoover, after the famous vacuum-cleaner because of his talent for hoovering up any crumbs which the family let fall. A happy and willing little dog, he had performed well throughout a lengthy basic training while awaiting the retirement or death of the Calders’ old Labrador. A rapidly deteriorating heart had put an end to the old dog’s career and life, and Herbert was now in an early stage of his introduction to real game.

  Any piece of farmland which carried a few rabbits or was being visited by woodpigeon would have done. Keith was always welcomed by any of a dozen farmers who were happy enough to be relieved of pests and knew that their hospitality would be repaid in time by his help in need or by the gift of cartridges abstracted behind Wallace’s back.

  But Keith called to see whether his brother-in-law was free to go with him and, getting no answer at Ronnie’s door, continued out over the canal bridge. That way took him past Kenny Stuart’s road-end and, on another impulse, Keith turned in, nursing the hard-sprung jeep between the pot-holes in the gravel road. He parked near the farmhouse and found Kenny waiting beside his Land-Rover. Kenny Stuart was a fit, middle-aged man with a jovial expression, rough hands and, when the occasion demanded, a rougher tongue. He looked out of place in his going-to-town suit.

  Custom and courtesy demanded an enquiry after the state of the farm.

  ‘The spring sowing’s finished at last, thank the Lord,’ Kenny said. ‘It’s late, but look at the winter we had! Much of the land’s only just come dry enough to take the machines.’

  ‘You’re in time,’ Keith said. ‘Any growth you got earlier would only have been feeding the pests.’

  ‘That’s true enough.’ Kenny sighed. A farmer confronted with a silver lining will usually prefer to look for the cloud.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a go at the pigeon?’ Keith asked. ‘I see they’re dropping into the oilseed rape along that burn at your north end.’

  ‘Help yourself. But I’d rather you worked along the boundary of Boswell Court. Nobody’ll mind a shot or two. They’ve been complaining of rabbits at their young plants, carnations especially.’

  Keith thought about the lie of the land. ‘There’s not much I can do at this time of day,’ he said. ‘The rabbits’ll mostly be in that wood, which is too thick to ferret and far too thick to shoot even if it didn’t have pheasants in it. I’d be giving the pup a workout and that’s about all.’

  ‘Just so the residents see somebody’s trying,’ Kenny said, ‘There’ll be few enough pheasants in the wood after the way the police went through it.’

  ‘I could maybe come back after dark some day with Ronnie and his long net. There’s no other way to tackle a place like that, except snares.’

  ‘That’d be fine. Just as long as it’s only you and Ronnie, and maybe that lassie of yours if she feels like it,’ Kenny said. ‘I don’t want every bugger feeling free to come around the place. The residents want me to give Mr Albany the run of the land nearby. What d’you think?’

  Keith shook his head. Ian Albany was not in his good books at the moment, and shooting permissions are not lightly shared. ‘He’s chairman of the shooting club. He’d soon be pressuring you to let them all on.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking myself.’

  The two men nodded at each other. Kenny seemed to be in no hurry. For lack of anything else to say, Keith asked, ‘You remember the day Sam Hendrickson died?’

  Kenny nodded solemnly. ‘Aye. Yon policeman Gowrie’s been at me about it. I was drilling barley just behind Boswell Court. Not that I kenned ocht about it at the time. I’d not hear a shot over the noise of the tractor.’

  ‘You began that morning?’

  ‘That I did.’ The farmer looked steadily at Keith for a few seconds before going on. ‘I’ll save you asking the same damn questions Gowrie asked me. By the time the shot was fired, the verge along the road, the back gardens and the canal was all freshly drilled and chain-harrowed. Any footprints on that bit were made since then – likely by Gowrie hisself. And I’d’ve seen anybody coming over the fields or along the canal, but apart from a car or two on the road there was nobody. I could see folk moving in the gardens, here and there, and old Mrs Orton at her window. She gied me a wave as she aye does, and I waved back. You’ve more need to speak with her.’

  ‘I’m not investigating,’ Keith said. ‘I did my bit ten days ago. All the same, I wonder what time she got to her window.’

  ‘That I can’t tell you. If it’s any help, the laddie Beecher went off along the road in yon red sports car of his about the time we waved. He must’ve been doing ninety before he braked for the road-end. He’ll kill himself or somebody else before he’s through, yon lad will.’

  Keith heard the sound of a door being locked and Mrs Stuart arrived. Like her husband, she was town-smart in an inexpensive fur. She nodded and smiled to Keith and climbed into the Land-Rover.

  ‘Time I wasn’t here,’ Kenny said. ‘You do what you like. The sooner this business is sorted the better.’

  ‘It’s not my business now,’ Keith said. ‘I was just chatting.’

  He watched the Land-Rover drive away and then fetched his gun, boots and cartridge-belt from the jeep. He let Herbert out and the spaniel sailed over the fence into the neighbouring pasture, raced in a few circles around the handful of curious bullocks and leaped back, panting and obviously pleased with himself. Having blown off his steam, he was ready and even anxious to come under control.

  The weather had recovered. It was a beautiful day of springtime promise. Keith knew that the promise was probably as meaningful as a tart’s smile, that even the snow could come back again before summer, but for the moment all was comfort and hope. The deciduous trees were still bare, reaching hopeful fingers towards the sky, but at ground level the countryside was bursting with the sights and sounds and smells of a new season. Over a distant wood, pigeon were soaring in their courtship flight, while on the further hills the shadows of small clouds lay still. It was a day for doing something special, buying a car or acquiring a new mistress – but no, he reminded himself, those days were behind him. He had meant what he had told his daughter. He kept his mind on the business in hand.

  They followed the line of a long hedgerow and Keith worked the spaniel through its base. A rabbit bolted on to the bare ground and he bowled it over. Herbert had dropped as the rabbit departed, and he stayed fast at the shot. Keith was pleased. This was a crucial stage of training when the young dog must learn that his mission was to respond to his master’s directions without any idea being implanted that he was free to act on his own initiative. Giving the pup a word of praise, Keith left him sitting – the dog must never think that retrieving is his task alone – and fetched the rabbit himself, paunched and legged it and hung it on the hedge for collection on the return journey.

  From half a field away, Boswell Court was mostly roofs, spaced well apart above a barrier of trees and hedges. Splashes of blossom painted the smaller, specimen trees.

  Their route brought them down to the corner where the access road entered Boswell Court. Here, as Deborah had said, the road took a swing away from the canal bank and a small spinney had been planted in the triangle so made. This was balanced by a slightly larger spinney on the other side, a decorative grove of smaller garden varieties, mostly cherries and rowans and some laburnum. The ground beneath was deep with last year’s uncut grass. Keith placed
himself where the easiest escape was cut off and sent Herbert in.

  The tips of the grasses betrayed the movement of a rabbit. Keith felt a familiar surge of excitement. No matter how humble the quarry the hunter’s instinct, that exclusively male urge to gather meat, would always take over. He directed Herbert with hand and whistle. The rabbit broke across the road. Keith missed behind and caught it with his second barrel. The sound of his shots echoed flatly back to him.

  A round, female face topped with iron-grey hair appeared at the corner of the first garden as Keith was picking up his rabbit. ‘Did I frighten you?’ he asked. This would be Mrs McLaing. She and her husband had been abroad when Sam Hendrickson died.

  The face broke into a broad smile. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘And if you had, it would have been worth it. You wouldn’t believe what those little beasts are doing to the gardens.’

  ‘Believe me,’ Keith said, ‘I would. I get them myself. Kenny Stuart asked me to see what I could do.’

  ‘We had to give up trying to grow brassicas,’ Mrs McLaing said sadly. ‘I’ll phone round and warn the others. It might help if I knew your name.’

  ‘Calder,’ Keith said. He hung the rabbit, like his earlier victim, on a branch to await his return. Rabbit fleas soon desert a dead host and he had no wish to carry them home.

  He put Herbert through the smaller spinney but without result. Blackthorn hedging overhung the canal and there was no way past on that side. He was close to Kechnie’s boundary and half expected the older man to burst out at him with some complaint about noise or danger; but the grocer seemed to be away, probably, thought Keith, spreading gloom and despondency among the staff of his other shops which took a different closing day.

  Mrs McLaing reappeared as he crossed the road again. ‘That’ll be all right,’ she said. She paused and then hurried on in some embarrassment. ‘I phoned Mrs Hendrickson specially to warn her, because I thought that the sound of shots might upset her, so soon after her husband . . . You know what I mean?’

  ‘I know,’ Keith said.

  ‘She said to ask you to call in on her before you leave.’

  ‘I’ll do that. You were away when it happened, weren’t you?’

  Mrs McLaing nodded happily. ‘What a stramash to come back to! We had a week in Tunisia. We like to get away when the Scottish winter’s gone on long enough. It’s nice to see the spring happen somewhere warmer and then come back to see it happen again here. But it quite spoiled it, arriving home to hear that a neighbour was dead. And everybody quite sure what had happened but no two of them agreeing with each other.’

  ‘Your house was all right when you got back? No break-in?’

  ‘Nothing like that. I worried about it while I was away, but I needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘It’s always a worry, isn’t it?’ Keith said sympathetically. ‘Do you leave a key with anybody?’

  ‘No, never.’ Mrs McLaing glanced anxiously over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘I did once, with Mrs Strathling. But when I got home I could see that she’d been through all my things. Just nosiness, but it’s not very nice, is it?’

  A car was approaching. Keith was unsure whether the road had ever been adopted by the local authority but had no desire to find himself in an argument with a policeman over the definition of the word ‘recklessly’ or as to whether the road near which he had been shooting constituted a public thoroughfare. He gave Mrs McLaing a nod and a wave and made his way back into the field.

  He took Herbert along the margin of the field at heel. Only one set of footprints preceded him along the soft soil and he guessed that they would be those of Detective Inspector Gowrie.

  It was his intention to work the hedges back from the thicker wood at the far end; the rabbits would have an easy escape into the gardens but at least he would be pushing them away from their safest haven. He could trace the garden boundaries by the hedge materials – holly for the McLaings, berberis for the Beechers, cypress at the Strathlings and beech at the Hendricksons. He walked on around the wood, studying the fencing. He was on his way back and had just come abreast of the beech hedging when another female head appeared, disembodied above the hedge like that of the Cheshire Cat, but not grinning.

  This, he guessed, was Mrs Strathling. She was older than he had expected, perhaps in her fifties, with a patrician face and a recent, disciplined home-perm. Her complexion was slightly too perfect to be true and her hair was tinted. He had seen her at the bank without knowing who she was.

  ‘Psst,’ said the head. ‘Come through. Quietly.’

  There was a thin place in the hedge, almost a gap, and Keith squeezed awkwardly through. The remainder of Mrs Strathling was in keeping – thin, thanks in part to an excellent corsetière, neatly tweeded and with a brisk sparkle of costume jewellery at her throat.

  She soon dispelled any idea Keith might have had that she expected him to emulate D.H. Lawrence’s gamekeeper. ‘Three or four rabbits come out of the shrubbery every dusk,’ she whispered. ‘Come with me.’ The shrubbery, a thickly-planted display of almost every shrub known to horticulture, bulged out from the hedge on the Hendricksons’ side of a large lawn. Above it, Keith could see the peaked roof of the summerhouse. Mrs Strathling placed him outside her French windows and retired to the hedge.

  ‘This is the only gap,’ she whispered. ‘The rest of the hedge grew around a chicken-wire fence. If you sent your little dog in now, they should bolt across the lawn.’

  ‘It may damage the turf,’ Keith warned.

  ‘Once. But those damn rabbits damage the garden every day. Get on with it.’

  Keith loaded his gun and took two spare cartridges between the fingers of his left hand before sending Herbert in. One rabbit bolted almost immediately and he dropped it in the open. He took advantage of a pause in the action to slap his barrels down. One spent cartridge went over his shoulder. He slipped another in and closed the gun, dropping his left hand to his belt for a replacement. There was a sudden flurry of activity among the shrubs and two rabbits bolted, followed a second later by a third. Keith dropped one, and hit another, which rolled over but scrambled back to shelter. He reloaded in one quick movement, missed the third rabbit as it vanished through the cypress hedge, but took a fourth which made a late exit just ahead of the spaniel.

  Herbert looked at his master enquiringly. Keith reloaded and sent him back in. Half a minute passed. ‘That seems to be the lot,’ Keith said.

  ‘You missed two,’ Mrs Strathling said accusingly. She seemed quite unperturbed by the noise of the shots.

  ‘Only one.’ As he said it. Herbert came out of the bushes, carrying a dead rabbit and very concerned as to whether he had sinned. Keith could see the marks of shot on the fur, so all was well. He reassured the dog and picked up the other three rabbits.

  Mrs Strathling looked past the house and waved. ‘That damned old woman!’ she said. ‘She gets very hurt if you don’t wave to her, and tells everybody that you think yourself too good for the likes of her. How’s business at the shop?’

  She was talking down to him as a shopkeeper. Keith met her eye. With a faint emphasis on his first word, he said, ‘My shop’s doing very well, thank you. How are things in the bank?’

  Her mouth tightened. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Well, don’t hang about. That’s all for the moment.’

  Now that the favour which she had sought had been granted, she was very much the grande dame dealing with a serf. Keith was tempted to give her an ironic tug of the forelock but decided that she might take the gesture at face value. Her accent, while good, was not quite perfect enough to fool him.

  She had moved on to the lawn and was smoothing a scar in the fine turf with the sole of her shoe. ‘What do you do with your rabbits?’ she asked.

  Keith usually ate them or gave them away, but if Mrs Strathling wanted to treat him as a tradesman then a tradesman he would be. ‘I sell them,’ he said. ‘Would you like a pair?’

  ‘Are you sure they’re quite c
lean?’

  ‘Not a trace of myxomatosis,’ Keith said.

  ‘How much? I used to love a rabbit pie,’ Mrs Strathling said, thawing slightly, ‘but you don’t see them in the shops since that disease started.’

  Keith quoted a price, pitched carefully at a level high enough to annoy her but which he was sure she would pay rather than let him think that she could not afford it. The lady surprised him. ‘Ridiculous!’ she said. ‘That’s rank profiteering.’

  Keith had conceived a dislike of Mrs Strathling, and he was not given to concealing his dislikes except when the person concerned was a good customer. He was hesitating between three different retorts, each of quite devastating sarcasm, when there came the sound of footsteps and Michael Hendrickson arrived at the gap in the hedge between the gardens. Incongruously, he was dressed in pyjamas, dressing-gown and slippers.

  ‘Mr Calder, come quickly please’.

  Keith dropped his rabbits on the grass and went.

  *

  They hurried, half-running, down the side of the Hendricksons’ garden. At the garden door, Michael paused. ‘Two men came to the house,’ he said breathlessly. ‘They looked rough. I heard angry voices. Mum sounded frightened and, although you mightn’t think it, she doesn’t scare easily.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you call the police?’ Keith suggested.

  ‘They’d take half an hour to get here. And it might turn out to have been just the wrong thing to do.’ Michael wrung his hands in nervous uncertaintly. Keith thought that he was looking very strange. ‘I’d heard your shots and knew where you were. I thought maybe you could . . . do something not too drastic. I don’t know what.’

  ‘I know exactly what,’ Keith said grimly. ‘And I’ll do it. Back up whatever I say. But what are you doing at home, mid-week?’

  ‘We’ve got German measles, both Beth and I. Mum fetched us.’

  ‘You’d better get back to bed and leave this to me.’ Keith told Herbert to stay where he was. Then he closed his empty gun and walked firmly into the living room.