The Theft of the Iron Dogs

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “The Georges stayed here – at Wenningby Barns – from August 21st to August 28th. I’ll just put that down on mine.”

  “I will too,” said Macdonald. “It may be relevant. Who are the ‘Georges,’ by the way?”

  “George is my cousin, a doctor. His name is George Castleby. He has a wife, Margaret, and the two children, Giles and Eleanor, called Nell. They stay here once or twice every year and there’s nothing they wouldn’t notice between them. You’ll see George this evening sometime. I rang him up and he’s coming to talk to you about the potters.”

  “Good,” said Macdonald. “I think our next date is August 31st, when Mrs. Hoggett saw Ginner fishing. Now the ‘Georges,’ if I may use the family term, left here on August 28th. That interests me because, according to Vintner, Ginner had no rod with him. Where did he get one?”

  “Here,” said Giles resignedly. “I suppose he took Uncle Henry’s.”

  “It seems probable to me,” agreed Macdonald. “He must have mooched around and observed when the Georges left. Did you come down here on the day they left?”

  “I came down to help them carry their gear up the brow though I didn’t actually come into the cottage,” replied Hoggett. “I’ve been thinking of what you said about Ginner ‘mooching around.’ He could have heard quite a lot that would have been useful to him. There was a lot of gear to carry up, and it necessitated double journeys. I remember George was the last to come up and he was going to go back for the key which he had left behind, and I called to him not to bother. If he’d left it in the usual place that would do and I’d go and fetch it later.”

  “Yes,” mused Macdonald. “That might explain a lot. I had a look at the land bordering the brow – you call those fields the ‘bank,’ don’t you? Anyone could hide behind those holly trees on the bank and hear everything that was said by anyone on the brow without being seen by them.”

  Giles Hoggett nodded and then explained.

  “Yes, I’ve realized that. We all talked pretty freely. The children said what a pity it was that no one was going to be at the cottage again for so long, and Margaret said she’d left everything arranged for the winter. That meant that nothing was left on the floor downstairs which could be damaged by flood water if the river rose high enough to flood the cottage. We are always careful to move mats and rugs and hassocks upstairs and not leave any boots or shoes to float about if the water does reach the cottage.”

  “I see. The general trend of the conversation indicated that no one would be staying in the cottage, and I expect it would be safe to assume that no one would ever go down there after dark when the place wasn’t being lived in?”

  “Aye, that’s true enough.”

  Both men fell silent for a moment, and then Giles Hoggett spoke again, studying his calendar.

  “Ginner didn’t come to Thorpe Intak until August 25th and the Georges were staying at Wenningby Barns until August 28th. If Ginner’s body had been in the river for a fortnight when it was found, he wouldn’t have had many days to study conditions at Wenningby Barns while it was unoccupied.”

  “Aye,” agreed Macdonald. “That’s sound reasoning, Hoggett. You’re thinking that a rogue like Ginner would have wanted to know a bit more about Wenningby Barns than he could have learned from what he overheard when the Georges were leaving.”

  “I don’t want to accuse Vintner of aught,” went on Hoggett. “I told you that I didn’t size him up as a bad lot, but I reckon he’s a weakling – got no moral stamina. Vintner had plenty of opportunities of studying conditions at Wenningby Barns when it was empty. It’s more than probable he knew where we kept the key, and he’d have certainly known that no one ever goes down there after dark in the usual way.”

  “Are there ever occasions when anybody goes down to the dales after dark?” inquired Macdonald.

  “Aye, if the river rises unexpectedly,” was the reply. “I remember one night when we all went to bed at the usual time and Richard Blackthorn came and woke us about midnight. He knew the river was rising, though we’d judged it’d be safe till morning. We were down there all night; one of Richard’s men had failed in his duty to drive the beasts up over the river and they were cut off.”

  For once Macdonald forgot the thread of his detection as he pondered over Hoggett’s words: “The beasts were cut off?” he asked.

  “Aye. They stood huddled on a little island of hither ground. We knew where they were, though we couldn’t reach them.”

  “But what could you do?” asked Macdonald.

  “Nought. We just waited. The river began to fall before dawn and we knew they were safe. Richard drove a wedge of wood into the ground hard by the gate there. He said: ‘If t’water don’t reach yon peg, they’re safe.’ It came within inches of it – and then began to fall. It rained that night. . . But this isn’t detection, Macdonald.”

  “Quite true – but thanks for the story. Now where are we? It seems probable that Ginner learned all the details he needed about the cottage from Vintner, who’d had opportunities to observe it.”

  “Aye, that was probably the way of it. Do you think Ginner imagined he could live in the cottage until the hue and cry after him died down?”

  “No, I don’t, because in my judgment all men of Ginner’s type make certain demands on life. How far is this place from a pub?”

  Hoggett scratched his head.

  “You should know. You’ve stayed at the nearest one.”

  “The Green Dragon. Call it four miles there and four back. Eight miles of hilly walking. I can’t see a man like Ginner settling in a primitive cottage with eight miles of walking between him and a drink – and you can’t buy spirits in bottles where you’re not known these days.”

  “Then what did he come here for?” demanded Giles Hoggett.

  “I’d risk a guess he came here in order to meet somebody,” replied Macdonald. “It’d have been a good spot for that. It’s safe after dark: it’s an easy spot to describe because it’s the only cottage right by the river for miles. Here are the probabilities as I see them. Ginner was concerned in a large theft of clothing coupons. His part in the ramp was dispersing the coupons – passing them on in comparatively small numbers to others who were concerned in cashing them, as it were. If Ginner wanted a safe rendezvous for meeting his clients, this cottage had a lot of advantages. It is within motoring reach of the industrial towns of the north; it is approachable from the Yorkshire wool trade towns, via the Leeds to Lancashire railway line, and yet it’s a place where the police don’t come. ‘Wenningby Barns’ – oh, that’s Mr. Hoggett’s cottage. Nought to do there.”

  “Aye, that’s all true enough,” agreed Giles.

  “There’s another piece of evidence which fits in,” went on Macdonald. “While I was in the dales this morning I found a tin with the lid carefully soldered on. Anthony Vintner said he saw the tin last night when he was swimming. It was wedged in the willow roots by the bank. That tin contains a large number of the stolen clothing coupons. It occurs to me that Mr. Ginner had hit upon a good safe hiding hole for his most valuable, but very incriminating, property.”

  Again Giles Hoggett scratched his head.

  “Then, if I follow you, Ginner wasn’t killed in order to get possession of his loot? It’d be a fool’s trick to kill him before you knew where he’d hidden the stuff you were killing him to obtain.”

  “Aye, so it seems to me,” rejoined Macdonald. “Isn’t that footsteps outside, or am I imagining things?”

  “That’s George,” replied Hoggett.

  ***

  George came in with a quiet “Good evening” and settled down by the fire looking exactly as though he belonged there and had never been farther afield than Wenningby village. There was a strong family likeness between the two cousins, though the doctor lacked the farmer’s healthy tan. George was not so lank and lean as Giles, and his glasses gave him a more studious air, but his low, deep voice was so similar to Giles Hoggett’s that Macdonald had an occasio
nal uneasy feeling that someone was playing at ventriloquism. He lighted a cigarette, stretched his feet to the fire and inquired about the river and the trout his cousin had caught before any other topic was mentioned.

  Macdonald, whose Scots shrewdness was far from lacking in imagination, suddenly realized how transitory he and his organization were in contrast to something that was changeless in these two natives of Lunesdale. It had seemed so incongruous that a cheap cheating rogue of a townsman should have got himself done to death in sordid manner in the dignity and silence of the fell-guarded valley – but listening to the murmur of the low-toned voices, the C.I.D. man realized that this incursion of alien crime did not so much as scratch the deep serenity of this place. It had happened here, but it did not belong here. The voice of Giles Hoggett and George Castleby brushed it all aside as irrelevant, and the essential peace of the valley re-established itself as though Gordon Ginner had never existed. “. . .all the beasts of the forest are thine. . . and so are the cattle upon a thousand hills. . .” The immemorial words were running in Macdonald’s mind when Giles Hoggett said:

  “About the potters. . .” and George murmured:

  “Aye, the potters,” and brought the C.I.D. man back to reality.

  “It’s the Golds you want to know about,” said Dr. Castleby. “They have a headquarters by the Clunter – a stream which runs into the Lune some ten miles from here. There’s some level waste ground there which has always been common land and they have their vans and encampments there very much like gypsies – although the potters aren’t gypsies. There’s no real Romany blood in any of them, they’re nomads, but native nomads. They travel about with their carts, huckstering and bartering, but they always come back to the old pitch in winter. It’s not a bad life – and the potters aren’t bad folk. I think they get the blame for a lot of mischief they’re innocent of, because the settled folk of farmsteads and cottages are always suspicious of the nomad.”

  “I don’t like the Golds,” put in Giles Hoggett, his voice mild but obstinate. “The old man’s got roguery ingrained in every line of his villainous old face.”

  Dr. Castleby chuckled.

  “So much for your judgment, Giley, my lad. You say ‘old face.’ Reuben Gold isn’t much older than yourself. I doubt if he’s over fifty-five and his wife is under fifty. I know they look old, but they live hard – and drink hard when they’ve got the wherewithal.”

  “Hang it all, George,” protested Giles Hoggett. “You must have underestimated. I can remember Reuben Gold for years. He’s never looked any younger.”

  “That’s your opinion, but it’s wrong,” said Castleby. “I’m fifty this year. I started practicing in Carnton as old Gregory’s junior partner when I was twenty-five. That’s when I first doctored the Golds. Mrs. Gold came to me one night with a child on the back of her cart – a boy of eight or nine. He’d got pneumonia. I had the dickens of a job to persuade her to let him go into the hospital – but we pulled him around. She’s never forgotten. These potters are like gypsies inasmuch as they never forget a grudge and never forget a kindness. Many’s the time I’ve been embarrassed by a basket of eggs left on my doorstep. They still bring me mushrooms and blackberries and even posies of flowers.”

  “Well, well, I’d never have thought it,” murmured Giles. “Did they bring you any fat ducks last Christmas? Never mind, George, but you told me something else I don’t know. I’d no idea they’d got a child.”

  George paused and turned to Macdonald.

  “I take it that I can regard this as a professional consultation – that is, the facts I state are for your information professionally, Chief Inspector, and won’t go any further if they’re irrelevant to your case?”

  “Yes. You can rest assured of that, Dr. Castleby.”

  “Very good. We don’t repeat gossip, and we don’t usually repeat facts we’ve come by in the course of our practice, but you are investigating a murder case and circumstances alter cases. Now, Chief Inspector, leaving Giles and his hunches out of this, have you any real reason for connecting the Golds with your problem?’

  “I’ve no direct evidence,” said Macdonald, “but there is one rather curious circumstance. Hoggett says that when he first discovered the theft of the iron dogs, he found in the dales a piece of old curtain material which had been used for wiping off some mud and which I think will prove to have bloodstains on it. Mrs. Hoggett gave the curtains of this same material to the potters. Another piece of it was in Anthony Vintner’s house. He had used it as a paint rag and it was stained all over with oil paint. I asked him if he knew the potters and he denied having spoken to them at any time. When I asked him where he came by this piece of paint rag he said that he hadn’t the least idea.”

  “Ah, George. This is where you can produce a little evidence,” put in Giles Hoggett. “Did you ask the children if Aunt Kate ever gave them some striped orange curtain material when they played Red Indians?”

  “Yes. I asked them, and they were quite positive they had never had any such material, and had never seen any near the cottage. Eleanor remembered the curtains up at the farm, because Kate used them when we played charades last Christmas, but they were then intact – not torn up into pieces.”

  “Well, that does lead to the conclusion that the potters have had some connection with the case,” said Macdonald. “Either the Golds brought a piece of material down here, or else Vintner did. Do you know Vintner, Doctor?”

  “I’ve seen him down here with his easel. He shows every’ sign of undernourishment and anemia.”

  “He also shows when he’s telling lies,” rejoined Macdonald. “As a rogue, he’s very unsuccessful. Every time he wittingly tells a lie he peers around at one to see if one’s swallowed it. When he tells the truth he doesn’t bother to scrutinize his auditor. I only mention this because I believe he was telling the truth when he said he’d no idea where his paint rag came from. My question about it didn’t disturb him.”

  “In that case one can make an assumption that Vintner found a bit of the curtain stuff lying about somewhere down in the valley – where the Golds had left it, and that Vintner picked it up to use as a paint rag,” suggested Giles Hoggett.

  Macdonald nodded.

  “That’ll do for the moment. Is that enough evidence to convince Dr. Castleby that I’m justified in asking questions about the private lives of the Golds?”

  “Yes, I think so,” replied George. “I was talking about the boy who had pneumonia. It was in the winter of 1922 – my first winter in Carnton. Mrs. Gold was then about twenty-six and the boy about eight. She begged me never to say anything about the child to her husband. The child was hers, but not his. It wasn’t my business and I didn’t ask her any questions, but when the little lad recovered I told her he’d better go to a convalescent home. He was still weak and not fit to live in their camp. She told me some rather involved story about the child being tended by a foster mother and said he’d been born in wedlock but the father had died. I remember she was very insistent about the child not being a bastard. Once again, it wasn’t my business. We don’t stop to ask if a child’s legitimate or not before we tend it. I had my own ideas about what had happened in the matter of Mrs. Gold’s child – but I asked no questions.”

  “But since you have admitted to having your own ideas about the Gold progeny, Doctor, won’t you give us the benefit of them?” asked Macdonald.

  “Aye, but they’re simple enough. The boy’s father deserted the mother after the birth of the child and the mother joined forces with Reuben Gold. She was married to Gold in the Preston registry Office. I’ve no real knowledge of Mrs. Gold’s earlier history, but I believe she wasn’t one of the potter’s community originally. I think she was the daughter of a small-holder in the fell country mound Kirkby Stephen, and I’d hazard a guess she ran away and got married and was later deserted. The reason I believe she was married in the first place was that she was evidently afraid she’d told me too much. You see she’d been th
rough a legal marriage ceremony with Gold, and if the first husband deserted her without a divorce she’d committed bigamy – and knew it. But most of this is surmise on my part. I admit I was interested at the time. Mrs. Gold was a fine looking young woman, and at eighteen, when the boy was born, she was probably a very lovely girl.”

  “This,” said Giles Hoggett, “is where I do a little arithmetic. The Gold child was eight in 1922. . . born, 1914, present age, thirtyish. How old was Ginner?”

  “Over 45. Probably between 45 and 50.”

  “. . .Once lived in Kendal. . . call him 50. . . in short Mrs. Gold’s first husband was Ginner, the son being Anthony Vintner,” murmured Giles Hoggett.

  “Elementary, my dear Watson. Too elementary,” replied Macdonald. “Life’s not as easy as that – but I do feel the story Dr. Castleby has told us causes me to ponder.” He turned to George. “What was the child like – if you can remember anything about him?”

  “He was a fine little lad, with carroty hair.”

  “What did I say?” demanded Giles triumphantly. “Of course he’s Vintner. . .”

  “I don’t think so, Giley. . . I remember the boy had odd eyes, one blue and one gray, like his mother – and Vintner is over thirty, quite a lot over thirty.”

  “Well. . . I’ll go into that later,” said Giles imperturbably. “But what about Ginner being the first husband? It answers everything, motive, means, opportunity.”

  “But without evidence,” said Macdonald. “However, it leaves me with plenty to do. I shall have to trace the past history of the Golds and of Anthony Vintner. We are already trying to work back along Gordon Ginner’s history.” He paused, and then said to Giles Hoggett: “It evidently entertains you to make up a story which fits the facts. I wonder if your ingenuity will work to the extent of producing a story which accounts for the various factors we have been considering? It isn’t altogether an idle question. You know this place, and you are observant of your fellows. It may be that you will tell me something useful when you are least aware of it.”