The Theft of the Iron Dogs

by E. C. R. Lorac

  George Castleby chuckled.

  “As a compliment, that’s a back-handed one, Giles, but I hope you accept the challenge. I’m prepared to sit back and enjoy the reconstruction.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  GILES HOGGETT sat forward, his feet on the hearth, his elbows on his knees, and he began his recital very solemnly:

  “We are considering the death of a man who was murdered in this valley. So far as the evidence goes, he was a stranger here, a man concerned with certain illegal dealings in the industrial Midlands, yet the evidence goes to show that he met his death at the hands of someone who knew the conditions of this valley and could utilize that knowledge. At the same time the murderer was lacking in a sense of detail and of real understanding of the inhabitants, for it did not seem to have occurred to him that any intelligent construction would be put on the theft of various trivial objects from this cottage.”

  George settled more comfortably in his chair.

  “That,” he said, “is a very promising beginning,” and Macdonald murmured, “Aye, a very sound beginning,” and Giles Hoggett went on:

  “The only evidence which directly connects any specific persons with the crime is the curtain material which my wife gave to the potters. A fragment of this was found caught on the thorns some hundred yards from this cottage, another fragment among Anthony Vintner’s painting materials. We have George’s evidence that Mrs. Gold had a son, born in 1914, previous to her marriage with Reuben Gold. It also seems possible that Mrs. Gold’s first husband deserted her. Assuming George’s theory about Mrs. Gold’s origin in a smallholding, near Kirkby Stephen, one can reasonably imagine that as a young girl of seventeen she ran away with a plausible rogue; perhaps the girl got hold of some money which had been concealed by her father – the thrifty suspicious fellsman of that remote hill country would likely enough hide his savings in the house rather than trust a bank. With the money as a lever, the girl achieved her marriage lines – and then, when the money was spent, the rogue deserted her. She would have been used to hard work and a hard life: perhaps she earned her keep among other casual laborers in the seasonal jobs of potato lifting, fruit picking, and hoeing. Her child was born, and put to a foster mother, and the girl met Reuben Gold, also earning money by potato lifting or such like, and he fell in love with her. Experience had taught her to bargain. She gave nothing away, and she induced Gold to marry her, keeping her own secret about her child, and with their joint savings they bought a horse and cart and joined the potters from whom Reuben was derived.”

  “Well, well! All considered that’s a good effort,” said George. “From what I know of the facts, you’ve made a good job of that reconstruction, Giley. Mrs. Gold did once work in the Preston country, fruit picking. I know that.”

  “Go on,” said Macdonald. “I thought this might be useful, and it’s even better than I hoped. You know this country and I don’t. Go on.”

  Giles Hoggett lighted another cigarette and stared at the fire. He was quite obviously taking this very seriously, and trying hard to work out his thesis. He spoke slowly, but his voice had a natural tendency to dramatize his thoughts, and he was curiously convincing, as though he spoke of something he really knew, rather than of theories he was developing. Without elaboration, in simple clear-cut phrases, he made his story come alive.

  “Sarah Gold had the cunning which often goes with the primitive peasant intelligence so often underrated by townsfolk,” he went on. “She kept in touch with her child, but concealed his existence from her husband. The boy had a mixed inheritance, on the one side the shrewd tenacity of his fell forebears, plus the less stable but more imaginative cunning of his father. The boy ran away when his schooling was over at fourteen, and he developed his gift for drawing and became a painter.”

  Giles Hoggett scratched his head and added:

  “I can’t tell you much about the boy. I can’t see him very well. . . mischievous, lively, but with the unstable element which always attracted him to bad companions and the seemingly easy path of petty pilfering. Perhaps he did have an uncle, somewhere up in the hill country: perhaps the uncle did think he would give the boy a chance to settle in the country and raise chickens. . . I don’t know, but I don’t think a north country uncle gave him 500 pounds to waste on hens which would certainly die. . .”

  “Leave the boy for the moment, he’s not in your line of country,” said Macdonald. “Go back to the Golds.”

  “Aye, the Golds,” said Giles Hoggett. “They rubbed along all right. It was a hard life, but they were both shrewd at a bargain and they valued their liberty. Their horse and cart gave them nobility and they call no man master. Sarah Gold was able to save a bit – thrift was in her blood; but she and her husband were opportunists: they bought what they could, they saved what they could, and they stole what they could. They were too clever to be bowled out and they flourished according to their own standards. This brings us to the present day and to the appearance of Sarah Gold’s first husband in these parts. Ginner had been involved in many transactions of questionable legality and he had a large acquaintance among lewd fellows of his own type. He had also run a profitable side-line of paying attentions, with matrimonial suggestions, to elderly ladies with some amount of capital. It seems not unreasonable to imagine that his first essay at obtaining money in this way had encouraged him to run the risk of marrying divers widows in suitably distant localities.”

  George laughed aloud here:

  “Steady, Giley, steady! You’re giving too much rein to your imagination.”

  “Oh no, he isn’t,” said Macdonald equably. “Dr. Castleby may not know that Ginner’s disappearance was first reported by a middle-aged lady of comfortable income and no pretensions to beauty. The very first idea I had about Ginner was that a likely looking fellow of under fifty, of his known proclivities, could have had only one motive in proposing marriage to a slightly bearded, teetotal, Nonconformist widow of sixty – and if once, why not frequently? Hoggett is on sound ground there.”

  Giles Hoggett did not laugh at all. He was entirely serious and working very hard.

  “This brings us to Ginner’s appearance in the Lunesdale country,” he said. “Ginner heard from some of his friends that the police were on his track. He didn’t wait to be arrested. ‘No, not me, old chap. Nothing of that kind of mutt about me,’ he would have said. ‘I’m going to beat it. He who steals and runs away, lives to steal another day.’ Beat it, that’s the idea. . . but where? Then he thought of the north – the fells around Kirkby Stephen. . . cold, dour, remote. . . and the country folk have long memories. No, not there. Somewhere nearer to civilization, somewhere within reach of a pub and a cinema and a railway line. Morecambe Bay. Why not? It’d do as a starting point.”

  Giles Hoggett broke off and turned to Macdonald.

  “That bit about Ginner being in a pub in Morecambe, it struck me as probable – completely in character. If he played with the idea of concealing himself up here, Morecambe was such a likely point of departure. Morecambe in August, crowded with trippers, the very thing! Then he met Vintner. He’d seen Vintner before, used him maybe, on some swindling venture, and had some hold on him. When Ginner learnt that Vintner had a lonely house on the felts above the Lune he said to himself, ‘That’s the ticket. That’ll do while I have a looksee” – and he went to Thorpe Intak and looked around. He saw Vintner’s painting of this cottage and asked about it. An empty cottage, furnished, a long way from anywhere. No one likely to be there all the winter. Just what he wanted. He could even risk making a date with some of his pals to raise a bit of money. After all, he’d got those coupons, and they were worth the devil of a lot if he could market them. He’d have had to think it out very carefully. He wouldn’t have risked writing letters, in case they fell into the wrong hands. No use finding a nice safe hidey hole like the cottage and then giving away the secret. No. I reckon he did some telephoning. There are plenty of public call-boxes to be found on the main roads if you look for
them.”

  “Quite true,” said Macdonald. “I’m looking into that Hoggett. Some of these rural exchange operators have long memories.”

  “He did some telephoning,” said Giles, earnestly taking up his story exactly where he had left off, “and it was while he was waiting about outside a call-box one day that the Golds passed him in their cart. Ginner hadn’t changed all that in the course of twenty-five years. Sarah recognized him – but, of course, Reuben had never seen him. Sarah hadn’t forgotten how her first husband had treated her, and she made up her mind, then and there, to get even with him if she could. Of course, Ginner didn’t recognize Sarah – a thin, weather-beaten, white-haired gypsy of a woman. If she was beautiful as a girl, she’s not beautiful now. . . I think the Golds saw Ginner enter Thorpe Intak. Sarah said nothing – but when she got the opportunity, she had a talk with a young fellow in the encampment, and offered to make it worth his while to follow Ginner and find out where he went and what he was doing. And this,” announced Giles Hoggett, with earnest directness, “is where the bits of curtain come in. Sarah tore up some strips of the stuff, and told her sleuth to lay a trail – a bit of the stuff on a thorn bush, with other signs which all the tramps and potters can recognize, to lead her to her quarry.”

  “Bravo, Giles! That’s a good effort,” chuckled George. “I wondered how the dickens you were going to bring in the curtains.”

  Giles turned to Macdonald with earnest dignity.

  “It isn’t so silly as it sounds,” he said. “The potters do leave signs, just as the tramps do, and that stuff is very distinctive.”

  “It isn’t silly at all. It’s a very interesting point,” said Macdonald. “Let’s have the rest of your story.”

  George suddenly snorted.

  “If you’re going to tell me that Sarah Gold killed Ginner and tied him up with salmon line and wheeled his body across the dales on your bogie, I tell you straight out I don’t believe you,” he said trenchantly. “The Golds may pilfer. I’ve no evidence to that effect, but it’s not improbable. But Sarah Gold did not bash her first husband over the head with a coal hammer–”

  “I never said she did,” said Giles indignantly. “I’ve been thinking over my suspicions of the Golds. I still believe they stole my ducks, and they once milked my cows when I was in Lancaster, but I don’t make any other accusations at all. If you’d only be as patient as Macdonald is, I’ll tell you just what did happen. Sarah Gold followed the trail laid from the high road to this cottage, and when she got here she had the fright of her not very virtuous life, for one of Ginner’s disreputable urban accomplices had followed Ginner here, knowing that he possessed the haul of coupons. It was this scoundrel from the slums of an industrial city who killed Ginner in order to steal the coupons. Once he’d killed him, he had to hide the body, and being here he saw the iron dogs and the chain and the salmon line, and he used them. Being a townsman he hadn’t the sense to realize they’d be missed and he thought it would be all right, so he waited till nightfall and then hid the body in the river, and Sarah Gold saw him at it. She was frightened and said to herself ‘Better say nowt. Better see nowt. Better know nowt’ – and she cleared out as fast as she could and told her husband she was going to see her old sister up at Kirkby Stephen, her being in a bad way – and that’s why Sarah Gold hasn’t been seen on the road recently.”

  Macdonald laughed: not in the least scornfully, but in appreciation of an effort at reconstruction which he was the first to admit contained some very ingenious ideas, plus a real knowledge of possibilities.

  “Congratulations, Hoggett. That was a very fine effort. You have included most of the facts and, not strained probabilities too far. The beginning was very good indeed, but the conclusion was a masterpiece of wishful thinking. You have persuaded yourself that the culprit was a scoundrel from the slums of an industrial city, and that even the potters of Lunesdale leave court without a stain on their characters.”

  “Dog does not eat dog,” said Giles with dignity. “George is probably right about Sarah Gold. Perhaps she didn’t even steal my ducks – altho’ they were stolen. I’m going to make some tea. I’m thirsty after all that talking.”

  He seized the kettle and turned toward the door (the water at Wenningby Barns had to be fetched from the beck). Suddenly Giles turned back toward Macdonald.

  “We ought to have had Kate here. She always spots the weak points in my reconstructions.”

  “Yes. She was born in London. Londoners are a great race,” chuckled Macdonald.

  Giles Hoggett looked pained at this conclusion but forbore to argue and went out with his kettle. George Castleby turned to Macdonald.

  “From your own point of view as a C.I.D. man, did you get anything valuable from Giles’s imaginative effort?” he inquired.

  “Certainly I did. He gave me some very useful ideas, and I’m far from disdaining ideas when I’m off my own beat. I encouraged him to do it that way because he was so interested in his own reconstruction that he produced his ideas without sterilizing them by analysis, if you follow me. It often happens that if you can get a chap talking about his own environment without the feeling that he’s on oath, as it were, he produces something useful in the way of local color which a newcomer to the district wouldn’t have thought about.”

  “Yes. I follow that, and I admit I was jolly interested in Giles’s story – but a story it remains. Incidentally, do you really think you have enough evidence to connect the potters with this crime?”

  “I have enough evidence to make it desirable – and justifiable to investigate them. Those pieces of curtain material need to be explained. Moreover, they constitute a link between Vintner and the potters, which also needs investigating. There is another point, which I observed immediately I had read the letter your cousin wrote to me. A lorry man who knew Ginner slightly put in his evidence that Ginner had a number of ‘low friends’ and that he once had a row with one of them ‘about a pottery’ or something like that. I gather that this row occurred at one of those road-side coffee stalls where lorry drivers pull in for a hot drink. It was on the road between Liverpool and Crewe. Now it seems quite possible to me that the ‘low friends’ who started the dispute with Ginner may have been tinkers or members of the gypsy tribe – that is, brethren of the road who may well have been acquainted with the potters of North Lancashire and Westmoreland. I tell you this because I’m hoping you’ll be willing to help me a little further, Dr. Castleby.”

  George’s expression lacked enthusiasm: in fact he looked far from happy.

  “Well, Chief Inspector, I am willing to admit my civic responsibility and my duty to help the police, but in my profession we are very averse to exploiting the confidence of our patients. I have told you what facts I knew because you were justified in asking for them, but I can’t combine detection with doctoring. That idea goes all against the grain.”

  “I see that,” replied Macdonald, “and I’m not asking you to do any detecting. The thing I want is confirmation of a fact which you mentioned, but without any degree of certainty – that Mrs. Gold came originally from a farm or smallholding, in the hills near Kirkby Stephen. If you can ascertain that, it may save me a great deal of time. As you know, all marriage certificates in England and Wales are filed in Somerset House. Searching with hardly any data is a wearisome and time-wasting performance, though it is astonishing what can be done by a skilful and determined searcher. If I had the name of the district plus the maiden name – if possible – of the bride, I could save one of my men a lot of trouble.”

  “I’ll try and get you the name of Mrs. Gold’s birthplace, but I doubt if I shall arrive at her maiden name,” said George. “If it’s any help to you, I can tell you that her son was named Stephen, that he was born in July, 1914, and his birthplace was Preston. I think his mother would have registered the boy’s birth, because she evidently laid considerable store on his legal status – maybe with the hope of his inheriting something from his father.”
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br />   Macdonald studied the other’s thoughtful but noncommittal countenance. With his large glasses and composed expression George Castleby looked both bland and reticent.

  “The child’s name was Stephen,” said Macdonald. “A not very common name these days. Have you any other reason for assuming his mother’s native place was near Kirkby Stephen?”

  “I think it’s probable – very probable,” said George blandly. “Here’s Giles with the kettle. Any fresh ideas, laddy?”

  “I’m bursting with information,” said Giles. “Anthony Vintner told me that he originally studied painting in Preston. He went later to a London Art School.”

  George looked interested.

  “Preston. . . Well, if it’s a coincidence, it’s rather an odd one.”

  Macdonald looked sceptical. “It doesn’t impress me,” he said. He turned to Giles Hoggett. “Did he tell you that when he was trying to sell you a picture?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Shrewdness on his part. Vintner’s sharp enough to know that you’d feel more sympathy for a man trained in the north. Think of his voice, Hoggett. Could you imagine for a moment that Vintner was reared in the north of England? He learnt to speak in the south of England. It’s unmistakable. You spent over twenty years in Camford, Hoggett, but it didn’t alter your voice. I’ve been living in London since I was ten years old – but nobody thinks I was born there when they hear my voice. A northern accent is ineradicable. Anthony Vintner’s voice is not the voice of north Lancashire.”

  “Yes. That is perfectly true,” said Giles Hoggett. “I ought to have thought of that. All the same Vintner must have had some knowledge of this part of the world. I don’t think he hit on Lunesdale by sheer chance.”

  “Perhaps his friend Ginner suggested it to him,” said George. “Incidentally, I’m far more disposed to think of Vintner as the culprit than either of the Golds. I admit Reuben Gold is a rough customer, and might well have a savage temper when he has been drinking, but this job doesn’t seem in keeping with what I know of him.” He turned to Macdonald. “Would it have been necessary to be able to swim to have concealed the sack where you found it?”