“Quite right. I remember now. It must have been a day or two before that, about August 26th,” said Shand. “I’ll look up some dates in my diary, but I think I’m right. August 26th.”
“Aye, you think it over,” said Staple, and Shand turned to Blackthorn with the quick speech of countrymen.
“Think it over, eh? It’s likely you’ll go on thinking about it till kingdom come. Now, Blackthorn. You’re tenant of that pasture near the Knabb, the five-acre opposite Lamb’s barn. My tenant’s been complaining about a broken fence between his pasture and yours. It’s in a poor way and it’s your business to put it to rights.”
“Aye,” admitted Blackthorn placidly. “I mind the fence. Maybe I ought to’ve fettled it up a bit, but mind you, Mr. Shand, ‘twas your tenant’s horses destroyed that fence. I’ll see to it when I’m on the job. Hedging and ditching’ll get seen to some time.”
“That’s the trouble with all you farmers hereabouts. Some times does,” said Shand. “No time like the present’s a good motto. Good day to you. Good day, Hoggett.”
They bade him good day, and Blackthorn chuckled.
“ ‘Like father, like son.’ I mind his father – always in a sweat over summat. Made a pile though, did old Mr. Shand. He weren’t that rich as a young ‘un.”
“ ‘Like father, like son,’ Richard. I don’t like the sound o’ that. Puts me in mind Mr. Shand has got a son, and there’s not much good said about him,” put in Staple.
“Well, it can’t have been Mr. Shand’s son wearing Mr. Hoggett’s coat,” said Blackthorn. “He’s a nowt. Now I’ve got a few bits to add, Mr. Hoggett. Your friend, Mr. Macdonald, walked past the Middle Upfields this morning.”
“Aye. He did. I told him about the path.”
“Reckon he’s not the only one that’s used that path of late,” went on Blackthorn. “Tom Profert, he’s one that sticks to’s own business and don’t do much cracking, but I went and had a go at him last night. ‘Twere hard work, mind you. Tom’s as near dumb as makes no difference – but he sees a thing or two. Reuben Gold was that way during harvest. A funny thing it was. Tom had got some sacks he wanted to be rid of, and he saw Gold on that path one morning – passing t’ farm he were, but he’d not got his cart with him. Tom reckoned he’d been out after mushrooms – a powerful price they are now – and he wasn’t too pleased. Tom says Gold came from the valley way, like as he’d come up through the woods. Aye, and Tom saw another chap way back-end of August, that was. I asked Tom to describe him, but he was no hand at that. Called him a watch and chain man and said he minded him of the auctioneer’s clerk at the cattle market.”
Giles Hoggett scratched his head. He was certainly acquiring evidence, but he began to fear that his memory would be overburdened. Accustomed all his life to writing things down he took a pencil and diary from his pocket, and Blackthorn laughed heartily.
“Why it’s the dead spit of a policeman you’re getting, Giles, with your little book and all. You only want the patter and they’ll be taking you on in the Force.”
Staple was cogitating deeply. “See here,” he said. “Old Bob was main vexed when he went off like that. Mr. Shand’s ower sharp like – but I’d as lief put my money on Bob being right as Mr. Shand. I’ll go on after him and have another word with him.”
“Aye – and I’ll come too,” said Giles Hoggett. “How’d it be if we persuaded Bob to come down to the dales and have a look at one or two of us in my old coat?”
“Aye, that’s sense, that is,” agreed Staple. “He’s no talker, old Bob, but he sees things – and when he says he’s seen a thing, he’s to be trusted.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MACDONALD got Mr. Hoggett’s car out and turned eastward. Before he reached Thorpe Intak, he drew up to speak to one of Inspector Bord’s men.
“He’s there at home, sir,” reported the constable. “Given us no trouble at all. He’s been out to the local once or twice – sozzling. Brings some liquor back with him, I reckon.”
“Does he?” inquired Macdonald thoughtfully, and drove on pondering. When he last saw Anthony Vintner the man had undoubtedly been hungry and had said that he was penniless. His financial condition must have changed rapidly if he had money to spend on liquor.
Macdonald walked again over the sour grass, duly followed by Belinda and the sad little donkey. This time Macdonald had thought of them in advance, and rather shamefacedly produced some of Mr. Hoggett’s carrots from his pocket. The carrots were called “Red Elephants” and justified their name: they induced in the recipients a sort of incredulous rapture which made Macdonald forget that he had purloined those carrots without either permission or acknowledgement.
He knocked on the kitchen door, which was secured from within, and Vintner opened it.
“Hallo, Scotty. Come in. I’m working – come in and look.” Even without seeing Vintner, Macdonald would have known that he had been “sozzling,” for the place reeked of stale whiskey.
Following Vintner into the “studio,” Macdonald saw a large-sized canvas on the easel and stood and stared. It was a fantastic picture, representing a scene Macdonald himself had witnessed: a thin, lithe figure racing over flooded ground in the moonlight, with a dark, crouching figure in the foreground. Even in its present unfinished state it was a notable composition: apart from the mastery of the draughtsmanship it had an eerie quality which communicated fear. The running figure conveyed terror, the crouching one, menace. The head of the crouching man was blocked in in charcoal, but clearly it was not Giles Hoggett’s head, for the skull was round and the profile thin and mocking.
Macdonald stood and stared, and then turned to the painter.
“Why were you afraid of him?”
“Who?” The painter turned sullen.
“Ginner. That’s his head.”
Vintner sat on the corner of the table and fiddled with his palette knife.
“No. It’s nobody. Just a picture.”
Macdonald was silent for a moment; then he reached across the table and set upright an empty whiskey bottle.
“Last time I was here you told me you were penniless. Whiskey costs money.”
“I know that, Scotty. Thirty bob a bottle, damn it. I sold a picture.”
Macdonald looked steadily at him. “If you were sober you’d have the wits to think of something better than that. You haven’t sold a picture. You’ve been watched all the time.”
“Damn you, it’s not your business.”
“It is my business. According to your own admission, Ginner stayed here with you. No one has seen him alive since he left here. Ginner had money with him. Now you have the money. I want to know where you got it from. You can please yourself about answering.”
The trenchant voice had a sobering quality and Vintner stared back, his self-assurance melting away, but he argued back:
“You say you’ve watched me. If you know I haven’t sold a picture, you know I haven’t been anywhere to get any money.”
“That’s perfectly logical. You had the money all the time.”
Vintner watched the other man, his facial muscles quivering.
“You think I went without food, nearly starved, while I’d got money? I tell you I grubbed up turnips and potatoes from the fields nearby and lived on them.”
Macdonald sat silent, considering a number of things. He was remembering the ashes on the hearth at Wenningby Barns. The ashes, as Mrs. Hoggett had said, were the remains of woollen material, plus some waterproofed fabric. It had been reasonable to assume that someone had burned Mr. Hoggett’s famous coat for reasons of their own – but now the coat had reappeared. Macdonald had another idea about those ashes. He spoke again, sharply:
“When Ginner left here, what topcoat or raincoat was he wearing?”
Vintner nodded wearily, as a man does when he gives up trying. “Oh, all right. If you know, why worry me?”
“He wore your coat – perhaps to impersonate you – and your hat.”
“He
pinched my coat, damn him! He went off with it, with my money in it and my last packet of fags – dirty dog that he was.”
“And he left his own coat behind?”
“He hid it. I only found it yesterday. He’d got some money in it and I took it. He took mine.”
Macdonald watched the pale, furtive face with the red-rimmed eyes. “Where did Ginner hide his coat?”
“In the chimney of his bedroom. He wrapped it up in an old black-out curtain and shoved it up the chimney.”
“And how did you find it?”
“Because I looked. If you’re ever hungry you’ll find it sharpens your wits. When I thought he’d just pinched my coat and walked out on me it didn’t occur to me he’d left anything behind. He hadn’t any luggage – just a rucksack with shaving and sleeping gear and he’d taken that. Then you told me he was dead. He couldn’t have expected that, could he?” Vintner began to laugh, a strained, hysterical laugh. “He didn’t expect that. It’s funny, damn it if it isn’t funny. No one expects to be murdered.”
“Stop that!” snapped Macdonald. “You’re in a mess, Vintner. You can’t afford to laugh. Pull yourself together, man, and talk sense.”
“It is sense, isn’t it? D’you think he said: ‘I’m going to be murdered soon so I shan’t want anything’? Of course not – but maybe he said: ‘I’ll hide my stuff till I want it. That poor, bloody fool won’t think of looking for it.’ I tell you I nearly pulled the walls down. I found his coat in the chimney and a whole wad of notes. I spent some – the rest are in here.”
He pushed a tin toward Macdonald, the self-same cigarette tin which Vintner had taken from Wenningby Barns. Macdonald’s cautious mind said: “Were those notes in that box all the time? I didn’t open it.”
Steadily as ever, Macdonald asked: “Where is the coat now?”
“I sold it. . . to those potters you’re so fond of talking about.”
“The potters haven’t been near this house lately.”
“Who said they had? I wore it when I went to the pub. Walked past your cop in it. . . Ginner’s raincoat. . . I wore it and the cop didn’t notice. Of course he didn’t. One of the potters was at the pub, and I went outside at the back and asked him if he’d like to buy a coat. I didn’t want it. I hated Ginner – and I hated his bloody coat.”
Quite a story, meditated Macdonald. He had given a lot of consideration to the matter of Ginner’s coat. He had had no raincoat on when his body was found: it looked as though the murderer had overlooked the coat when he put the body in the sack and had found it later and burned it, together with the rucksack. Macdonald went on:
“What else did you find in the pockets of Ginner’s coat?”
“Nothing worth, anything. Some bits of paper he’d made some notes on.”
“Where are they now?”
Anthony Vintner shrugged his shoulders in a helpless way. “I don’t know – how should I? I put them back in the pockets.”
“Can you remember anything about what was written on them?”
“They didn’t make sense. Sort of lists. A. B. and C. and dates and numbers. Like this: A.250. Sept.: 1. Point X. Then something about gold, silver and copper. There was a lot about gold, and more dates or numbers or something. The last bit was about a hand at cards – but it was sort of gibberish. I tried to make sense of it, because I thought there might be something in it. Baring – or Ginner, or whatever you call him, tried to show me some swindling card tricks while he was here – how to deal the sort of hand you want. I couldn’t make anything of it.”
“Can’t you remember at all what was written down?”
Vintner looked helpless. “It was an awful scrawl, almost illegible, and it didn’t make any sort of sense. You know the way in bridge problems they call the four hands north, south, east and west. Well, he’d scrawled down the cards in four hands, or some of them – like this.” He took a piece of paper and scribbled hastily, and handed the result over to Macdonald. It ran, “West’s hand K.5.7.1.4.”
“It was something like that,” went on Vintner. “Anyway, it didn’t make sense, and I can’t really remember it. I just scrumpled up the bits of paper again and shoved them back in the coat pocket. I know I did that, because I remember feeling the ball of paper in the coat pocket when I had it on.” He started drawing on the sheet of paper as though he had lost all interest in the matter, and Macdonald spoke again sharply:
“You say that you sold the coat to one of the potters. You told me last time I asked that you didn’t know anything about the potters.”
“Quite true. I didn’t. I heard a chap in the bar say something about one of the potters outside, and how they’d buy anything. I got the idea quite suddenly – get rid of Ginner’s coat. It’s a beastly coat anyway. I went around to the back and found the bloke – a real tough – and shoved the coat at him and asked him what he’d give me for it. He gave me ten bob – I asked for a pound, but he wouldn’t go higher than ten bob.”
“What was the potter’s name?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t ask. Big tough with a beard. He just mooched off. What are you going to do now?”
Macdonald had got to his feet, and he replied: “I’m going to see if there are any other interesting relics of Ginner’s among your possessions. You can sit still – and stay sitting still.”
He spent some time looking swiftly through Anthony Vintner’s chaotic possessions, while the painter sat with hunched shoulders and scribbled, on bits of paper, on the back of a canvas, on the deal table top. The drawings were all of Macdonald -
profile, fullface, three-quarter; the shape of his skull, the setting of his head, the slope of his shoulders; Vintner drew them all from memory, hardly bothering to glance at the man he was drawing.
Macdonald went upstairs into the bare, little bedroom where Ginner had slept on a camp-bed. There was a crumpled black curtain still shoved into the small fireplace, and a quantity of plaster from the chimney had been dragged down and lay about the floor. There was a cupboard in the corner of the room where the shelves had been dragged out and the wallpaper torn off. The whole appearance of the room bore out what Vintner had said about searching – even the floor boards had been lifted.
It seemed to Macdonald that a man as lazy as Vintner must have been pretty certain there was something to find before he undertook such a vigorous search; anyway, there was nothing else of interest to be found. He went back into the studio again where Vintner was still working at his drawings.
“Look here, Vintner, I’m willing to believe you’ve got a poor memory for facts, but you can’t pretend that you’ve got a poor visual memory. You told me that you saw an old man by the river wearing Mr. Hoggett’s old coat.”
“So I did, it’s quite true.”
“And you knew it was Mr. Hoggett’s old coat because you’d seen the coat in Wenningby Barns.
You’d noticed where Mr. Hoggett put the doorkey and you’d been in there once or twice. Ginner had been in there, too, because you told him about the place.”
Anthony Vintner sat in glum silence, not bothering to make any disclaimer, and Macdonald went on:
“You say you saw a man in Mr. Hoggett’s coat. Other people saw him too. Could it have been Ginner wearing the coat?”
“No. I thought of that,” replied the painter. “It wasn’t Ginner. Not his shape. It was more like Hoggett – but it wasn’t him either. I know the way he moves. He couldn’t have been as clumsy as that.”
“Could it have been the potter – the man you sold Ginner’s coat to?”
Vintner considered, and at length replied: “Yes. That’s more like it. It was about his build. . . heavy and clumsy.”
“Have you ever seen the potters in the valley?”
“No – unless it was that chap in the old coat.”
“When were you painting the view across the valley from the gap in the woods on the Upfield path?”
“After Ginner had left and before the weather broke – the first week i
n September. The picture’s there. I asked Shand to buy it. He offered me a pound-note, damn his eyes!”
“When did Mr. Shand see it? While you were painting it?”
“No. He came to see me here. Wanted to turn me out. He can’t – there’s rent restriction.”
“I thought you hadn’t paid your rent?”
“I haven’t. I offered him some pictures instead – including his own portrait. You should have seen his face when he saw it. By the way, you wanted to know when I saw the chap in Hoggett’s coat. I’ve just remembered. It was while I was painting in that gap – I saw him by the river. I thought of putting him into the picture, I remember now. I painted in the evening light, and I stayed on a bit in the twilight – it’s a good spot. I saw that queer old figure in the half-light. . . I believe I did a sketch of that old bloke.”
Vintner got up and rummaged among the canvases stacked by the walls and Macdonald watched him. The chief inspector had looked through the canvases on the first occasion he had come to the cottage, but he had seen nothing of that particular view. Vintner stood still and scratched his head.
“Well, that’s rum. It’s gone. . . I had it here somewhere. Belinda must have eaten it.”
“Perhaps you’ll find it later on,” said Macdonald. “Meantime – a question I’ve asked you before. Where did you get this piece of rag?”
He produced the paint-stained orange rag from his pocket, and Vintner shook his head.
“I don’t know, I just don’t remember. I bought a bundle of rags from a junk shop in Kirkby. Perhaps it was there. Maybe I picked it up. I believe I did find some bits in the dales, when those kids were playing down there. I’m always looking out for rags. I may live in a muck, but I do look after my brushes.”
“Finally,” said Macdonald, “which route did you take to that clearing? Down from the Upfields or up from the valley?”
“Up from the valley. I don’t know the other way. I walked to the barns just before Netherbeck and went down the bank there, over the fields, and along the river past Wenningby Barns.”
The Theft of the Iron Dogs Page 16