He turned to Giles Hoggett. “You gave me a very interesting exposition concerning the potters, and you said, ‘They each have their own territory which they work on their own like robins, keeping others off it.’ ”
“Aye,” said Giles. “So I did. I’d no idea I’d been so useful.”
Mrs. Hoggett’s exclamation was as near a snort as made no difference.
“Sorry,” she said apologetically, “but that’s just like Giles and his philosophy. He does know things – and that’s all there is to it. Wouldn’t you like a cup of tea, Mr. Macdonald? I’m sure you need one. I think your patience with us is the most remarkable thing about you.”
“Thank you very much, I should,” replied Macdonald. “but don’t think I undervalue your husband’s assistance. He practically solved this case for me and Reeves – but he didn’t realize that he’d done so.”
Kate brought the tea tray in, and George quelled his low-toned mirth as Macdonald continued:
“Next, there was Vintner. Here was an able artist but a man who had no stability of character at all. He had a motive to commit the murder, because he feared and hated Ginner. He had the necessary knowledge of the locality and he was a good swimmer. Nevertheless, I didn’t believe he’d done it for the very reasons Mrs. Hoggett adduced – he is chronically untidy and unmethodical and he hasn’t the determination to carry anything through. At the same time, I did believe that if he were arrested and charged he would certainly have been found guilty. The evidence was all circumstantial, but the circumstances were dead against him. That sort of bloke,” added Macdonald meditatively, as he sipped his tea, “is an absolute menace to a detective. He simply asks to be arrrested, and the very fact that he lies, feebly and unconvincingly, annoys one enough to go against one’s better judgment and arrest him. My favorite nightmare is that I shall one day produce convincing chapter and verse to charge a man like Anthony Vintner, and that I shall be unable to prove he’s innocent before he gets himself hanged.”
George grunted in acquiescence. “I follow that,” he said. “My own nightmare is that I shall disregard the moans of of an old chronic and that he will die on me before I realize he’s really in danger.”
“You’re neither of you in the least likely to do anything of the kind,” said Mrs. Haggett firmly. “You both of you suffer from excess of conscience, not lack of it. But it’s quite true,” she added, turning to Macdonald, “that I was glad you looked obstinate. Obstinacy is a valuable quality in intelligent people.”
“Aye,” murmured Giles. “That is it. I’ll remember that. Go on, Macdonald. What about little Mr. Willoughby?”
“Yes. Mr. Willoughby. He was a fine suspect. He’d got almost every qualification, I found him in flagrante delicto with your old coat, Hoggett, and he was in the wool trade. Aye, he was a grand red herring. You see, if he was speaking the truth, he gave me the case complete, but I’d no means of knowing if he were speaking the truth. He told me about how he went on the shilla bed and saw Shand, when Shand didn’t see him, and he saw the man in Hoggett’s old coat that very same evening, having seen two men, whom I took to be Vintner and Ginner, the evening before. And the date he gave, quite positively, was the first week in September when Shand claimed he was away in Derbyshire.”
Macdonald paused, and then added: “That brings us down to brass tacks. The most damning evidence Shand gave against himself was when he told Hoggett in the fold-yard that he (Shand) had seen the old man in the preposterous coat. He said it was before the weather broker and that he’d been away all the first week in September. Blackthorn reminded him he’d been away for the last four days in August, and Shand agreed and said it was a couple of days before that he saw the old coat – that is, on August 26th.”
There was silence, and Giles Hoggett said: “Well, why not? He could have–”
“He couldn’t!” cried Mrs. Hoggett victoriously. “At last I’ve seen something for myself. George and the children were staying at the cottage then and the coat was there all the time they were. No one could have taken the coat while the children were there, because they’d have noticed if it had gone.”
“Aye. So they would,” agreed Giles amiably. “Very bright of you; Kate. But you are bright,” he added proudly.
“Well, having acknowledged in full my debt to the Hoggett-Castleby contingent, I had better put in a word for C.I.D. routine work,” said Macdonald. “We’re a very industrious organization – Mrs. Hoggett would approve of us in that way. We collected chapter and verse about Ginner and his early life, which led to the successful work done by Reeves and Hoggett in Chapelton-Lonsdale. We learnt that Ginner was probably familiar with the general area, and later we used our searchers in Somerset House to complete the case. Meantime, I followed the trail of the orange rags and proved to my own satisfaction that Gold had something to hide. I felt pretty certain that Gold had acted as go-between for Ginner in communicating with his friends, and that the trail of rags was to guide Ginner to a meeting-place in the dales. Finally came the unexpected incident about Vintner finding Ginner’s coat and the paper in the pocket. The chief item on that paper was a scrawl which Vintner interpreted as: ‘West’s hand. K.5.7.1.4,’ preceded by the words ‘trump card.’ As you can see, there are no capital letters and no stops, the words and numerals being run together. I read it as ‘West. Shand K.5.1.14.’ For the K I hazarded Kendal, because I knew Ginner had known the place. It thus read: ‘Trump Card. West. Shand. Kendal 5.7.14’ – and when I learnt that Mrs. Gold’s maiden name had been West I believed I had interpreted Gordon Ginner’s trump card. If he knew that Shand had married Sarah West on July 5, 1914, and that both parties to the marriage were still alive but married bigamougly, it accounted for Shand losing his temper and killing a rogue who was trying to blackmail him, and for Mrs. Gold going into hiding with her sister at Slaidburn.”
“It sounds quite simple, when you relate it,” said Giles Hoggett. “If I’d been more careful I might have thought it out myself. . . No – I shouldn’t have. . . I haven’t the application to detail. My routine work is very poor.”
“Your routine work is very good,” said Macdonald, “but you haven’t learnt to co-ordinate yet. Now let us consider all the facts I had gathered about Shand. First, Hoggett met Shand coming up from the dales early on the first day the floods were out. Shand was a fly purist in the matter of fishing, I gather. What Hoggett calls a ‘gentlemanly fisherman’ – yet there he was, out with his gear, on a day when no trout would notice a fly and the water was too high to cast one. What has he been doing? Inspecting something? I didn’t know, neither did Hoggett. Next, Shand came and visited Hoggett at the cottage that evening. One thing was evident – he thought Hoggett was a simple soul who could be instructed and condescended to. Having a suspicious mind I watched him carefully as he thumbed those books. Shand knew that the thefts had been reported to the police, and he knew that even in rural areas the police take fingerprints. Was he supplying an obvious explanation for the presence of his own fingerprints, supposing he had been in the cottage on other than lawful occasions? It was a possibility.”
“But you said that nearly all the surfaces in the cottage had been wiped clean of prints,” put in Giles Hoggett, and Kate said:
“Haven’t you ever said to yourself: ‘Did I really do everything I meant to do before I came away? Did I put out that last cigarette, and lock the windows and lift things off the floor in case of floods?’ How often have I gone back again to the cottage to make certain? I can quite see a man saying: ‘Did I really rub all my fingerprints off?’ ”
Macdonald nodded. “That’s the idea. So many men have given themselves away because their nerves gave them no peace until they had gone back to make sure. However, that was only surmise. What was more certain was Shand’s insistence that the potters were innocent of the thefts – an odd attitude for a land-owner. Why did he want to protect the potters? I
hazarded an answer to that when I heard Dr. Castleby’s evidence about Mrs.
Gold’s first marriage. It was sheer guesswork, but I felt that something was needed to account for Shand’s championship of the potters. Next, Shand’s attitude to Vintner – and there I felt I was on to something. Hoggett, if you wanted to evict an undesirable tenant who doesn’t pay his rent, what would you do about it?”
“Put it in the hands of my solicitor,” replied Giles. “The process of the law is quite straightforward and well known to every landlord.” ‘
“Yes, but I found Shand, who was a very ‘de-haut-en-bas’ type, going to call on Vintner personally to argue with him about evicting him, even preparing to offer to forgo arrears of rent; and Vintner saying that Shand bullied him. It all seemed a bit odd to me. Since Vintner had neither paid his rent nor kept his land in order, the matter of eviction was simple, yet here was an intolerant landlord like Shand havering over it. It looked to me as though Vintner had some leverage, some knowledge, which enabled him to sound so certain when he told me that Shand couldn’t turn him out. Well, there it was. Ginner had stayed with Vintner and Vintner seemed to have some sort of hold over Shand, and Shand was busy telling people that Vintner was a rogue. It was plain to any intelligent person that Vintner was an ideal scapegoat. That’s why I had the approach to his house watched so carefully. Whoever the murderer happened to be (and I didn’t believe it was Vintner) it would be a most satisfactory solution if Vintner committed suicide and left some drunken scrawl acknowledging his guilt.”
“I don’t follow one point here,” put in Giles. “How was it that if Shand felt that Vintner had a hold over him Shand risked accusing Vintner of the thefts when we were talking in the cottage?”
“You must remember that that was before the body was found,” said Macdonald. “Shand had every season to believe the body would not be found, and at that time he did not know Scotland Yard was after Ginner. Shand’s feeling was that he had successfully disposed of Ginner, and the sooner Vintner was discredited and cleared out the better. I argued that Shand wanted Vintner to be under suspicion in case any inquiry ever arose about Ginner – and having taken up his stand by accusing Vintner, Shand thought it wiser to be be consistent.”
“Well, that’s a rough outline of my own gropings toward a reconstruction,” said Macdonald. “The end came while the case was still thoroughly untidy, but Shand made a desperate bid to straighten things out. He was in a miserable position, poor wretch. He had killed a blackmailer and thought he had been successful. Then, because of Hoggett’s persistence, Scotland Yard heard of the iron dogs and came and found the body. Shand made another mistake here. He let me know that he had been out on the fell-side watching at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. He must have used binoculars to see all that he did from that distance – again, a bit odd. Next, Vintner let Shand know that he (Vintner) knew there was some connection between him and Ginner. Vintner is cunning enough. He thought out the idea of pretending he had found a letter from Ginner involving Shand. The only surprising thing to me is that Vintner hasn’t got himself murdered long ago for his beastly tricks.”
“I hope he doesn’t get murdered in Lunesdale,” said Mrs. Hoggett hastily, and Macdonald replied:
“I can assure you he won’t have any opportunity of doing that for a long time to come. He suppressed evidence which he ought to have given, and his last tour de force insured him a reasonable retirement at His Majesty’s expense. Now for the final exposition, which includes ascertained facts obtained from Gold, Vintner, Mrs. Gold, Mrs. Soper, and last, but not least, Somerset House.
Gordon Ginner, when a boy of 15, saw a married pair leaving a Registry office in Kendal and learned their names out of curiosity, because they looked an odd pair to him. Young Shand, then a lad of no fortune, married Susie West and later deserted her. Some years later, Susie married Reuben Gold, using the name of her dead sister, Sarah West. Susie also sent home a report of her own death, so that when Shand made guarded inquiries he learnt that the girl he had married was dead, and he also married again, being now a prosperous manufacturer. There it might all have rested had not Gordon Ginner, with an uncannily good memory, seen Mrs Gold at a café by the roadside and by some freak recognized her – and said so. I think the thing which caused him to recognize her is that she has one blue eye and one gray. Then, in August of this year, Ginner came up here to hide and stayed with Vintner and heard about and saw Barton Shand. Then the stage was set. Ginner attempted blackmail, and at the same time busied himself in getting into touch with his swindling associates through the medium of Gold, whom he bribed. When Mrs. Gold saw Ginner again, she persuaded her husband to take her to her sister’s in Slaidburn.
“Ginner certainly used the cottage, obtaining information about it from Vintner, who knew that Ginner had met Shand there. The rest can be argued from the evidence you know; Shand killed Ginner and hid his body in Jacob’s Buttery, trying to use the bogie to transport the body, and finding, as Reeves did, that it was impracticable. Shand made a good many mistakes, none of which would have mattered had his original argument held good – that the body would never be found. After he abandoned the bogie, he left it in the dales, because he forgot it. Gold saw him move it later – and Gold guessed for himself, when he had time to think it over, that it was Shand who stole the waders and the brogues, in order that his own footprints should not be identified, and it was Shand who hid the waders under the wall of Middle Upfield.”
“And it was Mr. Shand who wore my coat,” said Giles, as though that were the most surprising point of all.
“Aye. It was a good idea, mark you. Shand didn’t want to be seen on Mr. Hoggett’s land, nor yet by Jacob’s Buttery, and the disguise was a good one. No one recognized him, though he was seen by a variety of pebple, and he was enabled to spy out the land and make his plans.”
Mrs. Hoggett sat forward, her elbows on her knees, chin in hands, brooding.
“The most interesting part of it all is that the evidence gave a clear idea of the type of man the murderer must be – and yet we never saw it. We practically told Mr. Macdonald that the murderer was fairly prosperous, that he wasn’t used to manual work, that he knew Lunesdale but was not of Lunesdale, that he was careful but slipped up because he didn’t know our ways – and even then, we never spotted it.”
“There are two reasons for that,” replied Macdonald. “One is lack of training in reading evidence. It seems so easy, but it’s really an expert job. The other is this: when a person is part of a familiar world, you just accept that person. Mr. Shand? Oh, yes, you laughed at him a little because he was pompous and self-opinionated and thought he was so much superior to the farmer. Hoggett said: “He’s not a bad landlord. I’ve known worse – a, sort of ‘irritated toleration,’ to use his own phrase. But someone ‘from away,’ like myself, sees you all in fresh perspective.”
“I shall put those iron dogs back in the river,” said Giles Hoggett meditatively, and Macdonald put in:
“Then may I send you some more proper iron dogs such as there are in that chimney at the V and A? It’d be good for you to accept something which came from a London junk shop and yet belonged in the cottage.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Hoggett. “We should like to have them.”
“And what can we give you in return?” asked Giles. “We should like you to have something to remember us by.”
“I don’t think I’m likely to forget you, Hoggett, but since you’ve made such a kind offer, in addition to all your noble hospitality, would you give me that little English grammar in the Latin tongue which belonged to your grandfather Ramsden?”
“It’s here, Macdonald. I’ve brought it for you,” said Hoggett. “You see, I saw the way you looked at it and held it, and I was a bookseller once, before I turned farmer.”
Macdonald took the shabby little leather-bound book in his hands and rubbed his fingers appreciatively along the raised sewing bands at the back.
“Thank you, Hoggett. I didn’t know my covetousness had shown in my face, but your routin
e work then, as ever, was excellent.”
THE END
The Theft of the Iron Dogs Page 21