by Tim Heald
‘In life the firmest friend;
The first to welcome, foremost to defend;
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone.’
Bognor was appalled at the use to which Byron had been put. Lines completed, Mrs Potts signalled to the gardener, who manhandled the orange box clumsily into the hole. This done she produced a large yellow handkerchief and said, barely audibly, ‘Goodbye, Fred, You were a lovely dog,’ then she subsided snivelling into the folds of the handkerchief as the gardener began to shovel earth on the grave. Bognor who felt that he had intruded unforgivably into this scene of private grief hurried back to the wrought iron gate to await the return of the mourners. On his way he noticed several small tombstones, many of them inscribed. ‘In happy memory of my old mate, Bonzo Eglington’, said one, while another, more grandly, proclaimed: ‘Bolislav—a very gallant dog’.
It was several minutes before the women returned. The gardener had evidently been left behind to finish his job. What other bizarre rites had been performed Bognor could only guess. The three girls in overalls—one of them presumably Mervyn Sparks’ informant—came first, fresh-faced and looking relieved that the ordeal was over. Mrs Potts and the blonde followed a few paces behind, the younger woman arming the breeder along. As they came to the gate he emerged in a manner which he recognized as being absurdly theatrical but which seemed at the time the only way possible.
‘Mrs Potts, I presume,’ he said. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. Bognor of the Board of Trade. I apologize for intruding at a moment of personal distress but …’
He seemed to come as a shock to Mrs Potts, who drew back in alarm and failed to accept his proffered hand. She had obviously not noticed him earlier. Her face was an unsightly mess of tear-stains and stale make-up. Luckily the blonde was under control. She smiled conspiratorially.
‘I’m Coriander Cordingley,’ she said, taking Bognor’s hand and holding it for an instant longer than etiquette required. ‘Mrs Potts has had rather a shock and I was going to make her a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d join us.’
‘Thank you.’ Bognor fell into step—or rather shuffle—alongside them.
‘Did you say Board of Trade?’ asked Miss Cordingley, brightly. She was about thirty, Bognor guessed, and was wearing almost enough make-up to make her look prostitutional. Almost but not quite. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘How frightfully interesting.’
‘Oh.’ Bognor was perplexed. Nobody ever said that about his job. Then before he realized that she was simply being polite he said, ‘What makes you say that?’
She blushed slightly. ‘You must meet such interesting people.’ Bognor guessed she said that to everyone.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘frightfully interesting.’
She laughed.
They had reached the house now and they went in through the back door. The kitchen smelt of rancid fat and bacon rinds. Bognor wrinkled his nose and was pleased to see that Coriander Cordingley did the same. Mrs Potts who had been immersed in lachrymose silence since Bognor’s introduction suddenly became galvanized. She strode to a cake tin surrounded by half-empty jam jars on the sideboard, opened it and removed three-quarters of a Battenburg cake spotted with green mould. This she deposited on a cracked willow pattern plate together with the remains of a packet of Garibaldi biscuits. From the hooks above the cake tin she took three cups, chipped, stained with lipstick and with tidemarks of tea clearly visible an inch below the rim.
‘Would you like tea?’ she asked. ‘Or would a drink be better?’
‘A drink,’ said Bognor too eagerly, and was relieved when Miss Cordingley said the same.
‘Bravo,’ responded Mrs Potts, now much restored. Bognor was upset to see that she did not replace the filthy teacups. Instead she went to the stove, opened the oven and peered in.
‘Scotch, brandy or tonic wine,’ she said.
Bognor opted for whisky while the two women had brandy. The brandy was the same brand that had been administered that morning—Grand Seigneur ten star—while Bognor’s whisky was poured from a bottle marked ‘McCrum’s guaranteed ten-year-old whisky’ and subtitled ‘purveyors of Scottish Whisky to His Majesty the King of Nepal’.
‘More comfortable next door,’ said Mrs Potts, taking the comestibles in one hand, her drink in the other and pushing the door open with her bottom. They followed her into a dingy drawing room, darkened by yellowing net curtains and ornamented with large numbers of silver cups. There were photographs everywhere, nearly all of poodles. On an upright piano, however, Bognor noticed one of a statuesque woman in a fox fur and fruit salad hat, standing next to a slight man with a Clark Gable moustache and spats. With a start Bognor realized that the picture was of a younger Mrs Potts with, presumably, Mr Potts. He sat down gingerly on the edge of a fragile Victorian chair with an antimacassar, declining his hostess’s offer of Garibaldi or Battenburg and watched fascinated, as she carved herself a portion consisting of almost half the remaining mildewed cake.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Potts, ‘as I said, Coriander, I’m afraid I’ve no one else for you to paint. I’ll pay you, of course.’
‘Oh nonsense, Mrs Potts,’ said Miss Cordingley, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. As soon as you have another dog like Fred just let me know and I’ll be down in a flash.’
‘There’ll never be another dog like Fred,’ said Mrs Potts morosely, ‘he was unique. Not while I live there won’t be anyway.’ She took a mouthful of cake and a noisy slug of Grand Seigneur. ‘Now, young man,’ she turned to address Bognor, who was duly flattered. It was a long time since anyone had called him a young man. The woman was still, he supposed, blinded by grief. ‘What can we do for you? I’m afraid you’ve found us at a sad moment. You may not realize it but that’s not just a dog I’ve lost, it’s my future. I could have retired on the proceeds of that dog. He was a friend, too, I know, but he was worth a thousand times his weight in gold, make no mistake.’
‘What about the insurance?’ asked Bognor, trained against his true nature to be suspicious at all times.
‘Pshaw,’ said Mrs Potts waving dismissive fingers, thick as bananas. She drained her cup and went out of the room.
‘Do you paint … er … dogs?’ asked Bognor, smiling at Miss Cordingley.
‘Yes.’
‘Is that lucrative?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ she said. ‘Not so much the money, but the travel and the expenses. I’ve been all over the world painting dogs.’
‘Do you like dogs?’
She made a face. Mrs Potts returned with the Grand Seigneur and the McCrum’s. Without asking she refilled all their cups.
‘Well,’ repeated Mrs Potts. ‘You don’t look as if you’ve come to buy a dog. I should say you’re more of a cat person. Or even a parrot person. Do you keep parrots?’
Bognor shook his head. ‘I’m here on business,’ he said.
‘Let me guess,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘It can’t be the licence. I’ve done that. And it wouldn’t be the car. Is it the VAT?’
‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘it’s about dogs. As a matter of fact it’s about Whately Wonderful.’
For a moment she had seemed slightly tipsy. Now she was sober again, and very on edge. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I heard the dog was dead …’
‘How? No one else knew. It only happened this morning. How could you possibly …?’
‘We at the Board of Trade …’ Bognor was about to launch into his long and frankly pompous spiel about the all-seeing intelligence network at the Board’s disposal, but Mrs Potts prevented him.
‘That bloody kennelmaid,’ she said explosively, ‘I’ll have her for this. I told the little bitch to keep her trap shut.’ She drank more brandy and Bognor realized that although she was upset about the dog there was more to it than that. She was frightened.
‘It doesn’t honestly matter how I knew,’ he said, gently, ‘and it may be irrelevant.
The point is, you see, that I’m investigating a dog smuggling business and my informant suggested that there might possibly be some connection between the sudden death of your dog and …’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped at him. ‘How the hell could there be? What are you talking about?’
‘All right,’ said Bognor, ‘I admit it seems far-fetched. But I wonder if you’d mind telling me precisely what it was your dog died of? I understand he was a young healthy dog. Isn’t it rather unusual for a dog like that to suddenly drop dead?’
‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘The dog just died and that’s all there is to it. It was a virus.’
‘What sort of virus?’
‘You obviously don’t know the first thing about dogs. It could have been any sort of virus.’ Bognor knew she was bluffing. He might not know anything about dogs but he had acquired a certain knowledge of human nature.
‘What exactly did the vet say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh?’
‘The vet wasn’t called. As far as I’m concerned the vet’s job is to look after live dogs and keep them healthy. Once a dog’s dead it’s of no interest to him and he’s of no use to it.’
Bognor sighed. He wished he knew more about dogs.
‘Isn’t it usual to call the vet if a dog dies in these circumstances?’
‘I don’t know why you’re being so suggestive. There weren’t any “circumstances”. The dog died. No, I don’t call in the vet when a dog dies. I see no reason for it.’
He was stymied.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Was the dog insured?’
She bridled. Whether it was because of real annoyance or whether it was part of her act he couldn’t be sure.
‘Do you have any authority for asking these questions?’
He produced his ID card and she examined it suspiciously, turning it over a couple of times and screwing her eyes up to read the small print.
‘That doesn’t give you any authority,’ she said eventually, ‘it just says who you are. What do you think, Coriander?’ She passed the card across to Miss Cordingley who glanced at it and said with the tone of one who doesn’t expect her advice to be contradicted: ‘It doesn’t give Mr Bognor any authority, Ailsa, but in view of who he is and who he works for I think it might be nice to help.’
Mrs Potts appeared to consider. Bognor was grateful to Coriander. He had almost forgotten she was there. She’d been very quiet while he was interrogating.
Eventually Mrs Potts appeared to concede. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll help in any way I can, but I really don’t see what connection there can possibly be between Fred and this smuggling nonsense.’
Bognor smiled ingratiatingly. Mrs Potts, who had polished off the whole of the Battenburg cake, began to make inroads on the Garibaldis. She was undoubtedly agitated.
‘For a start,’ he said, ‘is this smuggling thing feasible? For instance, if you could have taken Whately Wonderful to foreign dog shows or mated him with foreign dogs, would that have made much difference to you financially?’
‘Yes.’
‘But it wouldn’t be practical?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Quarantine mainly. But other countries have their own regulations.’
‘Have you heard anyone mention anything about a smuggling ring like this? No one’s approached you, for instance?’
Bognor was aware of hesitation. The two women didn’t even look at one another, but he was certain that something passed between them. What? He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t psychic, but there was something there.
It was Coriander who answered. ‘As I said, I travel about an awful lot,’ she said, ‘and I just don’t see how it could be done. Customs are awfully strict.’
‘If you can smuggle arms and illegal immigrants you can presumably smuggle dogs. I mean you can put little dogs into handbags.’
‘Oh really, Mr Bognor, I thought you were being serious.’ Miss Cordingley laughed patronizingly.
‘But neither of you have ever heard of it happening?’
They both shook their heads.
‘I’ve sold abroad,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘The best dog I ever had, apart from Fred, went to a Count in Florence. He paid £3000 and never showed him. Nor bred from him either. Just took him round the town to show off to his mistresses and his wife’s lovers.’
Bognor finished his whisky. It was obvious to him that they were both lying and that he wasn’t going to get any further that day. He continued to ask questions in a perfunctory manner, neither expecting nor obtaining any satisfactory answers. After five minutes he rose to leave.
‘Can I offer you a lift?’ he said to Coriander.
She smiled. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I have a return ticket and Ailsa and I still have a few things to talk about. But if I can help …’ She took a card from her handbag. ‘Let’s meet for a drink. I really think you’re wasting your time, but the drink would be nice anyway.’ Once more she held his hand a fraction longer than necessary.
Mrs Potts was more abrupt.
‘Next time you come,’ she said, ‘I hope it will be to buy a poodle. Can’t afford to fiddle about with tomfool stories about smuggling.’ He hardly listened, mesmerized instead by the crumb of marzipan which had stuck to her chin.
2
HE WAS EARLY BACK to the flat and there was no sign of Monica. They had lived together for as long as he cared to remember now and their routines were at least as established as those of most married couples. He seldom returned before 6.30. She was always there to greet him, but had usually only been home for a few minutes. She took jobs when and where she felt like it, but always made a point of being out in the afternoons. He supposed that one day they would marry but somehow with time and familiarity the prospect receded rather than advanced.
The view over Regent’s Park was idyllic on an early summer’s day like this. All leaves were lime green with youth, untainted with age or city grime. He stood for a moment looking south, then went to the kitchen to make coffee, forgetting, briefly, the tedious business of dogs. After the kettle had boiled and he’d spooned into a cup one and a half teaspoons of brown granules he took the resulting concoction to the drawing room and sprawled full length on the faded sofa. It was nice to be able to put one’s feet up. He sipped at the steaming liquid and perused the last edition of the evening paper. There had been an armed bank robbery in a suburban high street and the President of the United States had told another lie. The stock market had had a bad day and so had the English cricket team. Nothing ever changed. He turned to the back page where the home news stories lived and immediately read a headline which set the adrenalin flowing.
‘Duchess in Rabies Scare’ was the headline. The story underneath was simple. ‘An outbreak of rabies is feared at the home of Dora, Duchess of Dorset, following the death there of one of the Duchess’s Dandie Dinmont terriers. A spokesman for the Duchess confirmed that the dog, Champion Piddlehampton Peter, had been destroyed early today after apparently going berserk and attacking one of the Duchess’s kennelmaids. The spokesman refused to comment on the suggestion that rabies could be involved but local medical authorities have appealed to all those who may have been in contact with the kennels to come forward for anti-rabies injections.’
There followed a note from ‘Our Medical Correspondent’ describing the inexorable agonies of death from hydrophobia, and emphasizing that unless injections were given soon after a bite from a rabid dog, the disease was virtually incurable. Under that there was another note from ‘Our Pets Correspondent’ giving a brief résumé of the quarantine restrictions and referring to the last outbreak of rabies, in Camberley. And finally ‘Our Social Correspondent’ appended a note about the Duchess—the Dowager Duchess—who had bred Dandie Dinmonts for more than twenty years with enormous success. She had also at an earlier stage in her career piloted a Sopwith Camel under Clifton Suspension Bridge and won a hundred guineas by
dancing naked round the pond in the middle of Tom Quad, Christchurch, during the Commem Ball of 1921.
Bognor was suitably appalled. Rabies, he now knew, could only be imported from abroad and it could only be passed on by animals—particularly dogs. That meant one of three things. First that the Duchess of Dorset had imported a Dandie Dinmont and somehow the quarantine restrictions had proved inadequate. That had happened in the Camberley case. The rabid dog had actually been in quarantine kennels approved by the Ministry but the period had not been long enough. Regulations had now been tightened but it was conceivable that something of the sort might have happened. The second possibility was that the kennels had been visited—unknown to them—by a rabid visitor, or by an animal capable of carrying the disease. Both of these exempted the Duchess from any blame, but the third was bad. It seemed most likely to Bognor that the Duchess’s dog had contracted the disease abroad and somehow returned home without going into kennels for the statutory period. That made the Duchess not only blameworthy but criminally liable, too. He stood up and began pacing the room. Could there be any connection between this death and that of Whately Wonderful and if so what? Had Whately Wonderful died of rabies? He wondered if, on the strength of his half-formulated suspicion, he could order the dog’s exhumation and a post mortem. And if it had died from rabies what would it prove?
He was struggling with the ramifications of the case when the phone rang. Instinctively he knew that it would be Parkinson and that it would be bad news. Parkinson had never yet rung when there was good news to communicate. As usual he was right.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you, Bognor,’ said Parkinson. Bognor gulped. It must indeed be bad news if Parkinson was prefacing it with a warning like that. He waited.
‘It’s about Mervyn Sparks.’
‘I had lunch with him.’
‘So I gather. He’s in hospital now.’
‘Christ. It’s not food poisoning …’ Bognor’s instinct for self-preservation invariably got the better of him in moments of stress.