Death of a Gay Dog

by Anne Morice

  ‘This would be the exception to prove that he was off his head. Presumably, if you were planning such a risky deed, you would have to be an utter fool to choose the one moment when the three of you were locked up together in the presence of half a dozen witnesses, one of whom happened to be a detective from Scotland Yard. He would be in a first-rate position to find dozens of more favourable opportunities.’

  ‘Which reminds me, Toby; whose idea was it to show the film? If you remember, we were originally invited to play bridge. It was only after dinner that the programme was switched.’

  ‘I assume it was because Robin had made it clear that neither of you was in their class. And, of course, Christabel had upset the bridge cart, too. That was no part of the murderer’s plan. Her presence was due purely to a last-minute whim on the part of the murderee.’

  ‘All the same, I wonder if it was used as an excuse to get us all down into that dungeon? If so, it means that the murder was unpremeditated.’

  ‘Oh, no. All the essential ingredients could have been present at the bridge table, too. With dummies wandering around and players swapping over, it would have been equally easy to arrange; easier, in a way.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. It’s not a profitable line of inquiry. Let’s concentrate for a moment on Anabel. Can she have run away?’

  ‘Can she? You sound hopeful about it, but I should have thought it would ruin all your plans?’

  ‘Oh, they’re elastic enough to take it; and it would certainly be damning evidence against Roger. I mean, if a sensitive teenage daughter had seen something to give her reason to believe that her father was a murderer, running away would be exactly the course she would adopt, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I only have one sensitive, teenage daughter, and I am not sure that she has ever considered herself to be in that situation. Can we go and get the papers now?’

  The Maltings was less than ten minutes’ walk from the village, so there was no reason to object. Moreover, I knew that he would be in no fit state for future collaboration, if he did not have his precious crossword to fall back on in moments of stress or boredom.

  (ii)

  I waited for him outside the newsagents, gazing down the village street, with its neo-Georgian banks and estate agencies competing valiantly with eye-catching multiple stores, including Dolly’s Inter, where the insouciant manager doubtless cavorted around inside. Between its green and gold facade and Evans the chemist, directly opposite me, stood the bow-fronted shop which had once displayed the banner of Geo. Nicholls & Son, and whose cornflakes and soap powder had now been replaced by lustre jugs and warming-pans. On a swinging signboard above the door, the words ‘Treasure Trove’ were inscribed in Old English lettering.

  Toby emerged with a stack of newspapers under his arm, and pointing across the road I said:

  ‘Shall we go and buy ourselves a treasure?’

  ‘Oh, haven’t we got enough?’ he grumbled. ‘Oh, very well. I suppose one can always do with one more. Do mind these lorries, though. I don’t believe they could stop, even if they wanted to.’

  There was a hideous Victorian dining-table taking up half the space in the Trove showroom, with a ticket on it bearing the figure £120, among other meaningless symbols. It was piled with job lots of cutlery, wine glasses and dessert plates, but a space had been cleared at one end to make room for a battery of furniture-polishing equipment. Guy Robinson was seated there, on some library steps, shining a pair of shoes.

  ‘We’re closed,’ he called out, in his merry Irish voice. ‘But doan’t let that be worrying yez. Come insoide, the both of yer, and cheer the auld fellah up.’

  ‘You should hang a card out when you’re closed,’ I informed him. ‘How is one supposed to know?’

  ‘Well, the boss has taken off, d’ye see? Went out in the divil of a horry, and I can’t seem to lay me hands on the blessed little card. Should never be surprised if she’d sold it, you know.’

  ‘Will she be long?’

  ‘Couldn’t ever say, me darlin’. She’s away to one of them auction sales, combin’ the countryside for bargains.’

  ‘In that case, we might do better to postpone our visit until she’s combed it,’ Toby suggested, glancing around.

  ‘But you have masses of stuff here already,’ I said firmly. ‘And we don’t exactly want to buy anything. Couldn’t we just snoop around for a bit? How much is this lacquer tray?’

  He told me and I put it down again, passing on to a Waterford jug, with a chip in the handle.

  Toby remarked sociably that it made an interesting change to see someone cleaning shoes with furniture polish, since it was the custom in his house to use shoe polish on the furniture, and when he had recovered from his astonishment Guy told me that the reason for the Waterford jug being knocked down to twenty-five quid was that it had a chip in the handle, invisible to the naked oy. Then switching abruptly to his drawing-room comedy style he begged us to partake in a glass of sherry wine. He went across to an inlaid corner-cupboard, which also had a price tag dangling from its key, and took out a decanter and some glasses, saying:

  ‘Or are you nervous about your tipples, after last night?’

  ‘Not at all –’

  ‘. . . Yes, very,’ Toby and I replied in unison.

  ‘Shocking business, isn’t it?’ Guy continued. ‘Must have been suicide is the cry that goes up all around.’

  He had turned his back on us and I noticed him put the decanter down and unobtrusively step aside to close the door between the shop and the back storeroom, which had been off the latch.

  ‘What makes them cry any such thing?’ I asked.

  ‘Because, sweetie, the alternative is really too fantastic for sane men to contemplate, wouldn’t you say? I mean, there we all were in the room with him when he died, and people don’t up and murder one of the other guests in the middle of a party. At least, not in my experience.’

  ‘And in mine they don’t up and commit suicide, either.’

  ‘I suppose it would depend on the party?’ Toby suggested.

  Guy gave a snort of laughter: ‘Well, I admit the H.B.s do rather get away with murder – Oh, blimey, ’ark at ’im! Now, don’t get me wrong, folks. I was referring to those turgid movies they will keep inflicting on us.’

  ‘As a matter of curiosity, had you seen that particular one before?’

  ‘Know it by heart, darling. But, apart from that, they’re very, very lovely people, as you must have seen. Xenia and I are devoted to them.’

  ‘We may not have seen them at their best,’ Toby admitted, ‘and I really do think it’s time we left, Tessa. I’ve got that soufflé on my mind. You can come back some other time and look for whatever it is you want.’

  ‘Oh, but I do so love poking around, and another few minutes won’t hurt. It always has to stand for an hour, before going in the oven. Haven’t you got some more stuff in the back room, Guy?’

  ‘Only a few oddments that haven’t been priced yet. Pictures, mainly; and not for sale. The Russian eagle eye picked out one or two watercolours which might fetch a bit more than our average trade provides. We’ll probably send them up to Sotheby’s. How about this, now? Here’s a pretty little troifle as’d suit a foine young lady like yeself.’

  He was poised on tiptoe, leaning precariously forward over a mountain of assorted china, one arm reaching up to grasp a dusty Dresden mirror on the shelf above. Seizing my chance, I said quickly:

  ‘Not now. Toby’s right; we must dash. Good-bye and thanks awfully.’

  ‘But you’re leaving by the wrong door,’ Toby pointed out.

  ‘Oh, silly me, so I am!’ I said, opening it, as I spoke.

  I closed it again almost immediately, because Guy’s reflexes were admirably tuned up and he had spun round and regained his balance in the space of seconds.

  Nevertheless, my brief glimpse inside of the store-room had been enough to verify two guesses. One was that it cont
ained a much larger collection of paintings than Guy had led us to believe; the other that it was no poltergeist who was responsible for the scuffling noises I had heard. For that brief instant, I had stared straight into the cringing, frightened eyes of Anabel Harper Barrington, who crouched on the floor, hugging her martyred old golden retriever.

  Eight

  (i)

  ‘Did Guy realise you had seen her?’ Robin asked, with mild interest, when I had poured an account of the foregoing events into his undeserving ear.

  He had dashed into the house two minutes before lunch, looking distrait and self-important, and had incurred Aunt Moo’s displeasure by wolfing down the soufflé as carelessly as though it were a baked apple, and mine by refusing to discuss the progress he was making with his darling friend, Superintendent Cole.

  All he would say, and it was said without a smile, was that, owing to the fortuitous circumstance of his being on the spot, Scotland Yard had officially requested him to remain and give what assistance he could to the local branch in the little matter of Sir Maddox Brand’s murder.

  If he had expected his audience to swoon with excitement he must have been disappointed. Toby gave it as his opinion that policemen were not only getting younger, but the arm of their coincidence growing longer every day; and Aunt Moo’s comment that poor Maddox had been a very curious man was made in such dismissive tones as to suggest that this provided the last word on the subject. To compensate, she assured us that he had not only been curious about pictures but other things as well.

  My own retort took the form of congratulating her on the sacrifice of the Monday papers. The only mention of Sir Maddox’s death, apart from the official obituary, was the faintly misleading statement that he had collapsed and died while dining with friends a few miles from his home. The moral of this, I pointed out, was that if anything sensational did occur on Sunday it stood little chance of being accurately reported on Monday.

  It was irritating to find that, instead of deflating Robin, these reflections merely increased his complacency, and he said that this was where the trained eye could be an advantage. It often enabled its owner to see more than met the untrained one.

  He unbent a little, when the other two had padded upstairs for their afternoon naps and we were alone together in the library, but only to tell me more about Old King Cole and how wonderful he was.

  ‘Lived here all his life, you know,’ he added proudly. ‘His father was head gamekeeper to the people who owned the Court before Sir Maddox came, so he knows this part of the world like the back of his hand.’

  ‘That’s bound to come in useful,’ I said. ‘Seeing that the old boy was knocked off in what was virtually a padded cell.’

  ‘I don’t think we should let ourselves get too bogged down by that circumstance; but an intimate knowledge of the locality may turn out to be more valuable than you think.’

  ‘You mean there might be some connection between this and the burglaries? Are you on to something? But that’s terrific, Robin!’

  ‘Now, for God’s sake, don’t jump to conclusions and then expect me to justify them. Naturally, it’s always been on the cards that the two things were linked in some way, but we haven’t got any closer to proving it. In any case, that’s not what I had in mind. Where Cole is so useful is in supplying background information about all the people involved. It would take me months to complete the kind of unofficial dossiers he’s collected on them. He’s a great fan of your aunt’s, by the way.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’ I asked. ‘At least, to be fair, I know of one who wasn’t, but he hardly counts any more.’

  ‘You mean Brand? Well, the odd thing is that Cole says they were thick as thieves until just lately.’

  ‘Not literally, I hope,’ I said, thinking of the cargoes of loot which Harbart was ferrying down to the Treasure Trove.

  ‘But you must agree it’s peculiar, in view of the unpleasant way he spoke about her to you?’

  ‘Not necessarily. He was the type who would be as chummy as hell with someone when it suited him, and the next minute say the most slanderous things behind their backs.’

  ‘I maintain that it was odd of him to pick on you to say them to; unless he intended you to repeat them.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t; and nor did she poison him off in a fit of pique, whatever darling old Cole may believe. For one thing, she was within two feet of me the whole time; and you know perfectly well that if she’d wanted to poison him she’d have got Dolly or Harbart to do it for her.’

  ‘There you go again! Of course, Cole doesn’t suspect her. It’s simply that we’re interested in every tiny anomaly that cropped up just before he died, and there happens to be a discrepancy here, which might be significant in some way.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you of a tiny something or other which cropped up just after he died,’ I said, ‘although whether Superman Cole will attach any significance to it is another thing.’

  It was then that I described our visit to the Treasure Trove, and of finding Anabel concealed there.

  ‘I don’t know whether Guy guessed I had seen her, or not,’ I said, answering his question, ‘but she knew it and, despite all that machinery in her mouth, she will no doubt manage to get the message through. In any case, it’s not Guy’s attitude which concerns me. He is exactly the sort of childish creature who would think it a great lark to give political asylum to a run-away adolescent. I should have thought the puzzling part was why she had run away at all, and why her mother, instead of informing the police and dragging the river, has simply taken to her bed and let the whole thing slide.’

  ‘She’s probably pattered off home, by now. In any case, we know she’s safe, and we have far worse problems than Anabel confronting us.’

  ‘Such as the little item the untrained eye missed in the newspaper this morning? I do think you might tell me what it was.’

  He handed me the paper, folded into four, to show the bottom right-hand corner. Even so, it took me a minute or two to catch on, because the relevant item consisted of four lines of blotchy type in the Stop Press section. It announced that unidentified intruders had broken into Haverford Court during the early hours of Monday morning. Police were investigating, but nothing was thought to have been stolen.

  ‘How extraordinary! What do you make of it?’

  Robin shook his head: ‘Nothing whatever, at present. All we know is exactly what you read there. It’s just one more loose end.’

  He would not discuss it further, saying that Cole expected him back for a meeting at three o’clock. So there was no opportunity to tell him of other small discoveries the Treasure Trove had yielded. Nor did I consider it necessary. If Cole was half the paragon Robin believed him to be, he would need no prompting from me to take a peep at all those pictures which were also shacked up in the Robinsons’ store-room. He might even find, among the oddments of glass tucked away in their corner cupboard, the pair of tumblers which were identical to the one from which Sir Maddox had drunk his last vodkatini.

  (ii)

  After all, there was a miniature hue and cry over Anabel’s flight, but it did not get to the pitch of dragging the river, or even of promoting a tussle in my own conscience. Before I was called upon to speak out, or forever hold my peace, she was back at home.

  Dolly, the messenger of these tidings, told me that she had been bundled there in Mrs Zany’s station-wagon, late on Monday evening; and I concluded that, having combed the countryside for bargains and not best pleased to find the space for them appropriated by a girl and her dog, she had lost no time in disposing of them.

  It would have been a tame ending, indeed, to the escapade, although fitting enough for one involving Anabel, who seemed destined for a life of futile gestures; but, happily, one small mystery remained. The dog was still missing.

  Dolly had rather a fanciful explanation for this, which was hardly surprising, since the account had come down to her from Maria, via Anabel, both of whom could be guaranteed to create co
nfusion out of the simplest statement. The story went that, at some point during the afternoon, Anabel had let the dog into the Robinsons’ back garden and, seeing it limp away on its own devices, had turned indoors again. Twenty minutes later, when she went back, it had vanished, and she had spent the remaining daylight hours combing the countryside for a golden retriever, punctuated by regular return visits to the Treasure Trove, but all to no avail.

  There was something undeniably fishy about this tale, as a dog of that size and colour, with one game leg, was hardly in a position to cover much ground, nor to pass for long unobserved by the neighbours. However, neither Robin nor Toby considered the matter to be worthy of their attention, and I was left with one more unanswered question to add to my file.

  The inquest was scheduled to take place in Lewes on Tuesday morning, but the Superintendent, ever vigilant in sparing me contact with harsh reality, had decreed that my presence would not be required. Unfortunately, I could neither use the time to pursue my personal investigations of the Harper Barrington’s, nor to coerce Christabel into getting out the palette and making a start on my portrait, since all three of them had been summoned to give evidence.

  Mooning about in the library, I came across a book of Daniel Mott reproductions and sat down at the desk, turning the pages slowly as I studied each in turn, and pausing even longer over those which featured Christabel. There was a set of four sketches of her, taking up the centre double page. She was depicted on a characteristically tousled bed, with her back half-turned to the artist, apparently scrutinising her toenails. In my philistine fashion, I found all the drawings fairly dull and anaemic, but had to concede that there was something about the curve of her back in one of them, which was a trifle heart-stopping. Having nothing better to do, I took a pencil and writing-pad and began to copy the sketch.

  I cannot pretend that my efforts were remotely successful and Toby, who came alongside as I was adding some shady bits to the fourth attempt, fell about laughing.