Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

  Hannah looked mollified. When she had eaten and made her fruitless phone calls, she went obediently to her bed.

  *

  All through the Monday and Tuesday we endured Hannah’s misery. To be fair, she did her work and tried not to inflict her worry on the rest of us, but she was so obviously unhappy and frightened, and made so many wasted phone calls in the hope of getting some news, that her anxiety seemed to colour everything that we did. We tried to be careful of what we said, but so many topics had suddenly become taboo that inevitably we put our several feet right in it from time to time. Only Sam found the right words. With a child’s uncanny ability to put a finger right on the hub of a problem, he marched up to Hannah while she was sitting still beside the phone after another useless call, a dispirited figure like Patience on the toilet, and climbed onto her knee. ‘I’m still here,’ he said. Hannah choked, clutched him tightly, broke down and howled. Sam hugged her. He knew the therapeutic value of a good cry.

  ‘She’ll be better now,’ Beth said. Privately, I doubted it; but we were both right. Hannah had not yet come to terms with worry but had partially suppressed it. She was subdued but if she shed any more tears she did so in privacy.

  The weather had turned suitably miserable to match Hannah’s mood. Each day came grey and dank. A recurrent drizzle kept the ground sodden so that even if the weather went into remission for an hour or two a spaniel was soon made soaking wet. As I had once said – and the girls repeated it back to me whenever that particular work was getting on top of them – God made spaniels and sponges on the same day. A platoon of wet and muddy dogs to be cleaned, dried and brushed was more than the ladies of the business cared to cope with, so only those dogs for whom outdoor training was essential were allowed out for more than token exercise. The others underwent training in the barn.

  On Wednesday, Detective Inspector Ewell arrived.

  Ewell had been our local sergeant some years previously. His removal to headquarters in Kirkcaldy, transfer to CID and eventual promotion just when it seemed that he was destined to coast towards retirement as a perpetual sergeant, had all been due, he had told me in an expansive moment, largely to a case with which we had given him a little help and all the credit. He was a thin man, his hair now fully grey, and he was in plain clothes, looking just as neat as he invariably had in uniform. He had a friendly face which always looked as though a smile was imminent though it never actually appeared.

  I had never presumed on our acquaintance. Gratitude can too easily turn to resentment. For the moment, however, it seemed that we were still on good terms although there was a touch of embarrassment in his manner. I sat the three young dogs and took a seat on one of the straw bales furnishing the corner of the barn. The Inspector considered the effect of straw on his smart cavalry twills and decided to remain standing.

  ‘Would you rather we went into the house?’ I asked him.

  ‘This is fine. I wanted a word in private with you. Can you think what about?’ He had an unusually soft voice for a policeman although he could bark when a bark was called for.

  ‘You’re not bringing bad news?’ (He shook his head.) ‘Then I can only suppose that somebody has reported Dougal Webb as a missing person. Have they?’

  This time he nodded sadly. ‘His employer once and Miss Hannah Hopewell four times. The young lady sounded very upset.’

  ‘She’s usually a sensible girl, but she was becoming very much attached to young Webb. She’s naturally concerned.’

  ‘That I can understand,’ Ewell said. ‘I’ll be as gentle as I can. I thought that I might have a word with you first and then perhaps you’d be present—’

  We were interrupted by the arrival of Hannah herself in the barn doorway. Her face was white and her eyes looked enormous.

  ‘No news,’ I said quickly. ‘Hannah, would you kennel these three for me, please? Give us a few minutes and then come back. The leads are hanging on the door.’

  When she was out of earshot I said, ‘I can’t tell you much more than that Hannah was away with Mrs Kitts on Saturday and missed a date with Webb, or so he seemed to think. She phoned him and then told us that they’d made a fresh date for Sunday evening. She got all dolled up for the date but he never showed. Around nine thirty she borrowed my car and went to see if he was asleep or collapsed or drunk or injured or a combination of two, three or all four. Elevenish, she phoned from Mr Cove’s farmhouse, to say that there was no sign of him and she was going to wait a little longer.’ I hesitated, uncertain if and how to introduce the subject of blackmail. ‘That’s about all that I can tell you from my own knowledge.’

  He looked up from the book in which he was making a few terse notes and regarded me shrewdly. ‘Is that really so?’ he enquired. ‘Perhaps you’d care to tell me about the quarrel you had with him on the Saturday evening?’

  I tried not to let my irritation show. Gossip travels like a heather fire in the neighbourhood. Webb and I had been well away from the bar but the hatch had been nearby and Mrs Hebden was a notorious chatterbox. Instead of volunteering my information I would apparently now be making an admission under questioning.

  ‘There’s not a lot to tell,’ I said. ‘Young Webb had admired my shotgun—’

  ‘The Dickson?’ His tone was respectful. As a sergeant, Ewell had been responsible for implementing shotgun and firearms legislation in the area and he knew about guns.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He joined me in the bar. He said that when he called for Hannah and found her missing Beth had told him that I’d be there. Hannah is sure she’d made it quite clear that she couldn’t get back in reasonable time, but that may be by the way.’

  ‘She’s a reliable sort of girl? Not given to fantasizing?’

  ‘Yes, very reliable,’ I said, ‘and no, no more than any other young lady of an age for romantic dreams. Webb brought up the subject of my gun. He offered me a hundred for it.’

  The Inspector clicked his tongue. ‘The young man was looking for a thief’s bargain?’

  ‘Very much so. When I told him that he didn’t have a hope in hell, he began to utter vague threats. He seemed to be suggesting that I’d been doing something that the Kennel Club wouldn’t approve.’

  ‘And had you?’

  ‘Nothing that they don’t know about. I’ve criticized their policies up hill and down dale. Young Webb seemed to be suggesting that his boss was concerned with me in something nefarious, though apart from buying dog-food off him I’ve had no dealings with Cove in years. I suppose we raised our voices. That was as far as it went. If it hadn’t been that we weren’t even talking the same language, I suppose that it could have been called a blackmail attempt. But we’d come up against a barrier of total mutual incomprehension.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to tell the police?’

  ‘Tell them what?’ I demanded irritably. ‘There was no witness. At least, not that I knew of at the time,’ I amended. ‘And the words themselves could almost have been innocuous. After all, it’s no crime to make somebody an unacceptable offer for some possession and I could hardly point to any threats when I didn’t know what if anything was being threatened. But one thing occurred to me since. If he’s in the habit of using threats to gain what you called a “thief’s bargain”, it might be worth finding out how much he paid for his watch or for the fancy car he drives around in. And any other expensive acquisitions.’

  Detective Inspector Ewell thought it over while contemplating me mildly. I remembered him as an officer who was never brusque but instead was given to comfortable chats over a cup of tea or a beer, which probably gained him far more information than any amount of interrogation would have done. ‘You realize what you’re suggesting?’ he asked finally.

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ I retorted, perhaps untruthfully. ‘I’m giving you the facts. If you want to suggest—’ I was about to put words into the Inspector’s mouth as he nearly had into mine. The thought hanging in the air between us was that blackmailers hav
e been known to disappear, sometimes for ever, when a victim has been pushed too far. I was interrupted by the return of Hannah. She paused in the doorway looking, I thought, rather like a trapped moth awaiting the arrival of the spider.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ Ewell said at his most fatherly. Perhaps the thought about the spider had not been wholly inappropriate. ‘Do sit down.’ (Hannah perched one neat buttock on another straw bale and looked at me pleadingly.) Ewell introduced himself. ‘I’ve asked Mr Cunningham to bide with us while we talk. Is that all right? I thought you might prefer it.’

  Hannah nodded more confidently.

  ‘Aye well,’ the Inspector said. He pretended to flip back through his notes but he was watching Hannah out of the corner of his eye. ‘How long have you been going out with Mr Webb?’

  ‘About a year,’ Hannah said very softly. It was little more than a whisper.

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘About ten days ago. On the Saturday. There was a dance at the Royal Hotel.’

  ‘And you made a date for a week later, Saturday last?’

  ‘But I phoned him during the week,’ Hannah insisted. ‘I was driving Mrs Kitts to a field trial and I knew that I couldn’t possibly get back at a reasonable time. The trials usually go on until almost dusk, then there’s the results and presentations. And Mrs Kitts likes to stop on the way home. So I told him that I’d phone and make another date.’

  ‘Then why did he come here asking for you?’

  ‘Perhaps he forgot that I’d phoned him,’ Hannah said after a pause. ‘Perhaps habit took over. Saturday nights were – are – usually our time together.’

  ‘Would you say that he was absent-minded?’

  ‘No. But anybody can forget things if they have something else on their mind.’

  ‘What did Mr Webb have on his mind?’

  The day was still overcast and daylight was failing early. Under the harsh fluorescent lights in the barn, Hannah was looking older than her years. ‘Nothing that I know of,’ she said carefully. ‘But I hadn’t seen him for a week. You’d better ask Mr Cove.’

  Ewell nodded. ‘But when you phoned again – on the Saturday evening, was it? – what was his reaction? Did he sound like a man who had forgotten your call and was angry at having been stood up? Or was he apologetic for having made a silly mistake? Angry with himself, perhaps?’

  ‘None of those.’ Hannah was becoming more confident. ‘He sounded quite normal. I said that it was me and I was back now but it was too late to go out, just as I’d expected. And he said yes it was and that he thought he’d have an early night for a change and how about tomorrow evening? I said that that would be fine and I asked him why he’d come looking for me. He said that he’d come over on spec and he asked how we’d got on and I told him and he said he’d spent most of the day dismantling a tractor and he’d rather have gone along with us. He said that he’d pick me up at about eight the next evening. And that was it, really.’

  ‘That was absolutely all? You’re sure of that?’

  Hannah turned pink and became tongue-tied.

  ‘Have a heart, Inspector,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you wouldn’t expect a young couple to hang up straight away. You wouldn’t have done so yourself when you were courting. Equally, you can’t expect one participant to quote the fond exchanges out of context. Words which were memorable gems between the two would sound quite insane when quoted in public.’

  Hannah looked at me gratefully.

  ‘I suppose that’s so,’ Ewell said. ‘Well then, Miss Hopewell, I’ll put it another way. Was the rest of your conversation limited to an exchange of . . . endearments?’

  The pink of Hannah’s cheeks became tinged with scarlet but she nodded.

  ‘And during that exchange, was his manner as usual?’

  Hannah got up, walked to the doorway and turned. I thought that she was holding back the tears with an effort and wanted to be able to duck out of sight if the effort failed. ‘Absolutely as usual,’ she said defiantly. ‘I told him that I loved him and he said that he loved me.’

  ‘But on the Sunday evening, he never arrived?’

  ‘No. I tried to phone but I got no answer. So I borrowed Mr Cunningham’s car and drove there. Dougal’s cottage was dark and there was no sign of his car. I sat there for hours, until about eleven, playing the radio and sometimes running the engine to keep warm. Then Mr Cove drove home. He let me come in and use his phone to call back here and say that I’d be late. He sat with me for a while and had a drink of whisky, because he said that he’d been needing a good dram all evening but he couldn’t take more than a drop because he’d be driving. He went off to bed after that but he said that I could wait in his house if I promised to drop the lock behind me as I left. So I did that. In the end, between three and four, I decided that it was too late. If he came home at that time, I wouldn’t want to face him. So I gave up and came back here.’

  ‘Was it unusual, for him to stand you up like that?’

  ‘He’s always very dependable,’ Hannah said. ‘He wouldn’t do it on purpose, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘The two of you are close?’

  ‘Yes, we are.’ Hannah’s cheeks, which had lost their colour, flushed again and her mouth hardened. ‘But to save you asking, Inspector, we haven’t slept together. In fact, I’m a virgin. I don’t think that he is, but I certainly am.’

  It was the Detective Inspector’s turn to redden. ‘I was not, in fact, going to ask you such a question. Does he see other girls?’

  ‘I don’t know, Inspector. If he does, he never told me and I wouldn’t expect him to.’ And with that Parthian shot and a quick sob, Hannah turned and stalked off towards the house, injured dignity in every step.

  ‘A young woman of spirit,’ Ewell remarked. ‘But I seem to remember that, not so long ago, she was a real hellion.’

  ‘Teenage rebellion,’ I said. ‘As soon as she started working with animals she cooled right down. It’s the best therapy in the world.’

  ‘I must try it some time.’ The Detective Inspector paused for thought. ‘Might she have heated up again if she was the woman scorned? If, say, while she was waiting in your car he had arrived home with another woman’s lipstick on his face and her perfume hanging around him? What do you think?’

  I tried to imagine Hannah as the woman scorned and found that it was easy. She was more a natural victim than an aggressor. ‘She would be hurt more than angry,’ I said. ‘There might have been words. There would certainly have been tears. No more than that. You’ve checked that he isn’t lying in hospital somewhere, unidentified?’

  ‘Not unless he had changed his sex and aged about thirty years.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. It seemed to be the only possible comment. But I was not ready to give up yet. ‘Tell me, have you found his car?’

  ‘Aye, we have. I see no reason not to tell you. It was in the station yard at Cupar, undamaged.’

  ‘There you are, then. He’s got fed up and run off. People do.’

  ‘They do that,’ the Inspector acknowledged. ‘And I ken it better than you do. But when somebody vanishes, we must aye consider the possibility that . . . he didn’t just run off. If he did run off, was he threatened? Bribed? Was he running away from guilt of some crime? We have to consider these things.’

  ‘I suppose you must,’ I admitted. ‘But you needn’t consider that possibility in respect of Hannah Hopewell or me. I didn’t have a car, remember. And even if he did make Hannah angry enough to dot him one, what would she have done with the body? I can’t see her managing to handle the agricultural machinery well enough to bury him about the farm and leave no trace.’

  ‘No more can I,’ Ewell said. ‘But mind this, Mr Cunningham, she was sitting almost on the doorstep of a deserted pet-food factory.’

  *

  The next few days were spent in a sort of limbo. We were the rabbit waiting for the eagle’s strike, the condemned waiting under the guillotine. Something was going to happ
en. We had no way of guessing what it would be, but it would not be pleasant for Hannah. Dougal Webb might come back with an explanation, credible or otherwise, to account for his disappearance. He might be found wandering with amnesia. Or he might turn up dead or injured, in which eventuality Hannah and I might have more questions to answer. Detective Inspector Ewell had hinted – and my mind shied away from the hypothesis – that a pet-food factory might be the ideal place for the disposal of an unfaithful lover or an aspiring blackmailer.

  Hannah, to do her justice, tried to cope with her job but for once her heart was elsewhere. She sank into a state of unhappy apprehension, comforted only by a lopsided faith in a God of her own imagining. The big dining table in the kitchen was often the scene for lively discussions or arguments on any subject that took our fancy and we had been made aware of Hannah’s views. She made no secret of them. She admitted that, logically, she could not give credence to the idea of a personal God. She was an avid reader in such spare time as we left her and she was aware of a growing view that, if the evidence of the Dead Sea Scrolls was to be accepted, the traditional view of Christ was the imagining of Saul of Tarsus after he had suffered a stroke on the road to Damascus and that Jesus, rather than the son of the deity, had more probably been a political agitator. These things she knew and part of her mind accepted. But, she would argue, the churches were the only force striving for all the old moralities and might be forgiven for clouding the issues with myths. And yet that very mythology gave rise to the philosophy and ritual of the Christian religion which had such appeal and comfort for her that she made a conscious leap clean over disbelief and into a faith that was not blind but deliberately unseeing.

  Daffy, while her husband was at home, should have been working part-time, but with Hannah distracted by worry and liable to vanish without warning in the direction of the church, she gave up much of her leisure to help out rather than have me put pressure on Hannah to pull her weight. In particular, she and Rex agreed to escort Isobel to an open stake to be held near Perth at the weekend.