Twice Bitten

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘Then you saw Mim. She was brindled, a throwback to Champion Clunie of Netherbrae, as was your young bitch. They looked identical. The difference was that Mim was registered and had a good pedigree. You tried to buy Mim. A little later when she turned out to be gun-shy, Daffy sold her to you on the understanding that she would be going to a good home. But that isn’t Mim that you won the novice stake with and were so desperate to enter in an open stake last week. That’s your own bitch.’

  Quentin Cove had listened in silence but with a growing expression of injured innocence. When I halted, he stared at me for a few seconds and then said, ‘You’re daft as a brush. And you canna prove a word of it.’

  ‘But can you disprove a word of it?’ I asked him. ‘Bring out your bitch and see if she recognizes Daffy. Give us a clump of hair for DNA testing.’

  ‘I’ve no need to disprove a damn thing,’ he retorted. ‘It’s your story, it’s for you to prove it. What’s more, there’s no law against changing a dog’s name.’

  ‘Fraud and false pretences,’ I told him.

  Sergeant Bremner looked up and frowned. ‘I don’t see the Procurator Fiscal making a case out of it,’ she said. ‘There’s no big money involved.’

  ‘It runs to big money in the long run,’ I told her. ‘And I’ve no need to prove it,’ I said to Cove. ‘I’ve done what I came to do, which was to make sure that if anything else happened to Daffy or to us you’d find yourself being looked at damned hard by the police. And if you attempt to enter that bitch in competition again I’ll make a report to the Kennel Club. They’ll certainly insist on DNA testing.’

  That threat shook him as nothing else had. ‘Ah, now, there’s no call for the likes of that,’ he said quickly. ‘You’ve said yourself, many a time, that the Kennel Club rules were a to hell!’

  ‘I don’t think I put it quite like that,’ I said.

  ‘Damn near it. I’ve heard you tell a committee member to his face that if their closed gene-pool policy had been in force in the old days we’d never have had half our present breeds. You said – and I remember it well – that the German shorthaired pointer was virtually the only breed to produce dual champions, show-bench and field trial, in the last twenty years and that the breed came about as a mishmash of Spanish pointer, German pointer and the foxhound.’

  ‘And the Hanoverian Schweisshund. Don’t forget that one,’ I said mildly. I was rather flattered that he should have remembered my words so accurately. I pulled myself together. ‘All this has damn all to do with the case. Under the rules as they are, however little I agree with them, you’ve been robbing other competitors of the rewards they’re entitled to. In fact, come to think of it, you’ve robbed me. And because my dog did not get the award it had earned, its value and the value of its progeny to infinity may be diminished. You’re an amateur, but competition success is my bread and butter and you stole it from me.’

  ‘I’ll fight you. I’ll fight every inch o the way,’ he said furiously.

  ‘You can try,’ I said. ‘I think you’ll find that the odds are against you. And there’s one other thing. We’ll have to buy our dog-food somewhere else from now on.’

  He thought it over for some seconds before it sank in. ‘Damn it to hell, there’s nae need for that,’ he exploded. ‘I’d not do sic a thing, ye ken that fine.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Quentin,’ I said. ‘But you did do something just like that. Or can you still produce Mim alive?’

  His eyes slid away from mine. I got to my feet and picked up my coat. ‘You won’t be proceeding against the girls?’ I asked the Sergeant.

  ‘I must make a report. I won’t recommend action.’

  ‘Hey!’ Cove said. ‘Those wee buggers laid into me, in my own yard!’

  ‘Then you’d better show the Sergeant your bruises,’ I told him. I left the room, fairly confident that, protected as he had been by his oilskins, his only bruises would be to his ego.

  *

  In the hall, Mrs Dundee’s small bottom was presented to me as she worked her way backwards down the stairs, dusting and polishing the exposed woodwork as she came. I only recognized her when she straightened up, glad of any excuse to stop for a rest and a chat. ‘It’s yourself,’ she informed me. She looked more cheerful than when I had seen her last. She was no more beautiful a sight but at least her hollow cheeks seemed to have filled out a little and her cheery grin somehow seemed to justify her over-large mouth.

  ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know that you worked for Mr Cove.’

  She seated herself comfortably on the fifth or sixth tread, her gnarled face on a level with mine. ‘Och, for years he was asking me to come, but I was well enough, doing half days for Mrs Macevoy and efterneens up at the Big Hoose. I couldna come here while yon skellum Dougal Webb was around the place. But then Mrs Macevoy turned me awa, just acause she couldna put her hand on a wee bit jewellery I dinna mind ever seeing. And just then Mr Webb disappears like snow off a dyke. Then Jack Gilchrist telled Mr Cove I was free an he asked me again. And no afore time. Goad, the dust that was in the place!’

  ‘What did you have against Dougal Webb?’ I asked her. Surely he could never have been blackmailing such a poor creature.

  ‘He had a way wi him but I found he wisna suithfast. There was a thing he wheedled out o me, in confidence like, and then let oot the poother. But it wasna just that. Sir Ian Bewlay hissel telled me to steer clear of Mr Webb. I get my wee cottage from Sir Ian in return for my two hours in the efterneen and I’d no want to be put oot in the road for bein gran billies wi the likes of Dougal Webb.’

  ‘Sir Ian wouldn’t put you out just for that, would he?’ I asked.

  ‘He seemed awfu positive when he spoke to me. “You stay clear of yon man Webb,” he said to me. “There’s bad blood there,” he said, “and if you want to keep what’s yours,” he said, “you’ll gie him a wide berth.”’ Mrs Dundee paused. Something was missing. ‘He said,’ she added suddenly.

  ‘It was good advice,’ I said, ‘though he may not have meant it quite the way you took it. Would you come out to my car for a minute? There’s something I want to ask you and I don’t want to be interrupted.’ I nodded towards the sitting room door. Voices were being raised. I gathered that the Sergeant was giving Quentin Cove a hard time on the subject of where he and his car had been, around dusk of the previous day.

  She looked doubtfully at me and then shrugged and came along. ‘My time’s amost up,’ she said. It was like walking with a child, but she might have taken it amiss if I had held her hand to steady her until we were on a good surface. Instead, I stooped and let her take my arm. She hopped cheerfully up into the front passenger’s seat and exchanged greetings with the two in the back. Daffy and she seemed to know each other of old. I got into the driver’s seat – with some difficulty because the Sergeant had parked uncomfortably close to my door. I started the engine to put a little warmth into the heater.

  ‘You know that we found a body, just after you spoke to us that Saturday?’ I said. ‘And you know that the body may have been Dougal Webb?’

  She nodded in answer to each question.

  ‘It’s important to find out who had a reason to dislike Mr Webb. I think you should tell us why Sir Ian had a grudge against him. Unless you’ve already told the police?’ Mrs Dundee paled. ‘I’ll see that you don’t suffer for it,’ I added, ‘and if it turns out to be irrelevant, neither the police nor Sir Ian need never know.’

  ‘I canna be sure,’ she said.

  ‘But it began just after Dougal Webb betrayed your trust?’

  She nodded again.

  Daffy leaned forward so that her hair tickled my cheek. ‘Mrs Dundee,’ she said, ‘was it anything to do with your Jimmy?’

  The car moved slightly on its springs as Mrs Dundee jerked. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It might.’

  ‘There have been whispers going around for years,’ Daffy said. ‘Mrs Dundee, is Sir Ian Jimmy’s dad?’

  Mrs Dundee uttered a pained c
ry. I could feel her small frame shaking in the seat next to me. There were tears on her sallow cheeks. Then the dam burst and the story came tumbling out.

  *

  The sun was melting the surface of the ice, giving it a fresh polish and doing away with the last traces of grip. When Mrs Dundee had finished I got out of the car with some difficulty and escorted her back to the house, although she had less far to fall than any of us. Returning, I was faced again with the task of squeezing in through a narrow gap. In a moment of frustration I put my bottom against the Sergeant’s car and pushed. On that melting ice and aided by a distinct slope, the car slid easily. Without further help from me, it travelled several yards sideways. I flinched, expecting at any moment to hear the crumpling sound as the front hit a stanchion supporting the head of the open front of the barn or the back struck the work-bench. But the car, as though guided by a mighty hand, arrived between the two with an inch to spare at either end. And there it stopped.

  The Sergeant was going to need help, and a lot of it, to get her car out of there and I doubted whether she would get it from Quentin Cove. But I had rather modified my favourable view of Sergeant Bremner since she and I had failed to see eye to eye on the subject of whether blocking the advancement of one of my dogs by deception had constituted a fraud. I coaxed my car gently across the yard and hurried away.

  Chapter Nine

  If, as I said earlier, God created spaniels and sponges on the same day, He knocked off after that and played snowballs. A short-haired dog like a Labrador can come in out of the snow almost bone dry, but take a small spaniel out in deep, fresh snow and it will come home like the makings for a Christmas tree, with a snowball dangling from each lock of hair. Any attempt to remove those snowballs by hand turns them into chunks of ice locked fast to the hairs.

  Dogs need free-running exercise. That is one of the few incontrovertible facts in the canine world. As the snow continued, novice and open stakes were being cancelled or postponed all around; but, when the thaw came, honours would go to those who had managed to keep their dogs fit and up to the mark. Training and walking had to continue. We tried hard to stick mainly to a long strip of field which a dense wood of pine and Scots fir had sheltered from the prevailing wind, but a fresh fall of snow came in on a different wind and after that each spaniel (and other hairy breeds residing with us as boarders) had to be thawed as well as dried in the blow-drying chamber which had been created from what had once been a lean-to privy, then brushed into an unmatted state and with luck returned to its kennel without picking up a fresh cargo of Christmas decorations.

  Isobel was still confined to her bed – or else, knowing what life would be like at Three Oaks, she had decided to hibernate until the spring. Henry spared us what time he could, but he had his own life to lead in addition to tending a ’flu-ridden wife.

  All this is merely to explain that for the next few days we were very busy indeed. I managed to give Beth a detailed account of our visit to Ardrossie, but we never seemed able to sit down at the same time long enough for a serious discussion and, to be honest, I was thoroughly sick of the subject anyway. Even Hannah seemed to have put it out of her mind. The revelation of defects in her lover’s character seemed to have turned a grand tragedy into a passing disappointment. She was pulling her weight again and even singing occasionally. The church saw much less of her.

  It was Beth’s custom to go into Cupar on a Thursday morning to do the week’s shopping, accompanied by any of us who was in need of a visit to the shops, the library or the dentist. That week, Jenny had stepped on a fragment of broken glass and cut one of her pads. Despite my ministrations, the cut was slow to heal. Isobel would certainly have got out of bed to attend to it, possibly ruining her own health in the process, so we kept the news from her, swearing Henry to secrecy, and Jenny and I joined the trip to Cupar. At the last moment Henry, whose car had gone in for servicing, decided to leave Isobel’s care to a helpful neighbour and come with us.

  It was Beth’s journey, so she drove. She parked behind the big supermarket. She and Henry hurried inside while I led Jenny, limping bravely, through the store and along the pavement to the surgery.

  The vet and Isobel had at one time been colleagues. He was a born gossip and the disinfecting and stitching of Jenny’s pad was accompanied by enquiries after Isobel’s health and the recitation of many recipes for the relief of ’flu symptoms, ranging from herbal through homoeopathy to folk remedies verging on witchcraft and totally unsuitable for a man of science. He replaced my amateurish bandage with a more professional version and charged me an arm and a leg.

  Jenny, always a good patient, was quite unmoved by all the attention but by the time we neared our car again her better foreleg had tired and she was limping pathetically. But that fact cut no ice with a big man who arrived from behind us and thrust past to reach the door of his Isuzu Trooper, so nearly treading on Jenny’s bad foot that she yipped in fear.

  Instead of looking round, the man back-heeled viciously, catching her in the ribs. ‘Bloody dogs!’ he said.

  Then he turned and I saw that he was Sir Ian Bewlay.

  I had no wish to quarrel with one of the larger landowners in the area and thereby lose a valuable outlet for dog-training. Jenny was hurt but not injured. On the other hand, although I am not aggressive by nature, nobody, but nobody, kicks one of my dogs without repercussions. I began to seethe.

  ‘Don’t you dare to do that again,’ I said. I was further annoyed to find that my voice was hoarse.

  He turned and looked down at me from his considerable height. I saw him recognize me and decide that I was a person of no account, dust beneath his wheels. Large though he was, I thought that he looked soft. My training in unarmed combat had been years earlier but it had been thorough. There were witnesses not far away. If I could provoke him into lashing out, I was sure that I could damage him with impunity.

  ‘Do what?’ he sneered.

  I pointed down at Jenny, who had retired behind my legs and was peering past, wondering what was going on. People, in her experience, just did not behave like that. ‘You kicked my dog,’ I said.

  ‘So I did. What do you want me to do? Kiss it better?’

  ‘You could start by apologizing. Tell the dog you’re sorry. Give her a pat. Then we’ll take it from there.’

  Timothy Pratt, Sir Ian’s shadow and sycophant, pushed forward. ‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’ he demanded.

  ‘I think I’m talking to the mannerless boor who kicked my dog,’ I retorted, ‘and I’m still waiting for him to say that he’s sorry.’ I shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet, ready to counter any sudden moves.

  Sir Ian glanced around the car park, then weighed me up. My appearance may be fragile but my readiness must have shown. He broke off eye contact. ‘But I’m not sorry,’ he mumbled. He turned away quickly and climbed into his vehicle – leaving me frustrated but taking with him, I was pleased to note, most of a large dog-turd which Jenny had deposited in the excitement of the confrontation.

  ‘But you will be sorry,’ I promised him silently as he pulled away.

  I put Jenny into the car. The rush of adrenaline had left my mouth dry and I needed a drink. But first, while my dander was still up, I wanted to fire the first shot in my battle against Sir Ian Bewlay. I needed to commit myself before my temper cooled.

  The nearest public telephones were inside the supermarket. As I placed my call, I could see Beth and Henry working their way towards the checkout. Kirkcaldy answered. I asked for Detective Inspector Ewell but he was out, of course. Then, unexpectedly, the voice became helpful. Where was I calling from? It turned out that DI Ewell was not far away. I suggested that he might care to join me for coffee in one of the local hotels. There was a pause while Ewell was consulted over the radio, during which I spotted another familiar face. Then the voice told me that he would be there in ten minutes.

  Beth and Henry were emerging from the checkout, putting away their credit cards. At
the long worktop provided by a thoughtful management (and why can’t others follow suit?) I helped Beth to transfer her shopping from a trolley into several cardboard cartons. Henry trans-shipped his own more modest purchases. I could feel Beth glancing at me. She knew that something was wrong. As much to distract her as for any other reason, I said, ‘That was Mrs Macevoy behind you in the queue.’

  Beth turned and stared at Mrs Macevoy’s departing back. ‘The fat ginger-headed tart? I wondered who she was.’

  ‘Do you fancy coffee?’ I asked her. ‘Because I’ve made a date to meet Mr Ewell for coffee in a few minutes.’

  ‘Yes,’ Beth said slowly, ‘I think that’s a very good idea.’

  Mrs Macevoy, as we reached the car park, was driving off in a nearly new BMW, custom-painted an unusual colour which I can only liken to that of a nearly ripe plum or the underside of a red snooker ball which is reflecting the green cloth.

  We loaded the cartons of shopping onto the back seat of our car, well out of Jenny’s reach but still managing to leave room for Henry. Jenny was not given to stealing food, but the habit is easily learned and difficult to eradicate. For the moment, we left the car where it was, the supermarket being better provided with parking than the hotel. It was a five-minute walk between the two and Beth said not a word. Either she was coming down with Isobel’s ’flu or something that she had seen or heard had set her thinking. I wondered whether to interrupt her thoughts by telling them both about Sir Ian’s arrogance and my determination to hit back; but Beth would either have told me to cool off or else she would have gone to war on my behalf.