Ain't Nothing but a Pound Dog

by Jeannie Wycherley

  He let her pet him.

  Besides Selma, there had been nobody to do that over the past few months, and he had to admit he’d missed the touch of a human. Clarissa’s hands were warm, and she scruggled his ears in just the right place. Against his better judgement, he found himself leaning into her.

  “You could probably do with a bath,” she suggested, her tone gentle, but Toby took umbrage.

  “A barf?” If ham sandwiches brought him joy, a bath had to be his least favourite thing in the whole world.

  She laughed at his expression. “You said you’d been in kennels recently? That’s what the smell is, I suppose.” She sniffed her hand and pulled a face, then searched through her handbag. “I can never find a darn thing in here,” she told him, her head buried inside. “I just had my wipes a minute ago.” She eventually found them and brought them out with a flourish, then proceeded to wipe her hands clean.

  She reached towards him again. “May I?”

  He succumbed to her ministrations a tad reluctantly, but found himself enjoying her soft touch nonetheless. At least she knew how to be gentle. When she pulled the wad of wet wipes away from his head he could see how filthy they were.

  She was right. He needed a barf.

  “Were you here the day Mr Silverwind fell?”

  Toby jerked his head away from her. “What do you mean fell? Old Joe didn’t fall.”

  Clarissa paused, her hand holding the wipes in mid-air. “That’s what I’d heard.”

  “Anyone who says he fell is a liar.”

  “But the police—”

  Toby stood and backed away from her, turning in circles in his agitation. “I don’t care what the police said. I was here. I saw the whole thing.”

  “They said it was an accident,” Clarissa continued, troubled by the dog’s reaction.

  Toby threw his head back and howled. “It wasn’t an accident. The Pointy Woman killed him, and she did it on purpose.”

  Clarissa frowned. “The Pointy Woman? You mentioned her before. Who is she? She killed Joseph?”

  From the pavement behind him came the tell-tale sound of high heels clicking on stone slabs. Toby spun about, clearly rattled. He cowered and slunk behind some of the overgrown bushes. Clarissa watched as a pedestrian made her way past the house without so much as giving the young journalist a second glance.

  “It’s alright, Toby,” Clarissa soothed him, “no-one is going to hurt you.”

  Toby poked his head out from his hiding place, his eyes rolling in fear. “That’s easy for you to say. One false move and I’ll be back in the pound so fast my head will spin. And this time they’ll finish me off before I can escape again.” Toby began to pant hard.

  “Shhh-shhh-shhh.” Clarissa held her hand up. “I’m not going to let that happen, I promise.”

  Toby eyed her with scepticism, his shoulders tense. He’d been let down too many times. Who could he trust? He had no idea.

  Clarissa dropped her hand, tapping her knees to a beat only she could hear, deep in thought. Finally she turned back to Toby, eyeing him with a heavy heart as he panted in anxiety, hiding beneath the bush, his eyes rolling with fear.

  “You were in the house just now, right?”

  Toby nodded. “Yes.”

  “I think that’s the safest place for you to be as long as you’re not making any noise. Can you get back inside and I’ll go and get some more food for you? Then we’ll have a proper chat over lunch.”

  Toby sized the young woman up. She was as unlike The Pointy Woman as it was possible to be with her soft voice, crazy hair and worn and faded clothes. For sure her nails were jagged too, but only because she was so unkempt. “How do I know you won’t double cross me?” he demanded.

  Clarissa laughed softly. “You don’t know that. I can only give you my word.”

  They watched each other. A small smile played around Clarissa’s lips; her eyes remained soft. Toby studied her face; it seemed transparent to him. She didn’t appear to be hiding anything.

  “Go inside for now,” she urged him. “I’ll be back with supplies as quickly as I can.”

  Toby took one last quick look at Clarissa, then skipped past her and up the side of the house. He entered the back door using the dog flap, making it rattle noisily in its frame, and then raced to the front door. He listened intently. The young woman’s footsteps faded away as she exited the front garden through the rusty gate and turned right in the direction of the park and the nearest shops. He couldn’t hear her talking, so she hadn’t plucked her mobile out and rung anyone. Not yet at least.

  That much was positive.

  Once he’d ascertained she really had gone, he slipped back through the dog flap and back around to the front garden. The bushiest of bushes grew against the low wall, draping itself along the wall and over the pavement. There were numerous families of sparrows nesting within the shady foliage, and now they twitted at him, annoyed they had to share the space with something so large and smelly. During the warm weather the previous summer, Toby had often lain under here in an effort to keep cool while Old Joe attended to his gardening.

  It made for the perfect place to hide out.

  If Clarissa came back mob-handed, they would never think to look for him here.

  He tucked himself into the corner, curling up as small as he could, and peeked out through the leaves.

  And waited.

  Clarissa returned alone.

  She arrived swinging a brown paper carrier that appeared to be full of goodies. Toby remained under his bush and sniffed the air. Definitely ham sandwiches, but other things too.

  Clarissa hovered on the doorstep. “Toby?” she hissed quietly. When he didn’t answer, she glanced around and deposited the bag beside her before gently pushing open the letter box and kneeling to peer through it. “Toby?” she called again.

  She waited.

  When he still didn’t answer, she sank back onto her haunches and dropped her head.

  It was that one movement that spurred Toby to respond favourably. He’d witnessed that gesture before, in the kennels. The sinking of a dog, or a person, when their special one doesn’t respond when they call.

  He crawled out of his hiding place, scenting the air all the while, and craning to listen for the slightest new sound, the arrival of a car or van, the flat footsteps of a police officer—not entirely sure she wouldn’t have shopped him to the authorities while she was out of sight—but apart from the distant sound of children playing in the park, and the rumble of traffic on the main road, there was nothing new. Nothing to alert him to danger.

  Clarissa sensed movement out of the corner of her eye and swivelled. Her face lit up when she spotted him, and it filled his heart with hope.

  “Oh, thank goodness! I thought you’d run off and deserted me!” She held her hands out. “Come here, you rascal.” Wagging his tail hard, but still in a slouched position, he moved towards her. She rubbed his head hard, obviously not really minding anymore that she found him a bit stinky.

  “I’m so pleased to see you,” she told him, and he curled into her knees. “We shouldn’t hang about here though. You might be seen.”

  “Why don’t you come inside?” Toby asked.

  “That would be ideal, but how will I get in?”

  Toby gave an excited wriggle. “I may be able to find the spare key. Follow me.”

  He waited for Clarissa to pick up her shopping, then led the way around the side of the house. Once he was sure she had followed him, he slipped through the dog flap. Inside the kitchen was a door to the pantry that had never closed properly, despite Old Joe’s best efforts to fix it. Toby edged his nose into the slight gap and pushed the door open. Inside the pantry, underneath the second-from-bottom shelf, sat a ceramic chicken. This was where Old Joe had stored his eggs. He’d also kept the spare key here.

  Toby lifted his paws to steady himself against the shelf. Old Joe had not approved of counter-surfing, but Toby figured he would have made an exception u
nder the circumstances. He prodded at the chicken, pondering whether the same person that had cleared the house of rubbish and perishables had thought to look inside the chicken and take the eggs. And if they had removed the eggs, had they also taken the key?

  He nudged the chicken a little harder and the top half slipped sideways. One more good push and it would be clear of the bowl beneath. Toby concentrated and then curled his nose as he jolted the chicken this time. That was quite enough. The lid dropped free with a clunk. He’d succeeded in freeing the bowl.

  The answer to each of his previous questions was no.

  The old stale eggs still inhabited the inside of the chicken, and he could just about make out the key beneath. Toby had to wedge the bowl against the wall, and then shuffle his paws forward so that he could extend his neck a little further. On the first try, he succeeded in sending a couple of eggs flying. Given their vintage, the shells were especially fragile, and they shattered and spat mess at him.

  That gave him the room he needed to manoeuvre the remaining eggs out of the way, more gently this time, and grab hold of the key with his teeth.

  He shot back through the dog flap, imagining Clarissa would have lost patience and taken her leave of him but, on the contrary, she had been waiting patiently. She smiled when he appeared and dropped the key at her feet, but as she bent to retrieve it, she regarded his egg-covered muzzle with evident distaste.

  “Eww. You’re even more whiffy now.” She held up her paper carrier. “Lunch first or a bath?”

  Food would always be the priority in Toby’s life, of that he was certain.

  Once safely inside the kitchen, Clarissa unpacked her bag and looked around for plates and bowls. She washed out his water bowl and refilled it with cool, fresh water. He drank the whole lot and she filled it again. When he’d reached the bottom for the second time, she stopped him. “Don’t you guys get bloated if you drink too much?” She shook the brown bag. “Come on. You can drink more later. I have food and I’m starving.”

  She unpacked the contents of her shopping bag. “I’ve bought some dog biscuits, and this little pouch of dog food…”

  Toby regarded the pouch with some dismay. The contents might satisfy a picky Chihuahua, but only then as a snack. “Is that it?”

  “I have this little package too. Is this better?” She showed him a foil-wrapped square. “I rather liked the cute little photo of the white dog on the front. And it says it contains organic carrots and steak. It sounds delicious to me.”

  “That cute white dog is a Westie. It doesn’t take much to fill a Westie’s tummy,” Toby grumbled.

  “Ah, I see. Quantity is the issue here, is it? I totally get that. I feel the same way about doughnuts.” She arranged the pouch and the packet and the biscuits on the counter. “How about I just give you all this? Would that suffice?”

  Toby grudgingly wagged his tail. “What else do you have in that bag?”

  “A cheese sandwich.”

  “Cheese? That’s my favourite!”

  “I thought ham was your favourite?”

  “Cheese is my very favourite favourite sammich.”

  Clarissa plucked the sandwich out of the bag and clasped it to her chest. “Of all time?”

  “Well until next time a sammich is on offer, yes.” Toby wagged excitedly and offered her his most appealing smile.

  Clarissa rolled her eyes. “I had a funny feeling you would say that. Good job I bought myself two.”

  She filled Toby’s food bowl with the dog food, sprinkled on a handful of biscuits and then broke up the cheese sandwich for him. He almost snatched her hand off as she bent and placed it on the floor.

  She watched him eat. He’d finished before she’d even pulled the cellophane from her own lunch.

  “You sure were hungry,” she said, as he came to sit by her and dribble on her knee, “but you can bog off. This one’s mine.”

  She ran a bath for him, and reluctantly he jumped in when she asked him to. However, he soon discovered that giving in to her ministrations with the dog shampoo actually felt really good. She had a gentle but firm touch, alternately tickling and massaging, and the combination soothed his soul. He leaned against her as she kneaded the soap into his thick coat, ignoring her complaints about how wet he was making her.

  “You’re a menace,” she told him, and he wagged his tail, whipping soapy water around the bathroom.

  She blinked water out of her eyes and laughed. “I should have expected that. I never bathed a dog before.”

  “You’re very good at it,” Toby complimented her. “I might allow you to do it again. But not till next year.”

  “Ah ha? I imagine you might need one sooner than that.” She changed the subject. Toby seemed a little happier, more relaxed; perhaps he’d feel better about talking to her. “Tell me what happened the day Mr Silverwind died.”

  He considered how best to answer. By avoiding looking into her eyes, he thought he could manage to tell the story.

  “It started off as a day like any other. We’d been out for a quick walk around the park.” Toby cast his mind back through the curtain of pain he always experienced when thinking of Old Joe’s last few hours. “We’d had lunch. Old Joe tended to rest for a while after lunch. He always said he needed to get his energy back even if we hadn’t really been doing very much. And we hadn’t. Not that day.”

  “That was his age I guess. And then?”

  Toby jumped as Clarissa started to work the shampoo around his undercarriage. “Do you mind?”

  “I beg your pardon,” Clarissa smiled. “Go on.”

  “I suppose it was around two in the afternoon. The news had finished. There was some daytime soap or other on. Old Joe hated them, but he still watched quite a few. There was a knock on the door.”

  “Did you bark?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Were you alarmed by the knocking? Did you go and bark at whoever it was?”

  Toby sniffed in disdain, then sneezed when the bubbles went up his nose.

  “Bless you,” Clarissa said. “Boy, you are absolutely filthy. Have you seen the colour of this water?”

  The water that ran from him was brown. Even the bubbles in the water were brown. Toby could well believe the amount of ingrained dirt in his coat and skin. “I’m a bit grubby, it’s true.” He resisted the urge to shake as she began to rinse off the soap, knowing full well he would drench Clarissa if he did.

  “So—did you bark?”

  “I’ll have you know I’m not that sort of dog. I don’t go around shouting the odds every time the door goes. Old Joe instructed me properly in manners and etiquette.” Toby lifted his head and tried to look haughty, difficult when you actually have more in common with a drowned rat than a Royal Corgi.

  “Fair enough.” She leaned across him. “I need to do your rump now. If that’s alright with you?”

  Toby wiggled. “Very well.” He loved having his back end massaged but he didn’t want to admit that. Once she’d made a start with the shampoo, he continued, “I did go to the door to help Old Joe greet whoever it was.”

  “So who was it?”

  “A woman.”

  “Had you seen her before?”

  “No.”

  “Not hanging around the house at all?”

  “No.” Toby thought back. “I’d never sniffed her before either.”

  Clarissa paused in her massaging, her fingers deep in the skin around Toby’s back end where some of the matting was at its worst. “That’s an intriguing idea. You’d recognise her smell if you came across it again?”

  “Of course. That’s the way we dogs see our world. Scent can linger for an extraordinarily long time. Cadaver dogs are used to find corpses that have been left in the natural environment for many years.”

  Clarissa shuddered. “I’d never thought of that before.” She resumed rubbing in the shampoo on Toby’s back. “So what happened next?”

  Toby blinked. “Old Joe knew her. He greeted her and
invited her in. I had a sniff of her shoes. They were new. Leather. But they smelled of musty oldness. And they were pointy shoes. Then I went back to my basket. Old Joe went off to make a cup of tea and find the biscuits.”

  Toby’s stomach began to ache. Certainly he’d eaten too much, but what had happened next to Old Joe made that ache worse.

  “She sat in his chair in the living room. The one he liked to sit on because it had the best view of the television. Then when he came into the room, carrying the tray of tea things, she kicked her handbag out in front of him to trip him up.”

  Toby stopped, then swallowed hard.

  Clarissa paused, then sank to the floor so that she and Toby were at the same level. “Tell me the rest,” she told him, her voice soft.

  His tone matched hers. “Her aim was precise. Straight in front of his leading foot. He fell. He hurt himself. But she could have called for help. That woman with pointy shoes.” He cried a little, a pitiful whining. “It might have been an accident… She really could have saved him. She would have if it had been an accident, wouldn’t she? She could have gone next door. The neighbour would have come. Mrs Crouch. She liked Old Joe. She would have helped him.”

  “But the woman with pointy shoes?”

  “The Pointy Woman I call her, because everything about her was pointy. Her nose. Her hair. Her elbows. Her feet. And her fingers.” Toby shuddered.

  “What did she do then?”

  Toby moaned in misery. “She tapped his head. And then he was dead.”

  Startled, Clarissa pulled back. “She tapped his head? What with?”

  Toby lifted his right front paw and placed it on the edge of the bath. “Her finger.”

  “She tapped his head with her finger? Did she do it hard?”

  Toby considered Clarissa with surprise. It seemed like a strange question, and he’d never actually thought about it before. “No. It seemed quite a light touch to me. Not even as hard as a poke.”