The Curious Affair of the Third Dog

by Patricia Moyes

“I don’t know,” said Henry, and realized that he had spoken aloud.

  “You surely know why you’re interested?” said Bill.

  “Oh, that…no…probably nothing to do with it…”

  “Well, here we are.” Bill unlatched the gate of Cherry Tree Cottage and stood back to let Henry enter first. Funny, he thought. Old Henry must have had one too many. Not like him. Usually holds his drink well. Probably been working too hard. Do him good to have a nice quiet weekend with nothing to worry about.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NEXT DAY, Henry made a determined and largely successful effort to ignore the tugging of his professional instincts. With Emmy and the Spences, he went for a long and leisurely pre-lunch walk through bluebell woods and across sandy heaths, finishing up at a somewhat bleak establishment on an open hilltop which Jane described as “Simon Yateley’s place,” but which a wooden signboard designated as Hilltop Kennels. The barrack-like appearance of the buildings was enhanced by the presence of a high wire fence, topped by rolls of barbed wire and dangerous-looking spikes. Inside were several long, low structures, whitewashed and looking much like stables, each compartment giving onto a wired-in enclosure. As Bill pressed the bell beside the formidable iron gate, a cacophony of barking greeted the visitors; and Henry saw that the whitewashed buildings were in fact rows of kennels, and that many of the runs were occupied by slim, nervous-looking greyhounds.

  Glancing up at the fortified fence, Henry said, “Your friend Yateley certainly makes sure that his dogs don’t escape.”

  Jane laughed. “It’s the other way round,” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The fence isn’t to keep the dogs in. It’s to keep out any possible—oh, hello, Simon. I heard you wanted to talk to me, so we thought we’d take our constitutional in this direction.”

  The bluff, four-square man whom Henry had met in the White Bull had come from the kennels, and was now engaged in the complicated process of unlocking the gate. He had exchanged his tweed jacket for blue overalls, and a whistle hung around his neck on a lanyard. He grinned in welcome.

  “Good show. Always delighted to see you, Jane my dear. And Bill. Yes, I met Henry last night over a beer. How d’ye do, Mrs. Tibbett? Come on in, all of you, and have a drink. I was just about to pack in the training session and have a snort myself.”

  He pulled open the heavy gate to admit his visitors, and then relocked it carefully after them, before leading the way past the line of kennels toward an ugly, upright, red brick house which was presumably the residential part of the establishment.

  “Come on in,” said Simon Yateley. He opened the front door and ushered the party into the hallway, which was hung with sporting prints. Raising his voice, he called, “Bella!”

  A distant female voice answered. “What is it now?”

  “Company. Bill and Jane and a couple of friends. We’ll be in the lounge.”

  The voice shouted an unintelligible reply which did not sound enthusiastic, and Yateley grinned. “My lady wife,” he explained, “will be very cross with you.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry—” Emmy began, distressed.

  Yateley went on, with a grin. “Don’t you worry yourself, Mrs. Tibbett. Jane knows what I mean, don’t you, dear? The fact is,” he went on in a confidential tone, to Emmy, “Bella has been dying to meet you and she’ll be miffed as all hell not to have had time to tart herself up. Now, come and name your poison.”

  Mrs. Yateley appeared as her husband was handing out the drinks. For no very good reason, Emmy had expected a slick, enameled beauty; to her surprise, Bella Yateley turned out to be a capable country girl in corduroy breeches and a khaki shirt. Her chestnut hair was short-cropped, and her strong, attractive face was patently unused to the application of cosmetics—although, in honor of the occasion, Bella had put on a smudge of lipstick and a sprinkling of powder which failed to hide her freckles.

  She greeted Bill and the Tibbetts with a wide, friendly smile, and then went over to Jane. She came straight to the point. “Simon tells me you’ve got Heathfield’s dogs.”

  “That’s right,” said Jane. “Pro tem, anyhow. I’ll keep Tess myself until Harry comes out, but I’ll have to find a home for the other one.”

  “You want to be a bit careful who you give her to,” Bella said. “She’s a sensitive bitch.”

  Jane looked surprised. “She? What do you mean? It’s a male—a sort of brindly mongrel Airedale. Rather a nice animal.”

  “Oh.” Bella dismissed Ginger with a shrug. “That must be another one he picked up. I meant the third dog.”

  “Now, don’t you start, for heaven’s sake.” Jane was laughing. “This is becoming the mystery of the century. What became of the third dog?”

  “Well, what did become of her?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m talking about Lady Griselda.”

  “About who?”

  “Lady Griselda of Gorsemere. By Lord Jim out of Patient Griselda. One of our biggest disappointments,” Bella added.

  “You mean, Harry Heathfield had a greyhound?” asked Jane. She became aware that Henry was standing beside her, listening with interest.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” said Bella.

  “But…” Jane was bewildered. “What on earth was Harry doing with a racing greyhound?”

  “I’ll tell you.” Simon Yateley’s voice boomed genially, as he joined the group. “Bella gave the bitch to Harry.”

  “You must have been mad,” Jane remarked, to Bella.

  “Not at all,” said Simon. “As Bella said, Griselda was one of our biggest disappointments. We bred her ourselves, you see. Most of our dogs,” he added, to Henry, in explanation, “belong to other owners, and they send them here for training. Rather like an exclusive finishing school for young ladies. But we do breed some of our own, and we thought we had a winner in Griselda, didn’t we, Bella?” His wife nodded.

  Henry said, “So what went wrong?”

  Yateley shrugged. “Nothing exactly went wrong,” he said. “It was just a question of temperament. Some dogs are racers, some aren’t. Griselda had the looks, the breeding, the class, and the speed, too—but temperamentally she must be a throwback to some undesirable ancestor. She’s a delightful creature—affectionate, gentle, perfect as a pet—but a dead bloody loss on the track. She’d go like the wind on training runs—do anything for Bella. But show her a racing track and a mechanical hare and—phut. Like Ferdinand the Bull. He didn’t want to fight, Griselda didn’t want to race. No competitive spirit at all. Well, it does happen, and there’s no sense wasting valuable kennel space on an animal like that. So we let Harry have her. Glad to find her a good home. How is she?”

  Jane was looking distressed. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What d’you mean? I thought you’d taken in Harry’s dogs—”

  “So I have,” said Jane. “The other two. But there was no sign of a greyhound—was there, Emmy?”

  Emmy shook her head. “There certainly wasn’t. She must have escaped sometime during the day, before we got there.”

  “Oh, poor Griselda!” Bella Yateley was patently upset. “We must find her. What can we do?”

  “Give me a complete description of her, for a start,” said Jane, “Then I’ll circulate it to the police and other RSPCA representatives. Now—color?”

  “Pale fawn, white forefeet, white star on her forehead,” said Simon promptly. “Most distinctive. Can’t miss her.”

  “In that case,” said Jane, “I’m sure we’ll find her quickly. Somebody’s sure to have picked her up. And if she’s an obviously valuable-looking dog, you needn’t worry about her being sold for vivisection or anything like that.”

  “No,” said Henry, “but whoever found her may be planning to sell her for a good lot of money.”

  Yateley said, “She certainly looks like a top-notcher, but it’d take a full-blown classic mug to buy a greyhound off a stranger, with no pedigree an
d no idea of her form. No, I reckon she’ll turn up. Now, Jane Spence, what are we going to do about the Reverend Wretched Thacker and his fête worse than death?”

  Back at Cherry Tree Cottage at lunchtime, Jane started on her round of telephone calls in search of the missing Lady Griselda of Gorsemere, but she drew blanks. No such dog had been reported as found, or turned in, either to the police or to any of the animal societies. Lady Griselda had, it seemed, just disappeared.

  “The plot thickens,” remarked Bill Spence with heavy humor, as he sharpened a dangerous-looking knife prior to tackling the joint.

  “It certainly does,” said Henry. But he was not smiling.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MONDAY MORNING. A pale, watery sun did its best to struggle through the high layer of clouds lying over London, while a sharp wind from the north sent scraps of paper flying down the gutters of Victoria Street, and made the scurrying crowds of work-bound typists wish they had worn their winter maxi-coats. In an office on the fifth floor of Scotland Yard’s clinically pale new building, Detective Sergeant Reynolds faced Chief Superintendent Henry Tibbett across the latter’s desk. He looked puzzled.

  “The Heathfield case? You mean, the drunken driver who ran down Larry Lawson? But I told you, sir—I checked it out.”

  “You got Detective Constable Wright to do it, didn’t you? He’s a new boy.”

  “Well—yes, sir, he is. But very conscientious. Shaping up well.”

  “All right, all right, Sergeant. I’m not getting at him.” Henry smiled. He knew about Reynolds’ fierce championship of his men, and he approved of it. “What I mean is that in the nature of things he’s not acquainted with the name and face of practically every villain in London, as you are.”

  “Of course he’s not, sir. Couldn’t be. But like I said, he’s conscientious. He told me he’d checked with CRO on every witness in that case, and not one has a criminal record. So—”

  “All the same,” Henry said, “just check once more yourself, will you? Get hold of the trial transcripts and read them through. Just see if there are any familiar names.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Look, Sergeant,” said Henry, “you know me well enough by now. Call it my nose, or anything else you like. Call me a bloody fool—but do as I ask, will you? I’m off to the Old Bailey to give evidence, but I’ll be back.”

  Reynolds grinned. “Anything you say, sir.”

  Henry spent the greater part of the day in court—most of it waiting in bleak corridors, but culminating after lunch in a satisfactory half hour in the witness box, which was instrumental in convicting an habitual robber-with-violence. He got back to his office at three in the afternoon, to find a message that Sergeant Reynolds would like to see him as soon as possible. He picked up the telephone.

  “Ask Sergeant Reynolds to come in right away, will you?”

  As soon as the sergeant came into the office, Henry knew that his instinct had been right. Reynolds’ expression of mingled admiration and exasperation was one which Henry had seen before. He carried a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  Henry said, “Well? Any luck?”

  “Once I don’t mind. Twice is a bit much,” said Reynolds enigmatically. He threw the papers down on Henry’s desk. “You knew all along, didn’t you, sir?”

  “No,” said Henry. “I guessed. You mean—it was Weatherby?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean, sir. Major George Weatherby, licensee of the Pink Parrot public house in Maize Street, Notting Hill. Talk about an old friend. No criminal record, of course. By golly, he gets around, does the major. I thought we’d heard the last of him, after the Byers case.”

  Henry sighed, but with a certain satisfaction. “I thought of him at once, when I heard that one of the witnesses had been a London publican,” he said, “but I hardly dared hope… What’s he been up to lately, Sergeant?”

  Reynolds shrugged. “Nothing—as usual. He still runs the Pink Parrot, and the upstairs Private Bar is still the meeting place for prosperous villains specializing in gambling, racetracks, and the dogs. The major has been especially careful about keeping his own nose clean, since we got so close behind him on the Byers case. I thought he’d maybe given up the profitable profession of being a convenient witness, but the temptation must have been too much this time.”

  “Tell me about it, Sergeant,” said Henry. “Who were the other witnesses? What was Weatherby’s evidence?”

  “Well, sir.” Reynolds took a deep breath. “The fact is, it was Weatherby’s car that was stolen—and wrecked, into the bargain. It’d be funny, wouldn’t it, if it was all just a coincidence? I mean, suppose it’s true what he said—that he’d been having a quiet drink in this country pub, and this drunk nabbed his car and crashed it—”

  “With Larry Lawson under the wheels?”

  “Well, sir—”

  “I know. Try to prove it. Well, go on. What happened?”

  “According to Weatherby, he was on holiday. The Pink Parrot was closed for redecoration, he said. It was a fine evening, and he and a friend decided to drive down to the country for a meal and a drink. All innocent enough, on the face of it.”

  “Who was this friend?” Henry asked.

  “Not a CRO man, you can be sure, sir. Never heard of him before. A Mr. Albert Pennington of Chelsea. Occupation, Company Director. The two of them drove down to Middingfield, in Hampshire, in Weatherby’s car—the major driving—and finished up at a pub called…” Reynolds consulted his papers…“called the White Bull, in a village by the name of Gorsemere, a few miles from Middingfield.”

  “I wonder why,” Henry said.

  “Well, now, sir—not that I hold any brief for Weatherby—but it was a lovely spring evening, and from all accounts it sounds a very pleasant pub. Inglenooks and oak beams and so on. There’s plenty of London people like to drive to the country of an evening—”

  “The White Bull isn’t on the main road,” said Henry. “It’s on the old London-Westmouth road and used to be a coaching inn—but now the road passes to the north. It’s most unlikely that a stranger would go out of his way to find the White Bull—and the landlord says he’d never seen either Weatherby or his friend before.”

  “He does? But how—? I mean, you’ve actually spoken to the landlord, sir?”

  “I have. I’ll explain in a minute. Go on, Sergeant.”

  “Well, like I said, sir, Weatherby and Pennington went into this pub, leaving the car parked in the yard outside. Weatherby said he didn’t bother to lock the car, not in the yard of a quiet country pub—but he did admit that he hadn’t intended to leave the key in the ignition. Pure forgetfulness, he said. Well, I suppose we’ve all done it one time or another, haven’t we? Anyhow, Weatherby and his friend went into the White Bull and sat down in one of these inglenook things, where they got into conversation with the man Heathfield. Never met him before, of course, but Weatherby said he was a great character, with plenty of local anecdotes to tell. They were amused by his talk, and brought him drinks to keep the flow going. Whiskey, it was.”

  “His usual drink was mild and bitter,” said Henry. “Go on.”

  “Heathfield got a bit merry, it seems, but both Weatherby and Pennington insisted that he seemed OK. Then, suddenly, the drink seemed to hit him. About ten o’clock, that was. He got to his feet—Heathfield did—swayed about a bit, and said he’d be off home. Very unsteady, and speech badly slurred. Weatherby says he asked him if he was all right, and Heathfield said yes, it was only a few minutes’ walk to his house, and the fresh air would do him good. And off he went. Weatherby and Pennington had another drink and thought it was all a bit of a joke. Then, at half-past ten, the pub closed. The two men went out into the car park—and lo and behold, no car. They went in and told the landlord, who phoned the local police. By that time, news of the accident had reached the Gorsemere Police Station, so of course they were able to identify the car right away. It was a write-off, of course. Weatherby and Pennington hired a local
taxi into Middingfield, and caught the last train back to London. All perfectly straightforward.”

  “Perfectly,” said Henry dryly. “Now, what about the rest of the evidence?”

  “Just routine, really, sir. P.C. Denning, from Gorsemere, received a phone call at twelve minutes past ten, from a Mrs.…” Reynolds consulted the paper again “…a Mrs. Donovan. The accused’s next-door neighbor. A widow lady living on her own. She testified she was in bed and asleep when she was woken by the crash outside. She got up, put on a dressing gown, and looked out of the window. The road’s not lit there, but she could see the car, with its nose smashed into Heathfield’s front wall. She says she could see Heathfield, slumped over the wheel, unconscious. She knew him well, of course, living next door. She rang the police right away. It was only when they got there that they found Lawson. He’d been caught between the car and the wall—killed outright, the doctor said. Heathfield was still out cold. At first, they thought he was concussed—but when they got him to the hospital they found he wasn’t injured at all. Just dead drunk. And that’s all there is to it.”

  “And Heathfield says he remembers nothing about it.” Henry said.

  “That’s right, sir. He remembers going to the White Bull, like he did every night, and sitting in the inglenook, and the two London gentlemen talking to him and buying him drinks. Then, he said…” The sergeant sorted out the appropriate sheet of paper, and began reading aloud. “He said, ‘I came over queer suddenly. I remember saying I must go home—and after that I don’t remember nothing till I woke up in the hospital.’ And he seemed to think that was a defense!” Reynolds laughed sardonically.

  “Any other witnesses?” Henry asked.

  “Just enough to sew the case up tight,” said Reynolds. “Nobody actually saw Heathfield getting into the car—the pub yard was deserted. But a young lady did happen to see the car being driven in the direction of Middingfield. A Miss Amanda Something…double-barreled name…”

  “Bratt-Cunningham,” said Henry.

  “That’s right. She was driving home and happened to notice the car. It’s rather distinctive—or was—being bright yellow. She noticed that it was weaving about a bit, which made her take a second look, and she’s certain she recognized Heathfield at the wheel. Reading her evidence, I’d say she liked Heathfield, and didn’t enjoy ratting on him—I gather her old man’s by way of being the local squire, Chairman of the Magistrates and so on. Reckon it was him insisted she tell the police what she’d seen. Anyway, it was an open-and-shut case without her evidence. The only other witnesses were the experts—doctors and police. Oh, and Lawson’s widow identified him.”