The Curse of the Cockers (Three Oaks Book 5)

by Gerald Hammond

  We got back on the motorway. ‘Go round by Perth,’ I said. ‘It’s not much further and it’s dual carriageway until we’re almost home. We can miss those road-works.’

  ‘All right.’ She was silent for a couple of miles. ‘If the police decided that she had something to do with her sister’s death,’ she said suddenly, ‘the sale could be invalidated.’

  ‘It won’t happen,’ I told her. ‘The smallholding without the house can’t be worth very much and somebody else had a stronger motive for wanting Mrs Bluitt silenced. If I can see that, so can the police.’

  ‘They’ll probably blame Angus,’ she said, which started me thinking again.

  Henry’s hatchback cruised along at an easy seventy. I waited until we were past Perth and heading for Dundee. ‘Foleyknowe’s only a few miles out of our road,’ I said. ‘Let’s take a look at the shoot.’

  I saw Beth glance at the dashboard clock and then look in the mirror at Sam, who was deeply asleep. ‘You intended this all along, didn’t you?’ she said.

  ‘It’ll save us making another trip.’

  ‘You did, then.’

  But she turned off where I told her to. After a few miles we took to a driveway, bypassed a substantial house which had the blank look of the temporarily empty and followed a rough estate-road to park where a stand of tall conifers had been planted to give the house shelter from the prevailing wind. The dogs in the back of the car sat up, wondering where we had arrived.

  The conifers were the only mature trees to be seen, but we were at the junction of two diverging valleys along which, as Angus had said, the cover was fenced against cattle. Among the bushes, treeguards drew my eye to a host of saplings, now bare but reaching their thin branches skyward. In my mind’s eye I could see the strips of game crops on the higher ground and the feeders that would lead the birds up to them.

  The low sun was still finding its way under the branches or I might not have noticed a shed almost lost among the trees and screened by ivy. I got out of the car and walked over to it. The door was locked but the post was rotten and a good push opened it. All that I could see in the semi-darkness was that the shed was empty except for a stack of old straw bales at one end, but it seemed dry and sound enough to house the equipment that a shoot would need. I pulled the door closed, making a mental note to apologize for the damage at a more suitable moment, and came back to the car.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

  ‘Don’t you want to look around?’

  I was feeling tired. ‘I’ve looked,’ I said. ‘In a year or two, this bit will be perfect. I’ll take Angus’s word for it that the rest is much the same.’

  With much toing and froing, Beth turned the car in a field gate. The rear of the house was facing us and in my peripheral vision I saw a movement, perhaps a curtain being drawn. So the house was not empty.

  Beth must have noticed the same movement. ‘Shouldn’t we call at the house?’

  ‘Isobel will be phoning soon.’

  A progress report was more important than a courtesy call. Beth set off for home.

  ‘You think we should take it on, then?’ she asked as we turned out of the driveway.

  ‘It depends,’ I said.

  Beth slowed in the narrow road to let a Jaguar, driven by a woman and with two children in the back, squeeze past. ‘Depends on what?’ she asked.

  My attention had been drawn to a springer pup on the knee of the girl child in the other car and I had to bring it back. ‘Firstly on whether Angus stays out of gaol.’

  ‘And if he does, what else?’

  ‘Satisfactory agreement with the farmers about planting game crops. And some shed space. That’s all I can think of for the moment.’

  Sam woke up and announced in no uncertain terms that he was starving to death. Beth made all speed for Dundee, the Tay Road Bridge, and home.

  The sun was down but Daffy was only slightly anxious by the time we arrived. Nobody had phoned.

  I was detailed to attend to Sam and to begin preparations for our meal while Beth and Daffy checked over the newcomers, included them in the distribution of food, and installed them together in a spare whelping kennel. They might be cramped but they would draw comfort from each other amid a host of larger and boistrous springers.

  Sam accepted my efforts tolerantly but showed surprise. ‘Get used to it, buddy,’ I told him. ‘You’re not the Latest Arrival any more.’

  Beth came in eventually and took over. As usual, she talked steadily while she flitted between Sam and the stove. ‘They’re adorable,’ she said. ‘But cockers don’t fetch the same price as springers.’

  ‘They do,’ I said. ‘And they eat less. But it’s a more selective market. We can always sell them off if we don’t want to diversify. We could show a profit on them any day of the week.’

  Beth looked at the clock. ‘The championship must have finished for the day ages ago,’ she said. ‘Why hasn’t somebody phoned? Are you going to tell the police what Mrs Whoosit said about the man who bought two pups and wanted another?’

  I had been wondering the same thing. Her question helped me to make up my mind. ‘I’ll have to. It may not help Angus much. We’ll just have to hope that he has an alibi this time.’

  ‘You could ask him first,’ Beth suggested.

  ‘We’ll have to tell them anyway. If Angus is innocent, the truth is his best defence.’

  I had no idea how to get hold of DCI Kipple, so I phoned Constable Peel and told him to pass the word on. ‘We have Mrs Bluitt’s bitches here,’ I added. ‘If it becomes relevant, it wouldn’t be difficult to prove whether one of them was the dam of that pup.’

  ‘Are you going to do that?’ he asked.

  ‘If it suits your cousin’s defence. Otherwise, let the police spend their money.’

  The phone rang a few minutes later while Beth was out of the room answering a cry from Sam. Isobel was on the line. She sounded slightly pickled, which explained the delay in phoning. I switched on the amplifier so that Beth would be able to hear.

  ‘Both dogs are going forward to the second day,’ Isobel said. ‘I thought for a minute that Rowan had blown it and was going to be eliminated. He was hunting a pile of brashings where another dog had already put out a hen pheasant. I could see that the judge was getting impatient. He thought that Rowan was being fooled by the scent left by the hen. So did I, to be honest. But I remembered you saying to trust the dog. He put out another pheasant, a cock. The nearer gun only winged it, a strong runner in thick cover. Rowan seemed to me to be taking the heel-scent. I tried to turn him and he ignored me for a moment. Then, when he turned back, the judge said that I was wrong and the dog had been right first time.’

  ‘That sounds like Dan Pringle,’ I said. Pringle was inclined to give unwanted advice to the handlers, often wrongly.

  ‘That’s who it was. I wasn’t going to change my mind or I’d have been on a hiding to nothing, but I was sweating big drops. Then Rowan popped out of some rhododendrons with the bird in his jaws. I’ve never been more relieved in my life. I could have burst into song.’

  ‘But you didn’t, I hope.’

  ‘No. For two gins I would have done. But the gins were still in the future at that time. How are things, back at the ranch?’

  I told her about my purchase of the late Mrs Bluitt’s bitches.

  Isobel repeated the kennel name thoughtfully. Drunk or sober, her knowledge and recall of gun-dog breeding lines is unequalled. ‘That’s good stock,’ she said. ‘How much did you give for them?’

  ‘A hundred.’

  ‘What?’ Isobel’s voice was a squawk. For a moment, I thought that she was objecting to the disbursement of such a large sum. ‘For the three? One of them in pup? I suppose you made the poor woman throw in her virtue and a diamond necklace as a makeweight?’

  ‘You agree, then?’

  ‘At the price, I’d probably have handed over the cheque so quickly I’d have broken her arm. Are we going t
o train cockers on now, and compete with them?’

  ‘That’s for discussion,’ I told her. ‘If you don’t want to spread yourself, Beth might like to take it on.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Isobel said. ‘Give her my love.’

  ‘Go easy on the bottle,’ I said. ‘You’ll need a clear head in the morning.’ I heard her hang up. The click sounded indignant.

  Beth had returned. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘I missed some of that.’

  ‘She thinks I got a bargain. And she sends her love.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant and you know it.’

  I relented. ‘Both dogs go forward to tomorrow.’

  ‘Whee!’ Beth sat down very lightly on my knee and kissed my nose. ‘Unless they make a pig’s breakfast tomorrow, that should mean Certificates of Merit at least. What were you saying I might take on?’

  ‘Handling cockers in competition.’

  She jumped off my knee as though it had become red hot and stirred something furiously at the stove. ‘I have Sam now,’ she said.

  ‘I’d expect Sam to be toddling before the first pups are mature enough for field trials,’ I pointed out.

  She stirred some more, splashing something greasy onto the tiles behind the stove. ‘I’d be scared of letting you down,’ she said at last.

  ‘But you already compete with Jason in retriever stakes,’ I said.

  ‘But that’s for me. If I blow it, it doesn’t affect the business.’

  ‘You never do blow it. You stay as calm as Isobel. And the spaniels work well for you in training. You’re good.’

  She turned pink and regarded me with a mixture of suspicion and hope. ‘Am I really?’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Don’t believe me. Ask Isobel. I haven’t had a good look at the new ones yet. I think I’ll take a walk and see how they’re settling in.’

  Beth switched instantly from hesitation to her bossy mode. ‘They’re settling in fine and you’re not going out in the night air yet. You can walk them in the morning, if it’s fine. We won’t want them to meet the other dogs yet. Do you think the puppy would be more at home if we moved him in with them? He’d still recognize his dam.’

  ‘If she is his dam,’ I said. ‘We can’t be sure yet. Leave it a little longer.’

  I got down to phoning the vets around Kinross to find out whether the immunizations of our new acquisitions were up to date.

  Beth wanted to pack me off to bed for another early night, but I was feeling fully recovered and sleep was a long way off. Besides, there was a play on television that I wanted to see. I settled, reclining on the settee in the sitting room, with a fire of beech logs sending ripples of light around the room. Outside, the wind was rising, drawing sparks up the chimney. Beth joined me on the settee and took my legs across her lap. We were back in harmony.

  It was too good to last. The play was just becoming convoluted enough to grip me when the phone rang and the evening began to go mad.

  The first caller was a distraught Mrs Radbone. A local sergeant of police had called and, while milking her of every word she could remember her sister saying about the purchases of pups, had contrived, first, to let slip that her sister’s death was now being treated as a case of murder and then to let her think that I had accused her of something dread but unspecified. My attempts at an explanation were shouted down. She wanted her sister’s dogs back, but she was not going to get them from me without a struggle and I told her so. She had already paid my cheque into her bank and, although she had anticipated probate and the sale was therefore of questionable legality, if the law moved at its customary pace the death would be solved and the dogs probably retired before she could do anything about it.

  She hung up on me at last and I was just picking up the threads of the television play when Angus phoned. He had been at home, overhauling his incubators and brooders to be ready for the busiest part of his year, when DCI Kipple had arrived with a constable in tow, showing a renewed interest in his comings and goings and hinting that I was at the bottom of it.

  Angus was both suspicious and resentful until I managed to get across that I had tracked the probable source of both cocker pups and that it seemed probable that the breeder had been another on the growing list of murder victims. When it dawned on him that he had been entertaining neighbours at the time of the fire and that DCI Kipple had set out deliberately to alienate him from his only active helper, he cooled down rapidly.

  ‘I knew you’d not let me down,’ he said. ‘I’m off the hook, surely.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ I said. ‘A procurator fiscal could argue his way around it. An accomplice of yours might have set the fire.’

  ‘Like who?’

  I nearly said ‘Like me,’ but decided that that was a thought I would rather keep to myself. ‘I had a look at Foleyknowe on my way back from Kinross,’ I said.

  The change of subject brought an immediate change of mood. Even over the phone I could hear his smile. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘I think you could be right. We’d have to work in with the agents who bring parties up for a week’s shooting break. At the moment they can put together a day’s wildfowling, a day walking up, one day driven, and then they’re scratching around and having to Range Rover them up to Perth or Deeside. But the market for second-rate shooting is swamped. We’d have to show first-class birds, so we’d be dependent on getting game crops sown on the high ground. Is that in the contract?’

  ‘Not in writing. I thought we’d deal with the individual farmers.’

  ‘I’d rather have it in the contract with the landowner. He can work it through the tenancy agreements and then we’d be covered. And I’d like to be sure that we had shed space and the use of a room where the visitors could lunch in bad weather. There’s a brick shed tucked away among the trees which doesn’t seem to be doing anything.’

  ‘There is? I never noticed it.’

  ‘It’s there all the same.’

  ‘Speak to him yourself, then. But do it soon, before he decides to advertise.’

  We went back to the play but I had hardly sorted out the characters again in my mind when a car arrived at the door. I prepared to answer the bell but Beth jumped to her feet as soon as I lifted my knees off her. I reached for the remote control. My chances of catching up with the plot had waned to vanishing point.

  She came back with Detective Chief Inspector Kipple and his attendant constable, both in ‘plain clothes’ – which I would have called ‘mufti’.

  The DCI started off in suspicious mood. He would have been prepared to conduct the interview standing but I insisted that we all sit down. He lowered his backside into one of the wingchairs as though into a cauldron.

  He began by thanking us coldly for the information relayed by Constable Peel. The words must have stuck in his throat, because he followed up by enquiring just how we had traced Mrs Bluitt and her sister.

  ‘By phoning around everyone who breeds cockers,’ I said. ‘There weren’t so many black pups born around the right time. When we’d eliminated nearly all of them, we were left with Mrs Bluitt.’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you to let the police do their job?’

  I nearly said that the police didn’t seem to be doing their job worth a damn, but I bit it back. ‘We were asked by Angus Todd to make enquiries—’

  ‘Over the gun-dog grapevine,’ Beth put in anxiously.

  ‘Which might help to prove his innocence. Your enquiries seemed to be directed towards making a case against him.’

  ‘Our enquiries are directed only towards discovering the truth,’ the DCI snorted.

  ‘So were mine,’ I said. ‘And I told you what I found out without waiting to see whether or not it helped to bear out Mr Todd’s story.’

  He did not miss the implied criticism. ‘If it comes to a case,’ he said, ‘we’re required to furnish the defence with all the evidence, whether it supports our case or not.’

  ‘But you’re not required to look for evidence that
contradicts your theory,’ I pointed out. ‘Somebody else has to do that.’ I decided to push my luck. ‘In confidence, is there still any likelihood that the fire was accidental?’

  He puffed out a breath of exasperation. ‘If it will buy me a little co-operation, I’ll tell you this – in confidence. The local Firemaster’s prepared to bet his pension that petrol was squirted through the letterbox and followed by a match. Now, tell me this. On canine evidence alone, how sure can you be that the puppy in your care came from one of Mrs Bluitt’s bitches?’

  I was forced to hesitate. I had been assuming the relationship because of the general circumstances. But it seemed that my information was out of date.

  ‘Fairly sure,’ Beth said. ‘I took the pup out to the whelping kennel.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me that,’ I said.

  ‘You were watching the play. And you’d only have gone on at me about the risk of spreading infection. Anyway, Chief Inspector, when I put the pup down he ran straight to the one that had had a recent litter. She was sick immediately. So then I knew.’

  The Chief Inspector was looking dazed. ‘Knew what?’

  ‘That he was her pup.’

  DCI Kipple emitted a sound of mingled enquiry and bafflement that is not capable of phonetic spelling. ‘I would have thought,’ he said, ‘that it proved the contrary.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Beth said gently. (The Chief Inspector shook his head.) ‘After the milk’s dried up, some dams, as soon as they see one of their own pups, will regurgitate food as an alternative to providing milk for them.’

  ‘Ah!’ DCI Kipple, an expression of mild revulsion on his round face, thought about it. ‘If it should become important to prove the relationship, we can hardly do it by having a cocker spaniel bitch throw up all over the courtroom.’

  ‘She’d have stopped doing it long before then anyway,’ I said. ‘You’d have to resort to genetic fingerprinting.’