Sting in the Tail

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘And how far have you got?’

  ‘Not very far.’

  He met my eye squarely. ‘Mr Hopewell’s daughter has come to the attention of the local sergeant before now.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘But not relevant.’

  ‘That’s as may be. You can hardly be surprised if the sergeant is suspicious. Personally, I’m inclined to agree with you – she’s a friend of my daughter so I’m not unacquainted with her. The sergeant wanted to charge her with aggravated assault, but it was held that she had been resisting an assault with excessive violence. My own view is that she has the devil of a temper which she may or may not grow out of. But I find it interesting that you avoided mention of her history.’

  He had a point, although I was not going to admit it. ‘Just as you avoided mentioning that you have a special dislike of Clarence,’ I said, ‘for digging up your roses. I hadn’t got around to mentioning it because you keep interrupting me. What’s your excuse?’ (The Detective Sergeant looked shocked.) ‘And this is wasting your time and mine. I fail to see any connection between an injured dog and a murdered man.’

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘so do I. But one never knows what’s relevant until later. One thing I do know is that one can never ask too many questions of the person who found the body. He is usually the only person who saw the scene totally undisturbed. And until the preliminary search is finished and I get the pathologist’s guess at the time of death – and a guess is all that it usually is – I have to bide my time.’

  With all the patience I could muster, I took the Detective Chief Inspector, his sergeant, the shorthand writer and the two recording machines through my investigations to date. The DCI listened with an air of faintly patronizing amusement. The two machines seemed to show more interest than the other two men.

  When I had finished, the DCI said, ‘This Mrs Bell could be a useful witness.’

  ‘I expect so. She knows the local scene, she’s observant and she dearly loves an audience. Can I go now? I’m overdue for some lunch.’

  He nodded loftily, as though eating were a human weakness against which he had been inoculated on attaining his present rank. ‘Your address is still Three Oaks Kennels?’ he asked.

  I nodded in turn, to show that I could be just as strong and silent as he could. ‘I’d be grateful if you could avoid giving my name to the Press,’ I said. ‘I have a living to earn.’

  The Sergeant escorted me outside. He was suddenly human. ‘I have a springer,’ he said. ‘The vet can’t find any sign of parasites but the poor beast scratches himself raw.’

  ‘Seborrhoea?’ I suggested.

  ‘The vet says not. But he can’t say what else it is. I’ve tried everything that he’s recommended, without result. Is there anything I can do about it?’

  I had met the problem once or twice in the past and, failing a precise diagnosis, had found it best to treat the symptoms. ‘Try Head and Shoulders,’ I said.

  ‘The shampoo? You’re joking!’

  ‘I’m not, you know. Try it. It works for me.’

  ‘I dare say. But does it really work on dogs?’

  ‘I meant on my dogs,’ I said shortly.

  *

  I stopped in the village and phoned home from the hotel. Beth answered. Angus, I learned, had left his visitors at their hotel to recuperate before their evening flight, and Beth had caught him at home. He had called down an unusual strain of pox on my private parts but would already have done the rounds and returned.

  ‘I’m coming home now,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t had any lunch.’

  ‘I’ll fix you something. But what’s going on?’

  ‘Tell you when I see you. This phone’s rather public.’ Not only that, but I could tell from the puppy noises that Beth was outdoors and using the cordless phone, which, despite the assurances of the manufacturer, can sometimes be picked up by other, similar instruments. I suddenly wanted to be at home, where things were safe and familiar.

  Waiting had swallowed much of the day and the sun was low as I hurried home. The haar was rolling in again. Angus should already be establishing his visitors somewhere among the reeds on the banks of the Tay. The fog would encourage the geese to fly low and might give the visitors the chance of one or two more in the bag before the end of their holiday, but it did not make driving easier. I was glad to turn in through my own gateway and park at my own front door.

  Beth had hot soup waiting and was breaking eggs into a pan as I entered the kitchen. ‘This is all you get or you’ll spoil your dinner,’ she said severely. ‘Are you warm?’

  ‘Perfectly,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Now, tell me what’s going on.’

  I was washing at the sink. ‘Say please,’ I told her over my shoulder.

  ‘Say you’re sorry, or these eggs go in with the puppies’ mash.’ I could tell that she was laughing.

  I dried my hands and gave her a kiss. ‘Three, two, one,’ I counted, and as I said ‘Sorry’ she said ‘Please’. It was an old ritual with variations.

  ‘Where’s Hannah?’ I asked. The story I had to tell was too gruesome for a young girl.

  ‘She’s in her room, playing tapes of pop music to Sam.’

  I gave her another quick kiss and sat down at the table. ‘I walked into a murder,’ I said. The soup was delicious. I had never been so hungry.

  Beth gasped. ‘I was wrong, I really do mean “Please”. Who was it?’ she asked me. ‘Anyone I’d know?’ She turned off the flame under the eggs but left them to fry on.

  ‘I doubt it very much. I told you that I was going to have a word with the butcher’s van-driver and with the peculiar man who lived near the cottages. Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’ Beth popped the two eggs into a bread roll and put it in front of me. ‘I take it that it wasn’t the van-driver who got himself killed.’

  ‘You take it correctly. I saw the van heading for the other man’s house, so I thought I’d . . . No,’ I said. ‘“Kill two birds with one stone” is a saying that’s off my list for the moment. I thought I’d catch them together. So, like the lady in the song, I followed the van. The driver was getting worried because the outside kitchen door was standing open but the place seemed deserted. He said that it had been like that the week before. So, lending each other moral support, we went to look.’

  ‘And found the body?’

  I glanced at Beth. She looks so young that I sometimes forget that she is my wife and a mother, and when that happens I try to protect her as I would the teenager that she resembles. I reminded myself that Beth was quite capable of skinning a fox or cutting up a pig and had on occasions discussed the most grisly details of deaths and disasters without any tendency towards the vapours.

  ‘There was a body, I presume of the occupant of the house, fully clothed and sitting in a chair in the middle of the kitchen floor. He’d been there for some time. Somebody had chopped him in the back of the neck with a meat cleaver.’

  ‘Oho!’ Beth said. ‘Things look black for the van-driver. They always suspect the person who finds the body. Go on.’

  I had taken the interruption as a chance to catch up with my eating. I chewed quickly. Beth gave me a paper towel to wipe egg yolk off my chin. ‘I saw the body first,’ I told her. ‘And the cleaver was lying on the floor. There was a beautiful set of kitchen knives on the wall with the end hook vacant. The cleaver seemed to complete the set. I’d take a bet that it belonged in the house.

  ‘He seems to have been sitting in the chair when somebody took the cleaver and hit him on the back of the neck, cutting at least halfway through it. He flopped forward onto the table. There was a good deal of blood. The cleaver fell on the floor.’

  Beth pushed a mug of tea in front of me. ‘Go on,’ she said

  ‘The next thing was that somebody pulled the table out from under him, so that his torso came down on his knees and his head dangled horridly with the wound gaping. That didn’t happen immediately but some time later, because a le
g of the table had dragged through the blood on the floor, which must have been at least half congealed by then. According to our old acquaintance, Detective Chief Inspector McStraun – you remember him?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He’s the Senior Investigating Officer. According to him, the table was carried outside and an attempt made to burn it, although why anybody should do that beats me.’

  ‘There could be dozens of reasons,’ Beth said. ‘Suppose, for instance, the murderer had been leaving a message or drawing a map or something, on the surface of the table. It’s still there, under the blood. If, as you say, the blood was already congealing, he’d have had an awful job mopping it off just to get at the message and erase it, and probably he’d get a whole lot more blood on himself in the process after he’d already cleaned himself up.’

  ‘Or herself,’ I said. ‘Not that it seems to have been a woman’s crime, but I’m sure it runs against the Equal Opportunities Act to jump to the conclusion that any violent murder must have been committed by a man. You could be right, I suppose.’

  Beth whisked my dishes into the sink and began preparations for the dogs’ meal. ‘Whether I’m right or not,’ she said, ‘Henry’s still off colour and Isobel went home early to look after him, Hannah and I have been left to cope. She’s done enough for today. You can give me a hand.’

  ‘Haven’t I done enough for today too?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘Probably. But Hannah’s keeping Sam amused. Would you rather feed the dogs or cook dinner?’

  ‘We’d all prefer that I feed the dogs. Will Henry be all right tomorrow?’

  ‘He says yes, Isobel says no, take your pick. It doesn’t seem to have been more than the twenty-four-hour bug that’s going around.’

  We left the subject of murder far behind us. The dogs’ dinner and our own were of much greater importance.

  Chapter Seven

  Somebody had talked. No story was attributed to a police source, but a brief item appeared on that night’s television news and by morning the papers had it – to my great annoyance, together with my name as one of the discoverers of the body. When Isobel arrived with a much recovered Henry, both were in a state of acute curiosity.

  By then, the phone was alive with journalists wanting quotes, which they did not get. When Angus dropped off his wife, in a similar but suppressed state of curiosity, Beth and I were impatient to get away for what we hoped would be a day of comparative peace. We were, of course, deluding ourselves.

  Hannah had pleaded to come with us. I thought that she might have enjoyed a day in the beating line, but without her father’s agreement and steadying influence we decided not to take any chances. We told her that Clarence and the puppies needed her more and left her with Mrs Todd, warning the latter not to pump Hannah and to keep her safe from any prowling newshounds.

  We should have realized that the visiting Guns, when they arrived at Foleyknowe, would be just as curious as anybody. So also were the beaters, and they were followed in quick succession by a variety of reporters from the various media. These, having been fobbed off for the moment by Detective Chief Inspector McStraun, had taken only minutes to track us down and were prepared to follow us around all day; and since one or two of them would clearly have settled, as an alternative, on their customary hobby-horse about Slaughter of Tame Grouse on the Moors and the Crack of High-powered Rifles, it seemed better to give one and all a single statement. This was on condition that the media thereafter left us alone for the day – an agreement which they honoured when I made it clear that we would not make a start to the shoot until they were all off the estate – and also on condition that nobody else mentioned the subject to me at least until shooting was over for the day.

  Roberts and Strachan, each of whom had had some acquaintance with the dead man, were present among the beaters but kept low profiles. I had hardly begun my statement when Bob Roberts slipped away. I saw him intercept a middle-aged couple who were approaching the throng. When I looked again, the couple were walking away along the valley and Roberts was back among the beaters.

  After that, we were free to get the show on the road, only slightly behind schedule. I had been able to observe the party’s performance on the woodpigeon and had assessed them as above average – the lady in particular was a first-class shot – so we kept them back where the birds would be highest and fastest. By lunchtime, they seemed dazed but exultant.

  As I neared the barn, the beaters were debouching from their trailer and I found myself walking with Bob Roberts and his collie. ‘Who were those people you spoke to during the press conference?’ I asked idly.

  ‘Those were the Bassetts,’ he said.

  ‘They were going to make trouble? In front of the media?’

  He shrugged. I felt a cold shiver at what might have been. Any anti-field-sports protest is meat and drink to the media. ‘How did you manage to head them off?’ I asked him. Again the shrug. ‘I think I’ve a right to know,’ I said, ‘in case it happens again.’

  We stopped at the corner of the barn. ‘Between ourselves?’ he asked.

  ‘If it’s nothing to do with murder,’ I said. ‘Or Clarence’s tail.’

  He nodded. I knew that we would both treat my words as a binding promise. ‘You’d be bloody amazed what goes into some of their herbal medicines to make them so popular,’ he said. ‘What d’you call those very small doses, so small they can’t possibly work but they do?’

  ‘Homeopathic?’ I suggested.

  ‘If you say so. Very dilute, anyway, but very illegal.’

  As soon as he said it, the memory of the Bassetts’ garden surfaced and I could guess the rest. ‘Marijuana?’

  ‘And mescalin. You name it, they grow it.’

  ‘Well done,’ I said feebly. Had Clarence, I wondered, had a monkey on his back? Had he taken to visiting the Bassetts’ garden to browse among the herbs, in search of a fix? If nothing else, it could explain his extroverted behaviour. The Bassetts might well have decided to administer a lasting deterrent.

  Lunch was being enjoyed as usual in the barn amid happy chatter when the local sergeant appeared and beckoned to me. I got up off my straw bale and went out to meet him in no very good temper, because one of the visitors had been making serious enquiries about the price of a dog that I had been working that morning and, what was more, did not seem particularly startled when I quoted it.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked the sergeant.

  ‘Mr McStraun would like to see you.’

  ‘When?’

  He looked amazed. ‘Now, of course.’

  ‘Tell him to get real. I shall be available, here, some time after three-thirty.’

  His expression went from amazement to total disbelief. ‘You can’t seriously mean to send such a message to the Detective Chief Inspector.’

  ‘I can and I do,’ I said. ‘I’m busy. He has his job to do and I have mine. The only way I would come just now would be under arrest. Do you want to try it?’

  He sighed and became slightly more human. ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he said. ‘What do you think I might charge you with?’

  ‘Hampering the Police in the Execution of their Suspects?’ I said. ‘Suggest it to the Detective Chief Inspector, with my compliments. Have a drink and a sandwich before you go.’

  He looked at me as though I had offered him the use of my sister and stalked back to his panda car.

  Isobel, who had overheard, caught my eye. ‘We’re glad you’re recovering,’ she said, ‘but you were a lot more lovable when you were ill.’

  ‘That’s better than never having been lovable at all,’ I retorted. But I made a mental note to ask Beth whether she agreed with Isobel.

  I returned to my customer and was relieved to find that he had not gone off the boil. Indeed, he was prepared to complete the deal on the spot. This was only sensible; he would be returning south in the morning and I have the strongest objection to selling a trained dog without giving the pair, dog and
purchaser, a chance to learn to work together. So an immediate agreement was reached, highly satisfactory to all parties, by which I pocketed a substantial cheque, the buyer spent the afternoon picking-up with the spaniel alongside either me or Beth, so that he and his new shooting partner could learn each other’s language and foibles, while Henry inherited his place among the Guns.

  To my relief, man and dog struck up an immediate rapport. Perhaps I should be more commercially oriented, but selling a dog always seems to be rather like giving a daughter in marriage although on much more favourable terms. This marriage seemed to be made in heaven.

  After the last drive, while Beth was filling out game-cards, Angus and I were pairing up the birds into braces for guests and beaters and Henry was dispensing liquid nourishment, we were again visited by the police, this time in the person of Detective Sergeant Waller.

  ‘The Detective Chief Inspector would be obliged if you would grant him the favour of another interview,’ he said. ‘At your earliest convenience, of course.’ The DS was looking distinctly amused.

  ‘I’ll bet he didn’t express himself in quite those terms,’ I said.

  He broke into a grin. ‘Words to that effect,’ he said.

  ‘Make him say please,’ Beth suggested.

  ‘Pretty please,’ said the DS before I could speak.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘I’ll come now.’

  Beth slapped down the last card. ‘One moment,’ she said firmly. ‘My husband is not a well man. I’m carrying his medication. I insist on accompanying him.’ Each of those statements was true in itself but taken together they were acutely misleading. Beth’s reason, as I knew perfectly well and the DS undoubtedly suspected, was sheer nosiness.

  ‘I expect that will be all right,’ the Detective Sergeant said weakly.

  The discussion had taken place within earshot of Angus. ‘Just a moment,’ he said. ‘My wife’s minding your bairn.’

  ‘She won’t mind staying a little longer,’ Beth said.

  ‘I’ll mind,’ Angus retorted.

  Beth looked round. Isobel was a few yards away, saying farewell to Juniper and her new owner. Beth grabbed her by the elbow. ‘Isobel, will you go home and take over from Mrs Todd?’