FAIR GAME
Gerald Hammond
© Gerald Hammond 1982
Gerald Hammond has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1982 by MACMILLAN LONDON LIMITED.
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Every character in this book is intended to be wholly fictitious.
In one other way I have departed from strict verisimilitude: any writer who places his tales in an area where dialect is spoken confronts himself with a number of choices. He may write as if his characters all spoke English as uttered by Her Majesty or by the BBC. At the other extreme, and to the great tedium of his readers, he may attempt what becomes almost a phonetic representation of the dialect. I have chosen to compromise. Unless the character speaking is exceptionally broadly spoken I have retained the English spelling of any Scots word which resembles the English, leaving the reader to imagine accent or other variance. I hope that his may not offend the devotees of the Scottish language.
G.H.
Chapter One
‘I’m not getting at you, Peter. You’re the exception that more than proves the rule. But I’m getting fed up to the teeth with well-heeled city-types who come into the countryside for a bit of recreation and bring a taint of class-warfare into the few pursuits that make a rural life tolerable. Don’t laugh, damn you!’
‘Can’t help it,’ said Sir Peter Hay. ‘Nobody’s ever suggested that your favourite pursuit was the prerogative of the rich.’ He looked at his friend with amusement.
The younger man refused to smile. ‘Not any more,’ he said. ‘I’m a reformed character and without recourse to surgery. Come back to the point. Take shooting. It applies to other sports, but we’ll stick to shooting. There’s – what is it? – about nine hundred thousand shotgun users in the country, but because the papers are only interested in the doings of a wealthy minority, everybody believes that the whole scene’s taken up with beaters and driven game and tweeds and Purdeys and whole mountains of the slain. And then whenever a question arises, and especially when somebody wants a cheap band-wagon to jump on, the cry goes up, “Rich man’s sport, clobber it!” Only they disguise it behind a camouflage of other reasons and perpetuate a whole series of myths to justify themselves.’
‘Just what you’re doing too,’ said Sir Peter. ‘I always knew you were an inverted snob and you’ve just proved it.’
‘How?’ demanded Keith Calder. ‘How have I?’
‘You don’t like the rich so you blame them for attacks on your sport, closing your mind to the debt that wildlife owes to the big shooting estates.
‘Anyway, Ray Grass was a far cry from your pet aversions. He’d rather have spent a day pottering about after the bunnies with a gun and a scruffy old spaniel than have spent it shooting his own driven pheasants. Of course he held some big shoots that figured in the glossies. Why wouldn’t he? He had a big estate and all the money he could want. He might have been born to money, but he founded and built up one of the biggest chemicals companies in the world, and he was still chairman and managing director of it, and major shareholder. That sort of entertaining wasn’t just expected of him, it was necessary. But I’ve been on one or two of those shoots, and Ray usually went along as a picker-up and worked a dog or two.’
Keith shrugged. ‘All right. So he was one of us. Maybe I’d have liked him. That still doesn’t impel me to blither off to the other side of Scotland to help clear up his estate.’
‘I thought you did like him,’ Sir Peter said simply. ‘You spent half the evening discussing matchlocks and miquelets with him.’ He leaned back against a dry-stone wall and smiled. The farmland patchwork of the Scottish borders reached away below them, and Sir Peter’s pleasure in the early summer scene was neither increased nor diminished by the fact that most of it was his own. Close in front of them, Keith’s spaniel and two of Sir Peter’s many Labradors were enjoying an informal hunt through a plantation of young conifers. A blackcock took wing indignantly and Sir Peter lifted his gun.
‘Bang!’ he said. ‘That beggar’ll be back in season before very long. Does more damage in forestry than roe-deer.’
Keith brushed a cleg away from his face. ‘After your Boxing Day shoot? Was that him? I never caught his name and he didn’t let on that he had tuppence to rub together, though he had a damn good gun. Yes, I did like him. But the point is, I can’t take time off whenever I want it.’
‘You’re taking it off now,’ Sir Peter said.
‘That’s different.’
‘Because you want it to be different?’
‘Not at all,’ Keith said with dignity. ‘I spare myself half a Saturday occasionally and an hour or two of an evening, but if I take on anything else it’ll have to come off the business. And I can’t afford that.’
Sir Peter chuckled and shook his head, so that his tangled grey hair dripped shadows across his face. ‘Don’t tell me that the business isn’t making money. You’ll soon be so rich that other men will be complaining that you add to the myth that shooting’s a rich man’s sport.’
‘Then why do I always seem to be scratching around to find the next ha’penny?’
‘Because you plough it all back. I dare say that if you added up the value of all the shotguns you’ve got in the shop, and the fishing tackle and cartridges and other gear, let alone the antique guns that you try to avoid selling again, you’d find that you’d put by quite a wheen of money these last few years. Doesn’t that young partner of yours tell you that? He is an accountant, after all.’
‘Just as long as he keeps the tax-man off my back I don’t have to listen to him,’ Keith says. ‘When he talks about money he’s in another language.’
‘Well, if you like to think that you’re a pauper far be it from me to disabuse you. I’ll just point out that what I’m asking you to do is to help settle up the estate of a very rich man. And the fees for that sort of work can be very fat indeed. They may not be up to what you could make skinning my friends over second-hand guns that you’ve bodged back into some sort of shape –’
‘Here!’
‘– but they should exceed your hourly rate for gunsmith work or coaching by a handsome margin. When a rich man dies, the vultures tend to move in. Well, it was with that in mind that I suggested that he make Ralph Enterkin the executor of his personal estate. But Ralph isn’t going to work for sweeties – why should he? He’s a damned good lawyer, and he’s worth his hire on that sort of job.’
‘Good luck to him,’ Keith said. ‘He won’t need me.’
Sir Peter sighed. ‘He can’t value the best-class guns, nor a substantial collection of antique weapons; and he’ll need expert and independent advice about the shooting on the estate.’
‘The guns could be brought to me.’
The baronet dropped the barrels of his gun and squinted through the bores. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘you force me to ask you a personal favour. I, personally, want your opinion.’ He unfolded his long frame, stood up and brushed grass from his threadbare kilt
.
‘Opinion?’ Keith stood up and whistled his dog. The spaniel came running, a big grin on her face.
Sir Peter called to his Labradors. They paid not the least attention. ‘That makes three of you,’ he said sadly. ‘Yes, your opinion. You know how Ray Grass died?’
‘I read something in the papers. Some kind of shooting accident?’
They started to move down the hill. Keith had to step out to match the baronet’s stride. ‘The fiscal’s enquiry,’ Sir Peter said, ‘brought in that he slipped while climbing a fence with a loaded gun.’
‘That’s not how I remember him,’ Keith said, frowning. ‘I noticed that he opened and emptied his gun before he’d even step over a stile. Very much by the book.’
‘I thought so too. Of course, people do set themselves a lower standard when they’re on their own – there’s nobody else to endanger. But, to me, it just isn’t the way he was.’
‘Hell of a job to prove anything, without any witnesses.’
‘Problems are for solving. You’ll take it on, then?’
‘Don’t rush me,’ Keith said. ‘I’ll have to see if I can get away.’
‘You mean you’ll have to see whether Molly’ll let you off the lead?’ The words were not said unkindly. The baronet’s own Ladyship, when at home, was inclined to be possessive.
‘Something like that,’ Keith said.
‘Shall we have a go at the rabbits on the Long Brae?’
‘Let’s do just that.’
*
Back at home, tired and contented, Keith found Briesland House open but empty. From a window, he could see his wife at work among the shrubs that took up much of the garden. It was their season and the colours blazed under the gentle sun. Molly’s shape was changing and he thought, not for the only time, that in the bloom of her first pregnancy her dark looks were maturing into real beauty, serene and yet exciting. Already Molly was reluctant to go down on her knees. Instead, a spray container was slung over her shoulder and with its lance she was selecting weeds among the perennials for a quick mist of Paraquat.
Keith smiled. He made two long drinks, a strong whisky and a very weak gin-and-tonic, loaded them with ice and carried them out, carefully because of the spaniel pushing past his feet, to where two deckchairs and an iron table waited in the shade of a beech tree. ‘Come and relax,’ he said.
Molly came, smiling the smile that she kept for him alone. She doomed one last dandelion with a hiss from her spray, then laid it down and flopped into one of the chairs and mopped her brow. ‘It’s a bit warm for gardening,’ she said.
‘Well, don’t overdo it. We’d rather have weeds than a miscarriage, now that we’ve got this far. Now, listen.’ Briefly, he outlined Sir Peter’s proposition.
When he had finished Molly sat silent for a minute, absently scratching the head of the panting dog and looking down the valley to the town of Newton Lauder. She thought that they owed Sir Peter a thousand favours. ‘You wouldn’t want to lose the business and goodwill to somebody else,’ she said at last. ‘I see that. And if there was anything wrong about his death, I think you should help if you can. I remember him from Sir Peter’s party. I liked him a lot. He spoke very nicely to me. And he was one of those people who like to laugh a lot – no, that’s not quite right – who laugh a lot because they’re happy.’
‘You think I should do it? I’ve got a hell of a lot on.’
‘You always have. But we’ve finished the decorating, and Janet and Wal can run the shop between them for a bit. What else have you got?’
‘Several coaching sessions.’
‘At the clay pigeons? Wallace can do that. He enjoys it. And he had the knack of teaching. What else?’
‘Gundog classes.’
‘I’ll do those for you,’ Molly offered, ‘and I can deal with any correspondence about the antiques side of things if you leave everything tidy and labelled. Do you have any gun repairs that can’t wait?’
‘Nothing I couldn’t polish off tomorrow if I got down to it. You could manage? I may have to be away for several days at a time.’
Although she could almost feel a second lump in her stomach, Molly managed to laugh. ‘With Mrs Jelks coming in for mornings, of course I can manage. Can you leave me the car, and Tanya for company?’
At the sound of her name, the spaniel squirmed in the grass.
‘I shan’t need the car. They’re sending something plushy to fetch us.’ Keith sounded impressed. He was still new to the ways of the rich, and the idea of sending a large car on a round journey of more than two hundred miles was foreign to him. ‘You can keep Tanya if you promise me faithfully that you won’t let her have any buns or potatoes to eat. And if Jack Waterhouse comes back about the Baker rifle, tell him that I’m not coming down another penny. You can be as rude as you like; I don’t care if I never see him again. He’s a rotten customer, and I think he’s going off his chump.’
‘All right. Keith . . .’ Molly’s momentary silence was filled by a thrush singing in the tree above. Molly had never been under any delusions about Keith. She had known him for a rake when she married him, had held him on a carefully loose rein, and had felt ready to explode with relief and joy when he had turned into an almost perfect husband. The leopard’s spots, however, may fade but never disappear. There had been lapses. Molly was determined not to assume the ugliness of the jealous wife but . . . there were always buts.
‘Keith,’ she said, ‘if I promise about Tanya, will you promise me something in return?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Keith said absently. ‘What?’
Molly turned pink. Her vocal cords seemed to have turned into rhubarb. ‘Promise me that if you can’t look me in the eye and tell me truthfully that there’s been nobody else you won’t come back at all.’ Keith, she was almost sure, had never lied to her.
Keith was taken aback. He honestly believed himself to be quite the most faithful, loyal and considerate of husbands. Any trifling lapses from that ideal had been no more than the passing impulses of an affectionate nature – what he had once referred to as a “flash in the pants” – and anyway Molly knew nothing of them. ‘You didn’t have to say that,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Of course I promise. But I shouldn’t have to. You knew that I’d been wild before you married me. You, more than anybody else, were part of my wildness. And now my reputation follows me around. I’ve only got to nod in the street to some fat old bag with a moustache and a wooden leg and the tongues are wagging again.’
Molly was feeling a little better. ‘You can leave my relatives out of this,’ she said.
‘I’m a respectable businessman now, and happily married with it,’ Keith persisted. ‘And I want to stay that way. Is that good enough?’
‘Quite good enough. And, Keith, if there is anything going on that shouldn’t be . . .’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll not get involved in anything rough. If I turn up something murky, the fuzz can deal with it or the lawyers.’ He got up, drained his glass and stretched. ‘I’d better go and clear my feet, if I’m taking time away.’
Molly waited anxiously. Their private convention demanded that Keith make some little joke, just to show that his feelings had not been hurt. The moment dragged out. Either Keith was offended, Molly thought, or he could not think of a joke. She held her breath. Even the thrush was silent.
‘Yuck!’ Keith said suddenly. ‘That’s the last time I drink Champagne out of your slipper.’
‘It was giving me foot-rot anyway,’ Molly said happily.
Chapter Two
At an uncomfortably early hour of the Monday morning a Rolls Royce the colour of darkish coffee – upholstered, aptly enough, in cream – collected Keith and his luggage from the door of Briesland House. He was hardly seated before the uniformed chauffeur, in his cell beyond the glass screen, made some gentle passes and the car oozed silently over the uneven approach-road where Keith’s own car was wont to bounce and rattle.
Ralph Enterkin was already enthrone
d beside him on the back seat. Keith thought that he had come to know the solicitor well over the years, and he was surprised to find a young, black Labrador curled on the car’s floor, its chin resting proprietorially on Mr Enterkin’s instep. Keith had never taken the corpulent little man for a gun-dog enthusiast, his pleasures seeming to run more towards good food and wines, his own voice and his bed – the last, Keith gathered, not always in the solitary state which his bachelor status demanded.
‘Your dog?’ Keith asked.
‘He seems to think so, or possibly vice versa. Name of Brutus. Bequeathed to me by a nephew who emigrated last month to some rabies-infested hole. A delightful character, but demanding. He takes me for walks,’ Mr Enterkin said plaintively. ‘However, I dare say that the exercise is beneficial. I think I was in danger of putting on a little weight.’ He patted his protuberant stomach.
‘Does he come from working stock, or is he for showing?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. Does it matter?’
‘Not if you don’t want to work him.’
‘My nephew said something about training him for field trials.’ The solicitor looked out of the window at the countryside sliding by. ‘What splendid weather for being conveyed opulently over the moors towards a fat fee at the other end.’
‘Can you leave your practice for days at a time?’ Keith asked. Mr Enterkin was a one-man firm.
‘Bless you, my boy,’ the solicitor said, chuckling, ‘I could probably leave it for years without anyone noticing. The practice of law is largely common sense obscured by jargon. Learn the language and it’s all written down somewhere. Nine-tenths of my work is conveyancing and the invaluable Miss Wilks does practically all of it. I live in comfortably suspended animation, rousing myself only when one of my more interesting clients is trapped in flagrante delicto, or gets his head caught in a breathalyser. The rest of the working day I spend browsing through my legal tomes which, for those who can read them, contain more and better tales of quite astonishing humour and not a little salacity than you would ever find on the shelves in the public library. Every extraordinary deed brings its perpetrator to court in the end. And the tales happen to be true, or as true as the rules of evidence will permit.’
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