Whose Dog Are You

by Gerald Hammond

  Beth came to see me whenever she could – emotional at first, competent always, but harassed much of the time. One of the dogs brought in for retraining had imported pediculosis, an outbreak of the lice to which spaniel puppies are particularly susceptible. Henry came more often and kept me up to date with the lack of progress which the police were making. He had been pressed into service as assistant delouser and was glad of an excuse to escape now and again.

  On the eleventh day I awoke to a beautiful morning. A change of hue had washed over the visible countryside, delicate as a maiden’s blush, suggesting that spring was beginning to stir. I was already known as an unwelcome guest and when I set my mind to making a real nuisance of myself the authorities seemed relieved to remove my stitches and allow me home. I was released only after dire warnings about taking it easy, not exerting myself and above all not to put any strain on my shoulder.

  The warnings were unnecessary. I tired easily and my left arm was unusable. I felt awkward and guilty, sitting around while the others laboured, but Beth and Isobel soon decided that my assistance was more trouble than it was worth.

  Beth put it in a nutshell. ‘Go away,’ she said tiredly. ‘I don’t have time to be helped.’

  So I was banished to the sitting room, or to a seat on the grass when the sun shone, to assist with the paperwork, teach the older puppies some elementary retrieving with tennis balls from my armchair and deal with visitors. Business always turns brisk when you are worst equipped to cope with it. During the next fortnight I sold two trained dogs and seven or eight young puppies, accepted several dogs for board and training and dished out free advice to anybody who came seeking it. The role of guru was still a novelty to me and I suppose that I pontificated. It paid off. I had time to give the purchasers of trained dogs much more than my usual brief lecture on words of command and how to accustom the dog to a new handler. One of those pairs is still gaining honours in field trials.

  Murder and GBH would have seemed very far away, except that among the visitors were several reporters. They tried to make a sensation out of my story but, apart from the events already being stale, there was little drama in the coincidence of a man who had found a body being the victim of an attack. They never came back and the story never rated more than a line or two.

  Another visitor was a young woman, very thin except for large hips unflattered by yellow stretch slacks. She seemed to be the nervous type, which probably accounted for her lack of flesh. She could have been pretty if her teeth had been straightened. Her voice was prissy but her accent was good.

  It had turned showery again, so I saw her in the sitting room. She was to be married later in the year, she told me with a flash of a modest engagement ring and, her fiancé being a shooting man, she was thinking of giving him a springer as a wedding present. Whenever her approaching wedding was mentioned she turned red and twined her fingers together.

  We talked money. The price of a good pup made her blink but she said that she could manage it. The cost of a trained dog is strictly for the well-heeled or the fanatic and was quite beyond her means.

  ‘You see, I’m out of a job now. I worked for Atlantis Controls,’ she added, with the air of one dropping a famous name. When I failed to react, she added, ‘The firm which just went bust. The boss turned up dead. The papers said that you found the body, so when I thought about a spaniel for a wedding present yours was the one name I knew.’

  ‘Not a very good basis on which to choose a strain of gundog,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, laughing. Laughter would have made her almost beautiful except that it showed off those uneven teeth and brought on another fit of finger-twining. ‘But, to be fair to myself, I did make some enquiries and heard nothing but good. Which is better than you can say about poor Mr Falconer. The names they’re calling him!’ She looked at me earnestly. ‘I can hardly believe that he was what they say he was. He seemed so . . . nice.’ The hesitation was excessive for choosing just the wrong word.

  I refrained from mentioning that seeming nice is the stock-in-trade of every rogue. ‘You worked closely with him?’ I asked her.

  ‘I was his private secretary. Nobody gets to know a man better, except perhaps a wife. And if he was a crook he certainly fooled me. I did all his correspondence and it seemed perfectly above board.’

  She was beginning to revive my flagging curiosity. ‘You mentioned a wife,’ I said. ‘I heard that his wife came over to stay with him for a week or so. Did you meet her?’

  For some reason, she hesitated again before answering. I guessed that there had been some jealousy between the privileged wife and the trusted secretary. ‘No,’ she said at last. ‘But he told me that she fell in love with his dog. I could understand that, she’s adorable. That’s another reason why I decided to come to you. If she’s still here . . . do you think that I could buy Salmon?’

  ‘She isn’t here,’ I said. ‘She’s been moved. You’d better have a word with the police. Our local Sergeant would help you if he could. Tell me, did you ever meet the shooting friend he’s supposed to have spent time with?’

  ‘I think so, once.’ She had recovered from her initial nervousness and was speaking more confidently. ‘He was a tall man with sandy hair. Oh, and he had a slight limp. Mostly he was just a voice on the phone to me. Rather a deep voice with a trace of Glasgow in it. But I don’t think that they spent all that much time together, just early morning visits to the shore. Mr Falconer sometimes brought back a duck for me. But he had other places to go and shoot. He got to know some of the local farmers. And every few weeks he’d have me phone and book a place – a Gun, he called it – on one of the big, commercial shoots.’

  ‘Did you never hear the friend’s name?’

  ‘Only the first time. After that, whenever I heard the voice I’d put him through. I’ve tried and tried to remember the name and I’ve been over it with the police. It began with a J but what it was I just don’t remember.’ She broke off and changed to a pleading, little-girl voice. ‘Couldn’t you tell me where Salmon of Glevedale is now? Perhaps if I spoke to them . . .’

  ‘The police took her away,’ I said. ‘They’ll be holding on to her in case the widow turns up to claim her. I think you’d do better to forget it.’

  We seemed to have run out of topics. She said that she’d think about a pup, really she would. As I showed her to the door, I remembered to ask her name.

  ‘McGillivray,’ she said. She thanked me excessively for what, on my part, had been no more than a normal sales-talk.

  *

  Sergeant Ewell arrived not long afterwards on the pretext of examining, under the new legislation, my gun-safe. He had seen this many times before, so I guessed that he was looking for coffee, a chat and any more hints which he could use to further his own chances of promotion. Beth brought the coffee and joined us. She sat near where Miss McGillivray had sat, looking youthful and delicious by contrast.

  Beth asked how the investigation was going.

  ‘They’re looking gey hard at the banking fraternity,’ the Sergeant said. ‘It’s thought that any fool with a wee bit understanding of accountancy could follow the ins and outs of the industrial grants, but the money vanished so cleanly and with so little trace that they think he must have had help from inside a bank. There’s no sign of a cheque, a withdrawal slip, or a statement even.’

  ‘There’s a lot of people in banking,’ I said.

  ‘No doubt of that. Lothian and Borders aren’t happy about it, being asked to check up on the Edinburgh banking men over a murder committed in Fife. And with so little to go on.’

  ‘They’ll be limiting themselves to the holders of shotgun certificates,’ I said. ‘That should cut it down a bit.’

  ‘Likely so,’ said the Sergeant. ‘But that alone takes an age of checking.’ My comment reminded him of something else. ‘There’s been a shotgun found in the Eden. A twelve-bore. It had silted over but one of the horse-riders kicked it up again at low tide. It’s awfu
l rusty, I’m told, after that time in salt water, but they can tell it’s a Browning. That’s American, isn’t it?’

  ‘Belgian,’ I said. ‘But if it’s recent it was probably made in Japan. John Moses Browning was an American but he emigrated to Belgium. A lot of Browning shotguns go to America, but they come here as well. I suppose it was found just to the east of Coble Shore?’

  ‘Aye, it was. How did you know that?’ The Sergeant’s voice was bland and he seemed relaxed and at home in his usual chair, but his eyes were fixed on mine.

  ‘That’s where it would be,’ I said. ‘But it could just as easily have been lost by a genuine fowler. I can imagine a man laying his gun down to deal with a goose or a duck which is winged and still struggling. In the dark, he can’t find his gun again and the tide’s coming in fast.’

  ‘But if his murderer was getting rid of the dead man’s gun?’

  ‘There would always be the risk that it would turn up again,’ I said. ‘The easiest place to get to would be just above the bridge, though it’s not the kind of place a man could be cut off by the tide and drowned. But he could drive a car to the small car park by Coble Shore, walk across the spit from the Reserve side and as far out on the sand as the tide would let him. If the gun turned up there, that would at least be consistent with an accidental drowning.’

  The Sergeant thought about it, nodding slowly. Something else was causing an itch at the back of my mind. ‘Can you tell me the name of Falconer’s secretary?’ I asked him.

  ‘McGillivray,’ he said. ‘They’ve given her a clean bill of health.’ I was about to change subjects when he went on, ‘A rather scatterbrained old maid or she’d have seen that something was up.’ He looked into my face again. ‘What’s adae?’

  ‘I asked because there was a young woman here just before you came. She said that her name was McGillivray and that she’d been his secretary; but there was something about her manner which didn’t quite ring true. For one thing, she was twitching with nerves. I wouldn’t have called her an old maid. She was very interested to know where the springer bitch had gone.’

  ‘A young woman?’ He took out his notebook. ‘What description?’

  ‘Red-brown hair,’ I said, ‘with a wave which looked natural but probably wasn’t. Oval face, good skin, slightly pinched nose and crooked teeth. She was self-conscious about her teeth so she tried not to part her lips when she talked or smiled. Generally skinny but big around the hips. Medium height.’

  ‘Age,’ he asked, writing busily.

  I shrugged. I never was good at women’s ages. ‘Thirtyish,’ I suggested.

  ‘I saw her going in,’ Beth said. ‘You didn’t mention that she had sexy legs.’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I said. (Beth looked disbelieving.) ‘She said – and I pass this on for what it’s worth – that Mr Falconer’s shooting friend was a tall man, fair-haired and with a limp. Voice deep and with a slight Glasgow accent.’

  The Sergeant made a careful note. ‘Did either of you happen to notice her car?’ he asked.

  I shook my head. Beth said, ‘I think she walked up from the road.’

  The Sergeant smiled sadly. ‘Just my luck,’ he said. ‘I’ll pass along both descriptions and if anybody turns up answering your description of her she’ll have some difficult questions to answer.’

  ‘She’ll probably just say that she saw the chance of a cheap dog,’ Beth said.

  ‘She can have her as far as I’m concerned,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Really, that spaniel should be taken into the pound.’

  ‘And be put down if nobody claims her? That’d be a shame,’ Beth said.

  ‘Aye. But I suppose we’ll be getting a fat bill for her keep one of these days.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, you won’t,’ Beth said. We both looked at her in surprise. ‘An anonymous postal order, quite a large one, arrived with a typed note to say that it was for her keep, to save her from being destroyed. It was while you were still in hospital, John. Isobel and I decided that it was from some eccentric dog-lover.’

  ‘Did you keep the envelope?’

  ‘No. It was post-marked Glasgow, because we looked,’ Beth said helpfully.

  ‘I wonder,’ the Sergeant said vaguely. ‘Yon lassie . . . did she seem more interested in the dog, or in planting the description of the friend?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ I said. ‘Probably the dog.’

  As the Sergeant left, I noticed dog-hairs on the back of his neat uniform. It was the season for coat-shedding. He might have brought them in with him, perhaps having collected them from a car-seat. I decided to go over the chairs with the small vacuum cleaner. The hairs would not show on our yellow-brown slip-covers but they would stand out on any dark clothing. They could have come off a dark yellow Labrador or a red setter, although they did not look quite right for either.

  Chapter Five

  Another week went by while I continued to mend. My left arm was still in a sling. It still hurt me if I tried to use it. I became adept at doing everything one-handed but dressing and undressing taxed my ingenuity and I usually let Beth help me. Besides being easier, it was more fun that way. In all other ways, I felt good.

  The Sergeant visited us whenever he was passing but it seemed that the investigation was grinding slowly along without going anywhere, rather like the mills of God. Then, one morning, he telephoned me and from that moment things started to move again.

  ‘Mr Cunningham?’ he said. He had long since accepted that I dislike being credited with my former army rank.

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘About the springer bitch, the one you call Anon. Somebody has made an offer to buy her.’

  ‘From the executors?’ I asked.

  ‘There aren’t any executors. As far as is known, he left no will; no relatives have turned up and such property as we’ve found comprises the ruined clothes on the body, one cartridge belt and a rusted wreck of a gun.’

  ‘And a whistle,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. The receiver appointed to liquidate the remains of the business wants nothing to do with dogs. My superiors have decided that there’s nothing more to be learned from her. So unless somebody takes her she’ll be put down.’

  The idea of a charming dog being destroyed because nobody cared was abhorrent to me. ‘Accept the offer, then,’ I said.

  ‘I expect so,’ he said. ‘We can hold the money in case a claimant turns up. She’d have been handed over by now except that it seemed to me that it would only be right to give you a chance to offer for her.’

  It took me only a few seconds to consider. ‘If I could be absolutely positive of her identity,’ I said, ‘and if I could be sure that the pups she’s carrying won’t ruin her for life, I’d jump at it. She’s an intelligent little animal and her breeding is first class. But no. If somebody wants her, let him have her and I hope he gives her a good life.’

  ‘So be it,’ he said.

  It had been an easy decision to reach and yet it unsettled me for the day. Beth had often accused me of treating each purchaser of one of our pups as if he were asking for the hand of a favourite daughter. There was some truth in it. A dog is so vulnerable in the hands of a wrong or ignorant owner, capable of such an intense degree of misery, and so completely lacks any form of redress, that my imagination sometimes plays tricks on me. I never took Beth’s comment to heart. She was as soft as I was.

  That afternoon, the rain set in again. I persevered with training youngsters in the big barn but, when all the chores were done and the pups had been fed, we settled down in the big kitchen for tea, scones and a rambling discussion of business. Henry, who had walked over to join us, had swallowed his tea in what seemed to be a single gulp and was drinking my beer.

  ‘I’m surprised that you didn’t ask who was taking Anon,’ Beth said suddenly out of the blue.

  ‘I’d no right to the information,’ I said. ‘And on the whole I think I’d rather not know. I hope she’s gone to a shooting man, but she’ll probably
be happy enough if she’s become a house-pet.’

  ‘You’re just trying to convince yourself,’ Isobel said tolerantly. There was no need to explain. Any working dog, prematurely retired, like many a man in the same position, pines for the old days of dedicated activity. It takes a lot of nothing, to fill time.

  I dragged the conversation back to business and the eternal problem of choosing, long before there could be any signs of talent, which pups should be offered for sale as against which ones should be brought on for sale as trained dogs or for competition with an ultimate destiny as breeding stock. Isobel had the table covered with her file cards which we were passing around as if in a game of Happy Families when we heard tyres on the gravel. Nobody moved. With luck it would only be the postman.

  The doorbell chimed. ‘I’ll go,’ Beth said reluctantly, getting up. ‘Don’t decide anything until I come back.’

  ‘I’ll be surprised if we decide anything for a week,’ Isobel said. We each had our own hunches and favourites.

  Beth was back inside a minute. ‘There’s a man,’ she said, holding out a card. ‘I’ve put him in the sitting room. He wants to see all of us together but he won’t say what it’s about. He seems respectable,’ she added uncertainly. We had been hoodwinked into admitting an itinerant bible-thumper not long before and he had been very difficult to dislodge.

  I took the card and passed it to Isobel. According to his card, our visitor was a Mr E.J. Rodgers and he represented a well-known firm of Glasgow solicitors.

  ‘We’d better see him,’ Isobel said. ‘Is the fire lit in your sitting room?’ she asked Beth.

  ‘Not yet. I could light it.’

  ‘Don’t bother. We’re all tired – he can take us as he finds us. Ask him if he’d mind stepping through here.’