The mention of his spaniel stopped him in his tracks. ‘What’s it to you?’ he demanded.
‘You never paid me for her,’ I said.
‘I did so!’ he said.
But I could see doubt on his face. Gus was known for never settling up if it could possibly be avoided, and I was sure that he had lost track of the innumerable debts which he had left behind him in a paperchase of unpaid bills and solicitors’ letters. It was a pity, I thought, that he and Lord Crail could not get on together; they had such a lot in common. ‘You have a receipt?’ I asked him.
‘I’d never have asked it. There’s no need of papers between honest men.’ He gave me a look of hurt dignity.
‘I’m thinking of repossessing her,’ I said.
He came back and stood over me. ‘You’d never!’ His voice had gone up to a squeal.
He was absolutely right. I was bluffing. As Crail had said, Gus was spiteful; and the kennels were vulnerable. ‘Try me,’ I said.
He was thinking hard. Gus was cast in the same mould as David Conrad Falconer. If he was capable of affection it was for his dog and his ferrets. ‘I’ll do your bloody work,’ he said at last. ‘You can take it off that.’
‘With interest at ten per cent per month for four years?’ I said. ‘I think I’d rather have the dog. Tell me about the American. Surely it can’t hurt you, for once, to pass the word along. Or do you have a good reason for keeping quiet?’
He thought again and then made a gesture of surrender. ‘There’s no reason,’ he said. ‘I just can’t thole being pushed. I’ll tell you. I’d met him the once, on Wester Gunnet Farm. He came on me suddenly using the ferrets. I telled him I’d the farmer’s leave to ferret there but he wouldna’ ha’e it. An’ he was richt,’ Gus added with unusual candour. ‘He chased me off the place. So, when I saw him shooting at the muircocks, I thought I’d just have a wee word.’
‘I can guess what that word was,’ I said. ‘Were those the only times you ever saw him?’
Gus hesitated once more, balancing my threat against the engrained habit of secrecy for secrecy’s sake. ‘I see’d him just the once more,’ he said at last. ‘I went to the Tay afore dawn, below Newburgh, for a crack at the geese. But when the birds came off the water there was two men in the reeds I’d not known was there. They took two for four shots and turned the birds back. I was well hid. I bided where I was and they walked past without seeing me. It was the Yank and another chiel and their twa dogs. But they left o’er soon,’ Gus added with satisfaction, ‘for the best of the flight came later.’
‘What did the other man look like?’
‘Two penn’orth of nothing,’ Gus said contemptuously. ‘Skinny. A poor creature, like yourself. He’d a fore-and-aft hat pulled down against the wind, but what I could see of his face was nipped. If he’d been a yowe in a sale, I’d not have bid for him. And if there was anything else about him, I never saw it.’
I knew that there was something else that I should ask but it eluded me. ‘All right, Gus,’ I said. ‘We’re all square now. And you can still do the work if you want to.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. He stooped over me. One of the pups woke up and nosed his leg but was ignored. I was too late in recognising the fury in his eyes. Suddenly, he punched my shoulder. ‘Now we’re all square,’ he said.
I nursed myself for ten minutes before I could wipe my eyes and make a move. The pups sat round, watching me and wondering. They had never before heard the sounds which a man can make when pain is beyond bearing.
Chapter Eight
Beth could see that my shoulder was giving me trouble, but there are no meters for measuring pain. For all that she knew, I might have been feeling sorrier for myself rather than suffering more. She left me to slump in one of the fireside chairs in the kitchen while she uncomplainingly lugged feed and water, cleaned runs and exercised dogs.
I was in a state of indecision. Any word from me to the police might start the hue and cry which Jess Holbright dreaded. But Gus Brown was on the loose, probably the only person knowingly to have seen the late Mr Holbright with his elusive friend.
How, I wondered, had Gus known exactly where to land his punch? My sling would have suggested no more than that somewhere around the left arm or chest would be vulnerable; but he had thumped his first right on to the wound itself. Chance? Or had he in truth been my night-time assailant? If the latter, then he must have made contact with the second man and been hired to steal Anon. In which case, was the description which he had given me a pure fabrication? Or was there another player in the game?
In bed the following morning, I decided that Jess Holbright would have to take her chance.
Beth went out to feed the pups and then came back to help me dress myself. My shoulder had begun to settle down once more and felt little worse than it had before Gus’s attempt at therapy but from time to time, at any incautious movement, it sent me a warning. Enough, it said, was enough.
‘There was a message for you,’ Beth said as she worked my shirtsleeve carefully up my left arm. ‘It was from Mr Rodgers’s office. But I couldn’t understand it at all. It was something about spring being here at last. I said that spring might only just have arrived in Glasgow but that it had been spring here weeks ago. They said to tell you anyway. Do you know what it means?’
I felt a wave of relief, slightly damped by the knowledge of a difficult interview to come. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what it means and I’m glad to hear it. It means that I’m free to tell Sergeant Ewell about my trip.’
‘And me,’ she said. She finished tucking my shirt in and knelt to tie my laces.
‘And you, when the time’s ripe. Would you phone the Sergeant and tell him that I have some information for him? Thank you, darling, I can manage from here,’ I added.
‘I’ll do that.’ She looked at me appraisingly. ‘You look a bittie brighter this morning. You were gey peely-wally last night.’ The phrase took me back. It had been a favourite with my mother. Beth used it self-deprecatingly. Usually, she avoided the Scots tongue, trying to speak perfect English although with a sweet trace of a Fife accent. She had, as she once admitted, a misguided idea that I would love her more if she ‘lived up to me’, whatever that might mean. There was more need for me to live up to her brave spirit and eternal patience.
The Sergeant came soon after I had finished my breakfast. Henry, back from his visit to Oban, had walked over with Isobel and, although Henry’s help with the chores would have been appreciated and he would have been happy to give it, I asked him to join me with the Sergeant in the sitting room. The Sergeant was not going to be pleased with me and I felt a need for the support of an older and wiser head.
Beth had lit the fire in the sitting room. The central heating kept the room warm but the fire, as usual, transformed it from a gloomy and old-fashioned cavern, only redeemed by the painting over the mantelpiece, into something cosy and comforting. I took a little time settling us into chairs and adding a log to the fire while I wondered how to express myself. The message and the Sergeant had come at me in a rush.
‘You’ll remember,’ I said at last, ‘that you agreed to the sale of the spaniel to a firm of Glasgow solicitors.’
The Sergeant’s friendly posture shifted slightly. ‘That dratted dog!’ he said. ‘We must have had six or seven enquiries for her after her photo was in the paper. It wasn’t even a photo of the same dog – even I could tell that.’
I took craven advantage of the diversion. ‘How did the paper get to know that I’d taken her abroad?’ I asked.
‘I wondered the same myself. I asked the editor. He told me that you were spotted at Prestwick. That’s all he’d say.’
‘Just an ill chance,’ I said. ‘The solicitors were acting for a client in the States. I was hired, under a promise of strictest confidentiality, to deliver the dog. When I got out there, I was met by a woman who I guessed was the widow of the dead owner.’
The Sergeant looked up shar
ply from his notebook. ‘How sure are you?’
‘She confirmed it. That put me in a spot. As I said, I had given my promise to maintain confidentiality. But she admitted that she intended to vanish because, although she assured me that she had never touched any of her husband’s fraudulent profits, the authorities and others were looking for her on the assumption that she was holding the kitty.
‘I didn’t want to break my word. But neither did I want any information to be lost if it would be of any help to you. The best I could think of was to get her to talk freely to me by promising to remain silent until I received a message that I was free to speak. That message reached me this morning.’
‘Then you’d better speak,’ said the Sergeant. He was no longer the mild and approachable man with whom I had been establishing a rapport. He frowned at his notebook and there was a grittiness in his voice which suggested that I was in for a tongue-lashing at the very least. For the moment, he wanted as much as I would give him willingly.
‘You already know that she came over to visit her husband early last autumn,’ I said. ‘Her intention, she told me, was to persuade him to come home and turn over a new leaf. But she failed.’
‘And you believed her?’ the Sergeant asked.
‘I did. She never met the other man, the one you’re looking for. But she and her husband planned to attend a shoot organised by Lord Crail.’
‘The lady was shooting?’ The Sergeant sounded surprised. Lady shots are much less common in Scotland than they are in Texas.
‘By all accounts, she’s damned good with a shotgun,’ I said. I tried not to remember that she was more than good with a pistol. ‘But she didn’t have a gun. Her husband phoned his friend who brought over a rather distinctive gun, a sixteen-bore sidelock of Italian make. She only saw this man from her bedroom window. She was looking down from above but she described him as having a round head, a chest like a barrel and protruding ears.’ I paused. What else had Jess said? ‘Brown hair parted on the left and no bald spot. I think that was all that I got from the widow but—’
‘Just haud a wee,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Where did this discussion take place?’
I did not know the name of the ranch but I could have provided enough information to pinpoint it on the map. On the other hand, I had no intention of placing myself in the area where Bubba had been shot, nor of dropping young Jim in the mire. ‘Overnight, in a lounge at Houston airport,’ I said. And if anyone cared to assume that I meant the main airport of Houston rather than the alternative Hobby airport, that would be their fault rather than mine.
‘Describe the woman.’
‘Tall. Nearly my height,’ I said. ‘Perhaps five-nine or ten. Early to middle thirties. A good figure. Her hair is probably light brown but bleached to a sort of dusky blonde by the sun. Good features but with a strong, square jaw. The sun hasn’t done her skin any favours. That’s about all I noticed. You probably got a better description from Mrs Blagdon at the hotel.’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘We did. But what I wanted to know was whether your description matched hers. And it does. What name did she give you?’
‘She wouldn’t give me a name,’ I said. A name would have completed the chain which still linked me to the now defunct Bubba.
The Sergeant looked pained. ‘Go on. You were going to tell me something else.’
‘Lord Crail came to leave his dogs with us,’ I said, picking my words with care. ‘He was about to go abroad. I didn’t have leave to speak to you at the time, so I thought it best to ask him about the occasion when the American couple attended his shoot. He hadn’t noticed much about them except that one of the beaters passed a few words with the man in a way that suggested that they’d met before.’
‘Who was the beater? Perhaps I’d better have a word with Lord Crail.’
‘He’s probably in Spain by now,’ I said. ‘But I can tell you who the beater was. Gus Brown.’
‘If we’re talking about the same Gus Brown,’ said the Sergeant, ‘that’s a real skellum.’
‘Then we’re talking about the same one,’ I said. I nerved myself and went on. ‘I had a word with him yesterday.’
The Sergeant threw down his notebook and glared at me as if he could hardly believe his ears. ‘You . . . did . . . what?’ The last word came out as a yelp.
‘I spoke to Gus Brown.’
‘Really, Mr Cunningham,’ said the Sergeant, ‘I thought better of you. I can just understand that you felt bound by the promise which you’d given to the lady and thought that it outweighed your duty to the police, although my superiors may not agree. If Lord Crail was about to journey abroad, I suppose that you did little harm in speaking to him. But to take it on yourself to interrogate a . . . a skybal of a man who might be a suspect for all you knew or cared—’
The Sergeant’s voice was rising higher in his perturbation. Henry, who had listened in intent silence, cut through it. ‘Think for a moment, Sergeant,’ he said. He spoke softly but with an authority that the Sergeant seemed to recognise. ‘By promising to remain silent until told that he could speak, Mr Cunningham obtained information which could be of use to you. Rather than break faith with his informant, he kept his word. He must have known that this would leave him open to your annoyance. His easiest course would have been to let you remain in the dark. You would never have known that you had any cause for complaint. Instead, rightly or wrongly, he took his information-gathering a little further while he waited for the all-clear. Before you decide whether his actions hindered the police in the execution of their duty, hadn’t you better hear what those actions were and what he found out?’
‘Thank you, Henry,’ I said. I tried to think of a suitable reward. ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I hope that you didn’t waste your time asking Gus Brown such silly questions,’ Henry said. ‘A beer will do for the moment. But don’t stop asking me. You can tempt me with something a little stronger later on. I’ll get it,’ he added, shooting up to his considerable height. ‘And you?’
I looked at the Sergeant but he shook his head as though repelling a persistent fly. ‘Too early for me,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’ll join you later, if Sergeant Ewell hasn’t eaten me.’
Henry sat down and poured beer for himself.
The diversion had given the Sergeant time to reflect. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell me about your interview with Gus Brown.’
‘He had had words with the American when they met on Wester Gunnet Farm, where Gus was using ferrets without permission.’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘We knew that Wester Gunnet was one of the farms he shot over. At least we got that far. Nobody introduced him, he saw the pigeon on the kale as he was passing by so he knocked on the farmer’s door. He never had company there, so far as we know.’
‘The two men must have been careful not to be seen together,’ I said. ‘Walking over farmland, you think you’re alone but there are eyes on you. Just lift a gun to anything you’re not permitted to shoot and the farmer appears like a genie out of a bottle. They seem to have limited their joint shooting expeditions to dawn flights on the foreshore. That’s where Gus saw the two of them together – on the Tay, near Newburgh. The American was with a man who Gus said was small and very lean. He was wearing a hat so Gus didn’t see his hair. Gus said that he was a poor-looking creature. Like me, he said.’
‘Dodsakes!’ said the Sergeant. ‘That’s three different descriptions you’ve brought us. Did the man have a dog with him?’
That, I realised, was the question which had been evading my mind. ‘Gus mentioned a dog. He didn’t describe it and I forgot to ask him. And I can only pass on what I’m told,’ I said.
‘I ken that fine.’ The Sergeant considered his notes. ‘Even if Gus was telling the truth for once in his misbegotten life, there’s no saying that that wasn’t the one time that the American went out with some other acquaintance. On the other hand, Gus could be hand in glove with the other man and lying his head off.’
‘Is . . . that . . . so?’ said the Sergeant. ‘Just what exactly did you say to him?’
‘I threatened to tell you that he was the man who attacked me,’ I said. ‘He had the remains of a shiner and when I thought about it I was almost sure that I had smelled his distinctive odour just before I was stabbed. Almost but not quite. That didn’t seem to bother him too much – he said that he was locked up for D and D at the time – so then I pointed out that he’d never paid me for his pup and I threatened to take her back. That shook him.’
‘Likely so,’ the Sergeant said grimly. ‘Either way, you’ve done just the wrongest thing you could think of. If it was Gus who attacked you, then he is indeed hand in glove with the other man, in which case he’s either told you a fairytale or run to warn him. If not, you’ve very likely put the idea of blackmail into his head; and it does not seem to me that the unknown man would take blackmail lightly. If Angus Brown turns up floating in the Tay or the Eden, you’ll be responsible. You didn’t think of that?’
I held my tongue. I had already said too much.
‘I don’t suppose that he did,’ Henry said. ‘And I don’t think that you need do so either. To say the least, you’re howling before you’re hurt. You’ll probably find Gus going about his usual insanitary business.’
‘That’s possible,’ the Sergeant said more mildly. ‘Well, well. I’ll say no more until we know, one way or the other. I’ll let my superiors know about all this. No doubt there will be more questions. But if you meant to do me a favour, you’ve missed the mark.’
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