Sauce For the Pigeon

by Gerald Hammond

  ‘I think I’m free,’ Keith said. ‘Molly might not agree. I’ve been neglecting her, and Deborah’s beginning to wonder who the funny man is.’

  ‘Suppose I were to phone her and ask whether she could persuade you to help me out on Jake Paterson’s behalf?’

  ‘At last you’re beginning to think like a married man,’ Keith said.

  *

  Although Mr Enterkin kept a Rover 3000, it was his habit to drive, if he drove at all, very slowly. He drove not by habit and instinct but with constant thought and it made Keith nervous. But when Mr Enterkin called for him that evening Keith could not without causing offence suggest that they changed cars or that he take over the wheel. He trod on imaginary pedals while they followed the valley northwards.

  The frost was holding. As they climbed, they left the salted and gritted roads and began to slip and slither on packed snow. The night was dark with only a thin sliver of moon, but Keith knew that the countryside also had changed. They were above the trees and the mixed arable farming of the lusher level. Here was sheep country, grass and heather.

  Their road branched, became smaller and rougher. They passed a row of cottages and came at last to a small farmhouse, set down uncompromisingly where open moor began. The only other lights belonged to the row of cottages and to one other farmhouse a mile away. Otherwise, not even distant headlamps punctured the dark.

  Mrs Muir must have heard the car stop in what was now no more than a lane. A lamp came on over the door, and as they walked across the yard a rhomboid of light widened across the frozen gravel. A female figure, evidently that of Mrs Muir, stood in silhouette, and for a moment Keith felt a pang of sympathy for Jake’s frailty. She was perfectly proportioned. Her thorax and thighs, accented by a cat-suit grossly inappropriate for a frosty rural night, were two perfect ovals from which sprang other gentle curves. Her hair, shoulder length, glowed against the light. As she moved forward her face came under the overhead lamp, and even in that cruel light Keith could see that she had beauty, not of the severe, classical sort but of the kind which is seen in men’s magazines. He wondered how anything like that could have walked the streets of Newton Lauder without his having been aware of it.

  The lady’s manners, it appeared, were not in the same class as her looks. ‘What do you want?’ she demanded of Mr Enterkin. ‘I thought the will was dealt with.’ She ignored Keith altogether.

  Mr Enterkin raised his hat. He was at his most suave. ‘It is indeed,’ he said. ‘Everything’s been delivered to the executor. But, as you may know, I’m acting as Mr Paterson’s solicitor and I’ve come to ask you for a little help on his behalf.’

  She jerked her head at Keith and raised her eyebrows. A ring flashed on her right hand as she made a small gesture.

  ‘Mr Calder is doing some investigating for me,’ Enterkin said. ‘We hoped to ask you one or two questions and perhaps to take a look at where your late husband kept his guns.’

  Mrs Muir looked at Mr Enterkin for a moment without disfavour. Keith thought that he could even detect faint gender-signals passing. Then her eyes flicked to himself and her nose went up. She turned her shoulder to him. ‘Why should I help the man who killed my husband?’

  Mr Enterkin tried not to sigh. Her question betrayed the attitude which is the bane of defence lawyers’ lives. ‘He has been charged,’ he said, ‘but surely he is entitled to a fair trial. We all want truth to prevail. Did your husband have many friends?’

  ‘It’s too bloody cold to stand out here,’ she said, and indeed Keith could see that she was shivering. Mr Enterkin moved forward but she stood squarely in the doorway. ‘No, you’re not coming in. It’s bad enough having to live alone at the arse-end of the world without being badgered by a lot of men.’

  ‘And yet,’ Mr Enterkin said, ‘Mr Paterson must have meant something to you once. Tell me, did your husband have only the one gun, or did he buy another during his last trip?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell you a damn thing,’ the lady said. ‘I’ve been advised. You can wait to hear what I say in court. Or if you want to use me as a witness you can cite me, and the best of British luck.’ She stepped back out of the overhead light.

  ‘Have you confirmed Jake’s alibi?’ Keith asked quickly.

  For the second time she looked down her nose at him. ‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘No, three favours. Fuck off. Fuck right off. And stay fucked off.’

  The door slammed.

  *

  They drove in silence for the first mile home, fuming.

  Keith’s indignation arose from hurt pride. Male pride. Like any good chauvinist he venerated women while still expecting to be allowed his superiority. Nor was he any kind of snob, real or inverted. Considerations of social status were never in his mind. He looked neither up nor down on duke or dustman. Once, while on holiday, noticing the existence of a self-styled ‘in-crowd’ he had thought the matter over and decided that they were not ‘in’ with himself and therefore could be of no importance. Because Keith gave or withheld his respect according to whether or not it had been earned, he naively expected others to do the same.

  Mr Enterkin’s chagrin rose from more practical considerations. ‘That damned woman,’ he burst out at last. ‘Her lover – or possibly ex-lover – is standing trial for murder and she grudges us the least bit of help.’

  ‘Couldn’t you ask the court to order her co-operation?’ Keith asked.

  ‘A statement taken under those circumstances is regarded by the witness as a sort of rape,’ the solicitor said, ‘and is usually about as satisfying. We could ask for an order to admit us to the premises for a search, but in view of the fact that there is no allegation of a crime having been committed there and that we can’t specify what we expect to find, it might all take time which we haven’t got.’

  ‘Why the hurry?’

  ‘Because she has already found the flat in Edinburgh which she wants to buy, and is placing her own house on the market. Hence her concern over expeditious handling of her husband’s will, of course.’

  ‘Surely,’ Keith said, ‘she wouldn’t be allowed to move house just now?’

  ‘Why not? As far as the police are concerned, the house and its contents are irrelevant. I’ll try the sheriff straight away, of course. But if the police, or the fiscal’s office, suggest that this is mere harassment of a poor, grieving widow. . . .’

  ‘At the least, we’ve got to see inside,’ Keith said. ‘We can’t have her moving house and chucking out or giving away just the sort of junk we’d be interested in.’

  There was a pause while the solicitor braked and turned with great care into the by-road which served Briesland House. ‘I would be doing less than my duty,’ he said suddenly, ‘if I failed to warn you that under no circumstances must you contemplate entering that house.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. Could you get me in to see Jake tomorrow? There’s something I want to ask him.’

  ‘I suppose that it is not a question which I could ask on your behalf?’

  ‘No,’ Keith said, ‘it isn’t.’

  ‘Come and see me in the morning.’ Mr Enterkin braked to a halt outside Keith’s front door and sat looking through the windscreen. ‘I know you wouldn’t dream of entering that house,’ he said, ‘so I need hardly bother to point out that, in the event of your doing so, any signs of illegal entry would invalidate such evidence as you might find; nor that, in the event of your finding anything, it must on no account be abstracted. Once removed from its context its value as evidence would be destroyed, whereas mere knowledge of its existence can be invaluable. I can almost hear counsel’s voice. “Remember, Mrs Muir, you are on oath. Is it not true that you have in your possession, among your late husband’s chattels . . .” And so on and so forth.’

  *

  Mr Enterkin, when Keith reached his office the next day, was studying and annotating a newly arrived cable. ‘Mr Dunbar,’ he said, ‘seems to have received our cable and even to have under
stood it, which is little short of a miracle if it passed through the same channels as his reply. Channels which seem to be imperfectly acquainted with this or any other language. I will not bore you with a precise rendition of what seems to have been translated literally into some debased Arabic dialect and back again, and to have been seriously garbled in the process. I need only say that, in the unlikely event that I am reading him aright, Mr Dunbar would indeed have been out after the pigeon early that day, because he did so every morning for a fortnight prior to his departure. But he is uncertain as to the details of that particular day. He suggests that we, which means you, should obtain his game-book, whatever that might be, from his mother and cable him any relevant details, whereupon he will endeavour to answer our questions. I sincerely trust that his information is going to justify the expense.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Keith said. ‘The cost of cables is soon going to overtake your fee.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that,’ Mr Enterkin said with satisfaction. ‘No, I wouldn’t go that far for a moment. Well, come along, my boy. We’ll pay our call on the unfortunate Jake.’

  *

  They were reunited with Jake Paterson in the same interview room as before, and Mr Enterkin immediately repeated his request for the toilet.

  Jake, Keith noticed, had lost weight.

  ‘While we’re alone,’ Keith said, ‘tell me this. You installed the alarms at the Muirs’ house?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You did it personally?’

  Jake nodded. ‘That’s the one bit of the business I see to entirely myself. I’d like to trust my employees; but you can’t be too careful when a dishonest employee could do the firm so much damage. While I’m in here, that work will just have to hang fire. I gave Muir the same installation you’ve got.’

  ‘Do you,’ Keith asked casually, ‘happen to remember what code it was set to?’

  Jake jumped as if one of his own computers had goosed him. ‘You’re not thinking of burgling the woman?’ he said.

  ‘There’s information we must have, and she’s being as obstructive as she can get. She’s acting as if she wants to see you jugged.’

  ‘She confirmed my alibi, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘For what it’s worth,’ Keith agreed. ‘And she confirmed her own at the same time. And she’s planning to move house. In all innocence, she could throw out the very clues which might clear you.’

  ‘You’d be putting your head on the block.’

  ‘You’d do the same for me.’

  ‘You said that once before,’ Jake reminded him. ‘But that time we weren’t talking about you taking a few pleasant country strolls. This time, we’re talking about you taking a chance on joining me in here. And I’m not sure that I would do that much, even for a friend, so don’t go counting on it.’ Jake paused, and gave his expressive shrug. ‘I don’t want to talk you out of risking your all for me.’

  ‘You couldn’t,’ Keith said. ‘But you could make it less of a risk.’

  ‘I wish I could, but I don’t think I can. When I put the system in, I left it set to be cancelled by the sequence one-two-three-four, on Muir’s own instructions, and showed him how to re-set the code for himself.’

  Keith looked at his watch. Time might be running short before Mr Enterkin’s return cut off this line of discussion. ‘Could I silence it from outside?’ he asked.

  Jake raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘If you could, you’d want your own money back. I couldn’t do it myself. Not without it yodelling for ten seconds or more.’

  Keith made a face. He knew that electronic yodel. It was designed to wake the dead; and the Presbyterian minister, who had a dry humour, had once suggested that such devices should be banned within a mile of a burial ground, to save wasted effort. ‘If I go in the front door . . .’ Keith said.

  ‘Then you’ve got two minutes to punch the right code. And if you punch one wrong digit it’ll go off. Dammit, Keith, it’s designed to be impossible.’

  ‘In that case, old friend,’ Keith said, ‘there’s a high chance you’ll go up the river.’

  ‘That’s different,’ Jake said. ‘Let me think.’

  *

  Mrs Dunbar, mother of the expatriate Watty, was a plain, plump widow with a twinkle in her eye and a sparkle in the small villa which she occupied on the outskirts of the town. She invited Keith into her parlour, all rosewood and plush and china, and gave him coffee and chocolate cake with cream. It was the first tenet of her beliefs that men needed feeding. Keith could well understand why Watty Dunbar would flee to the Middle East to lose weight – and then make tracks for home again.

  ‘Watty’s mentioned your name,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll bet he said that I’m expensive but usually worth it. That’s what he told me, once.’

  ‘Oh, not about the shop. He said he could sometimes shoot as well as you do, but he wished he could do it a’ the time.’

  ‘He could, if he kept his mind on it.’ Keith showed her her son’s cable. She fetched the game-book and left him alone while he copied out the entry for the crucial morning. This was in diary form.

  November -th.

  Out v. early. Bright dawn, v. cold wind off hill. Took S.E. corner of Hallerton Wood shooting over kale. Ground too hard for sticks, decoys not life-like and flapper impossible. Lofter helped draw birds from south. Company later.

  Woodpigeon 8

  Collared doves3 } over kale

  Mavis2over straw

  Cartridges18 (No 6 reloads)

  Winchester 12g with ½-choke.

  Mrs Dunbar returned while Keith was glancing back through the book. She brought with her a large glass of beer. ‘Watty’s got you well trained,’ Keith remarked.

  ‘I like fine to have a man to look after,’ she said.

  ‘Watty seems to fancy the Hallerton area. He could’ve got more birds nearer home.’

  ‘I doubt Hallerton has its attractions,’ she said. ‘And I’d not want him bringing home even more cushie-doos. The freezer’s about full of them already. It’s usually duck he’s after, but they tell me there’s a ban.’

  An hour later, when Keith showed Mr Enterkin his notes, the latter seemed unimpressed. ‘I can cable the information out to Mr Dunbar,’ he said, ‘and hope that it’ll jog his memory.’

  ‘I think it will.’

  ‘The mavis is the common thrush, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. You might add that Calder wants to know whether his brace of Turdus philomelos was a right-and-left.’

  The solicitor looked puzzled. ‘If I’m correct in my interpretation of all the technical jargon with which you’ve been bombarding me,’ he said, ‘Dunbar was using a gun which had but the one barrel. How then could he have scored a “right-and-left”?’

  ‘Just ask the question,’ Keith said, ‘and we’ll see what he says.’

  ‘Very well. I’m told,’ Mr Enterkin said, looking anywhere but at Keith, ‘that Mrs Muir had to miss her Edinburgh trip today, although why that should be of any interest to you evades me. Apparently there was a surveyor coming out to see the house. And Penny assures me – and again I can think of no reason for telling you this – that when Mrs Muir does not go to Edinburgh it is her custom to visit Newton Lauder in the evening in search of male companionship.’

  ‘You think that she might take a shine to me?’ Keith asked.

  ‘You never know your luck,’ Mr Enterkin said. ‘After all, she might be in the mood for a bit of what I believe is known as “rough”.’

  Chapter Seven

  That same evening, long after dark, Keith drove up the hill behind the Town Hall to collect his brother-in-law, Ronnie Fiddler. Molly’s brother was a large, rough-hewn individual of uncertain temper and, in Keith’s view, no very great intelligence. At the moment they were friends, so good that Ronnie was quite prepared to risk prosecution when Keith asked it of him. The fact that Keith stood well enough with Ronnie’s employer to smooth over any resulting absences may have helped.<
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  They drove past the Muir house, where the presence of the red hatchback suggested that Mrs Muir had not yet left for her evening’s dalliance, and on up the valley. The road deteriorated into a track. Keith turned at a gate and freewheeled back down the road, lit only by the palest of moonlight and by his sidelights wherever he was sure that they could not be seen from the house. He parked where a dry-stone wall would hide most of the car but from where he could see Mrs Muir’s front door.

  Ronnie had, after his fashion, been thinking. ‘A woman like her,’ he said, ‘with her looks, she’ll have no trouble scoring with a bloke. She could be back here before we’re out.’

  ‘They’re not all as quick as you are,’ Keith said. ‘Some people take upwards of twenty minutes.’

  ‘I don’t hang about,’ Ronnie said complacently.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve got Wal primed. He wanted to pour a couple of buckets of water over her car. But I said that’d be too obvious. An eye-dropper of water in each of the door locks should be enough in this frost.’

  ‘Some interfering idiot’ll come out with a blowlamp,’ Ronnie said.

  ‘It all takes time.’

  ‘Or the man could run her home.’

  ‘That’s the danger. That’s mostly why you’re along, to keep watch and to be a witness . . . mostly to bear me out that we never went inside the place at all.’

  ‘Oh, I can do that all right,’ Ronnie said.

  They settled down to wait. Keith played a Bach cassette. Ronnie moved restlessly in his seat. His taste favoured Jimmy Shand rather than Johann Sebastian. ‘How are you going to get us in? If the system’s the same as yours, the infra-red thingies’ll have you pegged in a jiffy.’

  The ploy worked. Keith turned the music down to a whisper. ‘It’ll have to be the front door,’ he said. ‘That way I’ve got two minutes before all hell’s let loose. There’s no way I can kill the system before it sounds off, but if I’m quick enough I can fix it before it lets off more than one or two whoopees. But it does that sometimes when you’re setting or unsetting it or when there’s a hiccup in the electrical supply, so I doubt if the neighbours will stir.’