Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 11

  ‘Yes.’ Bognor wasn’t satisfied, but as before he felt out of his depth. ‘What about this afternoon’s little episode? I’m told that Millicent Trench has never won a competition in her life and scarcely knows one end of a dog from the other.’

  ‘Calumny,’ said Mr Pocklington. ‘Millicent has been a League supporter for twenty years. She’s branch secretary for South West Surrey. She knows as much as any Dandie Dinmonter around, and as far as I’m concerned it is surprising that she hasn’t had more success earlier.’

  ‘But the dog withdrew?’

  ‘I can’t comment on that. The enquiry reached no official decision because we were pre-empted, but even if it had, the League’s rules forbid further discussion on that too. I’ve no idea why the dog withdrew but I regard it as most unfortunate. In my opinion it would have run the eelhound very close. That eelhound has remarkable depth of rib but I’m not happy about the way he goes behind.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Bognor. ‘So as far as you are concerned Tiresome Terrapin was Millicent Trench’s own dog?’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no reason to suppose otherwise, Mr Bognor. If I could give you a word of advice I’d pay no more attention to Mrs Protheroe than you have to. Unsound temperament. Strong suggestion of inbreeding. Pity. If we approached human breeding with half the knowledge and discipline that we bring to dogs then the world would be a better place. And now if you’ll forgive me I must return to my guests.’

  Bognor grudgingly forgave him and they joined the departing crowds jostling out into the down-at-heel purlieus of Kensington’s nether end.

  ‘Happy?’ asked Monica on the way home.

  ‘Not in the least,’ he said.

  6

  NEXT DAY WAS SUNDAY but it brought little rest. As soon as he woke, Bognor reached for his bedside pencil. He had been troubled in sleep by strange dreams of packs of rabid eelhounds, demented Duchesses and dog-lovers. Wearing only spats, he had been pursued by this throng across Hyde Park until, cornered in Queen Mary’s Rose Garden, he had been attacked with empty champagne bottles. It was then that he woke.

  For an age he lay sucking the end of the pencil and looking for some clue he had failed to appreciate. Beside him Monica lay snoring lightly. He wondered if he should wake her, but it was only just seven, so instead he went to the kitchen to make coffee, found a pad of lined foolscap and began to write.

  ‘Champion Whately Wonderful,’ he started, ‘was murdered by a person or persons unknown not long after Cecil Handyside had had a flaming row with Mrs Potts.’ He stopped and sucked at the pencil. ‘That’s a theory,’ he said optimistically, and wrote again. ‘Cecil Handyside killed him. Next day Coriander Cordingley exhumed the deceased’s orange box after I’d left, removed it to Piddlehampton Manor where the corpse was re-buried by the Duchess of Dorset. Later on, Handyside hit me on the head and somehow I was transported to the hotel.’ He left out the bit about being transported to Coriander’s bed for fear that Monica should read it. ‘Now,’ he muttered, still sucking, ‘that makes Handyside a killer and the other two accomplices. So if Piddlehampton Peter was smuggled out to America the odds are that Handyside and Coriander were involved along with the Duchess.’ He flung down the pencil in exasperation. Parkinson would not be impressed. It remained pure speculation. He made the coffee and then wrote down Percy Pocklington’s name. Against it he entered: ‘Awarded first prize to dubious Dinmont in Illinois and Colombia; to eelhound in which he has an interest; made suspect Tiresome Terrapin best of breed.’ All that suggested that Pocklington was corrupt, but then Pocklington’s whole appearance and demeanour suggested corruption. Bognor would have convicted him on the grounds of the spats and the moustache alone. The connection between Pocklington and the others was tenuous, to say the least. Of course he knew them but in dogdom everyone knew everyone else. That much Bognor already realized. He passed on to Mrs Potts. She was guilty of deception, that much was certain. She had prevented Bognor from examining the corpse and had refused to answer questions. He pencilled, ‘Why deceive me?’ against her name and by a ridiculous piece of autosuggestion began humming the ‘Lass of Richmond Hill’. ‘Guilt or fear,’ he pencilled. She was either an accomplice or she was a victim. If the dog had been murdered then she was a victim and therefore frightened. If it had been merely gastro-enteritis or a haemorrhage or rabies then she was an accomplice. But if it was any disease or illness but rabies there was no point in concealing it. Besides, Rose had suggested murder and he had a hunch that Rose was more perceptive than she appeared. She’d been right about Handyside. He’d definitely been upset when he mentioned the argument with Mrs Potts.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  It was Monica, still dishevelled with sleep. ‘It’s frightfully early. Come back to bed,’ she said.

  He looked at her, undecided, then reckoned that the prospect was insufficiently inviting.

  ‘I’m making lists,’ he said, ‘but it’s not getting me far. You go back to sleep and I’ll go and get the papers and bring you breakfast in bed.’

  She smiled. ‘You can be quite nice,’ she said grudgingly.

  The newsagent’s was a hundred yards down the street on the corner. He ambled there, hands in his pockets, wondering how he was going to solve this case. As usual he was dimly aware that there was an obvious and vital clue which he had completely failed to spot. Perhaps something would turn up. It usually did.

  He bought an armful of papers and ambled back, idly perusing the sports page. The news was, as usual, disastrous. The England side had totally collapsed after a brilliant start. It was, he reflected, very ignominious to be taught the finer arts of cricket by Indians and Pakistanis. Back at the flat he gave all the papers to Monica, and boiled eggs. The toast he burnt at the first attempt, but browned adequately at the second.

  ‘I see the Chewing Gum Dog’s been kidnapped,’ said Monica, when he took the food in. ‘Your friend Handyside’s had a ransom note. They want £10 000.’

  Bognor put down the tray, whistling, and picked up the paper. It was one of the populars and alongside a large picture of the crotchety old bulldog there was an account of how two kidnappers had abducted Britain’s most famous dog. He found the tale heavy going for the prose was florid and the puns atrocious. However it transpired that before leaving the Dog-lovers’ League Show last night Handyside had received the demand which had been handed in to one of the commissionaires. The commissionaire, who had been dealing with a disorganized crowd scene at the time, had only the dimmest recollection of who had given him the letter. He thought it was a man of medium height with mouse-coloured hair, between about twenty-five and forty. Bognor laughed drily. It didn’t look as if they’d find that man in a hurry, and it was nice to see Handyside getting a taste of his own medicine. Serve him right. He was about to give the paper back when his eye caught an item in the Stop Press.

  ‘Surblington sex fiend strikes’, he read. It had been the name of the town which had attracted his notice. ‘Police were searching the Surblington area for the killer of a twenty-one-year-old Rose Smith, a kennelmaid, whose body was found late last night dumped in a lonely lovers’ lane outside the town. She had been sexually assaulted.’

  ‘Look at that,’ he said, throwing it down on the bed. ‘The Stop Press.’

  ‘How ghastly,’ she said when she’d taken it in. ‘That’s your informant? The one you gave the five pounds to?’

  ‘Yes.’ He thought of the fat girl shovelling spaghetti and chips into her capacious mouth. ‘I’d better get down there right away.’

  ‘But it’s Sunday.’

  ‘She’s dead and I have a shrewd idea who killed her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Handyside.’

  ‘Oh, Simon, come on.’ She laughed. ‘Where have you been? That man is as queer as a cream puff. The paper says she was sexually assaulted. That means rape or worse and that must rule out that horrid little pansy. He couldn’t possibly have done it.’

  Bognor shrugged. ‘I think he
’s a psychopath,’ he said, ‘and everything is beginning to point in his direction.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  For answer he went to the kitchen and came back with the foolscap pad, the gist of which he repeated to her.

  ‘Pure speculation,’ she said. ‘This wretched girl was obviously on her way back from the flicks or from some hop and she was picked up by a sex fiend as the paper says and raped and dumped. It happens all the time.’

  ‘What if Handyside found out, as he did, that she’d told me about his row with Ailsa Potts?’

  ‘He might be upset,’ said Monica, ‘but I doubt whether he’d kill her.’

  ‘He’d already killed the dog, remember …’

  ‘Speculation.’

  ‘And yesterday before the final judging he was having that very curious conversation with Mrs Potts. Agreeing with each other. Now the only thing they’re likely to agree about is the awfulness of Rose, the informer. Mrs Potts said as much to me when I first met her.’

  Monica looked thoughtful. ‘I still think you’re assuming too much,’ she said.

  ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘you sound just like Parkinson. I have to make assumptions. I have no proof yet, but if I go down to Surblington and talk to the local police I may be able to find some.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ she said, ‘only try to be back for lunch.’

  He was back in time for lunch. The local police had been obstructive to the point of bloodiness. He had tried unsuccessfully to telephone Parkinson for support but without that even his faithful Board of Trade Identity Card had been useless.

  The CID man had heard him out. Just. A lot of nose-picking, watch scrutinizing, and clumsily suppressed yawning had gone on, but he had sat through Bognor’s speech. Then, when it had come to its conclusion, he’d said, ‘Thank you for coming, sir, very kind, though you needn’t have troubled. We’ll keep you informed of any development since she was a Ministry contact.’

  To begin with Bognor had retained his politeness. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector,’ he’d said, ‘but I don’t think you quite understand. I’m asking to be involved in this investigation and I’m suggesting that you question Mr Handyside as soon as possible.’

  The Inspector, at least ten years his senior, had looked at him scornfully. ‘I doubt whether we’ll find that necessary in view of the circumstances … sir. It’s evident that this was a straightforward sex crime and had nothing whatever to do with matters concerning dogs. If you’ll pardon my saying so, a great deal of what you’ve told me sounds like pie in the sky. And if I might make so bold, I’d also suggest that if a third party were to overhear the allegations you’ve just made then Mr Handyside would have a sound case in law for any action he might choose to take.’

  ‘Inspector, please try to realize this is a matter of national importance.’ He’d realized as he said it that the policeman would merely laugh. He did.

  About this point he lost his temper, which was unfortunate. The altercation which followed was short but bitter and some of what Bognor said he regretted. However he objected to being laughed at.

  Furious at the lack of response to his approaches, he had gone straight to Three Corners to interview Mrs Potts. When he arrived he was told, by a lachrymose colleague of the dead girl, that Mrs Potts was at Mass. The idea of her being a Catholic had not occurred to Bognor, especially after the macabre performance of the dog’s funeral, but he settled down to wait by the front gate, after establishing from the kennelmaid that Rose had last been seen on her way to the evening performance of a film called Bat Out of Hell. The epic seemed familiar to Bognor though he hadn’t seen it. She had been on her own and the bus stop was five minutes’ walk away. The road was unlit. It had all been too easy.

  After half an hour Mrs Potts arrived, accompanied by the police inspector with whom Bognor had dealt earlier. Another short sharp row ensued and ended with the policeman warning him off.

  ‘If I see you nosing around on my patch again I’ll have you booked for obstructing the course of justice,’ were the words used. Bognor had been so angry that his only retort was ‘Balls’, which in the circumstances was hardly adequate. The whole embarrassing incident had been made worse by the presence of Mrs Potts who watched his ignominious defeat with undisguised satisfaction. Her flabelliform features were smudged with what a stranger might have assumed to be tears, but Bognor, cynically, decided that such was not the case.

  After shouting ‘Balls,’ he had driven straight home. Which was why he was back in time for lunch.

  ‘I can’t say I blame him,’ said Monica over beer and cheese and chutney sandwiches in the local pub. ‘It must have sounded pretty silly to him.’

  Bognor was not amused. ‘Closed minds,’ he snapped. ‘That’s what he’s got and it’s what you’re developing too. I’ve a bloody good mind to go straight to Handyside’s now and have the whole thing out with him.’

  Monica coughed on a cheese sandwich. ‘That way,’ she said, ‘you really will end up in trouble.’ She drank more beer. ‘However, if you felt adventurous you could ask him some harmless questions about the chewing gum animal and his ransom. That would be a legitimate thing to do. He could hardly sue you for that.’

  ‘I don’t want another argument with some idiot of a policeman,’ said Bognor ruefully, ‘but I’m damned if I see why I should be messed around like this. The more I think about it the more convinced I am that the girl was murdered because she was telling tales out of school. Her frightful old boss knew what she was up to. She was livid when I appeared on the scene in the first place and even more when she realized that it was her kennelmaid who was acting as an informer.’

  ‘She could hardly have done it,’ said Monica drily. ‘It was rape, after all.’

  ‘Don’t be sick,’ he said. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence for her to be murdered so soon after that conversation. It all hangs together. What’s more there’s something very suspicious about Raffles and his disappearance. I don’t know what it is but it seems too clear cut to me. It was too easy. Surely someone would have stopped two men kidnapping Britain’s most famous dog?’

  ‘Evidently not.’

  ‘Not evidently at all.’ He wiped froth from off his upper lip. ‘You’re quite right. Handyside can’t sue me for asking questions about the ransom. Let’s go and pay him a visit.’

  ‘What? Now?’ Monica’s pint was still half full.

  ‘Now. While I’m in the mood.’ He stood up and wiped crumbs off his trousers.

  ‘But it’s miles,’ wailed Monica, ‘I wanted a quiet afternoon, reading the papers.’

  ‘Andover will take about an hour and a half,’ said Bognor, decisively, ‘the country air will do you good.’ He reached out for her glass and drained it in one gulp. ‘Come on,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t see what you’re going to achieve,’ said Monica petulantly as, yet again, Bognor drove west.

  He shrugged. ‘If I’m right,’ he said, taking both eyes off the road in front of him and only just replacing them in time to see a pair of red traffic lights, ‘and he did murder that wretched kennelmaid, then his nerve has failed—even if it’s only temporary. I want to jostle him a bit when he’s in a panic. I also want to have a look at his operation. See how he might smuggle dogs in and out.’

  They were on the motorway now, cutting through the fir trees near Camberley. They would be in Andover in less than an hour.

  ‘Smuggling them out isn’t much of a problem, surely?’ said Monica. ‘It’s getting them back in again. I mean there are no laws about the export of dogs. Only bringing in unpleasant diseases. He could quite easily send out dogs in a conventional export order and only do real smuggling on the way in.’

  ‘You need an export licence,’ said Bognor, frowning. ‘But you’re right, the real problem is getting the dogs back in again. Still, as I said before, if you can do it with people you can do it with animals. My guess is they fly in to France or Belgium or Holland and come across to the south coast in some
fishing boat.’

  ‘Sounds complicated.’

  ‘It would be. There’s money involved.’ He paused and switched topics. ‘I suppose Raffles would be insured?’

  ‘Bound to be.’

  ‘So if he were kidnapped, Handyside and the syndicate would collect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if they’d arranged the kidnapping themselves?’

  Monica gazed out of the window at the traffic returning from a weekend by the sea. It was building up already. ‘Then,’ she said, ‘they would either destroy the dog, in which case they would only collect the insurance money. Or if they were being very greedy they would smuggle it out of the country and flog it there to some unscrupulous continental advertising agency.’

  ‘I agree,’ he said. ‘It will be fascinating to see how far his nerve’s gone.’

  ‘If his nerve has gone and your theory’s right I suppose the dog will turn up safe and well, any minute now.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They relapsed into silence. At Micheldever junction after the motorway ended he took the right fork towards Andover, then shortly before the town he had to brake suddenly when he saw a large wooden hoarding by the road side. It was a simple black and white sign which said ‘Animal Transport Ltd. ½ mile left’. He turned down the twisting lane for the requisite distance and then saw a modern bungalow surrounded by a complex of wooden sheds also new. In the yard outside the house stood several vans and one larger truck, all clearly marked ‘Animal Transport Ltd. Prop. C. Handyside’.

  ‘Never imagined he would live in a bungalow,’ said Bognor, driving slowly past and peering in as he did.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Signs of life, evidence of guilt …’

  ‘I wonder if your friend, Coriander, will be here? She seems to make a habit of popping up wherever we go.’