Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 2

  Bognor was on the point of asking whether there didn’t have to be an inquest and then realized that the question would be thought facetious. Instead he asked for Mrs Potts’ address. For the first time since they’d met he’d asked Mr Sparks the right question. He scribbled down, ‘Three Corners, Surblington’ and Mr Sparks said he’d been hoping he’d go and have a word with Mrs Potts, whom he described as ‘one of the old school’, a phrase which filled Bognor with unreasoning horror.

  During the ice cream they forgot the particular problem of Whately Wonderful to consider the more general one of dog smuggling. Sparks was only moderately helpful. On his travels he had recently encountered several high class dogs that he suspected of being from leading British kennels, but he couldn’t prove it. It remained a suspicion. He hadn’t seen any British dog breeders except occasionally for one or other who had been invited, like him, to judge. The only man who got around as much as he himself was his fellow judge, Percy Pocklington, the general secretary of the Dog-lovers’ League. He didn’t like Pocklington but, well, dog didn’t bite dog, and he didn’t want to speak ill of anyone who had done so much for dogdom.

  Bognor said he’d never believed the aphorism about dogs not biting other dogs. In any case wasn’t it ‘eating’ not ‘biting’?

  Mr Sparks wasn’t interested in semantics. It was 1.30. Surblington was not much more than half an hour if the traffic was fair.

  ‘You suggest,’ he said, trying against every inclination to appear ingratiating, ‘that I should see Mrs Potts about her dead dog; and also grill Percy Pocklington.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case I shall take your advice.’

  Mr Sparks acknowledged the tribute with a thin, humourless smile.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked Bognor, disliking the smile, ‘why aren’t there any dogs here? I mean, surely it’s more appropriate for dogs to be members of the Kennel Club than their masters. I haven’t seen a single dog—or hound since we arrived.’

  Mr Sparks picked up the bill.

  ‘It was good of you to come, Mr Bognor,’ he said. ‘I trust I’ve been of assistance. My regards to Mrs Potts.’

  Bognor drove aggressively to Shepherd’s Bush and then fast down the A40, his progress slowed only by the interminable roundabouts which interrupted his progress every few miles. Past Northolt airport he touched 80 mph which was too fast both for him and his little Mini. He only ever drove like that when he was angry. It was the unpleasant little informer who’d upset him. Mr Sparks had reminded him of the school sneak. However, in this sort of work people like him were tedious and disagreeable necessities. He slowed down. There was no hurry. Mrs Potts was not expecting him because he hadn’t telephoned. He had thought it better to surprise her, though quite why he didn’t know. At the back of his mind there was the feeling that if he’d asked to see her she would have turned him down.

  He found the kennels without trouble. There was a large sign on the main road into Surblington which said ‘Three Corners Kennels—Standard and Miniature Poodles—Boarding. Mrs M. Potts’. Bognor parked the car by driving half-way up the grass verge which ran to the privet hedge. Then he walked to the front door of the dilapidated Victorian villa, brushed aside the honeysuckle which hung limply around the front door and rang the bell. He waited, an unlikely caller for a dog breeder, he reckoned. Normally he would have dressed the part but that morning when he left the flat there had been no question of anything to do with dogs. More likely codes, ciphers, the odd check on the activities of the Iron Curtain trade councillors. Perhaps a straightforward piece of suspected industrial sabotage if he’d been really lucky. Because of this he was still in his charcoal suit. It was bagging slightly at the knees, shining slightly at the elbows, thinning slightly at the cuffs but it was still unmistakably a city suit. He smoothed the back of his head and grimaced at the sparseness of the hair there. Still a few years before he was forty. He must take up squash again. It might not make his hair grow but it would get rid of his paunch. He rang the doorbell again and stepped back to take a look round.

  The house was a shambles. It badly needed re-pointing and the paint was flaking everywhere. On the first floor a window had been broken and the pane had been replaced with corrugated brown paper. Several tiles were missing from the roof and one of the drainpipes had come away from the wall. Bognor could smell drains. He sighed and thought of lighting a cheroot. Cheroots were a new pastime and they affected his breath which was becoming alarmingly short. Monica disapproved. Suddenly as he stood gazing up at the headquarters of Britain’s poodle breeding industry he became aware of an alien noise. He strained to identify it. It appeared to be coming from behind the house. He walked round to the back and was rewarded by an increase in volume. It was singing. Very poor singing, high pitched, querulous, dirge-like. He advanced on its source which seemed to be the orchard to the right of what he now recognized as a kennel block. He traversed the wasteland listening hard now to identify the sounds. Unless he was much mistaken it was ‘Abide with me’ sung by a small choir of tone-deaf ladies. One had a dominating soprano and somewhere in the middle of it all there was a cracked bass. He continued his advance and noticed that the orchard could only be entered through a wrought iron gate of surprisingly ornate design. Over the top of it, picked out in faded gilt were the words:

  The kiss of the sun for pardon,

  The song of the birds for mirth.

  You are nearer God’s heart in a garden,

  Than anywhere else on earth.

  It was undoubtedly ‘Abide with me’. The singing was execrable but the tune was recognizable if only because the human voices were augmented by some dim and crackling organ music. Bognor pushed open the gate and was amazed.

  Twenty-five yards away under a cherry tree of perfect symmetry stood a small group. Three were in overalls with black armbands. One, a lady of considerable bulk, sported an enormous black hat, and a fifth seemed incongruous—snappily dressed in a camel trouser suit, and with long blonde hair flowing over her shoulders. The only man in the group was an elderly agricultural type in heavy boots and braces. He was standing firmly to attention with a cloth cap clasped over his heart. At his feet lay a large wooden box, which Bognor saw as he drew closer had the words ‘Outspan Oranges—with care’ stencilled over it. He had been right about the organ music too. It came from a hand-operated gramophone which had been placed on an upright dining-room chair a little to the right of the tree. By some curious inbred reflex Bognor began to tiptoe. As he did the singing stopped and the blonde glanced in his direction. She noticed him and smiled. Bognor wished he hadn’t worn such an old suit. He felt as if he was playing grandmother’s footsteps and as he had arrived within a few feet of the group he decided to stay where he was.

  The fat lady in the hat, whom he guessed from her shape and demeanour to be Mrs Potts herself, now stepped to the edge of the hole in the ground and, in a voice breaking with emotion, recited:

  ‘In life the firmest friend;

  The first to welcome, foremost to defend;

  Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,

  Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone.’

  Bognor was appalled at the use to which Byron had been put. Lines completed, Mrs Potts signalled to the gardener, who manhandled the orange box clumsily into the hole. This done she produced a large yellow handkerchief and said, barely audibly, ‘Goodbye, Fred, You were a lovely dog,’ then she subsided snivelling into the folds of the handkerchief as the gardener began to shovel earth on the grave. Bognor who felt that he had intruded unforgivably into this scene of private grief hurried back to the wrought iron gate to await the return of the mourners. On his way he noticed several small tombstones, many of them inscribed. ‘In happy memory of my old mate, Bonzo Eglington’, said one, while another, more grandly, proclaimed: ‘Bolislav—a very gallant dog’.

  It was several minutes before the women returned. The gardener had evidently been left behind to finish his job. Wha
t other bizarre rites had been performed Bognor could only guess. The three girls in overalls—one of them presumably Mervyn Sparks’ informant—came first, fresh-faced and looking relieved that the ordeal was over. Mrs Potts and the blonde followed a few paces behind, the younger woman arming the breeder along. As they came to the gate he emerged in a manner which he recognized as being absurdly theatrical but which seemed at the time the only way possible.

  ‘Mrs Potts, I presume,’ he said. ‘Allow me to introduce myself. Bognor of the Board of Trade. I apologize for intruding at a moment of personal distress but …’

  He seemed to come as a shock to Mrs Potts, who drew back in alarm and failed to accept his proffered hand. She had obviously not noticed him earlier. Her face was an unsightly mess of tear-stains and stale make-up. Luckily the blonde was under control. She smiled conspiratorially.

  ‘I’m Coriander Cordingley,’ she said, taking Bognor’s hand and holding it for an instant longer than etiquette required. ‘Mrs Potts has had rather a shock and I was going to make her a cup of tea. Perhaps you’d join us.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bognor fell into step—or rather shuffle—alongside them.

  ‘Did you say Board of Trade?’ asked Miss Cordingley, brightly. She was about thirty, Bognor guessed, and was wearing almost enough make-up to make her look prostitutional. Almost but not quite. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘How frightfully interesting.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor was perplexed. Nobody ever said that about his job. Then before he realized that she was simply being polite he said, ‘What makes you say that?’

  She blushed slightly. ‘You must meet such interesting people.’ Bognor guessed she said that to everyone.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘frightfully interesting.’

  She laughed.

  They had reached the house now and they went in through the back door. The kitchen smelt of rancid fat and bacon rinds. Bognor wrinkled his nose and was pleased to see that Coriander Cordingley did the same. Mrs Potts who had been immersed in lachrymose silence since Bognor’s introduction suddenly became galvanized. She strode to a cake tin surrounded by half-empty jam jars on the sideboard, opened it and removed three-quarters of a Battenburg cake spotted with green mould. This she deposited on a cracked willow pattern plate together with the remains of a packet of Garibaldi biscuits. From the hooks above the cake tin she took three cups, chipped, stained with lipstick and with tidemarks of tea clearly visible an inch below the rim.

  ‘Would you like tea?’ she asked. ‘Or would a drink be better?’

  ‘A drink,’ said Bognor too eagerly, and was relieved when Miss Cordingley said the same.

  ‘Bravo,’ responded Mrs Potts, now much restored. Bognor was upset to see that she did not replace the filthy teacups. Instead she went to the stove, opened the oven and peered in.

  ‘Scotch, brandy or tonic wine,’ she said.

  Bognor opted for whisky while the two women had brandy. The brandy was the same brand that had been administered that morning—Grand Seigneur ten star—while Bognor’s whisky was poured from a bottle marked ‘McCrum’s guaranteed ten-year-old whisky’ and subtitled ‘purveyors of Scottish Whisky to His Majesty the King of Nepal’.

  ‘More comfortable next door,’ said Mrs Potts, taking the comestibles in one hand, her drink in the other and pushing the door open with her bottom. They followed her into a dingy drawing room, darkened by yellowing net curtains and ornamented with large numbers of silver cups. There were photographs everywhere, nearly all of poodles. On an upright piano, however, Bognor noticed one of a statuesque woman in a fox fur and fruit salad hat, standing next to a slight man with a Clark Gable moustache and spats. With a start Bognor realized that the picture was of a younger Mrs Potts with, presumably, Mr Potts. He sat down gingerly on the edge of a fragile Victorian chair with an antimacassar, declining his hostess’s offer of Garibaldi or Battenburg and watched fascinated, as she carved herself a portion consisting of almost half the remaining mildewed cake.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Potts, ‘as I said, Coriander, I’m afraid I’ve no one else for you to paint. I’ll pay you, of course.’

  ‘Oh nonsense, Mrs Potts,’ said Miss Cordingley, ‘I wouldn’t dream of it. As soon as you have another dog like Fred just let me know and I’ll be down in a flash.’

  ‘There’ll never be another dog like Fred,’ said Mrs Potts morosely, ‘he was unique. Not while I live there won’t be anyway.’ She took a mouthful of cake and a noisy slug of Grand Seigneur. ‘Now, young man,’ she turned to address Bognor, who was duly flattered. It was a long time since anyone had called him a young man. The woman was still, he supposed, blinded by grief. ‘What can we do for you? I’m afraid you’ve found us at a sad moment. You may not realize it but that’s not just a dog I’ve lost, it’s my future. I could have retired on the proceeds of that dog. He was a friend, too, I know, but he was worth a thousand times his weight in gold, make no mistake.’

  ‘What about the insurance?’ asked Bognor, trained against his true nature to be suspicious at all times.

  ‘Pshaw,’ said Mrs Potts waving dismissive fingers, thick as bananas. She drained her cup and went out of the room.

  ‘Do you paint … er … dogs?’ asked Bognor, smiling at Miss Cordingley.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is that lucrative?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ she said. ‘Not so much the money, but the travel and the expenses. I’ve been all over the world painting dogs.’

  ‘Do you like dogs?’

  She made a face. Mrs Potts returned with the Grand Seigneur and the McCrum’s. Without asking she refilled all their cups.

  ‘Well,’ repeated Mrs Potts. ‘You don’t look as if you’ve come to buy a dog. I should say you’re more of a cat person. Or even a parrot person. Do you keep parrots?’

  Bognor shook his head. ‘I’m here on business,’ he said.

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘It can’t be the licence. I’ve done that. And it wouldn’t be the car. Is it the VAT?’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘it’s about dogs. As a matter of fact it’s about Whately Wonderful.’

  For a moment she had seemed slightly tipsy. Now she was sober again, and very on edge. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I heard the dog was dead …’

  ‘How? No one else knew. It only happened this morning. How could you possibly …?’

  ‘We at the Board of Trade …’ Bognor was about to launch into his long and frankly pompous spiel about the all-seeing intelligence network at the Board’s disposal, but Mrs Potts prevented him.

  ‘That bloody kennelmaid,’ she said explosively, ‘I’ll have her for this. I told the little bitch to keep her trap shut.’ She drank more brandy and Bognor realized that although she was upset about the dog there was more to it than that. She was frightened.

  ‘It doesn’t honestly matter how I knew,’ he said, gently, ‘and it may be irrelevant. The point is, you see, that I’m investigating a dog smuggling business and my informant suggested that there might possibly be some connection between the sudden death of your dog and …’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped at him. ‘How the hell could there be? What are you talking about?’

  ‘All right,’ said Bognor, ‘I admit it seems far-fetched. But I wonder if you’d mind telling me precisely what it was your dog died of? I understand he was a young healthy dog. Isn’t it rather unusual for a dog like that to suddenly drop dead?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘The dog just died and that’s all there is to it. It was a virus.’

  ‘What sort of virus?’

  ‘You obviously don’t know the first thing about dogs. It could have been any sort of virus.’ Bognor knew she was bluffing. He might not know anything about dogs but he had acquired a certain knowledge of human nature.

  ‘What exactly did the vet say?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The vet wasn’t called. As far
as I’m concerned the vet’s job is to look after live dogs and keep them healthy. Once a dog’s dead it’s of no interest to him and he’s of no use to it.’

  Bognor sighed. He wished he knew more about dogs.

  ‘Isn’t it usual to call the vet if a dog dies in these circumstances?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re being so suggestive. There weren’t any “circumstances”. The dog died. No, I don’t call in the vet when a dog dies. I see no reason for it.’

  He was stymied.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Was the dog insured?’

  She bridled. Whether it was because of real annoyance or whether it was part of her act he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Do you have any authority for asking these questions?’

  He produced his ID card and she examined it suspiciously, turning it over a couple of times and screwing her eyes up to read the small print.

  ‘That doesn’t give you any authority,’ she said eventually, ‘it just says who you are. What do you think, Coriander?’ She passed the card across to Miss Cordingley who glanced at it and said with the tone of one who doesn’t expect her advice to be contradicted: ‘It doesn’t give Mr Bognor any authority, Ailsa, but in view of who he is and who he works for I think it might be nice to help.’

  Mrs Potts appeared to consider. Bognor was grateful to Coriander. He had almost forgotten she was there. She’d been very quiet while he was interrogating.

  Eventually Mrs Potts appeared to concede. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll help in any way I can, but I really don’t see what connection there can possibly be between Fred and this smuggling nonsense.’

  Bognor smiled ingratiatingly. Mrs Potts, who had polished off the whole of the Battenburg cake, began to make inroads on the Garibaldis. She was undoubtedly agitated.

  ‘For a start,’ he said, ‘is this smuggling thing feasible? For instance, if you could have taken Whately Wonderful to foreign dog shows or mated him with foreign dogs, would that have made much difference to you financially?’