Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 3

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t be practical?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Quarantine mainly. But other countries have their own regulations.’

  ‘Have you heard anyone mention anything about a smuggling ring like this? No one’s approached you, for instance?’

  Bognor was aware of hesitation. The two women didn’t even look at one another, but he was certain that something passed between them. What? He couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t psychic, but there was something there.

  It was Coriander who answered. ‘As I said, I travel about an awful lot,’ she said, ‘and I just don’t see how it could be done. Customs are awfully strict.’

  ‘If you can smuggle arms and illegal immigrants you can presumably smuggle dogs. I mean you can put little dogs into handbags.’

  ‘Oh really, Mr Bognor, I thought you were being serious.’ Miss Cordingley laughed patronizingly.

  ‘But neither of you have ever heard of it happening?’

  They both shook their heads.

  ‘I’ve sold abroad,’ said Mrs Potts. ‘The best dog I ever had, apart from Fred, went to a Count in Florence. He paid £3000 and never showed him. Nor bred from him either. Just took him round the town to show off to his mistresses and his wife’s lovers.’

  Bognor finished his whisky. It was obvious to him that they were both lying and that he wasn’t going to get any further that day. He continued to ask questions in a perfunctory manner, neither expecting nor obtaining any satisfactory answers. After five minutes he rose to leave.

  ‘Can I offer you a lift?’ he said to Coriander.

  She smiled. ‘It’s very kind of you, but I have a return ticket and Ailsa and I still have a few things to talk about. But if I can help …’ She took a card from her handbag. ‘Let’s meet for a drink. I really think you’re wasting your time, but the drink would be nice anyway.’ Once more she held his hand a fraction longer than necessary.

  Mrs Potts was more abrupt.

  ‘Next time you come,’ she said, ‘I hope it will be to buy a poodle. Can’t afford to fiddle about with tomfool stories about smuggling.’ He hardly listened, mesmerized instead by the crumb of marzipan which had stuck to her chin.

  2

  HE WAS EARLY BACK to the flat and there was no sign of Monica. They had lived together for as long as he cared to remember now and their routines were at least as established as those of most married couples. He seldom returned before 6.30. She was always there to greet him, but had usually only been home for a few minutes. She took jobs when and where she felt like it, but always made a point of being out in the afternoons. He supposed that one day they would marry but somehow with time and familiarity the prospect receded rather than advanced.

  The view over Regent’s Park was idyllic on an early summer’s day like this. All leaves were lime green with youth, untainted with age or city grime. He stood for a moment looking south, then went to the kitchen to make coffee, forgetting, briefly, the tedious business of dogs. After the kettle had boiled and he’d spooned into a cup one and a half teaspoons of brown granules he took the resulting concoction to the drawing room and sprawled full length on the faded sofa. It was nice to be able to put one’s feet up. He sipped at the steaming liquid and perused the last edition of the evening paper. There had been an armed bank robbery in a suburban high street and the President of the United States had told another lie. The stock market had had a bad day and so had the English cricket team. Nothing ever changed. He turned to the back page where the home news stories lived and immediately read a headline which set the adrenalin flowing.

  ‘Duchess in Rabies Scare’ was the headline. The story underneath was simple. ‘An outbreak of rabies is feared at the home of Dora, Duchess of Dorset, following the death there of one of the Duchess’s Dandie Dinmont terriers. A spokesman for the Duchess confirmed that the dog, Champion Piddlehampton Peter, had been destroyed early today after apparently going berserk and attacking one of the Duchess’s kennelmaids. The spokesman refused to comment on the suggestion that rabies could be involved but local medical authorities have appealed to all those who may have been in contact with the kennels to come forward for anti-rabies injections.’

  There followed a note from ‘Our Medical Correspondent’ describing the inexorable agonies of death from hydrophobia, and emphasizing that unless injections were given soon after a bite from a rabid dog, the disease was virtually incurable. Under that there was another note from ‘Our Pets Correspondent’ giving a brief résumé of the quarantine restrictions and referring to the last outbreak of rabies, in Camberley. And finally ‘Our Social Correspondent’ appended a note about the Duchess—the Dowager Duchess—who had bred Dandie Dinmonts for more than twenty years with enormous success. She had also at an earlier stage in her career piloted a Sopwith Camel under Clifton Suspension Bridge and won a hundred guineas by dancing naked round the pond in the middle of Tom Quad, Christchurch, during the Commem Ball of 1921.

  Bognor was suitably appalled. Rabies, he now knew, could only be imported from abroad and it could only be passed on by animals—particularly dogs. That meant one of three things. First that the Duchess of Dorset had imported a Dandie Dinmont and somehow the quarantine restrictions had proved inadequate. That had happened in the Camberley case. The rabid dog had actually been in quarantine kennels approved by the Ministry but the period had not been long enough. Regulations had now been tightened but it was conceivable that something of the sort might have happened. The second possibility was that the kennels had been visited—unknown to them—by a rabid visitor, or by an animal capable of carrying the disease. Both of these exempted the Duchess from any blame, but the third was bad. It seemed most likely to Bognor that the Duchess’s dog had contracted the disease abroad and somehow returned home without going into kennels for the statutory period. That made the Duchess not only blameworthy but criminally liable, too. He stood up and began pacing the room. Could there be any connection between this death and that of Whately Wonderful and if so what? Had Whately Wonderful died of rabies? He wondered if, on the strength of his half-formulated suspicion, he could order the dog’s exhumation and a post mortem. And if it had died from rabies what would it prove?

  He was struggling with the ramifications of the case when the phone rang. Instinctively he knew that it would be Parkinson and that it would be bad news. Parkinson had never yet rung when there was good news to communicate. As usual he was right.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you, Bognor,’ said Parkinson. Bognor gulped. It must indeed be bad news if Parkinson was prefacing it with a warning like that. He waited.

  ‘It’s about Mervyn Sparks.’

  ‘I had lunch with him.’

  ‘So I gather. He’s in hospital now.’

  ‘Christ. It’s not food poisoning …’ Bognor’s instinct for self-preservation invariably got the better of him in moments of stress.

  He could feel the exasperation in Parkinson’s voice when he replied.

  ‘I thought you might have realized what it might be. Haven’t you read this evening’s papers?’

  ‘Yes, but …’

  ‘He has rabies.’

  ‘Good God. But how?’

  ‘I’ve just come from the hospital. They let me talk to him briefly. He had been to the Duchess of Dorset’s and he was bitten by one of her bloody dogs.’

  ‘But surely he got an injection?’

  ‘Not even anti-tetanus. Let alone a rabies jab. It was only a little bite. It never occurred to him.’

  ‘But, good lord, he’s supposed to be an expert.’

  ‘Even experts are fallible. After all, if you were given a small nip by a terrier in the middle of Dorset you wouldn’t assume you were about to contract rabies. This was Piddlehampton, not Karachi.’

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘The doctors say he has a few more hours. No more. He’s in intensive care now. There’s nothing they
can do.’

  Bognor was silent, remembering his unpleasant lunch. He hadn’t liked Mr Sparks in the least, and Mr Sparks clearly hadn’t liked him. Even so.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, unable to think of anything more appropriate. He was sorry too. Not quite as desolated as he might have been, but still sorry.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Parkinson was abrupt. ‘Get off your arse and get down to the Duchess’s. Fast.’

  Bognor thought for a moment. ‘If it’s all the same to you … sir,’ he said, with a mixture of servility and insolence, ‘I’d prefer to go via Surblington.’

  ‘Where?’ Parkinson was irritated, but less so when Bognor had told him of the day’s events. ‘Get the corpse dug up,’ he said, ‘and we’ll have the bloody thing examined. If it was rabies the woman’s in trouble.’

  They exchanged goodbyes and Bognor went to make more coffee.

  It was ten minutes before Monica arrived. She had got a temporary job helping a friend in a new art gallery and there had been a problem with some sculptures which had been missing for days before finally being located at Didcot.

  ‘Dogs!’ she said in dismay, when Bognor told her. ‘Whatever next?’ She put down a bulging string bag, filled with extravagant goodies from Robert Jackson and the Berwick Street Market, took off her scarf and shook out her hair in front of the glass. Bognor made comparisons with Coriander Cordingley. Monica had lost weight recently but she was showing her age. There were lines on the face where last year there had been none. Still she was undoubtedly much, much nicer than Coriander Cordingley, even if she was five years older and, Bognor had to face it, a little on the plain side.

  ‘Aunt Flo used to breed borzois,’ she said, combing out her hair. ‘I got steak for tonight. Ghastly price. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Aunt Flo. Borzois? They’re the aristocratic looking ones with long noses, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But Aunt Flo was common looking with a little snub nose.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘I thought dogs were supposed to look like their owners.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Anyway it’s the other way round. Can I have a drink?’

  He mixed two gins and tonic, while telling her more.

  ‘Don’t you think you ought to have a rabies injection?’ she asked when he’d finished.

  ‘No one’s bitten me.’

  ‘You can get it from saliva, I think. Has anyone licked you?’

  ‘Dog or person?’

  ‘Dog, stupid. The worst you get from people is glandular fever.’

  ‘No. Try to be serious for a minute. If Sparks dies—and it sounds as if he’s going to—do you think they could charge the old Duchess with murder?’

  Monica looked thoughtful.

  ‘Not murder, but I wouldn’t be surprised by manslaughter.’

  ‘That’s rather what I thought.’

  They sat and stared into their drinks. They’d lived in the flat for eight years now—at least Bognor had. Monica had moved in by degrees and it was only in the last few months that she’d finally given up the pretence of a place of her own. It had grown shabby recently, but the shabbiness made it comfortable.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Bognor, ‘if the Duchess realized the dog was rabid when it bit Sparks.’

  ‘That would be murder,’ said Monica.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think it would.’

  First thing next morning he dropped into the local surgery for an anti-typhoid and cholera injection. It was a routine jab—a six-monthly precaution against the exotic trip to typhoid-ridden tropics. A trip on which, incidentally, Parkinson steadfastly refused to send him.

  Later, on his way to Surblington, he called at the Kennel Club. Just inside the entrance, on the left, there was a window marked ‘Enquiries’. He showed his card to the man behind it and as usual it produced the desired effect. The man became almost obsequious.

  ‘I’m afraid I have a curious request and it may take up a lot of your time,’ said Bognor. ‘But I assure you it is important. I know how busy you must be.’

  The minion smiled and nodded. ‘Anything I can do, sir. I’m only too happy to oblige.’

  ‘Good,’ said Bognor, taking a deep breath and asking, ‘I simply want to know if any Dandie Dinmont has won a prize in a foreign dog show in the last few weeks. And if you find one, could you establish as many details about it as possible—the name of the owner, the name of the judge, the organizing committee, anything at all.’

  The Kennel Club man betrayed no reaction whatever. ‘Dandie Dinmont,’ he said slowly. ‘I presume it would have to be quite a big prize. Best of Show, I mean. And a big show at that?’

  ‘I should think so, yes.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said. ‘We have thirty-five foreign associates. I’ll check through their latest reports and let you know.’

  It was mid-morning before he reached Three Corners. The traffic was heavy and he had a lot on his mind. He wondered if Sparks had died in the night and what sort of welcome awaited him at the Duchess of Dorset’s. Occasionally he remembered Coriander Cordingley. There was something slightly strange about her. He parked the car on the verge again and on getting out was immediately assailed by the smell of meat, cooking. From the kennels came a yelping which he judged to be the pre-prandial cries of hungry dogs. He accordingly walked straight to the kennels and was rewarded by the sight of Mrs Potts supervising the catering. Her three kennelmaids were dispensing dried biscuit and steaming meat. The biscuit came from a sack, the meat from a black, gravy-stained vat.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Potts,’ he said with a cheerfulness he did not feel. The stench was horrid. The voluminous dog breeder turned slowly and peered at him with mild hostility.

  ‘Good morning, young man. It’s feeding time.’

  ‘So I see. What are they having?’

  ‘Meat and biscuit. And seaweed.’

  ‘Seaweed?’

  ‘Seaweed. I’ll be with you in a minute or two. Do you want to buy a poodle this time?’

  He shook his head and watched as she waddled down the path between the kennels and runs. There was little consistency about the buildings which had obviously been erected at different times. Some were of wood, some of corrugated iron and some of concrete blocks. The size of the runs varied too. After studying them Bognor decided that this was due to the different size or number of dogs in each compartment. In some there was only one dog. When this was so it was usually a scrupulously groomed poodle, presumably the pride and property of Mrs Potts herself. In some runs, however, up to a dozen were closeted together but when this happened the dogs were an assortment of breeds, many of which Bognor did not recognize. These were presumably outside dogs whose owners had left them at Three Corners while they went on holiday.

  All the animals were voraciously hungry, gulping down the smelly meat and anaemic biscuit as if it were steak and chips. Bognor suspected it was horsemeat from the knacker’s yard.

  Eventually, when she’d finished dishing up, Mrs Potts was able to give Bognor her undivided attention. She seemed to have all the self-confidence her bulk suggested but beneath it Bognor was not so certain.

  ‘Not more of this smuggling nonsense, I hope,’ she said, a little too brightly.

  ‘You’ve seen what’s happened at the Duchess of Dorset’s?’

  ‘I’ve read the newspapers. You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? How could one of Dora’s Dandies get rabies?’ Her face folded into an apology of a smile which vanished as quickly as it had arrived. ‘And how am I connected with that anyway?’

  Bognor shrugged. ‘I can’t be sure, but in the circumstances we can’t take risks. Therefore I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to have your corpse dug up. We want to do a post mortem.’

  ‘And what do you expect to find?’

  ‘What caused its death.’

  They were still standing in the middle of the kennel area, Mrs Potts’ feet w
ide apart, a heavy pail on one elbow and her other hand resting where, on a conventionally proportioned person, one might have found a hip. Bognor glanced round at the dogs, still chewing over the last of their feed.

  ‘The rest of your animals look quite healthy,’ he said. ‘Funny that none of them have contracted poor Fred’s virus.’

  ‘Fred was in a place of his own. Isolated.’

  She was remarkably truculent. Bognor wondered if he’d made a mistake. At the moment she didn’t give the impression of someone harbouring a guilty secret.

  ‘Would you mind?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Having the body exhumed.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’

  ‘Do you have the authority? You’re not Ministry of Agriculture. Or police.’

  Bognor thought of bluffing but instead said, ‘No. But I can get it if you force me.’

  She shrugged and her whole body wobbled in the gesture of resignation.

  ‘Carry on,’ she said. ‘Do you want to take him away with you?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Again she shrugged, then began to waddle up the path towards the house, calling out at regular intervals: ‘Andrews … Andrews … Andrews.’ After thirty seconds of this shouting, the elderly agriculturalist who Bognor had seen at yesterday’s funeral emerged from behind a potting shed, doing up his flies.

  ‘Morning, M’m,’ he said, embarrassed. ‘Morning, sir.’

  ‘Mr Bognor here,’ said Mrs Potts, gesturing at Bognor dismissively, ‘wants to take Whately Wonderful away for an examination. Would you please dig him up again.’

  Andrews made a gesture of salute, returned to the potting shed, entered and re-emerged a minute later with a spade. The three of them set off in the direction of the cemetery.

  ‘Do you always bury your dogs in such style?’ asked Bognor as they passed through the gate with its gilt doggerel about God’s heart and the garden.

  ‘How would you put your friends to rest, Mr Bognor?’ asked Mrs Potts.