Let Sleeping Dogs Die (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 6

  ‘Now,’ said the Duchess when they’d fought their way through the main course. ‘Tinned peaches or fresh oranges?’

  All opted for oranges and they were brought in, in a delicate silver fruit basket. Bognor’s orange had ‘Outspan’ stamped on it. It jogged his memory which had been flagging under the physical assault of his injection and the gastronomic assault of dinner.

  ‘Outspan,’ he said very deliberately. ‘Do you buy in bulk, your Grace?’

  ‘What an extraordinary question. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Just idle curiosity,’ he said. This time he was aware that he had alerted them both. He was almost certain now that the Duchess had been burying the orange box when he arrived for dinner and fairly certain that the orange box contained the remains of Fred. He wondered what the cake tin in his boot contained.

  ‘We’re having a post mortem done on Ailsa Potts’ dead dog,’ he said, trying to provoke a response. ‘It’ll be interesting to see what it shows.’ Nothing happened. Both women muttered a neutral ‘yes’, but it was said with self-satisfaction. He was convinced now, but he still couldn’t understand why they should go to such lengths to protect Mrs Potts. If the dog could be proved to have had rabies that would be Mrs Potts’ problem, unless, of course, they were afraid she’d give away the secrets of the smuggling network. Always assuming … he groaned inwardly. It would be easier to make a list. As soon as things began to get complicated he liked to unravel them on paper. Otherwise they invariably stayed ravelled. He was not by nature methodical.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked the Duchess.

  It was lukewarm when it arrived but Dora announced that there was good brandy in the drawing room and they retraced their steps. This time the Duchess took one of the candlesticks and guided them with it. It was a feeble guttering light but enough to see by.

  ‘Are you feeling awful?’ whispered Coriander.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Never mind. We can go soon. I’ll show you those sketches of Dora.’

  Normally he’d have been delighted. Such obvious sexual advances seldom came his way. With a slight sense of remorse he wondered if Monica had gone out for the curry.

  The brandy was good. He swilled it round his mouth and hoped it would prove medicinal. His pains were appalling. They encouraged him to make further mischief.

  ‘I hear,’ he said, ‘that Dandie Dinmonts are beginning to take off abroad.’

  ‘Oh?’ The Duchess was a little too innocent. ‘I’ve heard no such thing.’

  ‘I understand a Dandie Dinmont was Best of Show in Bogota and at the Great Mid-Western.’

  ‘Really,’ said the Duchess. ‘I’m afraid Our Dogs has very little foreign news. Besides the print is too small. I simply can’t read it.’

  ‘You’re very well informed,’ said Coriander. She sounded distinctly frigid. ‘I thought you didn’t know anything about dogs.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he said, ‘but I’m finding out.’

  He braced himself. He didn’t feel up to a row but he couldn’t leave without having made some effort.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to seem boorish, your Grace, but the Kennel Club were very surprised indeed that Dandie Dinmonts had won those two shows. And your dog is suspected of having died of rabies. Isn’t it just possible that it was your own dog that actually won two prizes?’

  ‘Oh really.’ The Duchess was obviously angry, though he wasn’t sure whether or not it was contrived.

  ‘I’ve already told you,’ she continued, ‘I haven’t left the country for years. I can show you my passport.’

  ‘They don’t stamp passports these days.’

  ‘You need a visa for America and I don’t have one. What is more my passport’s expired.’

  ‘That’s all very well but I wasn’t suggesting that you won the prizes. I think your dog may have been in Cairo and Bogota but I don’t suppose you were for a minute. That would give the whole thing away—not,’ he added hastily, ‘that I’m suggesting you were involved. Much more likely that the dog was kidnapped. The man who showed it was Edgar J. Eagerly, so I should imagine your presence would be entirely superfluous.’

  ‘You really have done a lot of homework.’ It was Coriander. Her voice was light and patronizing. ‘But to an objective outsider the idea does seem rather preposterous.’

  ‘Who said anything about your being an objective outsider?’

  The pains in his stomach were making him almost too aggressive. He recognized it and tried to calm himself.

  ‘What I mean is that you have shown a peculiar facility for cropping up in places where I am taken by suspicion. What’s more,’ he felt himself become indiscreet but was unable to stop, ‘I believe that you and Ailsa Potts dug that dog up after I’d seen you burying it, and that you brought it down here in its orange box to prevent our conducting a post mortem on it.’

  ‘If that’s what happened, what are you having your post mortem done on at the moment?’ she asked. ‘You said you were having one done. What did you exhume?’

  ‘God knows,’ said Bognor, ‘But I’m jolly sure it wasn’t Fred.’

  ‘All right then, if you’re right and for some reason best known to you I dug up the corpse and brought it down to Dora’s, where is it now?’

  He had to admire her poise. The only indication that she might be losing her cool were her nipples which were heaving quite alarmingly under her chiffon blouse.

  ‘Outside in the flowerbed where you buried it before dinner,’ he said, grimly aware, despite his throbbing arm and stomach, that he was sounding like some Victorian parlour game.

  ‘All right then, go and get it,’ said Coriander, now allowing herself to appear irritated.

  ‘Children, children,’ shouted the Duchess, so loudly that the dogs began to bark. ‘This is most unseemly. May I suggest, with the wisdom of years that we sleep on the matter before it becomes any more ridiculous and acrimonious.’

  Simon and Coriander glowered at each other. The Duchess poured out more brandy. They still glowered. Then Coriander broke into a ravishing smile.

  ‘Dora’s quite right,’ she said. ‘Let’s be friends. So much more attractive. Anyway, I am tired. I think I am going back to the Dorset Arms.’

  She drained her brandy with a flourish and Bognor did the same, though without the flourish. The Duchess looked relieved. Bognor felt defeated.

  Back at the hotel, which he and Coriander reached in convoy, they entered together.

  ‘Are we going to have that drink?’ she asked, in the hall.

  ‘Honestly,’ he said, ‘normally I’d like nothing better, but I really do feel bloody.’ That was true. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I’m going to go straight to bed.’ That was not true.

  To his surprise she kissed him. Quite lightly but with a definite suggestion that, should he wish, there might be more to follow.

  ‘Good night then,’ she said. ‘Some other time perhaps. I have a feeling we may see more of each other over the next few weeks.’

  Unfortunately he had more work to do. He knew that if he stuck to his promise and insisted on searching for the orange box next morning, then it would not be there. His only chance of finding it was to go back to the Manor now. It was not a happy prospect, but over his years with the Board of Trade he had acquired a stern, unbending sense of duty.

  Upstairs he lay on the bed and waited. He daren’t go to sleep for fear of not waking till next morning. Anyway he doubted whether he would have slept. The pain would have kept him awake. Because he hadn’t expected to stay the night he had no toothbrush, toothpaste, pyjamas, let alone the aspirin which he badly wanted. Nor a book to read. He groaned. It was only just after ten. Luckily the country went to bed early and if he waited an hour he might be able to go to the Duchess’s in safety. It would be best, in the circumstances, if he drove straight back to London after he’d excavated the orange box. The morning could be embarrassing.

  After five minutes staring at the ceiling and alternating between e
xtremes of heat and cold he decided to have a bath. There was new soap and also Badedas. The luxury impressed him and he wondered if there might be some sort of room service. He turned on the hot tap and went to the phone. To his surprise it answered at once and a friendly Dorset burr promised to bring a bottle of aspirins at once. The voice was as good as its word and the drugs appeared in a couple of minutes. He took four.

  The bath was as therapeutic as the aspirins. Too therapeutic. When he woke it was because he was cold and damp and he realized with a shock that he had dozed off under the combined influence of the aspirin and the hot water. Now the water was almost cold and he’d lost the benefit of the exercise. His watch showed that it was half-past eleven, which was a reasonable time for setting out on his expedition. He dressed slowly and swallowed two more aspirins, then went to the window and looked out over the village. There was a full moon which enabled him to see the outline of every house in the place, but there wasn’t an artificial light visible, nor a person. Opening the casement he strained to hear any sound of nocturnal life but there was nothing, not even an owl. He gave a half smile of satisfaction. It was about the first thing that had gone right so far. He wondered if Monica was asleep or if she was worrying about him. Perhaps she’d forgotten him. He was glad she didn’t know what he was up to.

  The hotel was quiet as he crept downstairs in stockinged feet, his suedes held tightly in his left hand. He hoped no night porter would appear since the obvious inference to be drawn was that he was a penniless guest doing a moonlight flit. They’d probably accuse him of stealing an ashtray or some soap.

  The car started first time. It had been parked alongside Coriander’s white Morgan and he was relieved to see that that was still there. That young lady, he hoped, was safely tucked up in bed and fast asleep. For an instant he thought wistfully that he might, under slightly different circumstances have been tucked up with her, but a stab of pain in his arm reminded him of his duty. The moon was absurdly bright and it was quite safe to drive without lights. He did so and kept the car at fifteen miles an hour in second gear. At the disused lodge he pulled over on to the grass and turned off the engine. It would be safer to continue on foot.

  There was a torch in the car but it was so light that he decided to leave it. He had no spade or other implement so, he realized glumly, he would either have to scrabble with his bare hands or find something in an outhouse. Probably bare hands, which would be tiresome, but he doubted whether the orange box would be far below the soil’s surface. He set off, walking down the middle of the drive. He was out of sight of the house and there was no need for undue caution until he reached the bend in the road. At that point he could take to the parkland. The grass was so high that if he crouched he would be invisible. The thought of covering the final three hundred yards at the crouch did not appeal but it was inevitable.

  It was still amazingly quiet. His feet on the remains of the gravel made a noise like a regiment of light infantry and he crossed to the grass at the side of the road near the railings. The air was rich with the smell of animal excrement and wild flowers. He inhaled happily. It was warm too. A little further he half stumbled in a hole, swore in a loud whisper, and startled a sheep which had been asleep a few yards away. It baa-ed an objection, then subsided again. Bognor froze for a minutes and then walked on, more cautiously now. From the direction of the village he heard a car. Some late night reveller returning from a country frolic, no doubt. Or an illicit lover wending his way homewards after a tragic tryst. This was Thomas Hardy country. The engine sounded raw like a racing car. Then just as it reached the end of the drive it slowed to a dull purr for a moment. Bognor frowned and paused. Why had it stopped?

  Just as he turned to watch, he heard the engine roar and the tyres squeal as the machine spun to its right and began to hurtle down the drive. A second later and he would have been caught in the headlights like a trapped rabbit. Instead with lightning reflexes which subsequently amazed him and became a matter for massive self-congratulation he leapt the railings and flattened himself in the long grass. Seconds later the car shrieked past, took the bend ahead on two wheels, steadied itself and bombed on towards the house. He lay still, listening to the retreating vehicle, heard it skid to a stop, and only when the engine had been turned off and the doors slammed did he get to his feet cursing noisily. His stomach felt damp and the smell of dung, which had previously been a pleasantly rural suggestion, was now a painfully overstated fact. He had dived into a cowpat.

  Now he hurried. The moon had shown him that the car was a white sports car and he knew what that meant. Miss Cordingley must have been disturbed by his departure, investigated it and found the Mini missing. She would rightly assume that he had come for the body and her assumptions would have been confirmed by the discovery of his car at the end of the drive. Now she would wake up the Duchess and the two of them would once more unbury the corpse and remove it to another hiding place. He started to run through the parkland, keeping his head well down. Before long he came to an oak and he stood upright and peered round it. He was now only a hundred and fifty yards from the house which was illuminated by the moon so that it seemed almost fluorescent, drained of colour, like the haunted mansion in a very old black and white movie. In front of it he saw the little white Morgan and also, to his surprise and alarm, another car—a nondescript square biscuit tin of the sort that firms issue to their commercial travellers.

  He continued his advance, still grimly aware of the damp stinking patch on his shirt front and the continuing pain of his injection. He had got to within twenty yards of Fred’s flowerbed when the front door opened and three figures emerged. He could only see shapes, but the Duchess and Coriander were easily distinguished if only because of the disparity in their size. The Dandie Dinmonts cavorted at their feet and Bognor swore miserably. The bloody animals would be sure to sniff him out. He remained in a frozen uncomfortable crouch and tried to work out who the third person could be. It was a male figure taller than either of the women and it looked self-possessed. It had one hand in a pocket and the other clasped round a cigarette which glowed bright in the night air. He couldn’t hear what was being said but he could see that Coriander was explaining. Her shoulders heaved up and down and her hands waved to emphasize the force of whatever argument she was propounding. She obviously won it because the man shrugged and turned. The three of them began to walk towards the flowerbed. The two women strode purposefully, the man strolled casually—almost languidly. They stopped at the spot which, Bognor judged, marked Fred’s most recent grave and the man scuffed at the earth with the toe of his shoe. Now Bognor could just make out what was being said.

  ‘He hasn’t got here yet then,’ said the man. ‘My guess is he’ll have turned tail and scuttled for home by now, if he’s as wet as you both say. He’ll have been warned off by Coriander’s flying entrance.’

  Bognor winced and held his breath.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s as wet as he seems,’ said Coriander. Bognor wondered if that was a compliment. ‘I don’t think we should take the risk. I vote we dig the box up again and you can take it away.’

  ‘I think the girl’s right,’ said the Duchess. ‘No point taking any undue risks.’

  The man flicked the stub of his cigarette in Bognor’s direction. It landed about ten yards short of his position.

  ‘We’ll compromise,’ said the man. ‘One more glass of Dora’s exquisite cognac and then, thus fortified, I will perform the exhumation myself.’

  He spoke in an oddly affected way with a drawl and an Oxford accent which were both a little too good to be true. Bognor guessed he had had to work hard at them.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Coriander, ‘one quick glass.’

  They turned to walk back to the house accompanied by the dogs who, mercifully, had not noticed him. Bognor watched the front door slam and gulped. He guessed that if he crouched behind the shrubs in the border he might just be able to perform his excavations without being seen from the house
—even supposing that they bothered to look out. Which he doubted. They seemed very sure of themselves.

  Getting the box back to the car was going to be a problem too, but he would have to face that when he came to it. The instant the door shut he ran to the flowerbed and knelt behind an azalea. It was easy to see even by moonlight where the digging had been done. It was the only earth which had been overturned for years. Everywhere else was solid with flowers and weeds. Immediately he started to scrabble at the ground with his fingers. It was not as hard as he’d feared. The soil was still loosely packed where the Duchess had thrown it back earlier in the day. Within minutes his efforts were rewarded and he felt something solid. He scraped away and managed to distinguish the hard lines of a corner. A little more scraping and he had uncovered the whole of the top of the box. The sweat was pouring down his face now for, injection apart, he had been working much harder than he realized. He paused for breath and looked over towards the Manor. The door was still shut, the light was still on and the curtains were thin. Through them he could just discern shapes. It looked good. With any luck they’d have a second glass. He went back to his work. After a little more scraping he managed to get some purchase on one of the corners, but heave as he might the box remained firmly lodged. He would have to remove more earth. After a few more handfuls he tried again. The box moved a little but it was still wedged too tight. He rocked it to and fro but still it wouldn’t come and he returned to his digging. His fingers ached now, adding to his other discomforts. The aspirin was wearing off and the hot and cold machine-gunning was becoming more persistent. The cowpat on his front was beginning to congeal, caking his skin and amalgamating with the rivulets of perspiration. He found some relief in swearing to himself, and dug ever more furiously. At the next attempt the box moved much more. With a final effort he gave a heave and to his pleasure it came away from the enveloping earth. He fell back into the shrubbery making a crash which he was sure would be heard all over Dorset.