Die Like a Dog (6 page)

It was one o'clock in the morning when Judson stumbled up the stairs of his house and, if he read his wife's note on his bed about the dog's escape, he ignored it. No one saw him until nine o'clock when Ellen Evans, prompt to the minute this exciting day, was cleaning in the drawing room. As the vacuum whined down the scale she looked up to see Judson in the doorway, holding the plug.

‘Morning, Ellen.' He was in a good mood, and that surprised her.

‘
Good
morning, sir. I'll bring your coffee this minute.'

She bustled to the kitchen where Gladys was already putting bread in the toaster.

‘Any sign of the dog?' he asked as Ellen placed the coffee pot in front of him.

‘None, sir. Evans was out most of the night.'

‘No doubt.' He smiled, opening
The Times.
‘Where is he now?'

‘Still searching. He won't stop until he finds Satan.'

‘Send him to me as soon as he comes in.'

She hurried back to the kitchen. ‘He's not bothered,' she whispered to Gladys. ‘I told you not to take on so.'

Gladys nodded wordlessly. Ellen said, through the clatter of her own activity at the sink: ‘That dog'll be getting hungry; shouldn't wonder if he comes slinking into this yard any minute now.'

Gladys's eyes widened but still she said nothing. She basted Judson's eggs, turned down the flame under the pan, glanced at the clock. Her eyes were haunted.

Half an hour later Judson came in the kitchen. He was wearing a lightweight suit, the one he wore for town.

‘Evans not shown up yet?'

‘No, sir.' Ellen was quick. Gladys looked from the suit to her husband's face.

‘I have to go to Liverpool,' he told her. ‘Something's come up.' 

No one mentioned that it was Saturday.

‘When are you leaving, dear?'

‘Before lunch.'

‘I'll go and pack a bag for you.'

‘Just a couple of shirts.'

During this exchange Ellen's movements never faltered. She was scouring the sink and paying scrupulous attention to the corners. Judson regarded her back thoughtfully.

‘Which way did Evans go?'

She straightened. ‘Now that I couldn't say. Will I go out and see if I can find him?'

‘Don't bother.' He was casual, then he grinned. ‘But I'm not hanging about.' It sounded like a promise. Suddenly he turned and strode out of the back door. She craned her neck, squinting sideways through the window above the sink, trying to see which way he went.

‘That's that,' Gladys said when she came back to the kitchen: ‘Oh, he's gone.'

‘He's gone to look for Evans,' Ellen said eagerly. ‘Do you need any help?'

‘Help?'

‘With his packing?'

‘Two shirts?' It was only faintly ironic. ‘It's done. You can go home when you've finished the drawing room, Ellen. I shan't need you until Monday.'

‘It's better I come across. You'll need company.'

‘I shall be out most of the time if that dog isn't found.'

‘Then you need me to run the house and see to your meals. I'll be here to answer the phone too.'

‘Very well. If you like.'

At eleven o'clock – coffee time – Evans came in, and there was fluster and indecision as everyone wondered where Judson was. He came home half an hour later, his step jaunty, his eyes gleaming.

‘Any sign?' he asked as he entered the kitchen.

No, Evans told him, no one had seen the dog.

‘That's a valuable animal,' Judson said. ‘I'll report it to the police.'

‘No one would steal him!' Evans was horrified.

‘No one
could
steal him. What d'you think, Evans? Has he gone right out of the valley, over the mountain, after a bitch?'

‘Hughes Cae Gwyn's bitch were on heat, but Hughes never saw our dog. But someone were shooting yesterday afternoon.'

‘With a dog, d'you mean? A bitch?' Judson spooned sugar into his coffee.

‘No, sir. I did not mean that.'

‘Huh? What are you getting at, man? Speak up.'

Evans glanced at the women, puzzled. Gladys looked resigned but Ellen was tense as a pointer.

‘You may remember, sir,' he said heavily, ‘that threats has been uttered.'

Judson blinked and the sparkle left his eyes. He looked annoyed and ugly. ‘Threats,' he repeated. ‘He'd never dare. None of 'em would.'

‘The dog's not come back,' Evans said, greatly daring himself. They watched him, waiting for an explosion, but he exhaled slowly and his face cleared.

‘You're paranoid, Evans. The dog's after a bitch. But it won't hurt – no, it won't hurt ... Go up and lean on Lloyd a bit, and if you see those two lads, Banks and Owen, a few threats of your own wouldn't come amiss.'

‘It'd come better from you, sir. They respect you.'

Judson nodded carelessly. ‘I'll threaten 'em all right: after the weekend, on Monday. I have to go to Liverpool now on business. I'll be back. I'll leave it in your hands, for the moment. You know what to do if there's trouble. Bring the police in.' He was grinning happily, exuding good humour.

‘Very well, sir.' Evans rose, removing his beret from where he'd tucked it under his epaulette. ‘I'll go up there now and do a bit of leaning.'

The woodlands were scored by paths. He took one that ran from the back of his cottage, zig-zagging steeply to Lloyd's access track. As he emerged from the trees he saw that the man wasn't alone and for one moment he thought he'd caught the boys here as well. Was there anything in those suspicions of the boss's? Could Lloyd be one of
them
? But the second figure moved and he saw the outline of her breasts. He would have liked to pause, to work out how to deal with this unexpected development, but he was afraid they'd catch him hesitating, so he hunched his shoulders, his arms hanging loosely ready for any sudden move, and continued.

They became aware of him at the same time, turning to contemplate his arrival without interest, as if he were a bullock that had strayed up the track. They left the first words to him.

‘Mrs Judson were here yesterday,' he said, without expression. Lloyd was suddenly furious. ‘Haven't you found that bloody dog
yet?
'

‘I understand that you told her you hadn't seen it.'

‘If I'd seen it I'd have shot it, if I'd had a gun with me.'

‘But you didn't,' Seale said.

‘A pity,' Lloyd spat out. ‘I hope someone else has by now.'

‘Perhaps we could examine your weapon,' Evans said silkily and stared as Seale crowed with delight.

‘You know what you can do,' Lloyd growled.

Seale stepped inside the cottage and emerged carrying a shotgun. Lloyd opened his mouth, glanced at her face and said nothing. Evans took the gun suspiciously. He, too, was watching her face. She was amused. He broke the gun, squinted down the barrels, sniffed the breech.

‘You'd have cleaned it since, of course.'

Lloyd said nothing. Seale was grinning broadly.

‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, Lloyd?'

‘Oh no!' He shook his head in disbelief. ‘You've been watching so much telly you've got square eyes.' His face hardened. ‘Did
he
send you here? I don't believe it. Why wouldn't he come himself?'

‘Mr Judson,' Evans said with dignity, ‘has business to attend to in Liverpool.' Seale turned interested eyes on him. ‘He intimated that it was likely you knew more than had been divulged so far at this point in time.'

Lloyd grimaced in disgust.

‘So he said: “Go and lean on them”,' Seale observed.

‘He didn't mean you,' Evans said quickly, and handed her the shotgun. ‘Although this isn't the first time you handled firearms, is it?'

‘No.' She studied him. ‘What are you going to make of that? Usually it's rifles,' she added when he didn't reply. ‘“Lean on
them"?
Who's “them”?'

‘The local hooligans.'

‘Good for you.' She turned and went into the cottage.

‘Right,' Lloyd said. ‘Let's see your dust. We're leaving and I don't want you skulking around this place while I'm away.'

‘It's our place,' Evans pointed out with a thin smile.

‘That's immaterial. It's my possessions inside. That's why I don't want you hanging around.'

Seale looked out. ‘And that goes for my tent too. Just remember I'm under your master's protection.'

Evans stood for a moment, sucking his teeth, then he walked away. I'll get him, he thought, I'll get him if it's the last thing I do – and that dirty little whore with him.

‘I had heard rumours,' Ted Roberts said, filling Miss Pink's glass from the decanter. ‘But you know how people gossip, and one must admit that in these times, when a man has stuff worth stealing in his house, and he owns guard dogs, he's not averse to spreading the story himself that they're savage. Where's the deterrent in a dog without teeth?'

‘There is that.'

They had met at a hotel on a lake below a stony pass. Thirty miles from the Bridge Hotel, Miss Pink had confessed to a sense of outrage as she explained why she was afraid to take a walk in the area she had chosen for a week's holiday. Ted Roberts, retired solicitor, old friend and climbing partner, had listened with sympathy but not without objectivity.

‘What are the rumours you've heard?' she asked.

His foxy face sharpened further as he hitched his chair closer and, their backs turned to the distant bar, they gazed through the open window to the boulder fields beyond the water. But neither was interested in the view.

‘Not only dogs,' he said. ‘Women.'

She was disappointed. ‘That's obvious. I've been there only two days and he's chasing a new arrival while a lady who is either his last conquest or feels that she should have been, is beside herself with bad temper. His wife is Resignation on a monument.'

‘It was Patience on the monument.'

‘If Gladys Judson has anything to wait for, it will be useless to her by the time she gets it.'

‘Meaning Judson?'

‘Blood pressure if ever I saw it. Drinking heavily, riding hard, violent quarrels, frenetic sex.'

‘You shock me. How do you know that?'

‘He doesn't choose placid women, with the exception of his wife. Anna Waring – you know her?'

‘That's ancient gossip.'

‘Evidently that was what you were about to tell me. She's violent, but the new girl, the one he's chasing, is too much for him altogether: vital, confident, strong and, I would say, totally amoral.'

‘Really?' He regarded her with interest. She told him about the slide show, about Seale's gypsy life-style. ‘In that valley she appears exotic,' she murmured, ‘and yet she gives you the impression that she feels herself quite at home. As I said: confident. Of course she's too young to have any qualms about alienation.'

‘Innocent.'

‘Innocent? Well, yes, but it's an animal innocence, not human. I think Maggie Seale is able to take care of herself. I've seen men of Judson's stamp make a dead set at young women and I've known that ghastly dilemma: whether to issue a warning or hold my peace. With Seale I don't feel that. I've been in her company only for short periods but when men show up I've found myself standing back and watching as if I were a spectator – uninvolved.'

‘This sounds like trouble for Anna Waring.'

‘It is. Significant that you don't say trouble for Gladys Judson. Poor woman.' Miss Pink sipped her sherry, thinking of all those down-trodden, second-class citizens of whom she and Maggie Seale had no part. She eyed the decanter with approval. How pleasant to find a civilised hotel again. A few places will still leave the bottle on the table but how many take the trouble to decant?' She sighed for a vanished era. ‘And public quarrels ... although they didn't realise I was there. Violent scenes are fascinating. So difficult to retreat. One experiences no emotion at the time, apart from trepidation, but every movement, every nuance of expression can be recalled. Not that there were nuances; it was raw, naked aggression.'

‘Melinda, you have had three sherries; your mind is playing leap-frog.'

The machinery checked, rolled back to an intersection and set off again on the right track. Without umbrage she continued: ‘I was in my room after breakfast trying to decide what to do. The fact that I couldn't walk – safely – made me ridiculously angry. I wondered if the police had been told that the dog was loose and I went downstairs to ask Waring. The big river room was dim but the lights were on behind the bar and they didn't see or hear me. I came in the door and Anna had just turned to Waring and she said, so coldly that at first I didn't realise it was a quarrel: “It was decided weeks ago.” Waring said: “Yeah?” and it was the contempt in that one word that warned me. I hesitated, and then Anna lost control. She was going away with “him” that day; it was all arranged, Waring could divorce her, she'd had enough. ... By this time, of course, I was retreating –'

‘Not very fast, I'll be bound.'

She ignored him. ‘It was hackneyed. One's heard it over and over again in old films ... I've written the kind of thing myself, but not for a long time – but it sounds the height of melodrama when you hear it in reality for the first time, and said with obvious sincerity. She may not have been speaking the truth but she was certainly sincere. As I went up the stairs I heard the sound of a slap and the tirade stopped. Cut off. I'm afraid my sympathy is largely with Waring. He's a good inn-keeper.'

‘Did she leave the pub?'

‘I don't know. The scene made up my mind for me. I drove away and rang you from the public telephone box. Now what are we going to do about this wretched dog? Obviously, the situation can't be left as it is.'