Death at the Dog Read online

  Death at The Dog

  Joanna Cannan

  © Joanna Cannan 1940; new material © The Rue Morgue Press 1999

  Joanna Cannan has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1940 by Victor Gollancz

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER I

  THURSDAY

  As far as business in the lounge bar was concerned, the blackout, thought Eve, spilling a few drops of beer on a soft duster and beginning to polish the shove ha’penny board, was proving disastrous. It was a quarter to nine and, though the public bar was filling up, here the only customer was old Mathew Scaife, glowering over his second double whiskey in the corner seat by the door. Eve was not often sorry for herself; at forty-three she had abandoned extravagant hopes; but tonight she was tired. It was only six weeks since the beginning of the war, but already the blackout shutters of laths and black paper, which Peter had made for the twenty-eight differently shaped windows of the sixteenth-century building, had begun to warp, tear and split where the knots in the wood were. Peter, on leave from his duties as a War Reserve policeman, had only arrived at tea time, and Eve had spent the entire afternoon in the backbreaking, thumb-crushing and exasperating job of repairing the shutters. Her back ached; her ankles ached and her thumbs ached. Scaife had already been pretty offensive; and it did seem hard that, after all the trouble she and her brother had taken to build up a really solid connection, to create in the lounge bar of The Dog a club-like atmosphere, attractive to local people like the Days and the Franklands, which should make them independent of the possibly ephemeral attentions of bright young things from Melchester, this wretched blackout, coupled with petrol rationing, should reduce the usual cheerful evening crowd to one customer and he unwelcome.

  Scaife was the local squire and the largest landowner on this side of the county. His family was one of the oldest in Loamshire, the Chancery Rolls recording in 1103 the receipt of sixteen shillings and eightpence, the scutage of Willielmus Scaife of the manor of Witheridge, while, according to the Pipe Roll, in 1150 Rogero Scaife was fined ten marks for breaches of forest law. In the dim little chancel of the village church reclined the stone effigy of a Scaife crusader, and on neglected headstones in the graveyard you could trace the direct line down to Mathew’s father, John, who died ‘honored and beloved by every station’ in 1874. John Scaife may have been honored and beloved by every station, but his son, emphatically, was not. During the half-century of his stewardship the beautiful Queen Anne mansion, built on the site of the Tudor house destroyed by Cromwell, had decayed into a ruin in which only a few rooms were now habitable; under the noble oaks of the park, pigs routed, rabbits burrowed and thistles and nettles advanced like armies; throughout the estate, tumble-down farms, condemned cottages, derelict barns, tangled hedgerows, rotting fences and pasture humped with molehills and overgrown with thorn bushes bore witness to the decay of agriculture. Scaife wasn’t without knowledge of farming, but he had got his knowledge at a time when a farm laborer’s wage was ten shillings a week; obstinate as a mule, he had refused to move with the times and slowly, inexorably, brutally, the years had beaten him. Now his hand was against every man’s. He was constantly in the Courts to answer for such misdemeanors as allowing horses to stray, permitting the growth of ragwort, supplying milk deficient in fat, omitting to stamp insurance cards and disobeying the regulations of the Pig Marketing Board, while he, in his turn, freely summoned his tenants for nonpayment of rent, prosecuted trespassers, mushroom-gatherers and persons in search of conies. In spite of all that and more, there were men now in the public bar who would, Eve knew, speak up for him. Squire’s orl right if you knows ’ow to take ’im … Sooner ’ave Squire than some of them there jumped-up folks … So does the feudal instinct linger in the hamlets of hedgebound, elm-muffled Loamshire.

  But whatever brief was held for Scaife in the public bar, Eve didn’t want him in the lounge, leering at her women customers, annoying the men, sprawling and snoring over her Tudor Rose cretonnes. His appearance was unappetizing. He wore shapeless suits which smelled of the cowshed; his linen was dirty; he left straggling gray hairs on the cushions in the ‘cozy corner’; his deeply lined face, with its small, bloodshot eyes and out-thrust lower lip like a Hapsburg, gave an impression of morose ferocity. But she had no excuse for refusing to serve him. He was offensive when sober, but after two or three double whiskeys, he would fall asleep and at closing time someone would shake him up and he would go off muttering, walking over a couple of fields to his ruined house and presumably to the ministrations of the wretched old woman — a poor relation, some said, and others, a former mistress — who waited on him. During the last six months he had been less of a problem. His son — Edward, not the impossible Mark — had come home, having, through no fault of his own, lost his job of land agent to Lord Deddington, and Edward seemed a decent young man and the wife he had brought with him a sensible, quiet kind of young woman. Sometimes they came to The Dog and then Eve comfortably felt that she could rely on them to handle any awkward situation. She wished they would come in tonight, for already, with an unpleasant leer at her shining gold-brown hair, the old man had muttered something about fancying fair women. She could cope with him, of course; she could cope, she thought a little wearily, with anybody, but it left a bit of a taste in one’s mouth, and Peter was apt to go off the deep end if he heard of it. And now the old beast was stirring. His slow, bloodshot eyes, that had been fixed on the table, rolled round to her. He pushed forward his glass and muttered, “The same again,” and, “You’re quiet here tonight,” he said as she took his glass and went round behind the bar to fill it.

  Eve answered brightly, “Oh, it’s early yet,” and, bringing his glass back, she went on, “the other bar’s pretty full, considering the blackout.”

  Scaife pulled some change out of his pocket. “It ’ud take more than a dark night to keep ’em away from their beer,” he grumbled. “They’ve got money to burn — everything’s given ’em — education, doctors, dentists, now the dole when they’re out of work, the loafers — and the money that ought to be going back into the land, goes into the brewers’ pockets.” His voice was thick and indistinct, and Eve, without straining to catch the words, made assenting noises. If she neither annoyed nor encouraged him, he might grumble himself into somnolence.

  “ … This blasted government,” muttered Scaife, and “ … this miserable country …” and then the door was thrown open and somebody did come in. Eve, who was polishing a glass, looked up and saw with joy that it was Crescy Hardwick, and it was Crescy in her red Breton trousers and short-sleeved navy-blue jumper, which meant that it was Crescy in one of her good moods. Eve liked Crescy. Most people liked Crescy sometimes, but Eve liked her always, even at those times when it seemed that someone had placed an extinguisher neatly and quietly over the shining spirit and Crescy sat in silence as morose as Mathew Scaife’s or chatted cozily about hens or hairdressing to casual customers, uninteresting matrons or twittering girls, whom young men had driven out from Melchester and quickly tired of. Crescy’s appearance, like her behavior, was unpredictable. Sometimes she would come in dashingly dressed, her face made up, her nails varnished, but she was just as likely to appear in threadbare tweeds, with straws in her hair, grime in her nails and holes in her stockings. These inconsistencies precluded friendship. Dashing pe
ople didn’t like the shabby Crescy; quiet people didn’t like the dashing one. The Highbrow resented her descents from Olympus; the Lowbrow were perplexed by her flights of fancy and the academic wisecracks she exchanged with Adam Day. Only Eve, who had troubles of her own, analyzed a nature passionately in love with life, once and forever disillusioned and still bitterly resenting it. As for the banal conversations, to explain them you had only to read Crescy’s novels. In that queer contrary soul humility persisted. She had kept the common touch.

  It was three years almost to a day since Crescy had first appeared at Witheridge Green. The harvest had been a poor one. Mathew Scaife had dismissed several of his farm hands. Little Bottom Cottage was vacant and Crescy took it, spent a hundred pounds on repairs and a hot water system, and settled down there. It was a white cottage, isolated, standing in a fold of the hills, approachable only by a wagon track leading to the woods beyond, but except for two dogs, three cats and a one-eyed pony, Crescy lived there alone. She was by way of doing her own housework and sometimes it was done and sometimes it wasn’t, she told Eve, but she disliked cooking, and she soon began to drift into The Dog for her lunch of a pork pie or a sausage roll and half a pint of beer. At first she had been utterly uncommunicative, but presently she had told Eve that, for first time in her life, she was living as she would have chosen to live, and another day, talking about knowing oneself, she had remarked that the whole miserable business with Hugo could have been avoided if only she had known earlier what constituted happiness for her. As Crescy wore a wedding ring, Eve assumed that Hugo was her husband, but what the miserable business was and whether Crescy were divorced or not she had never discovered. She was increasingly anxious to know because of Peter. He was six years younger than she was, and, since they had been left motherless when he was quite a child, her affection for him, without being possessive, was protective. Lately, particularly in Crescy’s presence, he had seemed absentminded; he had given people the wrong change, poured out drinks they hadn’t asked for, handed them Players for Goldflake and vice versa; worse still, he had a different face for Crescy and took a grip on his voice before he spoke her name.

  “’Evening, Eve,” said Crescy gaily and, shutting the door behind her, she positively skipped in. “Nobody here? Defeatists!” She swung herself up on one of the high stools at the bar.

  Eve made a hushing face and pointed to Scaife in the corner. “Oh,” said Crescy, and she swivelled round. She had snatched a sausage roll and her mouth was full, but nevertheless she contrived a grimace of disgust at the sight of the squire.

  Scaife, who was sitting with his arms on the table and his head bowed, looked up. “Ah,” he said, “Mrs. What’s-her-name from Little Bottom Cottage. I wanted a word with you. You haven’t answered my letter.” Crescy wrinkled her nose at Eve. She had a small, oval face, which she could contort like india-rubber. With her mop of honey-colored curls and her green eyes, she didn’t look English. People guessed Viennese.

  Taking another sausage roll, she announced to Eve, “That’s elevenpence.” Then she swung round and faced the squire, her green eyes blazing. “I didn’t reply because I couldn’t believe you were sober when you wrote that letter. You can’t turn me out of the cottage. Look what I’ve spent on it!”

  Heavily Scaife shifted his limbs and sat at his ease, leaning against the partition. “I was as sober as a judge when I wrote to you. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I’ve given you a month’s notice to quit and that’s all you’re legally entitled to. You’ve got a copy of the lease. You go back home and look at it, Mrs. What’s-your-name.”

  “I daresay you can do it legally,” said Crescy, speaking as though legally didn’t matter much to her. “But it’s a dirty thing to do after what I’ve spent and what I’ve done to the garden and everything. Besides, what’s your reason? I’ve always paid my rent, haven’t I?”

  “Oh yes,” said Scaife, “you’ve always paid your rent, but what have you paid? Fifteen bob a week. Now, when I’ve got you out, I can shift some furniture down there from the Hall and let the place furnished for eight guineas a week to people who’ve run away from London on account of the air raids.”

  Crescy said, “You bloody profiteer.”

  Eve said, “I don’t think that’s very patriotic of you, Mr. Scaife. I don’t think it’s very wise of you either. People will get to know about it … ”

  “Let ’em,” said Scaife. “Clack, clack, clack. 'They talk about me enough already. What do I care?”

  “I never … ” began Crescy, but Eve interrupted her.

  “If I were you, Crescy, I wouldn’t say any more. I should go into Melchester tomorrow and see a solicitor.”

  Scaife gave a derisive snort.

  Crescy, all her brightness gone, turned round, put her elbows on the bar and her head in her hands. “Solicitors aren’t any good,” she muttered. “I’d like to murder him. Oh, Eve, it’s my home.”

  “Rotten luck,” whispered Eve. “Finish up your beer, Crescy, and have a whiskey and soda to pull you together. After all, there are other places.”

  “They wouldn’t,” said Crescy, “be the same. There’s the orchard for One-Eye — it’s almost impossible to get a small place with enough land. Besides, you can’t get a cottage now. They’re all let to London people. I’ve been planning murder ever since I got his letter. I’d like to kill him, the bloody old profiteer.”

  Eve was silent. She sympathized deeply with Crescy, but all the same, this wasn’t, she considered, the way to take a blow. Not with an outcry to Allah or any complaining was the way one should bear the bludgeonings of fate; besides, Crescy, over forty, was old enough to know that tout lasse, tout casse and, mercifully, tout passe. Dignity certainly wasn’t Crescy’s strong point. She was taking her whiskey like a lamb, but she was still muttering. “Filthy old beast,” and, “Dirty devil,” and, “I’d like to stick a knife in his insides.” Perhaps Peter would be able to do something with her. Eve opened the door that led into the public room behind both bars.

  Peter and Mrs. Chandler were serving beer. The room was full of smoke and rather dark because, although there was a door into the same lobby through which one entered the lounge, there was also a door which opened directly on the road, and this was the entrance which the patrons of the public bar were accustomed to use. By the simple process of removing the bulb from the electric fitting in the lobby, Eve and Peter had been able to make a light trap for those who entered the lounge, but they had thought it better not to bring the public bar people up the dark garden path to the lobby door. The entrance from the road was, therefore, still in use, and, instead of erecting a light trap and losing much-needed space, Eve and Peter had fitted up the public bar with blue electric bulbs. The effect was rather eerie, the blue light giving a sinister look to the homely faces round the bar. Eve, peering in, was struck by the thought that the room looked less like the bar at The Dog than like an apache den. And something had gone wrong with the conversation. They weren’t talking about the size of their marrows. Bert Saunders was cursing. “Damn and blast ’im,” said Bert Saunders, “to ’ell.”

  Eve quickly shut the door behind her. Peter, noticing her, raised his eyebrows. Eve said, “Crescy’s come.”

  “I’ll be through in a minute,” said Peter. “Scaife there?”

  “Yes, that’s the trouble,” whispered Eve. “He’s given her notice to quit. She’s — taking on.”

  “Well, listen to this,” said Peter.

  Eve listened. Saunders was speaking. “My grand-dad lived there. My dad lived there. Born there, I was. What right’s ’e got to turn me out now?”

  “’E’s got legal right,” said Stanley Janes, the carrier.

  “I’ll show ’im legal right,” said Saunders. “Turnin’ me out after a matter of nigh on an ’undred year. Tain’t jannock. And what’s ’e doing it for? Just so as ’e can get more money out of them excavated London folks, that’s all.”

  Someone spoke up for Scaife.

/>   “When all’s said and done, it’s Squire’s cottage. ’E needs the money. Things ’as turned out like that. You can’t blame ’im.”

  “Blame ’im? I’d like to wring ’is bloody neck. Only that’s ’ow we kills chicken — that’s too good for ’im. ’E may need the money, but what about me? Where am I going with seven kids to look out for?”

  Someone suggested a council house. “I ain’t going to no council house,” said Saunders. “There ain’t room to swing a cat in them kitchens and the wind blows under the doors and lifts the oilcloth off the floor. Besides, look at the rent. ’Ow can I afford to pay eight and sixpence a week, and extra for a lot of mucky electric light what no one can’t afford to use? I’m lucky if I see two pounds at the end of the week, and with seven kids opening their mouths it don’t make sense. Squires nor councils, there didn’t ought to be no bloody landlords.”

  An old voice said, “There’s always been landlords and there always will be. I’d sooner ’ave Squire than the council. Squire don’t do no repairs, but ’e don’t make a lot of rules and regulations. Mustn’t do this and mustn’t do that. Gar … ”

  “Orl very well for you to talk,” said Saunders. “You ain’t ’ad notice to quit. Notice to quit! Ar, well, perhaps’e won’t find it so easy, Squire or no Squire … ”

  Saunders’s face disappeared into his tankard and Eve took the opportunity to slip back into the lounge. Crescy was still drooping at the bar and Scaife still lolled in his corner. As Eve came in, he pushed his glass across the table and said, “The same again.” Even when she was very busy and the loom was full and he had to roar before she heard him, he never got up and brought his glass to the bar.

  Eve went to take his glass, but before she reached the table the door opened and Edward Scaife came in. “Good evening, Mrs. Hennisty,” he said. “Good evening, Mrs. Hardwick.” Edward Scaife was a tallish man of round about thirty. He had a long head, mouse-colored hair and grayish-blue eyes. The only feature in his face which expressed the least individuality was his mouth, which was small, immobile and crowded with sharp white teeth. He was dressed in a suit of gray herringbone tweed, which was clean and well pressed, though worn.