The Evil that Men Do (21 page)

Alan's voice had taken on a foolish, motherly quality. Alarm bells began ringing in my head. ‘We need to find his owners,' I said firmly.

‘Of course. But we can make him clean and comfortable first. I refuse to share a small house with a dog this dirty.'

There was little to eat, even for us, and almost nothing that was suitable for a dog. But I found a dab of pâté in the fridge, and a can of beef and barley soup. He accepted both offerings with an alacrity that suggested he hadn't eaten for some time, and then lapped up a soup bowl full of water.

‘All right, sir, it's bath time.'

I cravenly retired back to the fire while distressing sounds issued from the bathroom.

When my beloved emerged, much of the mud appeared to have transferred itself to his person, but the dog, though horrified after his ordeal, and looking very small with all his fur clinging to his body, was much better-looking.

‘I'll just go and change,' said Alan.

‘What does the bathroom look like?' I called after his retreating figure, but he pretended not to hear me.

The dog, meanwhile, sank down in front of the fire, burped gently, and went to sleep.

Alan also looked much more respectable when he came out of the bedroom. I poured him an extra tot of bourbon and gestured to the crackers and cheese I had set out. ‘That's supper, I'm afraid. Buster here got the rest.'

‘The old boy was starved, Dorothy.' That fond, foolish tone again. ‘I think he's been living rough for a while. You can feel his ribs, sharp under the fur.'

I opened my mouth to say something, saw his face as he looked at the dog, and changed my mind. ‘What breed do you suppose he is?' I asked mildly.

‘Mixed, certainly, but I should think mostly spaniel of some sort. When we get the brambles out of his fur it will be nicely feathered, and he certainly has a spaniel's muzzle and ears. He'll be quite handsome when he's dry.'

Again I took breath, and again stopped myself. I was too tired to argue. In the morning Alan would have come to his senses and we could discuss what we were to do with this animal.

In the middle of the night, I was awakened from a troubled sleep by the sensation of an earthquake. The bed rocked. I sat up, trying to banish the shreds of disagreeable dreams, and saw a pair of liquid eyes a foot from my face.

The dog cocked his head to one side and smiled at me. Then he turned around several times and burrowed contentedly into the nest he had made for himself, squarely in the middle of the bed.

I sighed loudly, turned over in the small space left to me, and went back to sleep.

The rain continued all night, and I slept late. Rain is such a pleasant background for sleeping. I woke, finally, to find myself alone in bed and, indeed, in the cottage.

I staggered to the kitchen and found the coffee already made, and cold, and a note on the counter. ‘Buster and I went to town for provisions. Back soon.'

Taking the dog with him in the car. This was a bad sign. We were going to have to have a serious talk when he got back.

I microwaved a cup of the coffee and lit a fire, and then sat and made plans. What could we do that the police couldn't?

Well for one thing  . . . good grief, had Alan called Rose & Co. to call off the ‘Where's Peter?' campaign? If not, I'd better do that right away. I booted up the laptop, found the agent's website, and saw with dismay that the search took centre stage. I called instantly.

Busy. Of course. Everyone in the country would be calling. What had I done? I buried my head in my hands and tried to remember how to make the phone keep placing the call until someone answered, and finally gave up. Instead I sent an urgent email, not at all sanguine about the results. This was all my doing, and it was appalling, but if I couldn't do anything about it, I couldn't. All right. Set that aside for the moment. Next thing.

Plainly the urgent matter was finding Jo. But what could we do about that?

Very little, I concluded, that the police weren't already doing. We could ask Paul and his mother about her usual favourite places, but what good would that do? She wouldn't be in any of them. If she was able to run away again, she'd try to get to the police. If not  . . .

I wished I could push the picture out of my head, the picture of that sturdy, sensible woman held prisoner somewhere, prisoner to a man with a history of violence. The only dim ray of hope was that he wanted her alive, because only she knew where to find Sarah.

But she didn't! Oh, dear heaven, she didn't! Alan and I had removed Sarah and Paul, hidden them in London in the most luxurious security cell imaginable. What if Jo, in desperation, told whatever-his-name-was where to find them, and he went, and they weren't there! From what I'd heard of him, I was sure he would explode into a fury of hatred and anger, and  . . .

Calm down, Dorothy, I told myself firmly. She's kept the secret all these years. She won't tell now.

She wasn't being tortured before, the other voice retorted.

I started pacing. I wished I had a warm cat to hug. I wished Alan would come back. I wished I didn't feel so bloody useless.

Think, Dorothy. Think. What do you know, what skills do you have, that might help?

Well. I knew something about the general situation, certainly. I hadn't taught all those years without learning things, things I would very much rather not have known, about abused children and their mothers. Sometimes, though rarely, it was the fathers who were abused. I knew about abuse turning into a family trait, children growing up thinking nightly fights were a family norm.

I didn't see how that could help, but I tucked it away.

I'd done volunteer social work of various kinds for many years, through my church in America. It had mostly been of the soup kitchen variety, but I'd brushed elbows with a good many professionals along the way. Did that perhaps give me some insight into the way they think? Could that help me find Jo?

I shrugged and kept pacing.

When I'd first moved to England, I'd been able to ask questions and generally pry into matters that were none of my business, because I was an outsider, who didn't count. It was the shipboard romance pattern. Anyone could say anything to me, because I was a foreigner who might never see them again.

That didn't work any more. My accent and vocabulary had altered enough that, while the English still knew I was American, my American friends said I sounded perfectly English. I was no longer a foreigner, quite. My friends in Sherebury thought of me as almost belonging. I never would, completely, of course. My ancestors were from Indiana, not Belleshire. But I was enough one of them that they were cautious about what they said in front of me. I knew too many official sorts of people to whom I might pass it on.

In these parts, though, I was instantly recognized as an American, even before I opened my mouth. Furthermore, I was a tourist, that species of humanity both welcomed into a community for the commercial value, and despised for the nuisance factor.

Hmm. That element of negligibility might prove useful, after all.

What else?

I racked my brains, my eyes surveying the room restlessly, as though the very walls would give me an inspiration.

My searching eyes lit on the book I'd been trying to read. My mind had been too fidgety to stay with it for long, but it didn't matter, since I knew it virtually by heart. Dorothy L. Sayers'
Gaudy Night
is, for me, the finest mystery novel ever written, with development of character and setting worthy of the finest ‘straight' fiction, with intriguing subplots, fascinating jaunts into Sayers' philosophy of life and her idea of a university  . . . meat enough to warrant the many re-readings I had devoted to it. The book was nearly falling apart, but I was loath to throw it away, as it was a Gollancz edition with the brilliant red and yellow cover so characteristic of its period.

The point, my wandering mind informed me sternly, was that I was an avid and experienced reader of detective fiction. I knew every plot device that had ever been used. I knew, in theory, how to interrogate witnesses, how to interpret clues. I knew that, in contravention of the tradition of English common law of ‘innocent until proven guilty', everyone should be considered a liar until proven to be truthful. I knew how to be an amateur detective  . . . or at least I ought to.

I made myself a cup of tea and sat down again, thinking hard until Alan came home. By the time he walked in the door, I had a plan.

He had brought plenty of food, for us and, I saw with misgivings, for the dog. It romped inside after him and came bouncing over to me to administer a thorough sniffing. I patted it gingerly on the head and went to the kitchen to help Alan unpack.

‘I'll get a collar and lead this afternoon,' he said, putting packages away. ‘He's full of energy and needs exercise, and the rain should stop soon.'

‘Alan.'

He turned to look at me, surprised at my tone.

‘He's not our dog.'

‘Well, I know that!'

‘Do you?' I pointed to the tins and boxes of food and treats, the new bowls. ‘He belongs to someone, my dear. We can't just  . . . appropriate him. And we have two cats.'

Alan's smile faded, and I felt awful. ‘Most dogs get along well with cats,' he said, ‘given the right introductions. He's a friendly fellow.'

‘Oh, love. I didn't mean to be heartless. He is friendly, but it's just  . . . I've never had a dog, and I don't know how to treat one. And he's come from somewhere. Somebody's probably frantic, wondering where he's gone.'

‘I had dogs, always, when I was a boy. You know I love cats, but  . . . oh, well, you're right. We'll have to try to find his owner.'

‘We could just let him out. He'll probably go home.'

Alan said nothing, but opened the back door. He looked like a small boy who had just had his ice cream cone snatched by a bully.

The dog gave us both a friendly smile and trotted outside. Before Alan could shut the door again, the dog came back, shook the rain off his coat, and sat down, tail thumping.

‘Oh, well.' I conceded the battle  . . . but not the war. ‘You'd better feed the poor thing, and I'll feed us. Then we can make some plans.'

‘Yes, we need to decide where and how to advertise. The local newspaper, I suppose, and perhaps posters  . . .'

‘I meant, about finding Jo.'

Alan turned slightly red in the face and became very busy opening a can of dog food.

TWENTY-FOUR

A
lan and I ate our breakfast in a slightly strained silence and then sat down on the couch to try to map out a plan of action. The dog, full of food, settled himself comfortably between us, and soon began to snore softly.

I sternly refused to give in to his obvious charm. He wasn't our dog. And Sam and Emmy would have forty fits if we brought him home. However, this wasn't the time to quarrel about it. We had more pressing issues.

‘Alan, I've had some ideas. Obviously the first thing we have to do is tell the police everything we learned yesterday. There are lots of leads they can follow up that we can't, or not nearly as effectively.'

‘I'm surprised to hear you admit that the police can do their job better than you can.'

Oh, dear. He was still sulking about the dog. Amazing how like a little boy a man of seventy can be at times. I hurried on. ‘I've never claimed to be better than the police at
their
job. What I can do, sometimes better than they, is ask questions. I'm not only an old woman, I'm a foreigner. I've lost that edge in Sherebury, where everybody knows me and knows I'm married to you. They've become more cautious about telling me things. But here I'm just an American tourist. Almost nobody knows me. I think I can go around and talk to people, around here and in Broadway, and who knows? I might just pick up something interesting.'

Alan made a non-committal noise. ‘Questions about what?'

‘I don't know yet. Social work, maybe. The problem of abuse. It'll come to me. The thing is, I have to do it alone.'

This time the noise was definitely displeased. ‘I think that's a very bad idea. You're looking for a man who's already killed, for apparently no reason at all. I'm coming with you.'

I'd been prepared for this. ‘Alan, it won't work that way. You know how people say I look like an American, somehow? Well, you look like a policeman. A superior one, intelligent and courteous, but unquestionably a copper. Nobody's going to say a thing if you're along.'

He said nothing, just sat there looking stubborn. We'd been over and over this for years: his need to protect me versus my need for independence. I sighed inwardly and played my last card. ‘And look, I've just had a thought. If you go ahead and buy that collar and lead for Buster, here, I can take him along with me. He'd be protection, and the perfect excuse for calling on strangers. I can say I'm looking for his owner, and that will lead to more conversation. You know what a good ice-breaker a dog is.'

‘You,' said Alan deliberately, ‘are trying to manipulate me.'

This time my sigh was audible. ‘You know me too well, that's the trouble.'

‘I know your capacity for getting into trouble. And quite honestly I can't see what you hope to accomplish. Besides taking my dog away from me.' But he smiled. ‘You know, if we do end up keeping him, we must come up with a better name. “Buster” just won't do.'

I looked at the dog, still soundly asleep. His paws were working as he chased something in his sleep, and he whined a little now and then. ‘I agree. Not a good name. He knows it isn't his  . . . doesn't respond to it. But of course we're going to find his proper owner. He's a nice dog. Someone will be missing him.'

‘You really want to carry on with this, don't you?'

‘Alan, I do. I don't know what I hope to accomplish, either, but I can't just sit here and pretend everything in the garden is lovely. Oh! That reminds me. I tried to call Rose and Co. this morning to tell them to call off the hunt, but I couldn't get through. And I couldn't remember how to make the phone keep on trying.'