The Theft of the Iron Dogs Read online

  GILES HOGGETT viewed the flooding of his native Lancashire dales that September morning with secret pleasure. With the rain coming down in sheets he had a good excuse for fishing. He had to give some reason to his wife for braving the weather when farming was impossible, so he said he was going to take a look at their summer cottage, and because, although an angler, he was a truthful man, he did so before even glimpsing the river. There he made a discovery that temporarily made him forget all else—he noticed two iron dogs were missing from the fireplace, as well as a complete reel of salmon line, a strong chain and hook, a clothesline and a large sack . . . a significant haul if one imagined someone wanting to sink a heavy article safe and deep in the waters of the Lune. E. C. R. Lorac has again selected as background to a fascinating mystery the beautiful fell country of Lunesdale in Lancashire.

  THE THEFT OF THE

  IRON DOGS

  by

  E. C. R. LORAC

  Copyright © 1946 by E.C.R. Lorac

  To

  MAUD AND JOHN

  jointly

  not forgetting

  BLUE-BELLE, LADY CLARE AND SUSIE

  and with gratitude to all those in Lunesdale

  who helped directly or indirectly with

  information and advice.

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT HAD BEEN grand harvest weather in Lunesdale. Even the most reticent among the farmers had been heard to say: “Aye. We mustn’t grumble.” The glowing golden days of late August and early September had meant hard work for every soul in the valley; but before the middle of September all the oats had been carted, and a quantity of it threshed as well.

  Then, about the middle of September, the fine weather broke. After two days in which the barometer behaved erratically and the wind wailed in fitful gusts, the rain came – and when it rains in Lancashire it rains, thoroughly. At first it was a soft grey mistiness, permeating everything and making the fields and woods sodden. Then, with a steady west wind, the rain came down in floods and the river rose swiftly.

  Mr. Giles Hoggett of Netherbeck Farm, Wenningby, had no complaint to make. These conditions meant one thing to Mr. Hoggett – fish. By fish he meant trout, though an occasional eel was not to be despised these days. Mid-September was not an ideal time of year for fishing, but sometimes, after a prolonged spell of fine weather, if the river rose suddenly, trout sometimes lost their heads, to use Mr. Hoggett’s description. As the becks filled and poured into the main stream with any amount of edible matter in their torrents, the trout would snap madly at this bounteous manna – and that was Mr. Hoggett’s chance. Worm was the bait for these conditions; no use to be a fly-purist on a day like this. Good, fat, juicy, worms; Mr. Hoggett had laid in a supply overnight.

  At breakfast time, Mr. Hoggett was rather silent. His wife, Katherine, looked gloomily at the weather. She was thinking of her garden and her husband knew it. The summer bedding was looking draggled, and it was time to think about “putting the garden to bed” – clearing, digging and storing. Mr. Hoggett felt a little bit guilty.

  “No chance to get on the garden today,” he said judicially. “I might do worse than get a few fish.”

  Katherine looked around at him.

  “I thought you said you were going to clear up the near barn and do that limewashing,” she said. “It looks more like a lunatic asylum than anything else – and you’ve got most of’the honey to extract, and I want the bench in the potting shed mended.”

  Mr. Hoggett finished his coffee. “I’ll see to it, Kate – but it’ll be a good day for fishing, and I want to see that the cottage in the dales is all right. I’m not sure about the roof, and I believe the ditches want clearing.”

  He got up from the table firmly and left Katherine looking gloomily out of the window.

  ***

  Half an hour later Giles Hoggett set out toward the river. The rain was pouring down so hard that visibility was reduced to a few yards; it was a gray, dour world, and Giles Hoggett looked part of the landscape. Any kindhearted and prosperous motorist, seeing the laden figure in ancient colorless raincoat, deplorable sodden hat and shapeless waders, might well have stopped his car and offered a coin to the drenched, sorry-looking derelict. Certainly none would have gone so far as to offer him a lift. Not the most imaginative could have guessed that Mr. Hoggett was a modest landowner, a man who had known the delights of rugger playing as a forward, who had once paddled peacefully on the Granta or sat in a backwater imbibing Paley’s Evidences and the philosophic systems of Kant and Hegel.

  The road he followed was midway up the scarp on the north bank of the river. He passed two other farm houses and was then about to turn down the steep brow which led to the valley bottom and the river. At the junction of the ways he saw another figure ascending the brow. Early though Mr. Hoggett was, a fellow landowner had been earlier, it seemed. This was Mr. Shand, whose land bordered Mr. Hoggett’s, but the former was owner of a much greater acreage, and was a gentleman of some importance – though being a comparative newcomer to the district, his importance was only considered in inverse ratio to the duration of his ownership in Wenningby. Mr. Shand wore a very fine and capacious raincoat, a new sou’wester and good looking waders. His creel had the same prosperous appearance.

  Mr. Hoggett greeted him pleasantly.

  “Good morning; Mr. Shand. A bit dampish today.”

  Mr. Hoggett was not making a deliberate understatement, or even indulging in negative hyperbole. He had unconsciously attuned his speech and tempo to those of the farmers from whom he was proud to have been derived. The teeming sodden day was “a bit dampish,” that was all.

  “Good day, Mr. Hoggett. River’s rising well,” barked the other. “No use to a fly fisherman though.”

  He nodded and pursued his way and Giles Hoggett tramped happily on down the brow. The gradient was so steep that the roadway was impossible for any wheeled traffic except farm carts, and even for these it was a heavy pull.

  Arrived at the bottom, Giles Hoggett turned dutifully toward the cottage. He wasn’t really anxious about either its ancient flagged roof or its unkempt ditches, but he had told Katherine he was going to inspect it, and he was a very truthful man.

  The cottage stood some hundred yards from the river, a low stone wall separating it from the dales – the rich hayland which had been divided into strips among the inhabitants almost before the drawn of history. Giles Hoggett was proud that he, and his ancestors before him, owned some of the dales; also their possession gave him fishing rights. The cottage was an ancient building, stone-walled with stone-flagged roof, and a stone barn. It had probably stood there for several centuries, and its long roof covered shippon and barn as well as dwelling house. Since the time of Giles Hoggett’s father, the cottage had been used as a holiday dwelling for the Hoggett family, while the hay barn and shippon were let with the dales to Richard Blackthorn, one of the biggest farmers in Wenningby. The fact that the place was so inaccessible had saved its being commandeered by billetting officers in the war, and the Hoggett family had had the undisputed use of it as their own private playground.

  Giles was deeply attached to the place, for it seemed part of his very roots, a place he had always known; it was always the same, peaceful, silent, solitary, and it always seemed to welcome him as if it had been waiting for him. When he was a boy, Giles Hoggett had had a secret dream that he would one day come and live by the river in Wenningby Barns, and wherever he had gone, either to University, or in the Army, he had carried the thought of the cottage with him – something peaceful, safe, and exceedingly desirable.

  Giles had not been down to the cottage for some weeks because harvest work had kept him busy in the fields above (the dales had never b
een ploughed), and he was glad of a chance to come and see that all was in order.

  He entered the garden by a stiff little iron gate set in the low stone wall, and gave a glance to see that the fold yard beyond was draining properly. He next glanced, as a matter of habit, at his woodpile.

  His first glance at the woodpile showed Mr. Hoggett that something was amiss. Some of the logs were scattered on the grass, as though somebody had withdrawn one, carelessly, and others had toppled down. Mr. Hoggett’s reaction was immediate.

  “Someone from away has been meddling.”

  No one in Wenningby would have disturbed his woodpile. Somewhat put out, for he resented even the thought of trespassers in the cottage garden, Giles Hoggett walked up to the door of the cottage, and then stood feeling foolish, his jaw dropping a little. He had forgotten the keys. He had been so taken up with the thought of fishing that he had omitted to get the keys from their hook up at the farm. As he stood there, with the rain running off his hat, he paused to think. Now had he seen those keys lately? He thought back, remembering the last time the cottage had been used. Nearly a month back, when George and his family came for a few days, and they had all bathed in the river in the hot August sunshine. He seemed to remember saying to George: “Don’t bother to bring the keys up. Leave them in the usual place and I’ll fetch them.”

  Had he done so? A rather sheepish grin turned up the corners of Mr. Hoggett’s close-shut lips. “A good thing Kate didn’t come here first,” he said to himself, and began to search in “the usual place.” This was behind a loose stone in a crevice in the porch. The keys were there all right, and Mr. Hoggett went inside.

  ***

  Mrs. Hoggett, when she put the house to rights, realizing that the weather would preclude any out-of-door activities today, decided to make a virtue of necessity and do a day’s mending. She was an industrious woman, but wartime mending had become a weariness and she felt that she hated the sight of Giles’ socks and stockings and shirts. He seemed to have a genius for making holes and even larger holes. She looked at the wireless’ programs, hoping for a little entertainment to enliven her labors, but there was nothing she could listen to. Katherine Hoggett had a very selective mind.

  Since the wireless was quite unhelpful, she lighted a fire: at least she could toast her toes in comfort while she darned. Giles always forgot the time when he went fishing and though he had not taken any food with him, it was quite likely that he would not turn up until teatime.

  It was a matter of considerable surprise to her, therefore, when she heard his footsteps before midday, and she looked up to see a dripping apparition standing in the doorway which led to the kitchen.

  “Take your coat off,” she said promptly, looking at the runnels of water on the flagstones, and then: “What’s the matter?”

  Giles took his coat off, and a moment later came into the sitting room in his stockinged feet and stood by the fire.

  “Someone’s been in the cottage, Kate.”

  “I’m not surprised. Did you bring the keys up? I thought not. What have they taken this time?”

  It was not the first time the cottage had been broken into.

  Mr. Hoggett lighted a cigarette and sat down by the fire.

  “It’s a queer business. I can’t make it out,” he said, then added: “Will you come down there with me?”

  “What on earth for? On a day like this too,” she said indignantly. “You know what’s there. If you’ve missed anything, say so. Did you leave any of your coats down there again?”

  “Only my old raincoat. I want you to come down because you know just how things were left. You’ll notice at once if anything’s amiss. I’m puzzled.”

  Katherine studied her husband’s face. She knew of his particular attachment to the cottage, but he was behaving a bit oddly; he was generally a very reasonable man.

  She put her darning back into the basket.

  “All right. I’ll come – but if I do, you can come back to dinner sensibly and go fishing again later if you must.”

  He agreed without a murmur, and she went and fetched raincoat and gum-boots, and they set out together in silence.

  “Anyone might imagine you’d found a corpse in the cottage,” she said.

  Mr. Hoggett replied solemnly, “Oh, no, there’s no corpse. Honestly there isn’t. I shouldn’t ask you to come and see it if there were. I just want your opinion, that’s all.”

  Katherine Hoggett pulled off her streaming raincoat before she entered the cottage – she hated seeing water run over the flagstones – and when she was inside she stood and looked around her, glancing this way and that.

  At length she said:

  “Someone’s had a fire since I was here; the hearth wasn’t left like that. I came down here on the morning the Georges were leaving and the hearth was swept perfectly clear and the fire irons stood up as we always leave them. Someone’s tried to tidy the hearth, but they weren’t much good at it.”

  She advanced over the flagged kitchen floor to the great open chimney and stared at the ashes on the ancient hearthstone, curling up her nostrils a little.

  “That’s not wood-ash; someone has burnt an old coat or something like that; and the chain and hook have gone.”

  “Yes,” agreed Mr. Hoggett.

  He came beside her and knelt down by the hearth, peering up the open chimney. There had always been a chain hanging from a staple inside the chimney with a hook at the end on which the big iron kettle was suspended. The kettle was still there standing on the hearth (and these days it was a very valuable kettle).

  “Do you notice anything else?” he inquired anxiously.

  “Yes, of course. Your iron dogs have gone.”

  Giles Hoggett’s “iron dogs” were two blocks of metal he had acquired to support logs on the hearth. The chimney was so wide it was possible to have a huge log fire on the flat hearthstone, and some sort of props made it easier to support the big logs so that they burnt to best advantage. Giles Hoggett had carried these weighty irons down the brow, and he resented their disappearance.

  Katherine turned to her husband.

  “What else has gone?” she demanded.

  “A complete reel of salmon line – very good line, and some food. You’d better look in the larder and see what’s missing.”

  Katherine walked into the old dairy which was now used as a larder, and her husband stood by the open hearth, having lighted a cigarette, and cogitated deeply. He ran his fingers through his thick, grizzled hair as he stood. Many a book lover would have recognized that unconscious accompaniment of deep thought on Mr. Hoggett’s part, for before he had come back to the north to farm some of his own acres, he had been a bookseller – and a very good bookseller, wise, leisurely, appreciative.

  Standing by the empty hearth in Wenningby Barns (for so the cottage was named) clad in ancient tweeds which his wife had given up mending in despair long ago, Giles Hoggett looked exactly as he had so often looked when considering a bookselling problem.

  “I want a book whose name I have forgotten by an author I don’t know and it’s a sort of world history written before H. G. Wells thought of doing it.”

  Such was the type of problem Mr. Hoggett used to solve.

  “Aye. It’d be Wynwood Reade you’re thinking of,” he would reply, after having ruffled his hair up.

  So today, Giles Hoggett, of Wenningby, small holder, ran his fingers through his hair. “The chain and hook, two iron dogs, salmon line and my old raincoat,” he murmured to himself.

  Katherine came into the room again: a strong, trim, well balanced figure, practical to the tips of her competent fingers, sensible and self-possessed.

  “My clothesline has gone too, and that big sack you used for bringing logs in – you left it here, didn’t you?”

  “The sack – aye, I left it here,” said Mr. Hoggett.

  “And I think some eggs have gone, but I can’t be sure,” she went on. “I put some down in March but the Georges may have
had some.”

  “George brought his own eggs,” said Mr. Hoggett. “There’s a tin of beans and another of sardines gone from the iron ration; the tins are outside. He tried to bury them, but he couldn’t find a spade. He must have used the coal shovel.”

  Katherine laughed. When she laughed it didn’t matter that her hair was gray: her face became young again, the merry face of Kate Rivers of twenty-five years ago. Fresh complexioned, gray-eyed, strong-muscled, Kate Hoggett was a wonderful fifty.

  Her husband looked a little indignant.

  “I’m not so sure it’s a laughing matter,” he said portentously.

  “Perhaps it isn’t, you poor old misery,” she retorted, “but if you could only see what you look like in those clothes, streaming with water, talking about burying things with coal shovels, you’d have to laugh too. He can’t have buried much with a coal shovel, anyway. All the tools are locked up in the loft – because I locked them there. Have you noticed anything else?”

  “My old raincoat’s gone; and George’s fishing cap, and father’s spectacles; also the old creel, and Uncle Henry’s trout rod.”

  Katherine looked at him suspiciously.

  “Don’t go making things up,” she warned him. “I believe the old creel fell to pieces ages ago, and I know we used your father’s spectacles for charades last winter and George’s fishing cap, too. As for your old coat, I’d been meaning to send it for salvage, only it smelled so awful after you’d used it for mucking out the shippon.”

  “It was a very good coat,” said Mr. Hoggett indignantly. “I was very fond of it.”

  “Never mind,” she replied cheerfully. “You haven’t lost anything that matters. If a tramp slept in here and made a fire and had his supper, you’ve no business to complain. You’d better be more careful about the key in future. It looks as though someone has spotted the place where you hide it.”

  “But you don’t understand, Kate,” said Mr. Hoggett, speaking very seriously. “It’s not the value of the things which have gone that matters.”