The Plague Dogs (40 page)

Forbes pleasantly. "P'raps you could let me see the agreed drill as soon as possible, could you, even if it is rather shutting the door after the horse has bolted?"

"Michael's going up there this afternoon, Parliamentary Secretary," said the Under Secretary, at last breaking his silence. ("First I knew of it. It was going to be Monday.") "No doubt that'll be one of the things you'll sort out as a matter of urgency, Michael, won't it?"

"Splendid!" said the Parliamentary Secretary in a tone of warm congratulation, as though all were now merry as lambkins on the lea. "Well, perhaps we've just got time to glance at this very convincing draught answer you've given me for the P. O. that Bugwash has put down—'To ask the Secretary of State, etc., in what circumstances two infected dogs were permitted to escape from the Animal Research Station at Lawson Park, and if he will make a statement.' Now, I expect I'm being very silly, but it did seem to me that this third draught supplementary—"

Ten minutes later, in the corridor, the Under Secretary said, "Well, Michael, you'll want to be catching a train as soon as possible. You won't forget, will you, that there are two things—first to see whether we can safely advise Ministers that the dogs couldn't have been in contact with any plague-infected material; and then the—er—somewhat belated matter of an agreed consultation drill."

At the lift-doors the Assistant Secretary found his tongue. "I've got to go and see one of the lawyers, Maurice, now, about an appeal case, so I'll leave you here, and look for a final word before I set out."

Once in the lavatory on the next floor, he was over-, come by a blinding rage so violent that for a few moments t his sight actually clouded over.

"He sat there and said nothing to the Parliamentary Secretary—not a bloody word! He sat there and let the Parliamentary Secretary take it out on me for something he knew damned well was no more my fault than a cold in the head! Eton and Balliol, and he let Forbes, a basically reasonable bloke, whom we all like, think that I'm to blame. The bastard, the dirty, rotten bastard!"

He beat the flat of one hand against the tiled wall. "Excuse me, are ye feelin'. all roight, sorr?"

The Assistant Secretary, looking round vaguely, recognized a messenger named O'Connell, a decent Irishman who had once served him during bygone days as a Principal.

"Oh, hullo, O'Connell. Nice to see you again. Yes, I'm all right, thanks. Just letting off a bit of steam, you know."

"I thought perhaps ye might have come over queer, v' sorr—been taken baad, ye know."

"It's good of you to bother. Still, old soldiers don't get;: taken bad, do they?"

This was a joke. Both the Assistant Secretary and S'O'Connell had at different times been in the army and t had once or twice exchanged military reminiscences.

"Well, they can do, sorr. I didn't like to see ye put vunder the weather, ye know."

"Thanks. You know, O'Connell, it's extremely annoying to suffer injustice and be unable to do anything about it.''

"Man, baste and bird, 'tis the fate of every wan in the world, sorr, all but a varry few. There was some fella—Oi read ut in the paper—that said, "The dispensin' of in-H justice is always in the roight hands.' Oi'd say that was livery thrue indade, wouldn't you?" f Digby Driver had succeeded in tracking down Annie Mossity.

It had not really been very difficult. He had simply followed up what Mr. Powell had told him during the run back to Coniston from Broughton, by enquiring of the Barrow-in-Furness ambulance service and police about any road accident known to them during recent weeks involving a man and a lorry and brought about by a dog. Within a few hours this had resulted in his being put in touch with a lady in Dalton named Mrs. Ann Moss, the sister and next-of-kin of the dog's master, a local solicitor named Mr. Alan Wood.

Mr. Driver was now sitting in a small, chilly drawing-room, in front of an inadequate electric fire masked by a facade of plastic coal and below a singularly nasty coloured print of two little Italian-looking children with fixed and implausible tears on their cheeks, balancing on his knee, in its saucer, a full tea-cup coloured pale buff and having the form of a truncated and inverted cone. Annie Mossity, a hefty, plain, untidy woman with large limbs and a general air of thinly veiled aggression, was sitting opposite. Digby Driver, who could seldom be accused of dragging his feet in getting around to the personal circumstances of anyone whom he interviewed—particularly any that might pertain to anxiety, fear, misfortune, sexual irregularity or conjugal disharmony—had already gathered, first, that she had no children and secondly that Mr. Moss, though presumed to be alive, was no longer in the field. He was not unduly surprised. The goldfish, he thought, looked frustrated and the budgerigar distinctly put upon. Neither, however, was in the fortunate position of being able to follow Mr. Moss over the hill.

"Was it a shock," asked Digby Driver (who had prudently left his notebook, as possibly having a somewhat inhibiting effect, in his overcoat pocket), "when you realised that this dog which had broken out of the Law-son Park Research Station was the very one that you'd sold them?"

"Well," replied Mrs. Moss, with an apparent spontaneity that somehow contrived despite itself to seem ; disingenuous and cunning, "we can't be sure of that, actually, can we? I don't believe it is the same dog, and to be perfectly frank, Mr. Driver, I think you're wasting your time here. If my brother were to get any idea—"

"There's virtually no doubt about it, Mrs. Moss, believe me. You see—"

"Why don't you ask the Research Station?" interjected Mrs. Moss somewhat sharply. "They'd be able to tell you for certain, surely? I don't want to be drawn in—'

"I have," replied Digby Driver untruthfully. "But you'll know—that is, you'll know if you read the Orator—that the station aren't saying any more than they can possibly help. They're not acting in the public interest by persisting in this uncooperative silence, but nevertheless that seems to be—"

"I don't wish to discuss it either," rejoined Annie Mossity. "I hope you'll soon come to feel sure, as I do,. that it's nothing to do with me and that it's not my; brother's dog."

"Well," said Digby Driver, smiling pleasantly, "well, all right, Mrs. Moss, let's not trouble our minds about that aspect of the matter at all. I'm not asking you to say yea or nay to that. Let's agree that we don't know for certain whether or not the dog you sold to Lawson Park has become one of the Plague Dogs—"

"However many are there, for heaven's sake?" asked the lady. "Only two, but that's definitely two too many, you know. But as I say, let's leave all that on one side. We'll j agree that it's not your job or mine to know that, al-; though you can be sure that it'll be established one way f. W the other quite soon. Can you help me by telling me f something about your poor brother and his dog? His death must have been a terrible shock and grief to you, wasn't it?"

As he uttered these last words there passed across Annie Mossity's face a sudden, swiftly suppressed look of incredulity, followed immediately by one of relief. She hesitated before replying and appeared to be pondering. Then, with an air of decision, she said, "It was a dreadful - blow; and a dreadful loss. Oh, Mr. Driver, if you don't mind, I can't bear to speak of it—"

"No, no, of course not. Forgive me," said Driver hastily. In the normal way he rather welcomed the tears of the bereaved, since they usually led to freer and more indiscreet speech, and often reduced the interviewee to a defenceless and malleable state. However, this was not what he was after just now.

What he wanted was specific information.

"Just tell me a little more about the dog," he said. "Have you a photograph of it, by any chance?"

"No, I certainly haven't," replied Mrs. Moss. "To be perfectly honest, I was only too glad to get rid of it."

"Ah, that's interesting," said Driver. "Why was that? Was it simply because it had been the cause of the fatal accident to your brother, or was there something else?"

"Well—er—"

Annie Mossity cannot be said to have been unconscious, in the psychological sense—though they were certainly not present to her mind at this moment—of the fur-lined boots and gloves which she had bought with the money that Animal Research had paid her for Snitter. Thanks, however, to inveterate vanity and to a long established capacity for self-deception, she was almost completely unconscious of her own jealousy of her brother's affection for the dog, and totally unconscious of her resentment of all that it represented—her brother's happy, untidy bachelor life and domestic contentment, his not always very well-concealed contempt for her empty-minded, genteel ways and lack of any real desire or need either for her interference in his home or for her nagging insistence that he ought to get married. Snitter, like Alan himself, had tolerated her, teased her and conceivably even committed, insofar as a dog can, the unforgivable sin of pitying her. But since neither dog nor master were present, all this could be unthinkingly transmuted in her mind. "Well—er—you see, the dog—it was, well, it was—"

"What was its name?" interrupted Digby Driver.

"My brother used to call it 'Snitter.' As I was saying, it was undisciplined and aggressive. It was its undisciplined ways that brought about the accident to my poor brother, you know—"

"It was habitually aggressive, was it? Were you afraid of it? Did it ever attack you?"

"Well—er—no, not to say attack, really, no. But it had a very nasty nature, really, Mr. Driver, if you know what I mean. It was—well, untidy, really, and destructive in its ways. After the accident there was no one to take it. I couldn't take it, not here; and you see, with my poor brother gone—"

"Did it ever attack other animals?"

"Oh, yes, with cats it was very bad. Very bad indeed. It used to bark at them and chase them."

"So when it made its recent day boo as a sheep-killer, it didn't come as a surprise to you?"

"Well, I suppose it didn't, really, no, not really, when you come to think about it, no." She considered for a moment and then said, "Not really."

"So you think that perhaps after all it may be one of the sheep-killing dogs?"

"Well—er—" Annie Mossity perceived that Mr. Driver had led her where she had not intended to go. "Well, I'm only saying it might be."

"Quite so. But it wasn't a particularly large dog, was it? Do you think it would really be able to kill a sheep?"

"Well, I mean, it was a fox terrier, it could kill a fox, couldn't it, and sheep, I mean, they're timid creatures, aren't they, really, and if it was that hungry—oh, it didn't care what it did, Mr. Driver! I saw it one day in the rhododendrons round at my brother's, and it had got hold of some horrible— well, I wouldn't like to say, but full of—full of, ugh, you know—"

(As long as she hated the dog and isn't going to deny anything we want to say about its evil and aggressive nature, thought Driver, that's all I need.

There's one thing, though, that might be raised by some third party if they were so minded. I'd better make sure that that's out of the way and then I can get the hell out of here and send some local chap round to get a picture this evening.)

"—and dragging that nasty, smelly blanket out of its basket, Mr. Driver, all round the floor—

well, really—I was glad to see it thrown away—"

"Mrs. Moss, I'm just wondering—I'm sure you can tell me—what gave you the idea of selling the dog to the Research Station? After your poor brother's death, you had a great deal to do, I'm sure.

Why go to that extra trouble? I mean, why not just have the dog put down?"

"Mr. Driver," said Annie Mossity, with the swift flux of defensive aggression that had caused her employer to learn better than to try to criticise her, however gently, for anything at all—it was easier to bear her incompetence in silence—"I hope you're not implying that I would want to cause the dog to suffer in any way. If so, I'm bound to tell you—"

"Certainly not," replied Digby Driver smoothly, "far from it. On the contrary, Mrs. Moss, I was wondering where you got hold of such a sensible, useful idea."

"Why, it was my brother-in-law—my sister's husband," replied Annie Mossity, warming under the facile flattery. "He's a vet up Newcastle way, you know. I'd mentioned to him that I couldn't do with the dog at all and meant to have it put down, and a day or two later he told me that the gentlemen at Lawson Park had circulated a request to several vets in his neighbourhood that they wanted to obtain a full-grown, domesticated dog for a particular experiment. It had to be an adult, domesticated dog, he said. He assured me that it wouldn't suffer and explained how important it was in the public interest that these scientific needs should be met—"

(So you sold your dead brother's dog to the experimenters, did you, you mean, avaricious cow, for what you could get? I wonder if you stopped to think whether that was likely to be in accordance with his wishes?)

"So it was a case of yielding to pressure, really, wasn't it, Mrs. Moss? In effect, they asked you on bended knee and you obliged them?" (And I'll bet you beat 'em up to more than they were offering in the first place.) "We all have to consider the public interest, and it was really kinder than having the dog put down, wasn't it? I mean, you saved its life, really." (If she'll swallow that she'll swallow anything.)

"Oh, yes, I suppose I did, really, because you see, well,; I mean, I couldn't really do with a dog with that aggressive nature, you see, but it was kinder really than having it put down, I mean—"

"Yes, of course. Precisely. Well, now, I'd like to do; an article on you and the dog, if you don't mind" (or if. you do mind, you blue-haired faggot). "and perhaps if I: j could send a colleague round for a picture this evening—" 'you know, you in your charming home—"

It was deadly cold out of doors and the light fading. Mr. Powell, who had a sore throat and also, he suspected, a. temperature, stood shivering in the draught and wondered yet again why Dr. Boycott did not shut the window. In point of fact Dr. Boycott—who, whenever he had to take one of his subordinates to task, always felt a little more tense and averse than he would have cared for them to know—was not conscious either of the draught or of Mr. Powell's discomfort. He had already decided that in ' the light of what he had to say it would not be appropriate to ask Mr. Powell to sit down; but on the other hand he did not feel up to remaining seated himself while requiring Mr. Powell to stand. In view of their normal working relationship, that would be overdoing things and what he had to say would only misfire, leaving upon Mr. Powell the dominant impression that his boss had tried to come in too heavy, and on that account Mr. Powell. could not feel small. Detachment would be a more effective ploy.