The Dog Who Didn’t Bark

CHRISSIE was typing up her boss’s file note. In the office briefly on Easter Monday I took a call from a chap called Ken. As a special Easter gift, he had bought for his wife a Fabergé egg. Not a real one, but crafted in silver and decorated with semi-precious stones in the Fabergé style so still worth a fair few bob.

Her delight with it, however, was short-lived. Three nights later, it was stolen while they and their teenage children slept . . .

Chrissie broke off typing to snap some chocolate from the more usual egg which the firm that supplied their stationery had left.

“Want some?” she asked Glyn as he came into the office.

“Thanks.”

He nibbled thoughtfully at the chunk she gave him, his eyes on the ancient manual typewriter she’d given up trying to persuade him to replace.

“Is that the new case you’re on?”

“Yes. But isn’t it just a straightforward burglary that should be reported to the police in the normal way?”

She smiled to herself at the word “normal”. It wasn’t one she’d used much since starting to work for Glyn! Maybe all private detectives were the same. She couldn’t say, she’d only ever worked for one and it was her intention to change even that.

She’d originally only come for a week, as a temp. But for some reason, when on the Friday he’d offered her a permanent job, she’d said yes, despite the weird hours, shambolic office and the sometimes oddness of the boss!

“They have reported it.” Glyn interrupted her thoughts. “But there’s something worrying Ken and he wants me to look into it.” He paused. “Thing is, their dog didn’t bark.”

“Isn’t there a Sherlock Holmes story –?”

“Yes. ‘Silver Blaze’, it’s called. A racehorse was stolen but the dog didn’t bark so Holmes figured that it must have known the thief.”

Chrissie smiled at the eager glow in Glyn’s dark eyes. She knew he thought highly of Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. Had the great detective been Glyn’s hero as a child and, later, the inspiration for the profession he himself had chosen?

“I didn’t know you were a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories,” he resumed.

“I’m not, not really. They’re a bit . . . oldfashioned.”

“No, no, Christine, the stories are timeless.” One of his familiar waves of the hand. “You could have a Sherlock in the present day and he would still work.” Another pause.

“Yes, someone should absolutely make a TV series with a contemporary Holmes. Have a young, good-looking actor as him and I’m sure it would be a smash hit.”

Though she doubted the validity of his prediction, a picture of Glyn in a deerstalker hat popped into Chrissie’s head. It rather suited him and she smiled again as she listened to the rest of what he had to say.

“The dog in question, apparently, always barks if a stranger comes to the house. That it didn’t bark on the night of the theft inclines Ken to believe that, as in the Sherlock story, the dog knew whoever it was that stole the egg.”

“Was anything else taken?”

Why hadn’t Smudge roused the family during the theft? Could it be the thief was known to him?

“No. Which also suggests it was someone who knew the family.” “You mean they were aware it was there, that it was valuable and, I’m assuming, small enough to remove easily?”

“Exactly. Which is why Ken has instructed us. He and his wife want to know if someone they regard as a friend took it.”

“Could it be one of the family? That would be even more upsetting.”

“A back window was forced open for them to get in, suggesting it wasn’t anyone from the house itself.”

“Unless they were devious enough to make it look like an outside job.”

Glyn shrugged noncommittally.

“Anyway, I’m going there now to get a list of everyone who’s visited since the egg arrived.”

As she often did, Chrissie accompanied him. Her shorthand came in useful when taking statements and, from her point of view, it kept her skills ready for when she applied for other jobs, as well as making the present one more interesting.

The house was on a perfectly average road, rather like the one she lived on with her parents. But inside it was very modern – inspired, she thought, by Habitat.

The egg, she decided, would be very noticeable, being so different from anything else in the room.

The dog, Smudge, had indeed barked as she and Glyn, strangers, approached the house. But when the postman came just after them, Chrissie noticed Smudge didn’t bark at him.

It all augured well for the theory that Smudge knew the thief, though the postman himself, an older man clearly nearing retirement, didn’t look like a prime candidate.

While Ken showed Glyn the place from which the egg had been taken, Chrissie kept her attention on Smudge. It was obvious where he got his name from, having a marking round one eye that truly looked like a large smudge of soot.

She liked dogs and had a way with them, and soon he was sitting at her feet with his head in her lap. But when Glyn turned to speak to her, he growled.

“Sorry,” Ken apologised to Glyn. “We got him from the dogs’ home and he hadn’t been well looked after. He’s still on the nervous side, but he’s coming on. Just needs time – we’ve only had him a few weeks.”

Glyn asked for her help with the list of people who’d been to the house since the egg’s arrival and were known to Smudge. Immediately she could see why – it was of considerable length!

“They seem to be very sociable sorts,” Glyn said to her later as they left the house and started down the path. “In three days, they’ve had about thirty people visit! Where to start, that’s what I want to know, with so many and just me to investigate them all.”

In normal circumstances Chrissie would have disputed that. There wasn’t just him, there was her, too! She liked to get involved in the cases and had no doubt she’d helped solve several.

But Smudge was out in the garden and she was busy saying goodbye to him.

“If only you could speak,” she said, stroking him. “You’d tell us, wouldn’t you?”

“Who can’t speak?” a familiar voice asked from the other side of the high hedge.

Shifty’s smiling face appeared over the privet. True to form, Smudge started barking, but he quietened down when Chrissie made suitably soothing noises.

“What are you doing round here?” Glyn asked.

“A job,” Shifty said, adding with emphasis, “a carpentry job.”

Shifty had, briefly, pursued a life of petty crime. But, all credit to him, he had put it behind him and was working again in his original trade.

He was looking now at Smudge with an expression that signalled to Chrissie he, too, was a dog-lover.

“Not seen you in the Globe lately,” he said.

Chrissie looked at Glyn. The Globe was the town’s worst pub. But the varied clientele included those who could, sometimes, provide useful information to someone in Glyn’s line of business, so he went in occasionally.

Then she realised it was Smudge that Shifty was speaking to.

“You’ve seen Smudge before,” she asked, “in the Globe?”

“You sure it’s the same dog?” Glyn said.

“Certain. Well, Smudge, he’s well-named. That mark on his face – it’s very unusual.”

“I can’t see Ken going in the Globe,” Glyn said, speaking now to Chrissie.

“No. But remember, Ken said they hadn’t had him long – he was a rescued stray – so maybe Smudge was with his first owner then.”

Glyn clapped his hands. “That’s going to be the answer! Smudge didn’t bark because the thief’s his original owner!”

He turned excitedly to Shifty.

“Who was Smudge with in the Globe?”

“I didn’t know the guy personally. But I’ll try to find out.”

Chrissie had no doubt Shifty would try – he often helped Glyn. Meanwhile, she and Glyn went back in to see Ken, to ask if he knew anything about Smudge’s previous owner.

Ken didn’t. And when Shifty turned up at the office next morning, he knew nothing much, either.

“At least, I think people do know who I’m talking about, but no-one’s saying anything. I remember he was built like a giant and a rough type. I reckon they’re scared, and you know as well as I do, Glyn, they don’t frighten easy down the Globe.”

Glyn sighed.

She knew the sigh. It usually preceded him going into one of his glooms – which actually rather reminded her of his hero Sherlock Holmes as she’d once seen him portrayed in a film.

“It’s so frustrating,” he said. “We know who it is, but –”

“Who we suspect,” Chrissie corrected.

“No, it’ll be him.” Shifty sided with Glyn. “One thing I did learn that might be significant is that he hasn’t been seen for a while.”

“That might fit with Smudge being found abandoned,” Chrissie said.

“Who found him?” Shifty asked. “Your client?”

“No, they got him from a refuge,” Glyn told him. “But the question’s a good one: where did whoever it was that took him to the refuge find him?”

Chrissie was already reaching for the phone. She spoke to Ken first, to get details of the refuge, then, after a rummage through the telephone directory, she got through to them.

Despite Glyn whispering to her, “You’ve got to know how to phrase questions to get the right answers, Christine”, and her gesturing to him to shut up, she was doing fine.

She established that the rescue centre volunteer she was speaking to remembered Smudge well.

Again his markings helped, and the fact that not much time had passed since Ken’s family had adopted him.

He’d been brought in to them having been found in poor condition, hungry and dehydrated.

“Tied up by the old farmhouse on the back way to the bluebell wood,” the girl

Glyn reminded Chrissie of his hero, Sherlock Holmes

explained. “It was lucky someone happened to be passing – no-one goes up there much since they built the new road.”

Chrissie had never heard of the wood, but Glyn knew it.

“Let’s go and have a look,” he said.

The girl, Chrissie decided, had been right when she said no-one went that way. For the last part of the journey, they hadn’t seen a soul, not even another car.

Nonetheless Glyn parked his Capri in among some trees – he always tried to hide it when out on an investigation – and they did the last bit on foot.

The farmhouse was there but in a state of near-dereliction. An adjacent field looked to her to have been left untended for several seasons. Aged machinery rusted in the overgrown yard.

Shifty had come with them, saying to Glyn he believed he’d recognise the guy if he saw him again.

By this Chrissie had assumed they were supposing Smudge’s first owner must live in the farmhouse. From the state of it, she now deemed this unlikely.

“No chance,” she started saying.

But Glyn was signalling her to shush. Shifty, she saw, was pointing up to a chimney from which smoke was pluming.

A glance through a grimy window revealed a fire in a huge old grate. And though there was no-one in the room, there were other signs of occupation. A mug on a table alongside a newspaper. A coat hanging behind the door big enough to support Shifty’s memory of a very large man . . .

Still, Chrissie could hardly believe anyone would live there.

“I mean, who?” “Someone who wants to live, shall we say, unnoticed.” Glyn’s eyes were on Shifty, who was already moving stealthily towards the door.

Chrissie prepared to follow but Glyn took her arm.

“You stay in that barn,” he whispered, pointing, “in case it gets rough in there.”

She started to protest, preferring to be with him, but he was insistent.

“If necessary you’ll be able to go and phone the police.” He gave her the keys to his car.

She nodded, seeing the sense of it.

Glyn had called it a barn, but in Chrissie’s mind those were usually made of wood, maybe with a corrugated iron roof.

This was an altogether more substantial building, brick-built and with a heavy, reinforced door double-bolted on the outside.

She opened it, not without effort, and stepped into the near-darkness.

With no windows, the only light was that coming in through the door she’d left slightly open to keep an eye on the farmhouse.

Tripping on the uneven floor, she grabbed at the wall to steady herself, displacing a brick that had obviously been loose.

Frowning, she leaned closer to look, and saw that more of the bricks in that section of the wall were loose. She moved another, which was enough to confirm her growing suspicion that she’d found a makeshift safe. Reaching inside, she removed an expensive watch . . . Footsteps!

Her first thought was that it must be Glyn, or Shifty, but some instinct told her it was neither.

“What’s this door doing open?” she heard someone, definitely neither Glyn nor Shifty, mutter.

For a moment she froze, then forced herself to dive for cover behind an old cart.

He was inside now. Her heart racing, Chrissie threw the watch into a shadowy corner, praying it would make enough noise when it landed to catch his attention.

It did. He started off in its direction, grabbing a scythe – a scythe! – which he brandished as he advanced.

Then she was out through the door, slamming it shut and pushing in the huge bolts all in a flash.

“That door weighs a ton,” she said to Glyn later, when the police had been called and the man arrested, “but I closed it no problem!”

“In emergencies we find the strength.”

She supposed that was right. But now that it was over she felt exhausted, and happy for Glyn to put his arm round her to help her to the car.

Next day, she was back to normal, at her desk, typing his closing file note.

Our thief’s name is Jobo. He has a record and acquired Smudge not as a pet, but as a guard dog at the farm which had been his base for some while.

When he ran up some gambling debts, he decided it was in his best interests to leave for a while. He did this without bothering to make any provision for Smudge – the dog was very lucky that someone heard him whining that day and took him to the refuge.

Our fair town is, however, what Jobo regards as “his patch” and was therefore considered by him to be his best option to steal enough goods to repay said debts.

So a couple of weeks ago he risked coming back and happened to see Ken returning home with what looked to Jobo like Smudge.

Uncertain it was Smudge, he waited till Ken and the dog had gone inside and took a peek through a window to try for a closer look at the animal.

It was then he saw the egg that Ken had bought for his wife . . .”

“The egg all sparkling with jewels,” Chrissie remarked to Glyn, who’d come into the office with toast for them both from the café over the road.

Glyn glanced at the note to see where she’d got to and took up the story.

“Absolutely. So he came back that night to steal the egg. Without Smudge barking because, of course, the dog recognised his old master.”

“From the sounds of him, I’m just glad he didn’t take poor Smudge along with the egg!”

“Don’t worry, he’s no longer interested in Smudge, Chrissie. He admitted that one reason he abandoned him was because, for all his barking, Smudge was never going to be the fierce guard dog he wanted. It seems Jobo was merely curious as to whether it was his old dog.”

“So Smudge is safe with Ken’s family?”

“Completely. As well as everything else, Jobo is going to be in jail for some while!” Glyn paused. “You know dogs better than I do, Chrissie, but I’m amazed, all things considered, Smudge didn’t bark his head off when he saw Jobo again and take a lump out of his leg!”

Chrissie smiled.

“As you say, you don’t really know dogs. He recognised Jobo as having a place in his life and dogs are famously loyal and loving.”

“Loyalty and love,” Glyn echoed, smiling back. “Yes, the things we all want.”

He turned away, but not before Chrissie saw an odd look on this face.

Who was he thinking off, she wondered. She knew very little about Glyn’s private life.

But what she did know was that what he’d said was true enough. Those were the things everyone wanted, including herself.

A strange sense of awkwardness came over her. She returned to typing the file note.

Her own contribution to the resolution of the case was covered in the note and she felt quite proud.

She got satisfaction from this job, no doubt about that, despite the hours and everything else.

Yes, maybe she’d stick with it a bit longer, she thought. n