The coyness jarred. It was a quickly calculated attempt to make up for the flip retort of the moment before. “In our regional vernacular,” she informed him earnestly, “Miss Lintz has been described as a bit warm in the arse.”
He grinned and went on. “Her recruit, as you’ll have guessed already, was a tearaway called Tring, and the reason she picked him, of course, was the fact that he was working at Doggigrub. He was also able to borrow a small truck from one of his brothers, and that was important, too.
“Before long, these two conned the Warden of the dog’s home into joining what the poor fellow thought was some sort of Scarlet Pimpernel operation. That must have been easy enough: Leaper’s none too bright a lad, by the look of him.
“They began dog-lifting. All were strays that nobody had claimed in the first week. The girl picked them and Leaper took them to a shed on its own. Then Tring collected a batch every now and again, after dark, and turned them loose forty or fifty miles away.”
“If I may interrupt for a moment...”
“But of course.”
“I appreciate this wealth of confidential information, but I am a perverse creature, Mr Charles. I keep wondering how it came into your possession in the first place.”
He smiled. “Perfectly simple. One of the conspirators turned Queen’s evidence. Or Cultox’s evidence, if you prefer. We were being kept in the picture right up to last week.”
“Until the demise of Mr Tring?”
“You could say that, yes.”
“Tring was not your informer, though?”
“Oh, no.”
Miss Teatime nodded. “Very well. Please go on. The story is most fascinating.”
Charles took several slow sips of whisky, then continued.
“The early part of the exercise had one main object—to build Leaper into a convinced and therefore credible witness to the fact that animals were being regularly carted away. He didn’t know where; all he did know was that they went, and that they’d been marked off as ‘R.I.P.’ His own interpretation of that, you’ve already found out for yourself. It only adds to the picture of Leaper as the perfect dupe, ignorant of the wicked goings-on at the pet food factory across the fields.” He looked at her expectantly. “You see what a clever build-up it was, don’t you?”
“I do, indeed.”
“The final stage of the plan was this. A dog was to be picked for the take-away treatment that wasn’t a stray—one that was identifiable and had an owner who’d likely create hell when it disappeared. Something easily recognisable—a bit of the beast’s collar, or, better still, one of those metal name-and-address discs—was to be hacked about by Tring to make it look as if it had gone through machinery and then sent anonymously to the dog’s owner—supposedly by a conscience-stricken employee at the Doggigrub factory.”
“How thankful you must be,” said Miss Teatime, “that so fiendish a plot was thwarted before it could come to fruition.”
Charles rubbed his chin. “Yes...”
“You sound doubtful.”
“We are a little anxious still.”
“I do not see why. The villain of the piece is no longer on the stage.”
He shook his head. “The villain of the piece, as you put it is, and always was, off-stage, Miss Teatime. Parish-Biggs.”
“But how can they hope to gain their object now? Of their two agents, one is deceased and the other defected. I cannot grasp the reason for your continuing concern.”
Charles regarded her narrowly. “I think you can,” he said. “I think you extracted enough information from Leaper this morning to have a pretty good idea of what we’re worrying about.”
Miss Teatime’s gaze remained one of blank anxiety to understand.
Charles’s patience broke.
“Bloody hell, you know damned well that the thing went off by accident while the girl was away on holiday. The idiot Leaper took it upon himself—God knows why—to pass over to Tring a dog that had actually been brought in by its owner. As a boarder, or whatever they call it. Tring promptly deported it to Yorkshire or somewhere, like the others, but he saw that this one had got an identity disc attached to its collar. He took it off, assuming that here was the job they’d been waiting for—the Big-Bother-for-Cultox job.” Charles made a gesture of exasperation. “Now do you see why we’re worried?”
“Tring is dead,” said Miss Teatime, stubbornly.
“Certainly, he’s bloody dead!” shouted Charles. “And where does that leave us? I’ll tell you. Waiting for a bomb to go off under the reputation of a multi-million pound product. And that bomb could be anywhere in England.”
Miss Teatime was frowning. “Bomb?”
“Look... when the girl got back, she tried to find out from both Leaper and Tring what had been going on. Leaper told her there had been a mistake but that he’d put it right with the woman concerned. He wouldn’t say any more. It seems he never liked the Lintz girl much.”
“Did she tell you this?”
“Yes, she did. Indirectly. I’ve never actually met her.”
“You mean, do you, that she told Harton?”
Charles nodded. “The point is that we were left not knowing who that woman was in case she needed to be offered compensation for her loss. And what made it all a thousand times worse was a sudden awkwardness on Tring’s part. Whether he’d become suspicious or not I don’t know but when the girl tried to get the truth out of him he just treated it as a huge joke. He told her he’d already got rid of the identity disc. He’d put it in a very safe place, he said. In a can of WOOF on its way to the sealing machine.”
“Did she believe him?”
“No.”
“But you do?”
Charles shrugged unhappily. “The idea has a certain horrid fascination. The packaging manager says that can could be now in any shop between Carlisle and Southampton.”
“Your bomb metaphor would seem to be all too apt, Mr Charles. I hope you will not consider it uncharitable of me to add to your troubles by making another of my idle inquiries.”
Frowning, he looked at his watch. “Actually, I don’t have all that much time, and there are a couple of things I wanted to ask you...”
“All I wish to know,” broke in Miss Teatime, firmly, “is the identity of the person who gave poor Mr Tring his come-uppance.” She paused, then added: “In your opinion, that is.”
Again, the raised shoulders. “Odd question. Some sort of fairground accident, as far as I know. Unless you mean this talk about a woman being involved?” He waited, but she said nothing. “All right—she’s the wife of our local managing director. Embarrassing?—sure—but what else do you want me to say?”
She regarded him steadily. “I do have some acquaintance with Julia Harton. She may have her quirks, endearing and otherwise, but homicide most certainly is not among them.”