Ed McBaines 87th Precinct Mystery Magazine. Volume 1, No. 4. April, 1975

Three for the Hounds by Theodore Mathieson

Bert Hunking, hearing his Siberian huskies begin to howl, came out of his wheel-less trailer house to see Corinne running up the path from her red convertible. In her arms she held a large brown paper sack, and as she reached him, pressing herself against his body and kissing him, she held the bundle over his head like a forfeit in a children’s game.

“You got some stuff he wore lately?” Hunking asked, grabbing the sack, and peering into it like a kid eyeing some goodies.

“Those are his pajamas, and he wore them last night.”

“All night?” Hunking’s heavily handsome face had a leer on it.

She slapped him playfully on the cheek. “If I didn’t love you so much, Bert, I’d take that to heart. Show me what you’re going to do, show me!”

“Can’t wait to get rid of him, huh?”

This time she turned away angrily, her movement setting the dogs in the nearest kennel to howling again.

Quickly Hunking reached for her. It wasn’t every day that he snagged himself a girl who lived in a rich house on a hill, married to an old geezer twice her age.

“Now you know I didn’t mean that, Doodles,” he said. “Sure, I’ll show you what’s on the program-y.”

Arm in arm, he guided her over to a large kennel where four Siberian huskies growled with the ominous promise of a canine apocalypse.

“I imagine right now they might even go for me, if I gave them half a chance. But they’ll sure as hell go for him. For three days they’ve had nothing to eat...”

“That must account for the howling we hear on the hill. It sets old Francis just about crazy.”

“It won’t bother old Francis much longer.”

Hunking took a pair of flamingo colored pajamas out of the bag, and tying them into a firm knot on a forked stick, he thrust the stick through the kennel bars and jabbed at the dogs. They went crazy, shredding the garments in seconds.

“How are you going to do it?” she asked presently.

“Well, your old guy will come in through the gate there. He’ll break a trip thread which will lower the drop gate I’ve fixed on this kennel, and the dogs will have at him.”

“But won’t it look odd, their getting out of a kennel like that?”

“Nope.” Hunking looked smug. “See, even though they’re in the kennel, they’ve got a three-way free chain on their collars, all linked to a single heavier chain. The final link on that heavier chain has been sprung, so when the dogs are found after the — er — accident, it will look like they broke loose — not from the kennel — but from this metal post outside it.”

He pointed to the post at his feet, where a chain fragment of four or five links was attached.

“I’ll be up the hill in the woods,” he continued, “apparently hunting quail with my shot gun, and when I hear the ruckus, I simply come down and shoot the dogs. The police can’t hold me. I looked into it; I got my whole ten acres pasted with dog warning signs.”

“One thing’s missing,” Corinne said. “How are you going to get Francis to come down here in the first place?”

“That, Doodles, will be your job. And here is what you tell him...”

From the rooftop of his three-story mansion, “Old Francis” Stoddard III crouched in a flapping bathrobe, with a telescope screwed into his good eye.

Every day for the past week, after Corinne had left for town, he’d come up here to study the clearing where the private road to Hunking’s place curved past, and had seen her red convertible go by.

Reluctantly he had realized she was having an affair with the dog man.

Ever since the day, two months before, when Hunking had called at the mansion, at Stoddard’s request, to help doctor an ailing Doberman pinscher, Corinne had started being away a lot. But he’d only become aware of it recently.

At first, in spite of his imperious curiosity, he had found it troublesome to climb out on the roof with his telescope — his asthma always gave him trouble afterwards. But then, as he experimented with angles of vision, and found he was able, from a kind of widow’s walk, to see a segment of Hunking’s yard where he kept his dogs, it became a bitter kind of fun.

For the past few days he’d seen the dog man poking at a kennel with a stick to which was attached some kind of colored material, and wondered what he was up to. But it wasn’t until he’d missed a favorite blue shirt and then, the following day, saw a blue material being shoved at the brutes, that he began to have his suspicions. Only this morning, for instance, when he’d seen Corinne eyeing his flamingo pajamas, he’d waited until she’d “gone to town,” then checked and found his nightwear was gone, too.

And now he’d just seen Hunking — with Corinne standing beside him — poke a flamingo piece of material at the dogs.

Thoughtfully, Old Francis climbed back through his bedroom window, and went for a stroll through his collection rooms. Visual contact with his artifacts always helped him meditate; gathered over a life time, they included everything from a slab smuggled from Stonehenge, to a crux ansata from Hatshepsut’s tomb.

Stopping amid his medieval English collection, where Hurk, his silent, Hungarian factotum was busy polishing the glass of a display case, Stoddard stared at a crossbow on the wall and thought of murder.

But he knew that before he could start to plan, they would have to make the first move...

Corinne made it that evening at dinner.

“Oh, guess what, darling,” she said over dessert, “I met Mr Hunking in town this morning. He’s the dog man, who came about poor Howitzer, remember? He told me he’d been digging in his yard for a new kennel spot, and he came across a big rock with pictographs on it — actual writing, he seems to think. And yet the Digger Indians, who used to live in these hills, were supposed to have no written means of communication. Of course, he knows about your interest in all those old things, and he wondered if you’d come down and take a look at it.”

“Of course, I’d be glad to,” Old Francis said as Hurk poured him a second demi-tasse. “Any particular time?”

“He said he’d be there around nine tomorrow morning.”

“Nine it is. I’m most interested in old pictographs.”

So while Corinne still slept, early next morning, Old Francis got up, as he sometimes did, to go for a constitutional in the woods. This time he went down the hill towards the dog man’s place, and hid in a clump of bushes near the trailer, in which electric light still burned.

After a while, Hunking came out, busied himself with his dogs, and went back inside again. Stoddard stretched his rheumatic limbs, and looked at his watch. Seven forty-five. At eight, Hunking reappeared and seemed to be stretching some kind of line, invisible from where Stoddard crouched, across the gate opening. Then he went to the kennel and fussed around the trap door there.

At which Stoddard saw the light. But he waited.

At eight-thirty, Hunking went into his trailer and emerged presently with a rifle, stuffing shells into his pockets. He climbed a side fence opposite Stoddard and disappeared into the woods. Shortly afterwards, Stoddard retreated up the hill under cover of the underbrush, and returned home...

“Oh, darling, it’s late,” Corinne said, as Old Francis crept back, puffing, into bed beside her.

“I went for a walk,” Stoddard said, “but I’m not feeling well, and I think I’ll spend the day in bed.”

“But what about Mr Hunking and the rock!” Corinne cried.

“It’s been there a good many generations, apparently, and it’ll wait a day longer. Tell Mr Hunking I’ll be there tomorrow at nine, will you? And I won’t disappoint him this time.”

Hunking’s gory death made quite a splash in the neighborhood. According to the newspapers, Mr Francis Stoddard III, the retired steel magnate on Vernal Hill, had come down to pay a visit to the dog man and found four of his huskies bloodily muzzling what was left of him. Commendably level-headed, Mr Stoddard had not fled, leaving the dogs to roam the countryside to jeopardize others; he had slipped quietly back to his car, seized a pistol from the glove compartment, and had shot the hounds one by one.

The fact the dogs had not attacked Mr Stoddard himself was accounted for by the fact their hunger and rage had been sated by their unfortunate owner. Indeed, many people weren’t at all surprised that Hunking’s own dogs had finally turned on him. He had been known as a hard kennel master.

But when Corinne learned the news, she’d run hysterically to Old Francis, who sat in his library reading a vellum-bound copy of Machiavelli’s Principle.

“You did it,” she cried. “You killed Bert Hunking. His own dogs would never have killed him!”

“But they did, my dear,” Stoddard said graciously, and rose to set a chair near his. He looked taller, younger. The challenge which Hunking’s threat has presented, and his success in meeting it, had obviously done more towards rejuvenation than living two years with Corinne had.

“Sit down, Corinne, and let’s have a talk.”

Caught in the spell of her husband’s transformation, his wife sat down silently and stared at him.

“The dogs did it, although you might say I maneuvered it. And of course you could go to the police and tell them, but that wouldn’t be wise. I know that you and the dog man had been intimate. In Hunking’s trailer, I found some notes of yours, signed with the obnoxious name of Doodles, which make it quite clear that you, as well as he, had planned to make me the victim of his dogs. Which disappointed me very much, my dear, but I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“What are you going to do?” she whispered.

“Nothing, except what I’ve already done. I saw my lawyer this afternoon, after the unfortunate — accident, and changed my will. You get nothing — I repeat, nothing — if you are guilty of a single disloyal act against me from this moment on, until the time I die — of a natural death, of course. I’ve also made that stipulation. So you see, if you tried testifying against your husband...”

Corinne’s eyes narrowed, and Stoddard sensed the struggle of her will against his. Outwardly flighty, he suspected his wife was steel inside, and wasn’t likely to forgive him for what he’d done.

“You hate me that much?” she asked.

“Not at all. Curious as it may seem, I want to keep you with me. Shall we shake on it?”

Her hand was as cold as death...

But within a week after Bert Hunking’s demise, Corinne had decided to relocate her maid, who like a duenna had occupied a nearby room, to another part of the house. And in bed, whenever Stoddard laid a tentative hand upon her shoulder, she no longer turned away and pretended to be asleep.

Breakfast together became a cheerful event, instead of a sullen hangover from the night before, and Stoddard, who already looked younger as the result of his punitive action against the dog man, began to act like a boy, going so far as to make paper airplanes out of the morning newspaper and launching them at Hurk as he served them.

Corinne and “Young Francis” as she now called him, began to take walks together, hand in hand, along woodland paths. Then one day as they sat at the top of the hills, near the edge of the reservoir, she said casually:

“I can’t understand how everything has changed between us, Francis. It must be because you fought for me.”

“Oh, I didn’t exactly fight,” he said modestly.

“What did you do? You know, I can’t imagine how you managed it. That man — I really can’t think of him as having meant anything to me — wasn’t easy to fool. He was strong. And those dogs could have torn you apart...”

“I know.”

“It was clever of you to gain the advantage the way you did.”

“A combination of desperation and imagination, I suppose.”

“No jealousy?”

“That too, of course.” He looked at her shrewdly. “You’d really like to know how I did it?”

She lifted his hand and kissed it. “Very much,” she said.

“All right. I went down the first morning early and acquainted myself with the set-up, and I know I don’t have to tell you the details of that.”

“That’s cruel,” she said, and pulled her hand away.

“Perhaps. Then, the following day I drove down even earlier and parked my car a ways off. With me I had my.44 revolver, an unwashed pair of trousers and shirt that I do my gardening in, and a suit of medieval armour from my collection.”

“My God,” Corinne said.

“I put on the armor, leaving one gauntlet off, so I could handle the revolver, and walked up to the trailer. The dogs heard me clanking, of course, and set up a howl, so by the time I reached the gate, Hunking was already out of his trailer and looking at me with his mouth open. The trap was not yet set, so I ambled in and pointed the gun at him, and told him to undress and put on my garden clothes. He didn’t argue. I had calculated that my appearance would give me a psychological superiority and it did. Once he was in my clothes, I kept the gun on him, and went over to set the dogs loose. They leapt at me, but slid off, and I think were scared of me too, because right away they turned around and went right for him. I watched, and after a while, I shot them, one by one...”

After he’d finished, Corinne sat for a long time without speaking. Then she rose and walked alone back down the hill.

Dinner that night was strained, so that Stoddard was forced to make comments about the weather to Hurk as he served, to relieve the tension. But later when they went to their room, Corinne said: “I didn’t mean to make you feel like a criminal, Francis. After all, you did fight for me, in your way.”

“I’d rather have you think so, my dear.”

“You trust me now, don’t you?”

“Not for a moment.”

“Then why did you—”

“I like to please you, if I can. And you wanted to hear.”

She kissed him at that, and trust or no trust, he kissed her back.

In the morning they had a pillow fight in bed, and he was like a boy again, laughing and shouting. Suddenly she said: “Young Francis, you say you like to please me. Would you do something for me now?”

“I’d love to, my dear.”

“Not every girl has a knight to fight for her. I’d like to see you as one.”

“You mean you want me to put on the suit of armor?” he asked surprised.

“I imagine you looked very chivalrous!”

“Why, I suppose I did, at that!” The idea suddenly appeared to please him, and he got out of bed. “Wait here, I’ll put it on for you.”

A few minutes later she heard a rattling in the hall, the door opened, and Francis came creaking in, encased in his metal suit, the helm scraping the lintel and jarring down the visor. They started laughing together, and laughed until they cried.

Then Corinne jumped up and went to the long mirror close to the low-skilled window.

“Stand over here, so you can see yourself,” she said, so he ambled over and took a warlike pose in front of the glass.

“You do look medieval!” she laughed prettily. “But you know, I think I like you better with your visor down!”

She slapped down the visor with a quick movement, then stepping back, gathered her weight and pushed him — straight at the window. He stumbled heavily, hitting the casement sideways with his epaulier; glass shattered, framework splintered, and, completely out of control, he swiveled so that as he fell backwards he was facing her. For several seconds his gauntleted hand held onto the casement sides, but the weight of the armor was pulling him back.

“Please, Corinne — pull me in!” he gasped behind his visor, and his voice echoed in the helm. “You can have the money, all of it you want.”

“You think I want the money!” she spit at him, prying at the fingers of his gauntlets. “You killed Herb, the man I loved! You fooled him, and I fooled you, and now you’re going to die!”

“I won’t die,” he gasped. “I’ve arranged to come back. You’ll see—!”

He lost his hold then, and disappeared. And when the sound, as of a multiple accident on a freeway, came up from the brick courtyard three floors below, Corinne had her eyes closed, and her lips stretched into a smile.

She found the note on the bed two nights later, on the eve of the inquest.

With a cry of horror, Corinne hurried out into the hallway and downstairs to her maid’s room. But the girl was gone, her clothes and luggage, too.

“Hurk! Hurk!” She was screaming now, and running through the big house. But the factotum was gone, and so was the cook. She was alone.

She grabbed at a phone then to call a taxi to take her to a hotel in town. The line was dead.

Going to the front door, she flung it open and stared into the moonlit woods. Then she fled upstairs to her bedroom and locked herself in.

Quickly she searched the bathroom and closet to see that nobody had hidden there while she was gone, and she even looked under the bed. With trembling hands she poured a glass of brandy from Stoddard’s decanter to steady herself, and stood panting as the liquid burned down her throat.

She was pouring a second drink when she heard it — the clank of armor from down the hall. With an animal cry, she moved her dresser against the door, spilling bottles every which way, and then added chairs to the barricade.

The lights went off.

Like a wild thing, now, she pulled aside the drapes that covered the broken window, and the moonlight streamed in. She leaned out seeking a ledge on which she might step, but the height made her dizzy and she quickly withdrew.

Once again the clanking sounded, followed by a terrific blow, as from a mailed fist, upon the door.

“Go away — go away!” she sobbed.

But the blows came again and again, and then the splintering of wood. The lock snapped, and the barracade began moving into the room.

Muttering incoherently, she climbed backwards across the low sill.

Now it was in the room with her. She heard the heavy steps approach the window, and straightening up in panic, lost her balance.

She screamed once more, falling as the face came into the moonlight — Hurk’s heavy Hungarian face, and just before her head struck the bricks in the courtyard below, a seemingly vagrant thought wisped through her brain...

Of course a knight doesn’t get into his armor unassisted.