Bedfordshire Clanger Calamity

the dog would have forgotten about that by the time they arrived at the pub and stare at his bowl because Rex’s body clock would assure him it was dinner time.
Keeping the dog away from his dinner bowl to avoid an hour or more of grumpy dog noises wasn’t what caused the u-turn. It wasn’t even the acknowledgement that the pub would be filled with young people making noise and playing the fruit machine and jukebox. Despite telling himself a quiet evening was what he desired, truthfully, he wanted to find out if the woman he met earlier really killed her lover.
Because he didn’t believe she had.
He’d seen her face when DS Craig arrested her. More importantly, he’d seen her eyes. She had no idea why the police would accuse her and that made her innocent: Albert was sure of it. A homewrecker she might be, but that wasn’t a crime in the eyes of the law. If April was right, and Kate had just inherited the entire café, the police would consider that to be a strong motive. They might take the stance that she seduced the older man as the first stage in a cold-hearted plan to murder him and take the café. There were many recorded cases of worse behaviour. However, if Albert’s instincts were right, the poor woman might be tried and found guilty of a crime she hadn’t committed while the true killer went free.
It would keep him awake all night if he didn’t at least explore what might have happened.
Arriving back at the café, he’d been forced to turn his collar up as the rain became persistent, but the door was now displaying a closed sign.
Rex hated the rain. He hated the way it bounced off his ears and how his paws flicked it up onto his belly where his coat was so short, he was virtually bald. The rain was cold and unwelcome and though it wouldn’t penetrate his coat to reach his skin anywhere else, it would saturate the outer layer of fur and take hours to dry out. Generally, he was happy to go wherever his human chose to wander. The old man spent a lot of time going to different places, and there was always something to do, new smells to discover, and, quite often, something to eat.
Today, however, they had been out for hours and he was quite looking forward to going home. They were back at the café, which was okay by him; the café had food inside and it was right about dinner time according to the clock in his head.
Wondering why they were not going inside, he looked up at his human and got rewarded with a rain drop right on his nose, a portion of which whooshed right up his left nostril. He ducked his head again, using his left front leg to wipe at his face, and he sneezed, a spectacular explosion of dog snot and rainwater as his head spasmed.
Pulling an odd face as he tried to decide if he needed to sneeze again, Rex sniffed, and that was when he caught the scent. He held it in his nose, deciphering it. His human was moving, turning to his left and about to walk away, but Rex dug his feet in and leaned his bodyweight in the opposite direction. The smell meant something. It lingered on the air despite the rain damping everything down.
‘Come along, Rex.’ His human tugged at the lead, trying to make him budge but with little effect. ‘What can you smell, boy?’ The question meant his human was paying attention at least. The answer was that he could smell the men from the café, the ones who were sitting by the door. The combination of scents coming from the pair blended together to give him an unquestionable result. They were not in the café, he could see that, using his eyes for once in favour of his nose. He got to his feet and looked around, lifting his nose higher as he sucked in air and tried to pinpoint where the scent was coming from. He wasn’t doing this for any particular reason, only because their scent was familiar and unexpected.
Behind him, Albert had moved position so he could see through the window into the back of the café. Beyond the counter, he could see someone moving around. The business shut for the day, but someone was working, and he hoped it might be Victor. Peering through the glass façade, he spotted Victor’s face, which confirmed there was reason to knock on the window. The action startled the man inside, his surprised expression appearing in the round window of the kitchen door.
Moments later, Victor came through it, a question on his brow as he came to see who might be there.
The sound of the door locks clicking open distracted Rex before he could find the source of the scent he held. He would need to leave where he was to pursue the smell, but it looked like his human was going back inside the café.
‘Hello again, Albert,’ Victor held the door open with his left hand, clasping the frame with his right so he blocked the gap with his body as he leaned outside into the cool damp air. ‘Did you leave something behind?’ he glanced into the café. ‘I didn’t see anything.’
Albert bit his lip, wondering only now how he might make his suggestion. ‘No, no, nothing like that. Actually, I wondered if I might be of assistance.’
Victor’s eyebrows knitted together as he missed what the old man was saying. ‘In the kitchen?’ he tried to clarify.
Shaking his head quickly at his ambiguous choice of words, Albert had another go at explaining. ‘No, I meant with your sister’s situation.’ He wasn’t making himself clear if Victor’s single raised eyebrow was anything to go by, so he stuffed his next sentence full