Gently Instrumental

by Alan Hunter

He lingered to fill his pipe before seeking the melting streets once more. He had parked the car, which had become intolerable, and left his jacket locked in the boot. Now, perspiring under a straw hat, he looked like any other casual visitor: an anonymous figure in sports shirt and sandals, hugging whatever shade offered.

  Puffing, he set out along the pavement towards the town’s end and the river. Despite the heat he passed people busy erecting banners and decorations. Posters appeared in most windows, a few flags were limply hanging; a bookseller was displaying a collection of scores and a draped photograph of the event’s famous sponsor. The Festival was coming: it defied the heat, the glare, the smell of melting tar, the Pompeian columns of smoke behind the town: and a small matter of someone’s dying.

  Where The Street ended he paused to look back on the decorated, glare-dulled scene, the thoroughfare of small mid-Victorian frontages of rococo plaster and dark red brick. There was movement in a window: his eye went to it. A pale, neat face was staring down at him, a face with a clipped black moustache and expressionless dark eyes. Gently turned to it: the face vanished. The window was above an imposing street front. Equal to 12½ per cent at Basic Rate, said a discreet display: Save with The Eastwich Building Society. Gently waited. The face stayed away. After a moment, he plodded on.

  Friday’s Yard was at the bend of the river, where it took a ninety-degree turn southwards. There a hotch potch of tarred sheds stood around a larger structure with a concrete slipway. Beside the sheds a few old craft lay quietly flaking on stocks, ancient cutters and lean-gutted launches, their engine-bearers starting from sand-heavy bilges. On a cradle on the slip stood a small yacht with two men in boiler suits working on her. A shed by the entrance was sign-boarded: Office. Gently tapped; a man answered.

  ‘Mr Friday . . . ?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  Neither his manner nor his dress invited formality. He was clad simply in the bottom half of a boiler suit of which the top and sleeves were twisted round his waist. What one noticed was a squashed nose set in a broad-jawed, sun-darkened face, rather close-set light brown eyes and a firm, large mouth. He was about forty-five. His hair was fair and he had the bowed shoulders and piston arms of a prizefighter.

  ‘What’s your name, then?’

  Gently told him. Friday’s eyes were shrewd for a moment.

  ‘About Walt’s bit of trouble is it?’

  ‘You could call it that. Perhaps we can step into the office.’

  Friday hesitated, then shook his head. ‘It’s as hot as the clappers in there, mate! If you want to talk we’ll go up the yard. That’s the coolest spot round here.’

  He dived back into the office to return with a pipe in his hand, shouted to the two men that he’d be around, and beckoned to Gently to follow him. He led the way past the old hulks and by stacks of well-weathered timber till they came to a grassy slope bounded by an unkempt hedge. Here a tall hawthorn cast shade and a faint breeze came from the river. One looked across the yard and down the river-reach and the line of shingle dunes hiding the sea.

  ‘We may as well sit.’

  Friday dropped to a squat and rested his back against the hawthorn. He filled his pipe from a grimy rubber pouch and exhaled smoke in a long sigh.

  ‘This perishing weather!’

  ‘Isn’t it good for trade?’

  ‘What—?’ Friday looked scornful. ‘Nobody wants to go sailing in this weather. It’s hotter out there than it is here.’ He puffed, then pointed with his pipe. ‘You know what will happen with that lot, don’t you? The first time it rains it’ll pour through the coamings of every boat on the ruddy moorings. My phone’ll be red hot.’ He glanced slyly at Gently. ‘Of course, I’m stocked up with putty and Sylglass.’

  ‘You won’t have so much time for music then?’

  ‘Nor for anything else I won’t.’

  ‘Why did you stay behind on Tuesday?’

  ‘Why? To knock back a pint. Why else?’

  Gently lowered himself to the grass and found a fence post for his back. It was a pleasant enough spot up there, in spite of the raffle of the yard below. The moorings were patched with colourful craft, each swung to the weak ebb, and the river unravelled southwards between marsh and dunes, almost straight, into azured haze. Ten miles it paced beside the dunes before reluctantly joining the sea. On the breeze a slight fragrance of marsh-litter mingled with the odour of seaweed. Friday spat a shred of tobacco.

  ‘That louse Virtue. He was born to make trouble.’

  ‘Did you have any dealings with him?’

  ‘Do me a favour! You could just see Virtue in a boat.’

  ‘But other dealings . . . ?’

  Friday stared at him. ‘Do I look like one of those? If it had been our Second Violin, now, you might have had cause to ask me.’ He picked up a pebble and threw it with a jerk to rattle on scrap below. ‘I’m a widower,’ he said. ‘I’m no angel, but don’t come accusing me of the other.’

  ‘Who was the man, then?’

  ‘How should I know? Likely it was all a lie in the first place. If Walt can’t tell you, I can’t.’

  ‘So . . . why did you stay behind with the doctor?’

  Friday said nothing for a few moments. He squatted and gazed out at the river. A single sail, a half-decker, was trying to stem the ebb. With bare breeze it seemed to rest still on the pale, unreflecting surface, then moved feebly, a yard at a time, towards the yacht club’s skeleton jetty.

  ‘That’s why you’ve come here . . . isn’t it?’

  Gently fanned himself with his hat.

  ‘Have you talked to the doctor?’

  Gently nodded. ‘Hasn’t your daughter been on the phone?’

  Friday struck a fresh light. The match wavered slightly and he drew on the pipe with vigour. He snapped the stem of the match and dug the pieces into the earth.

  ‘All right then – you may as well have it! Like I told you, I’m no angel. After the way that devil behaved I wanted to go after him and sort him out.’

  ‘You wanted to go after him?’

  ‘That’s right. I reckoned it was time he was given his orders. Because Walt wouldn’t have carried on with him around, whether we got an understudy or not.’

  ‘You intended to run him out of town?’

  Friday nodded, puffing fiercely. ‘And I still reckon that was the way to handle it, for all Dr Henry’s clever ideas.’

  ‘But you’re saying you didn’t.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

  Gently stared at him and said nothing.

  The half-decker still hadn’t made the jetty and was looking as though perhaps it never would. From standing still it had begun to make sternway, was widening the gap between stem and staithe. It had reached a wind-shadow: opposite the yacht club the spit of land was capped by a squat tower, probably used as a line-marker. Generations of yachtsmen must have cursed it.

  ‘Now look,’ Friday said. ‘Let’s talk some sense. I hadn’t any reason to do him in.’

  Gently made passes with his hat. ‘It could have been an accident,’ he said.

  ‘No it couldn’t – not with me. I’ve been in the business since I was a kid. I was an ABA finalist two years running and won the title in fifty-six. I’ve stopped plenty. But they all got up to shake my hand afterwards.’

  ‘They’d be men of your own weight,’ Gently said.

  ‘Look – how was he killed? Tell me that.’

  ‘By a violent blow.’

  ‘But not from a fist.’

  Gently simply went on fanning.

  Friday took some quick whiffs. ‘You’re just trying it on, mate,’ he said. ‘You think you’ll get me to drop my guard and then whip one in. That’s the game.’

  He snatched down a bunch of the fat blackish-red haws that decorated the hawthorn and aimed them, one by one, at an empty oil drum below. He was a good shot. The haws made a satisfying clang on the drum.

  ‘Didn’t Dr Henry tell you he’d talked me out of i
t?’

  ‘The doctor was prudent enough not to mention it.’

  ‘He would be, wouldn’t he?’ Friday sounded sour. ‘But that’s the long and the short of it. Bashing Virtue was too simple, it was only going to upset old Walt. But I reckon with Virtue out of the way we could have talked Walt round. Walt isn’t a mug. He might have sulked, but he wouldn’t have stood in his own light.’

  ‘What was the doctor’s solution then?’

  Friday discharged a haw. ‘Talk.’

  ‘Talking to Virtue?’

  ‘Who else. He said he knew how the little louse worked.’

  ‘How . . . ?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me, did he? Just made it sound like he knew the answers. That’s the way Dr Henry carries on, keeping everything close to his chest.’

  ‘Did he say when he’d talk to him?’

  ‘No.’ Friday reached for fresh ammunition. ‘And if you’re thinking he went after him on Tuesday then you don’t know the doctor. He went home to talk to Walt, you can take that for gospel, and maybe to think up some fresh tricks. He was for letting Virtue stew.’

  ‘He didn’t do it, you didn’t do it.’

  ‘That’s the cut of it,’ Friday said.

  Gently fanned. ‘It leaves Walt in the middle.’

  Friday slammed home another haw.

  One of the men came across from the sheds and approached them apologetically.

  ‘Tom, we’ve found some rot in the hog.’

  ‘Oh, God’s bloody pyjamas!’ Friday groaned. ‘Much?’

  ‘There’s quite a bit . . .’

  ‘Foxy’ll have my guts for garters. I looked her over before he bought her and told him she only needed some planks.’

  He jumped up and hastened down to the slip. Gently and the man followed. The yacht on the cradle was a good-looking sloop of around four tons, with a trace of tumble-home in her bilge lines and a firmly raked transom. Planks had been removed below the waterline to reveal the curved timbers. Friday, kneeling on the cradle, dug ferociously with a screwdriver.

  ‘A bit of softening . . . I don’t think it’s rot.’

  ‘You could shove your fist through the garboard, Tom.’

  ‘So that’s the reason then, isn’t it? Even ruddy oak will soften.’ He straightened up and jumped down from the cradle. ‘We’ll leave it till tomorrow to dry out. Then we’ll tap it and soak it with Protim . . . and for Christ’s sake stop giving me heart attacks!’

  He stood brushing sweat from his face and eyeing the lines of the little yacht; then his tanned shoulders heaved and he turned towards Gently.

  ‘Are you a sailing man?’

  Gently hunched.

  ‘This one belongs to Foxy Meares.’

  ‘Leonard Meares . . . ?’

  Friday nodded. ‘But perhaps you haven’t got around to him yet.’

  He jammed his dead pipe in his mouth and set off back to the hawthorn. There was sourness in his expression and a determination about his movements. They sat again. The half-decker was still loitering near the jetty, but now a more fortunate sail, heading downstream, had emerged from the haze towards Thwaite. It tacked with great deliberation, barely heeling on its boards. Friday kept an eye on it.

  ‘Is Walt your man, then?’

  Gently grunted and eased into the grass. Little cream moths, shiny-winged, rose irritably and settled again. ‘Would it stop the performance?’

  ‘What do you think? We couldn’t go on with Walt in the nick.’

  ‘It might get you publicity.’

  ‘We don’t need that sort. If you pinch Walt the show is off.

  Gently plucked a stem of the grass. ‘Do you think he was capable of it?’ he said.

  ‘Walt?’ Friday paused, scowling. ‘I wouldn’t know, would I, with that sort of seacook.’

  ‘Then why should we think differently?’

  Friday was silent; he sucked air through a cold pipe. The yacht from Thwaite had sailed clear of the haze and showed now as a yawl, its mizzen plain.

  Gently chewed on his stem. ‘Walt’s the man with a motive. He was adrift for two hours after the rehearsal. He’s active enough to have dealt Virtue. And Dr Capel is keeping him under sedation.’

  Friday kept sucking.

  ‘I talked to him this morning and he made some damaging admissions about Virtue. Inspector Leyston is with him now. I daresay he’ll be taking Walt to the police station.’

  Friday sucked faster.

  ‘He fits the pattern, of course. Normally our first suspect is the husband or wife. In this instance Hozeley stands as the husband and Virtue as the wife playing fast and loose.’

  Gently leaned back and chewed composedly, his eyes watching the yawl. Friday was sitting bold upright, pipe sagging, his scowling face hot.

  ‘But you can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘The jury will like it.’

  ‘To hell with the jury! I was the one who was there.’

  ‘You were . . . where?’

  ‘At that rehearsal. Trying to keep my hands off Virtue.’ He snatched the pipe away violently and jerked himself closer to Gently. ‘Now you just listen to me, mate. What I’m telling you beats guessing. When Virtue cleared off after the row Walt wasn’t in a shape to kill anyone. He was knocked up, you understand? What he needed most was a shot of brandy. When he left the hotel he was like a man who’d been hit over the head with a crowbar. And I was worried, I can tell you, in case he took a walk in the sea. But him going after Virtue is a laugh – he hadn’t enough steam left to swat a fly.’

  Gently chewed. ‘He’d have had time to recover.’

  ‘That’s damned nonsense. He was pooped.’

  ‘Suppose he was shamming.’

  ‘Pull the other one. You can’t act going grey in the face.’

  Gently turned his head to spit grass. ‘So you’re convinced of Hozeley’s innocence.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying and it’s the truth. You’re never going to hang it on Old Walt.’

  Gently sucked his stem. ‘Well . . . Meares is out. He and Miss Hazlewood left together. And we can pass the doctor.’ He tossed away the grass. ‘It does seem to leave only you.’

  The clusters of haws hung conveniently; Gently, in his turn, reached up to pluck some. He took careful aim at the oil drum and succeeded in bouncing a haw off the top. Friday was staring at him like a man who’d just been touched with a hot poker. His mouth was agape, showing strong but nicotine-stained teeth.

  ‘So then . . . it is me you’re after!’

  Gently shrugged. ‘The cap seems to fit.’

  ‘Oh no it doesn’t. I didn’t go after him – he was home and dry by the time I left!’

  ‘But you could have got him out again, couldn’t you?’

  ‘How could I have done that?’

  Gently aimed a haw. ‘Oh . . . any excuse. Say that Walt was injured and was asking for him.’

  Friday’s eyes were round. ‘But that’s all balls!’

  ‘I think it would have fetched him,’ Gently said. ‘Of course you may not have thought of the trick yourself. But it may have been put to you by someone who did.’

  ‘You mean – Dr Henry?’

  Gently fired a haw.

  ‘You’re raving,’ Friday said. ‘Bloody raving. Dr Henry was all against it. It was him that stopped me from going after him.’

  ‘That’s your tale.’

  ‘But it’s true. You go to the doctor and ask him.’

  Gently smiled, drew a haw and hit the oil drum dead centre.

  ‘Can anyone vouch for you . . . apart from your daughter?’

  ‘I don’t know – someone must have seen me.’

  ‘But someone you can name?’

  ‘I tell you I don’t know! I wasn’t thinking about that when I was walking home.’

  ‘There’s a footpath, isn’t there, across the Common, joining the road near Gorse Cottage? That would b
e your quickest way back – and of course, unfrequented at that time of night.’

  ‘I wasn’t out at Gorse Cottage!’

  ‘But if you had been, you’d have taken that footpath?’

  ‘Look – for Christ’s sake can’t you believe me?’

  ‘I’d find it easier with a witness.’

  Friday scrubbed at the sweat that was drenching him; his scowling eyes looked dazed. Below them the yawl, a blue-painted vessel, was approaching the bend in a tight haul. Now it too had encountered the wind-shadow and its masthead jib had begun to slat.

  ‘This is all a try-on . . . that’s it, isn’t it?’

  Reluctantly, the yawl was putting in a tack. As it came about the sun flashed blindingly from glassy paint and varnish. Then it picked up a course that would have been losing but for the friendly direction of the tide.

  ‘Look, if that’s the game . . . !’ Friday raked off sweat. ‘I’m not the only fish in the pond. I don’t know about Foxy’s going off with Laurel, but he was out there damn soon after Virtue.’

  ‘Meares . . . ?’

  ‘Yes – clever-boy Meares. He could have seen Laurel home and doubled back. And how was it he left his cello in the Music Room, when always before he’d taken it home with him?’

  ‘Did he do that?’

  ‘Yes he did. You’d better do your homework, mate. And here’s another thing – it was Foxy who was narking him, saying we should dump him and bring in an understudy. I’ll bet the doctor didn’t tell you that – nor that he’s such a pal of Foxy’s.’

  Gently poised a haw. ‘You think the doctor might cover for him?’

  ‘I know he would mate, never mind about thinking. And if you really want to have a go at Foxy, you listen to what I’m telling you now.’ He leaned nearer to Gently, his eyes hard. ‘On Wednesday morning he called at the doctor’s – was in there with him for above an hour – patients with appointments queuing up and getting on to my girl for keeping them out. So what was that about, hey? And before your lot had come taking statements. And Foxy was in a state was what my girl said, and still in a state when he left. Now you tell me!’ He eased back from Gently, a leer in his close-set eyes.

  ‘Didn’t your daughter tell you what it was about?’

  ‘What could she hear – out there with the patients?’