by Alan Hunter
‘Wasn’t she happy at other times?’
‘She put a good face on it, but there was something missing underneath. She had never come to terms with being an exile, that’s my opinion of Hannah.’
‘Yet she had been here since she was twelve . . .’
‘She had never settled. She and her father spoke Czech all the time. Her English was good, but the accent terrible. She bought everything in Czech she could lay her hands on.’
‘Frankly, was she your mistress?’
Riddlesworth blew on the propellers. ‘You may ask me questions that I may not answer. And you can make what you like of that.’
‘Hannah had a lover.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘In May, she sought a pregnancy test.’
‘In May. . .?’
‘Does that mean something to you?’
He shook his head and went on blowing.
‘She had been with a man just before her death.’
‘Is that to say you think he did it?’
‘Did you know that she had an acquaintance at Har-ford, a man whose yacht she used to visit?’
Now his eyes did latch on Gently’s!
‘If she had a lover, she never told me. Who was he?’
‘Had you no suspicion? You seem to have been in her company as much as most people.’
‘Well, I hadn’t, it never occurred to me. And I think you may be having me on.’
‘We know the rendezvous where they met.’
‘Then you must have talked to someone.’
‘Hannah and he had been meeting all through the summer.’
‘I don’t think you know who he is at all.’
‘I could give you a name.’
The model was staying quite still, and Riddlesworth had dropped his eyes to it. One more of those careful pauses, while his mind sifted through all the possibilities! It was infuriating that the frozen face could remain so empty of every emotion.
‘So give me his name.’
‘Perhaps I may. The meetings continued up to yesterday.’
‘When – he killed her?’
‘What we know is that she died then or very shortly afterwards.’
‘I still don’t know if you’re having me on. Don’t forget I was warned you were a tricky customer.’
‘You were going to give me your movements for yesterday afternoon.’
‘To quote yourself, perhaps I may.’
Riddlesworth rested the model on his knee while he pierced and lit a cheroot. He did it with the decisive movements that were characteristic of the man. With Claydon, a fresh cigarette was a symptom of nervousness and his tremulous hands betrayed it: not so with Riddlesworth. His hands were firm and he puffed at the cheroot with calm indifference. If he had ever been captured, number, rank and name would have been the sum of information they would have got from him. At sixty he carried a little more weight, but his steely will remained intact.
‘All right then – it’s no mystery. I told you that I am working on a book. That’s it on the desk. From lunch till tea I was sitting there typing and checking references. Ever write a book?’
‘Just reports.’
‘Ah yes. Then you’ll know it’s the biggest sweat going. Especially this sort, when they’ll be at my throat if I make the smallest error of fact. Checking references takes most of the time, even though I know my facts by heart.’
‘After lunch you came here.’
‘Right.’
‘Who was with you at lunch?’
‘Sue and Mark – that’s my youngest. He pops in here from the school.’
‘You left them to come here?’
‘Left Sue clearing dishes. Mark had a lecture period, he’d gone, and Sue left half an hour later.’
‘To go where?’
‘To the church, which is at the other end of the village. Tomorrow is the harvest festival service and Sue always gives a hand with the decorations.’
‘When did she leave?’
‘Say fourteen hundred.’
‘Did she look in on you before she left?’
‘Right.’
‘When did she return?’
‘Better ask her. About seventeen hundred.’
‘And your son?’
‘Same time.’
‘No doubt you employ a domestic help.’
‘A couple, Mrs Lane from Ivy Cottage and Molly Turner from Tinker’s Green. They stay late when we’re entertaining but otherwise leave at thirteen hundred. Then there’s the gardener, Jack Willis, who lives in The Cot, Marsh Road. He comes three days a week, but yesterday wasn’t one of them.’
‘So that between two and five p.m. yesterday nobody can vouch for your presence here.’
‘Not a soul. I did tell you that I couldn’t prove my movements.’
He took several smooth puffs and stared firmly at Gently: straight questions, straight answers, without a hint of evasion or impatience. So why did one feel an air of challenge about him, a sensation that he was getting his shots in first, as though he might be standing guard over something that Gently wasn’t even going to be allowed to glimpse?
One question only he had refused to answer: whether Hannah Stoven had been his mistress.
‘Would you know the time of low slack water yesterday?’
‘Naturally.’ The corner of his slit mouth twisted. ‘When you live here you get the tide in your veins, especially if you happen to be a yachtsman.’
‘When was it?’
‘From fourteen to fifteen hundred.’
‘At that time, you could sail a small boat downstream?’
‘Why not? The wind was nor’-west, two to three. Give you a broad reach down to Bodney Church and a comfortable haul coming back.’
‘Why to Bodney Church?’
‘You would meet the flood there, and without an engine you’d be stuck. The flood runs at three to four knots. You’d be standing still or going backwards.’
‘But you could get to Bodney Church?’
‘Check.’
In a dinghy such as that pulled up on your foreshore?’
‘No problem.’
‘It being apparently the only sailing dinghy that just now is based at Thwaite.’
‘As far as I know.’
Riddlesworth blew smoke at the model to set the four propellers spinning afresh. If Gently was getting through to him, then that was the only indication.
‘The dinghy was seen near the church.’
‘My dinghy?’
‘You tell me there is no other based up here.’
‘It could have come up from the town.’
Gently shook his head. ‘It would need to have beaten up against the ebb to have been where it was when sighted.’
‘Who saw it there?’
‘We have a witness. And the dinghy wasn’t all he saw.’
‘You make it sound intriguing.’
‘What I want to know is, what your dinghy was doing there at that time.’
‘So do I – if it was my dinghy. Mark was at classes and Sue at the church. It would mean that some charlie sneaked through the grounds here and went for an illicit sail.’
‘It would mean that?’
‘No other explanation. I never shifted from that desk.’
‘I wish you could prove that.’
‘I wish so too. But I’ve already explained that I can’t.’
He didn’t even bother to sound indignant, much less fly into loud assertions. It was merely a point to be taken and disposed of, then followed by a casual puff or two.
A stonewaller . . .
But still you had the feeling that, behind the bat, lay a vulnerable wicket.
‘Your wife has her own car?’
‘A small Peugeot. A likeable little beast.’
‘And your son?’
‘Mark sticks to his pushbike. He goes camping with it, too.’
‘Yesterday afternoon, your own car would have been available.’
; ‘Right. But what is all this about cars?’
‘Would you care to describe it?’
For once Riddlesworth checked, as though Gently had got on to unexpected ground.
‘You can see it if you like. It’s an XJS-HE. I took delivery of the brute two months ago. They’ve fixed it up with some new gubbins to improve consumption and I can get twenty-two with a mean foot.’
‘Colour?’
‘White.’
He still wasn’t happy.
‘Did you drive it at all yesterday?’
‘Yes – I did. Just into the town to pick up some booze, and this and that.’
‘In the morning?’
‘When else?’
‘So that in the afternoon it never left your garage.’
‘That is precisely the case.’
‘Would you object to telling me what clothes you were wearing yesterday?’
Riddlesworth considered the model again, apparently manoeuvring it through a spin. The cheroot was stuck in his mouth and little runlets of smoke were escaping from his nostrils.
‘You’re asking some damned rum questions, but I’ll go along. I was wearing a blazer and slacks.’
‘What colour slacks?’
‘Navy.’
‘Shirt?’
‘A tan shirt, blast it.’
‘A man was observed watching the sailing dinghy and Mrs Stoven’s dinghy, which was moored beside it. He is described as being below average height and dressed in dark clothing.’
Riddlesworth puffed and played, eyes, face wholly blank. If anything it was Leyston who was feeling the pressure, and who stirred furtively, and examined his hands. From their entry, the house itself had been silent, though one could hear distant vehicles moaning by through the mist.
At last Riddlesworth removed his cheroot and looked about for an ashtray to flick it in.
‘Nice try.’
‘Is that your only comment?’
On second thoughts he stubbed the cheroot.
‘I don’t know who your man was, but it wasn’t me. I was sitting here suffering all afternoon. My car was in the garage, Sue’s was at the church and Mark’s pushbike was down at the school. And, to the best of my knowledge, the dinghy was sitting on its chocks on the foreshore.’
‘One or another of those statements is false.’
‘Show me different and I stand corrected.’
‘I would like to speak to your wife and your son.’
Riddlesworth took sight along the model.
‘You can talk to Sue, but Mark’s away – he went off with his tent this morning.’
‘Went off where?’
‘Sorry, but I don’t have that information.’
Neither did Mrs Riddlesworth, a sharp-featured blonde who stood almost a head taller than her husband. Dressed in a gown with a choke throat, she appeared promptly at his bidding. She had caught his manner, and answered questions with the same bold curtness, her accent suggesting a finishing school and a certainty of being listened to.
‘Harry was working in here when I left and was still working when I returned . . . I arrived at the church at two-ten and was back again before five. Harry’s car was in the garage on each occasion, when I fetched mine and when I returned it. Mark went to his class at one-forty-five and was in the house when I got back.’
‘Did you speak to him this morning?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Didn’t he tell you where he was going?’
‘No.’
‘Was that usual?’
‘Quite usual. I made certain that he took sufficient food.’
‘But surely you have some idea of where he was heading?’
‘Pretty well where his fancy took him, I imagine. We have never been over-protective with our brats. As a result, they are very self-dependent.’
‘At other times, where has he gone?’
‘Is it so important that you talk to him?’
‘I would like to have his account of yesterday.’
‘Well, for the life of me I can’t think why.’
Hands in the blazer pockets, Riddlesworth stood by, never once prompting or offering support. Gently was welcome, he seemed to be saying, whatever he could get out of Sue he’d deserve . . .
‘When your son does return, I wish to see him.’
‘I’ll give you a ring,’ Riddlesworth said. ‘Will that be everything?’
‘Everything for now. But I may have to talk to you again.’
‘Any time I can be of real help you can depend on me, and I mean that.’
He saw them to the door and switched on a drive-lamp that helped them fumble their way to the gate. The mist seemed to have got thicker, if that were possible, and they had to cast about to locate the car.
SIX
DRIVING OUT OF that pestilential mist was like abruptly emerging from a bank of cloud; at one moment they were creeping through a luminous nowhere, at the next road trees and cottages sprang to life in their headlights. The moon had risen, and once clear of the village they could see the white coverlet of the mist below them, blanking out the river and the wide spread of the marshes as far as a rim of distant high ground. Last night it must have been the same, and under just such a coverlet had Hannah’s dinghy drifted: a plaything of the tides that moved this way and that at the moon’s discretion. Had Riddlesworth known it was there when, last night, he had locked his door? Or Shavers, across at his pub in Harford, when, the last glass rinsed, he had retired upstairs with Myrtle? Somewhere, someone had been trying to behave normally, while knowing the discovery the next day must bring: going through routine, and perhaps overplaying in an effort not to appear different. Wouldn’t anyone have noticed? Probably not. They would have put it down to drink or to a cold just starting . . . until next day they heard the news, when still they would be reluctant to make the connection.
It had happened before, even with multiple killers, and when facts were staring people in the face . . .
‘You must find that kid and get his story.’
Because that was the one thing the memsahib had dropped: that when she had returned from the church yesterday, she had found her son already in the house. How long had he been there, and how much did he know? His absence camping might be quite innocent: but it was one way of concealing an inconvenient witness, and at least of buying time.
‘I’ll enquire at the music school first thing.’
Leyston had spotted the slip too. Though he had sat glum-faced through the interview, he had been following each move with jealous attention.
‘On Friday they might finish early, sir, and perhaps only have a single period.’
‘Check the camp sites in the district. On a bicycle, he couldn’t have got far.’
‘If he knew his father was out, and we get to him first . . .’
Gently clamped hard on the stem of his pipe. Not for a long time had a man disturbed him as much as Group Captain Riddlesworth! He had come away from the house feeling completely unsettled, with his mind in a turmoil. Against a set of facts, pointing all one way, had been set an assurance that seemed almost superhuman. Could any man lie as well as that? Hadn’t Riddlesworth, indeed, been overplaying? Gently couldn’t make up his mind, and the vacillation was gnawing at him. He growled:
‘Check the wife’s movements too. Nothing would surprise me about a pair like that.’
‘Do you think she had a hand in it?’
‘The Lord knows. But don’t leave anything to chance.’
‘If she had found him together with the girl . . .’
Yes, there were all sorts of permutations – including the innocence of all parties: except that Riddlesworth had almost certainly been Hannah’s lover.
‘From somewhere, you’ll have to dig up witnesses – cast-iron testimony about Riddlesworth’s movements. If he was seen in his car or dinghy, if his car was noticed parked at the rendezvous. And that goes for his wife too: if she was seen anywhere in the vicinity.’
&nb
sp; ‘What about Shavers?’
Gently grunted impatiently – beside Riddlesworth, Shavers was well-nigh transparent.
‘Don’t waste too much manpower on him. Leave the local constable to check him out.’
But even as he said it he felt a surge of resentment that Riddlesworth should thus be engrossing the scene, and perhaps seducing his attention from a suspect worthy of more consideration. Confound the man! Back there, hadn’t he been tacitly issuing a challenge – summing up the case against himself, and more or less defying Gently to trap him?
He had baulked at only the one question, whether or not he had been Hannah’s lover: but couldn’t that have been pure mischief too, calculated to keep Gently simmering in uncertainty?
On the other hand the date of the pregnancy test had made him hesitate, just for an instant . . .
‘Shall I see you tomorrow, sir?’
They had arrived at the police station, and Leyston was waiting with his hand on the door. Somewhere down the line, that evening, he had resigned himself to the situation for good.
‘Don’t forget that I’m still unofficial.’
But that was ducking the issue, and he knew it.
Hesitating, Leyston said: ‘I am grateful, sir . . .’
Then after a moment, he closed the door.
Gently was still churning over his resentment when he parked the Princess in the coach-house at Heatherings, but then the soothing atmosphere of the mellow house, and all it meant, began to steal over him. It was as though he were turned about face, with all that day’s fret pushed to a distance – he was home; and in a way that had never been the case in the villa in North London. There one had merely enjoyed a respite, some hours off from the daily grind, liable at any moment to be called out or to have colleagues hunting one down. Well, he had been called out here too, but that had been voluntary and different. It wasn’t his case: he could drop it right there, to read about it some time in a local paper . . .
He let himself in, and switched on lights to admire his handiwork in the hall. Then the kitchen door opened to spill forth the sound of some TV quiz programme.
‘Someone rang and left a message, Mr George.’
His stare at Mrs Jarvis was less than friendly.
‘Who?’
‘Gave the name of Claydon, and said he’d be calling round later on.’
Without a word, Gently went through to the lounge to pour himself a drink. So even here you couldn’t rely on privacy, on slamming the office door when you came in!