Gently with the Innocents

by Alan Hunter

  ‘When did he leave the Grapes?’

  ‘After eight, he says. It’s only a step or two from the Marquis.’

  ‘Any check on that?’

  ‘They know him at the Grapes. They think he was there till about that time.’

  ‘But they’re not certain?’

  Gissing shook his head at the coffee-cup.

  ‘Would Colkett know you use the Marquis?’

  ‘He could do, of course.’

  ‘Is it far from Harrisons?’

  Gissing looked wretched. ‘About five minutes’ walk.’

  Gently issued a long stream of smoke. Not an alibi of much consequence! If Colkett were chummie he could have left the Grapes with time in hand to do the job. Then – a cunning move – he could go to the Marquis, and put himself under Gissing’s eye. When, later, he came to account for his movements, the local man would feel disposed to accept the story.

  ‘Perhaps we’d better check Colkett again.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry about that . . .’

  ‘Not your fault. There’s nothing against him except that he’s Johnny-on-the-spot. Then I want the evening of the 26th covered – get on to the van-driver and his mate – see if their story checks with Colkett’s, whether they noticed him watching the house. And finally, Peachment. We’d like to know if he habitually went out at nights, especially if he were seen on the 27th. He may just have gone out for a packet of fags.’

  Gently took some rank last puffs and squashed his cigar-butt in an ashtray.

  ‘Me, I’ll tackle the other end – what chummie pinched from the small room.’

  Gissing looked puzzled. ‘You don’t think the medal—’

  ‘I don’t think chummie knew about the medal.’

  ‘Then what—’

  Gently punched Gissing’s shoulder playfully. ‘Come on! Let’s go before it snows.’

  But the snow was no jest. Outside in Water Street a light mizzle had turned to sleet, and already the afternoon was so dark that cars were using dimmed headlights. Well-muffled shoppers, heads lowered, jostled each other on the narrow pavements, or overflowed into the roadway to set brakelights adazzle.

  Gissing paused to button his massive greatcoat before stepping out in the hurly-burly.

  ‘I’ll get back to the station then, sir, and put some men on those jobs.’

  ‘Where are the lawyers – what were their names?’

  ‘Howard and Patch. That’s them over there.’

  ‘I’ll give them a look. They may be able to tell us a few things about Harrisons.’

  Gissing shrugged very slightly before turning to bull his way up the pavement.

  Howard and Patch possessed an ornate doorway surmounted by a carved head of Solon. A clerk admitted Gently to a carpetless office where a thin-featured man rose to greet him.

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance. If we can be of any assistance . . .’

  He couldn’t, as it turned out, and for an unexpected reason.

  ‘You see, it’s the Church . . .’

  On his desk he’d untied a suspiciously thin sheaf of papers. Now, as he shuffled them out, you could see they were all fairly modern.

  ‘What has the Church got to do with it?’

  ‘My dear sir, they used to own Harrisons. From about 1800, I seem to remember, till . . . ah! . . . September 1888. They bought it for a rectory, I imagine, when the previous house fell into decay. Then they built the present rectory in Rushton Road, and Harrisons was put up for auction.’

  ‘So how does that affect the issue?’

  The lawyer gave him a bleak smile. ‘The Church has a habit, if I may so put it, of being a little ex cathedra in property matters. What they give you is a Declaration that the property has been held and enjoyed by a certain benefice, and this is to constitute your title: no acceptance, no sale. In our case, title commences on 16th September 1888.’

  ‘But . . . there must have been earlier deeds?’

  ‘You could, er, try the Diocesan Registrar.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’

  The lawyer sighed, then gave a brief shake of his head.

  Nor could he add very much else. Peachment’s father had been the original purchaser of Harrisons. A bid of two hundred and seventy pounds had bought it in those golden days. The name? – no idea. The legend? – a contemptuous shrug. Peachment’s affairs? – he had no affairs: they ended the day he retired from business.

  Going out of the office, Gently turned for a second look at old Solon. The sleet was gathering on his curly hair and dripping like tears from his vacant eyes . . .

  Gently turned up his collar and tramped away grumpily. Hardly an encouraging beginning! In anywhere but Cross a place like Harrisons would have a pedigree a yard long. But here – what was it Gissing had said? – they had so many ‘old drums’. Tudor chimneys were cheap in Cross – and blessed draughty into the bargain!

  At the bottom of Water Street he spotted a courtyard with a shop running down the side of it. Behind misty windows he could make out silverware and spreads of decorated china. Propped in the courtyard were several cartwheels, a bronze dolphin and a pair of urns, while a sign suspended above the door bore an inscription in spidery gothic.

  Gently stared at the sign, then went in, setting a door-bell clamouring. He stepped into a long, low-ceilinged room lined with shelves of china, plate, brass and pewter. What looked like the case of a harpsichord had been panelled with glass and now did service as a counter: it was stuffed with a hotch-potch of smaller trinkets, snuff-boxes, stay-fasteners, vinaigrettes. The shop was heated with oil radiators, which made it smell like Colkett’s office.

  ‘Looking for me?’

  A short, chubby man had entered silently from behind a curtain. He stood smiling cheerfully at Gently through a pair of rimless pince-nez.

  ‘Mr Bressingham?’

  ‘In person. Who are you – one of the trade?’

  Gently’s grumpy expression melted. ‘Do I look like it?’

  ‘No . . . you don’t have the mark of Cain.’

  He came forward. He was carrying a newspaper. He spread it open on the counter.

  ‘Look . . . I have to know who you are! They’ve splurged you across the Eastern Evening. It is you, isn’t it?’

  Gently glanced distastefully at the big front-page photograph. It was ages old – probably taken when he’d been working on the Sawmills murders.

  ‘Doesn’t help the public image, does it?’

  ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Bressingham’s eyes twinkled. ‘They could publish a print of a monkey’s backside if they’d give me all that free publicity. You’re spoiled, you know. But what can I do for you? Nice bit of glass? A Sheffield salver?’

  ‘I’d like your help with some stolen property.’

  Bressingham’s face fell. ‘Shouldn’t I have guessed it . . . !’

  He acted an exaggerated Jewish shrug, displaying white hands with cone-shaped finger-tips. He had a curiously cherub-like face, plump and sallow, with small, sensuous lips.

  ‘Well . . . it’s nothing on the list. I was checking through that only this morning. And all I’ve bought today is some marcasite, and a couple of rubbishy Staffordshire figures.’

  ‘How about coins?’

  Bressingham cocked an eyebrow. ‘Somebody knocked off something good?’

  ‘Well?’

  The chubby man shook his head. ‘I’ve had nothing in here but bread-and-butter stuff. Regular customers – you know. Amateur dealers, the last one of them. It’s a sort of fever that’s going around, everyone checking their change for chips off the moon.’

  ‘Any gold?’

  Bressingham’s eyebrow cocked again. ‘You’re not in here to count my sovereigns?’

  ‘Antique gold.’

  ‘Have a heart! Where would you find that stuff in Cross?’

  ‘That’s what I’m wondering,’ Gently said. ‘Do you have anything of the sort in stock?’

  Bressingham clicked his tongue. ‘I co
uldn’t sell it. It’s big-money stuff, for ace collectors. I look at it in Seaby’s, of course, and roll the figures round my tongue. But here you’ve done a good day’s work if you can flog a crown for seven-pound-ten. I once sold a bloke a George III guinea, for twenty-seven-ten. That’s my highspot.’

  ‘And nobody’s ever offered you any?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Or shown it to you?’

  Bressingham hesitated. He looked at Gently a little oddly, his blue eyes large behind the pince-nez.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m beginning to get it. This is old Peachey we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

  Gently nodded.

  ‘Poor old Peachey – with the hoard of gold under his floorboards! Yes, once in a while he’d drop in here, just to wag his old chin – he fancied horse-brasses, you know, I learned a lot about them from him. And somebody saw him here, right? And of course, he was flogging me pieces of eight! That’s what half of Cross would have thought if they’d twigged the old boy in here. And now you’re following up to see if you can catch me with a chest of doubloons. Am I right?’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘Oh, you’d make a dealer,’ Bressingham said. ‘But I am right. I know I’m right. So you may as well stop foxing.’

  ‘So,’ Gently said.

  Bressingham looked impish. ‘Suppose there is something in it,’ he said. ‘Not what the gossip is reading into it, but – well, just a spark under all that smoke?’

  Gently stared.

  Bressingham began nodding. ‘About a fortnight before the old boy died. He came in here when the shop was empty and got something out of his fob pocket. ‘‘Tarma,’’ he said – he was broad – ‘‘what do an objick like this fetch these days?’’ And he unwrapped the paper with his gnarled old fingers and laid the ‘‘objick’’ on the counter.’

  ‘And it was?’

  Bressingham kept nodding. ‘A gold coin – just the one. But a real beauty, mind you. Currently, they’re fetching seventy-five quid.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘SEVENTY-FIVE QUID!’

  Gently couldn’t quite keep the surprise out of his tone. Bressingham’s blue eyes flickered interestedly for a moment, then he smilingly wagged his plump shoulders.

  ‘So there are some better ones about?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Gently growled. ‘Are you sure about this one – that you got the value right?’

  ‘My dear man.’ Bressingham looked pained. ‘Seventy-five is catalogue price. I reckoned I might make fifty of it. I offered old Peachey twenty-five. What with over-heads and slow turnover you have to calculate on fifty per cent. They always knock you down, anyway – all my customers are rogues.’

  ‘Do you remember what it was?’

  ‘Oh come, now! It was an Edward IV angel. Cross above arms on ship, rose, and St Michael spearing the Devil.’

  ‘What condition?’

  ‘Extremely Fine.’

  ‘Isn’t that the next condition to Mint?’

  ‘Yes – a real collector’s piece. Looked as though nobody had ever spent it.’

  ‘And Peachment just brought it out of his pocket?’

  Bressingham nodded. ‘I’m not so green as I look either. But old Peachey – well, you couldn’t suspect him! He wouldn’t know what tea-leafing was about. Of course, I asked him where he’d got it, and he said he found it in an old box – a bit mysterious and giggly, you know, but that was how the old boy was. I reckoned he’d dug up a family heirloom, something his dad had put away. Anyhow, he didn’t want to sell it, just to know what it would fetch.’

  ‘Did he mention others?’

  ‘No.’ The flicker reappeared in Bressingham’s eye.

  ‘What was this one wrapped in?’

  ‘A piece of blue paper – pretty old, I’d say. What we call rag-paper.’

  ‘How old is that?’

  ‘Not as old as the coin! Paper would be rather crude in 1480. This was the stuff you find used in old pamphlets, say eighteenth-century or a shade earlier.’

  ‘Eighteenth-century . . .’

  Bressingham shrugged faintly. Naturally, he was putting two and two together! If there were other coins involved beside the angel, then it was scarcely a question of family heirlooms . . .

  ‘You say the shop was empty when Peachment came in.’

  ‘Yes. And there was nobody in the courtyard.’

  ‘Who else did you tell about the coin?’

  ‘Well . . . the wife. But she wouldn’t have mentioned it.

  ‘You’re sure that’s all?’

  Bressingham spread his hands. ‘This is a confidential business. If I started blabbing about what people bring in here I would soon be without customers.’

  ‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘So just you knew about the coin. And you left it like that, he didn’t want to sell it. You didn’t try to persuade him.’

  ‘What was the use?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gently said. ‘But that doesn’t sound like the dealers I’ve met. They’d have jollied the old boy, upped the price, asked what else he’d got to sell.’

  ‘Yes, but look—’

  ‘Then they’d have fixed a visit just to get their foot in the door. He might have had other treasures, mightn’t he? Some he didn’t value as much as the coin. So they’d be along there, getting into the house, laying out fivers on the table – giving him a silly price for some trifle to let him get the feel of the money.’

  ‘All right – so it’s done!’

  ‘But not by you?’

  ‘I’m not pretending I’m an angel.’

  ‘You didn’t fix to visit him one evening – say October 27th?’

  The blue eyes behind the pince-nez swam a moment, tense, a quirk of fear. Around them the chubby face hooked into a scowl.

  ‘I . . . I don’t like this!’ Bressingham said huskily. I don’t like it at all.’

  Gently stared, keeping the pressure on. Bressingham’s sallowness had taken a pallor.

  ‘I . . . I needn’t have told you about that coin. I was trying to give you some help. Now you turn on me. I don’t like it. Inspector Gissing wouldn’t treat me like that.’

  ‘I’m not Inspector Gissing,’ Gently said.

  ‘It isn’t fair,’ Bressingham said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Gently said. ‘A fair question. Did you fix that visit or not?’

  ‘I didn’t!’

  ‘Can you prove it?’

  Bressingham looked at him wildly.

  ‘Say by showing you were somewhere else,’ Gently said. ‘An alibi. For the 27th.’

  ‘An alibi . . . !’ Colour came rushing back into Bressingham’s cheeks. ‘Of course – I’m a bloody fool! You scared me so much I couldn’t think.’

  ‘You do have an alibi?’

  ‘My God I do. I was up in town on the 27th. It was the meeting of the Antique Dealers Guild. I wasn’t back here till the small hours.’

  ‘Proof?’

  ‘Yes!’ He turned quickly to a shelf on which was stacked a raffle of papers. Diving into them eagerly he pulled out a journal which had been folded back at a certain page. He smacked it on the counter before Gently.

  ‘Look – a report of the meeting on October 27th – and yours truly mentioned by name! Proposed by Thomas Bressingham, that the sharing of stands shall be permitted at the Antique Fair. Isn’t that proof?’

  Gently glanced at the report. The meeting had begun at 7.30 p.m. Judging from the number of resolutions passed, it had probably maundered on till after eleven.

  And Bressingham, shocked by the sudden stab of suspicion, nearly had to have this perfect alibi dragged from him.

  ‘Yes . . . proof.’ Gently grinned at Bressingham.

  ‘You’re a right bastard, aren’t you?’ Bressingham said gruffly. ‘Suppose I couldn’t have proved it?’

  ‘I’d probably have believed you.’

  ‘Yes – I’ll bet!’

  Gently kept grinning.

  To smooth his ruf
fled feelings, Bressingham opened a small cabinet and poured two whiskies from a cut-glass decanter. One he pushed across the counter to Gently, at the same time giving him a reproachful look.

  ‘Cheers! I still think you’re a bastard – but I can see that perhaps it was necessary.’

  ‘Cheers. Am I forgiven?’

  Bressingham chuckled and wagged his shoulders.

  They drank. Bressingham leaned against the shelves, staring out at the dark courtyard. Flurries of snow were skittering against the panes and chasing each other across the flagstones.

  A woman, a hooded bundle of clothes, came briefly to the window to stare at some rings; then the snow won and she dodged away again, hugging a shaggy fur bag to her side.

  Gently finished his drink.

  ‘You still want to help me?’

  Bressingham twinkled. ‘Not sure that I do! But yes, I do – for old Peachey’s sake. I’d like to help even the score for him.’

  ‘Look . . . I’ll put some cards on the table. Another coin has turned up in that house. It’s a medal, actually, a papal medal, worth around fourteen hundred pounds.’

  Bressingham whistled softly. ‘Deep waters.’

  ‘Yes – and this is what I find interesting. The medal is also medieval, also in Extremely Fine condition. In fact, another collector’s piece, and only the fourth known example. The other three are accounted for. And there have been no thefts of coins lately.’

  Bressingham took another nip from his glass. ‘The dates may not mean very much,’ he said. ‘You get collectors specializing in a period – medieval gold, if you own enough oil-wells.’

  ‘But . . . a collection.’

  Bressingham nodded. ‘It certainly begins to look that way. And if old Peachey had it, he’d have had it honestly, which points only to one thing. Is that the theory?’

  ‘That’s the theory.’

  ‘My goodness . . . after all these years!’

  ‘But is it credible?’

  Bressingham emptied his glass, remained a few moments gazing at it.

  ‘You’ve got me into a corner,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what to say about that. Of course, it’s possible. In troublesome times it was common to stash one’s gelt under a floorboard.’