by Alan Hunter
‘I agree that it’s a coincidence.’
‘Let me reconstruct what I think occurred.’
The super drew a deep breath and cradled his chin in his hands. On the square a mobile fish-and-chip saloon had drawn up, lending a scent of frying to the vernal atmosphere.
‘We’ll take it from Blacker’s angle – I think that’s most convenient. At some time between eleven and half past he secreted himself in the drying-ground.
‘He saw first Mrs Blythely arrive and wait outside the stable. Then Fuller joined her, and when they had gone into the stable, Blythely came out of the passage to take up his position in the lean-to. Ten minutes later X came into the yard.
‘X I am assuming to be the murderer. I don’t know whether Blacker recognized him – there wasn’t a lot of light. But he saw him go down the yard and stop in the mill passage, and it’s possible that he noticed the package X was carrying under his arm.
‘At eleven forty-five X was joined by Taylor. After a brief conversation X handed Taylor the package, and as Taylor was examining it to make sure of the contents, X slipped behind him and effected strangulation.
‘His plans were obviously made and he wasted no time about them. Immediately life was extinct he set about disposing of the body. How much of this Blacker witnessed is open to conjecture, but I think there is little doubt that it was he who Blythely heard come down to the passage a little later.
‘There he stumbled over the package – partly open, one supposes – and discovering what it contained, made off with it at a run. X, having shot the body into the hopper, returned to pick up the money: its absence must have been a shock to him, but there was nothing he could do about it and he didn’t hang around.
‘Unless I’ve overlooked something, that seems to me the inevitable interpretation.’
‘I don’t agree at all!’
Griffin was ready to jump in directly.
‘Surely there’s another alternative that fits just as well?’
‘There may be.’ Gently bowed his head. ‘It’s difficult to think of all the variations …’
‘Suppose it was Taylor in fact who committed the robbery – suppose he’d had to hide the money in the mill, for some reason. Then Blacker catches him collecting it – there’s a struggle, and Taylor is strangled – isn’t the hopper the very place where Blacker would get rid of the body?’
Gently shrugged without replying. Had he still to make himself plain? For most of the day he’d known the inexorable answer to all the questions …
‘At least it simplifies it, Gently.’
The super wanted to buy Griffin’s notion.
‘It gets rid of that “X” of yours, who’s likely to be a pitfall. And it gives us a clearer picture – the whole thing becomes more credible. This Roscoe lot had begun to dabble in burglary, and at Newmarket they heard of a likely crib to be cracked …’
Could neither of them see the facts which were staring them in the face?
‘There are four people, I think, who know the murderer’s identity.’
He would have to tell them in so many words.
‘Roscoe knows, and I’m sure Blacker does. Then there’s me, and of course, Mr Pershore.’
‘What!’
The super sat up with a jerking movement.
‘Mr Pershore … doesn’t that follow? The money was his and nobody else’s.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Why, everything, I imagine! It was he whom Roscoe and the others were blackmailing.’
The super leaned back with an expression of dizziness. A crazy element seemed to have crept into the exchanges! On the one hand, Gently didn’t seem to be raving, but on the other … could he have heard him properly?
‘But that money was stolen!’
Gently shook his head slowly.
‘Ask Inspector Griffin what he found in the study at Prideaux.’
‘He – he found it had been broken into. Didn’t you, Griffin?’
‘That’s right!’ fired Griffin. ‘There’s no question about that. A window catch was forced and there were scratch-marks on the safe.’
‘Only’ – Gently paused to make sure they were following him – ‘there were no scratches or forced windows when I was there an hour earlier. They appeared between the time I left and the time when Inspector Griffin arrived.’
‘Then you are saying—’
The super looked sick. Out of seemingly nowhere, his nightmare premonition was developing.
‘I’m saying that Roscoe, Ames and Taylor came to Lynton to blackmail Pershore, and that he, very determinedly, has responded by killing two of them.’
Coffee was brought in by a woman from the canteen. It was none too warm and probably concocted from a powder. In the square the fish-and-chip saloon was doing excellent business; quite a group were clustering round it, eating from newspapers and greaseproof bags.
‘Don’t you see the improbability of it?’
At last there was a spell for Gently’s pipe. Having got rid of his coffee, he scraped out the bowl and refilled it. After food, it was usually the second pipe which tasted the best.
‘He’s been a figure here for twenty years. After all that time, and with never the slightest suspicion …’
Round and round the super was gnawing at it, trying his best to find a weak place. Against anyone else, yes, it was a case – but against Geoffrey Wallace Pershore, Esq….
‘We probably shan’t know until we get hold of Roscoe.’
‘Just ask yourself! What could they have dug up about him?’
‘It might be something from a long time ago – before he ever set foot in Lynton.’
‘He came from overseas.’
Griffin was childishly bent on getting his foot in somewhere.
‘It was South Africa, I believe. I can remember it quite plainly. It was while you were still at Cheapham, sir.’
‘South Africa, eh …?’
‘He was as brown as a berry – younger, of course, not much over thirty. There was a lot of gossip. He had a Bentley in those days. According to what they said, he’d made his pile out of palm oil or something.
‘Anyway, he took a liking to Lynton and started investing his money here. Then, just before the war, he bought Prideaux Manor from old Major Calthorpe. During the war he organized the local St John’s Ambulance, and turned Prideaux Manor into a nursing-home.
‘Everyone thought he’d get an Honours List mention.’
‘Should’ve done!’ wailed the super. ‘It was only damned favouritism …’
‘Since then he’s done a great deal for Lynton. His name has been at the head of every charity list. He came to the assistance of the football club when it looked like going broke, and started the Library Appeal Fund with a thousand guineas.
‘His brokerage business qualifies him for the council. He’s been an alderman six years and was sheriff two years ago. Now, as I expect you know, he is to be the next mayor.’
‘Quite a busy career, in fact!’
‘Whatever you think of him, he’s public-spirited.’
‘And after twenty years he wouldn’t want the good work blemished … especially by a trio of Stepney spivs.’
‘But can you be certain, Gently!’ the super moaned. ‘It’s such a fantastic idea – and if you happened to be wrong …!’
‘I’ll check off the points for you.’
Gently extended his clumsy fingers.
‘All in all, I think you’ll find they add up to a case.
‘First, Pershore attended the meeting at Newmarket. Second, he was the source of the money. Third, he inspected the mill on the Thursday morning and knew about the flour-hopper. Fourth, he would have a set of keys to the mill. Fifth, he has no checkable alibi for the Thursday night. Sixth, his story about the money being stolen is unsupported by fact. Seventh, he manufactured evidence in an attempt to support it.
‘Tomorrow, I hope, the bank will be able to tell us that he withdr
ew the first five thousand pounds a few days after the Newmarket meeting. As far as we’re concerned, that will just about clinch it.’
‘But it’s all circumstantial – a defence would make hay of it.’
Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘There’s Roscoe to come! Also we’ve got an eyewitness tucked away in the cellar. I think Blacker will talk if you put it to him nicely.’
The super got to his feet and began pacing the room again. His distress was genuine and Gently felt sorry for him. Griffin, toying with his coffee-spoon, seemed caught between two contrary currents. He wanted to be loyal to the super, but nevertheless, as a policeman …
‘Get Blacker up here!’
The super had made his decision.
‘One way or another we’ve got to settle this matter.’
He glanced defiantly at Gently, but Gently was busy going through his pockets. Surely, in some neglected corner, there ought to be a peppermint cream?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LATER ON, THE super had resigned himself to the calamity which had fallen jointly on himself and Lynton. After Blacker went he sat a long time brooding darkly over his two-tone desk.
Not that Blacker, though he had talked, had proved entirely satisfactory. His evidence was of the type which a defence counsel such as Pershore could brief would tear into fine shreds.
‘There was a car standing in Cosford Road which looked like a Bentley … no, it wasn’t stood under a light, nor I couldn’t see the colour …
‘Of course I saw him go down the yard … looked familiar, I thought … the little bloke, too … I didn’t hear any struggle.
‘Then I tumbled to it, when I heard whose the money was. That was Pershore all right, and I don’t mind swearing to it.
‘If I put it to them straight, are you going to get me off the other …?’
Blacker had done some brooding of his own, sitting three hours in a cell with the smell of new cement in his nostrils.
But it was testimony that convinced the super, however vulnerable it might be to forensic corrosives. Gently’s reconstruction was being corroborated every time the foreman opened his mouth. And behind it all loomed Roscoe, the man no counsel could shrug aside.
‘Are you suggesting we make the arrest?’
He was trying to keep the bitterness out of his tone. The fish-and-chip saloon had departed for pastures new, and a clean, bright spring moon was climbing over the Georgian roofs and chimneys. Once or twice, from high overhead, they had distinctly heard the piping calls of migrant birds coming in from the sea.
‘No … not yet. The case isn’t foolproof.’
‘You want to dig up his past?’
‘Most of all I want Roscoe.’
‘Aren’t we doing all we can about him?’
‘We’ll have to take a risk.’
The super flashed a look at Gently, not quite understanding him. The man from the Central Office wore a stubborn expression which Dutt could have interpreted. His pipe, unlighted, stuck out of his mouth at an angle.
‘Tomorrow I’d like Blacker remanded on that charge, but I don’t want the money referred to. Have a word with the magistrate – it shouldn’t be difficult. Substitute “stolen property” or something like that.
‘And naturally, you’ll fob off the coroner about Ames.’
‘The press will be awkward.’
‘Try and clamp down on them! They’ll usually cooperate if it’s in a good cause. Then I’d like Inspector Griffin to keep investigating that robbery – any sort of play-acting to keep Pershore happy.
‘If he can get his prints we’ll send them up to Records, and perhaps you’ve got a man who can do some quiet digging. That Upcher deal will bear looking into – it should hardly fit Pershore’s story as neatly as he pretends it does.’
‘And meanwhile, you think that Roscoe …?’
‘He’ll get in touch with Pershore somehow.’
‘We could check his mail and tap the phone.’
Gently shook his head.
‘Look at it from Roscoe’s angle – and he was the brains of the bunch. If he talks he’s admitting blackmail. If he doesn’t we have to prove it. And besides admitting blackmail, he’ll be kissing goodbye to a gold mine.
‘Unless we can catch the pair of them red-handed, we shan’t have the benefit of Roscoe’s evidence.’
‘But Pershore will try to kill Roscoe!’
‘That’s our trump card – and we’ve got to play it.’
The super looked grave.
‘It’s a terrible risk, Gently …’
‘Of course, I shall be prepared to take full responsibility.’
He got to his feet, the cold pipe still lolling from the corner of his mouth. How could he tell them that he could see the whole pattern of it, as surely as though even now it was written up in a report?
‘You don’t have to worry … just keep Pershore from being suspicious. You’ll find it’ll work out. It isn’t the first time …’
‘If he succeeds in killing Roscoe—’
‘We could probably establish method! Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be turning in.’
The super did mind, but he could think of nothing to advance against it. He watched Gently go in helpless silence. When the door closed behind the bulky back his eyes met those of Griffin’s. Suddenly, as though both men were thinking the same thought, each of them shrugged his shoulders.
The car Gently had was the super’s Humber, and it was warranted to do better than a hundred m.p.h. Since Prideaux Manor lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, it was a simple matter to cover it by concealing the Humber in a side-turn at a safe distance.
Twice, during the morning, he and Dutt had seen Griffin go by in a police Wolseley. Agreeable to instructions, the Lynton inspector was doing his best to make a show of proceeding with his investigation. As he returned from his second journey he slowed and pulled into the side-turning.
‘It could be this afternoon – he says he’s got some business to see to.’
‘Business that would take him out?’
‘He didn’t say, and I thought I’d better not ask him. This morning at a quarter past eleven he had a telephone conversation, but he ordered me out of the study, so I don’t know who it was with.’
‘You’re doing a good job.’
Griffin coloured and let in his clutch.
It was an almost perfect day following the miserable one which preceded it. Gently had been prevailed on to remove his jacket, and sat smoking in his shirtsleeves with the door of the Humber ajar. The sky, at first washed clear, was now chequered with small, fleecy clouds. In the plantation which flanked the lane a blackbird was singing; larks rose continuously from the field of young wheat beyond the hedge opposite.
‘What a day for a blinking picnic!’
Dutt, like all cockneys, had a note of mute poetry in his soul.
‘If I had the missus here … can’t you see the nippers rousing around in them trees?’
From the radio they had had a bulletin from headquarters which told them little enough. Upcher, the yacht-owner, had been contacted and given an account of his deal. The price demanded for his craft had been twelve thousand five hundred and not ten, as Pershore had claimed, but the difference could easily be explained as a hoped-for compromise for immediate cash.
Of Pershore’s past there was nothing to relate. After twenty meritorious years at Lynton the trail had vanished into unsubstantial rumour. Griffin had got his prints, and that might lead to something, but failing this it rested solely with Roscoe – a Roscoe picked up alive and communicative.
‘Do you reckon it will be this afternoon, sir?’
Gently knew it would, with the irrational conviction that at times came to him. In every case there was a point when his vision seemed to border on the uncanny. Some people called him lucky, but in fact it went further than that.
‘We might as well have our lunch.’
The St George had put them up a wicker basket of provisi
ons. Undone, it displayed a truly old-fashioned lavishness: there was cold chicken and salad, apple turnover, biscuits, cheese, fruit, and four thermoses of hot coffee. ‘Between you and me, sir, I reckon this Roscoe won’t be such a mug as the other two charlies.’
‘No … but he’s up against a dangerous man.’
‘He could lay for him, sir, and maybe put a bullet in him.’
‘Not Roscoe, Dutt. He’s a professional through and through.’
‘All the same, he’s in a rum position.’
They ate in silence, the countryside about them seeming to drowse in its peacefulness. Nothing passed along their lane or the road leading to the Manor. An early sulphur-yellow butterfly, unsteady in the brilliant sun, was the only moving thing to come their way.
Gently glanced at his watch, which showed twenty minutes to two. If lunch at the Manor was at one, it shouldn’t be long before Pershore and the green Bentley …
He finished his coffee and screwed up the thermos. Just to test his intuition he would have the engine running! Dutt, taking the hint, packed the plates away in the basket. It was as though they had suddenly received a message that the quarry was on his way.
‘If he sees us do you think we can hold him, sir?’
Gently pulled the door shut with a grunted reply. If Griffin had played his part properly Pershore should have no suspicion; if he had, well, there were the patrol cars to reckon with!
It was ten minutes to two when the Bentley swept past the lane-end. Pershore, sitting relaxedly at the wheel, had no eyes for the Humber lying half hidden behind the bend. Gently gave him plenty of rope. The Bentley was not being driven fast. The road from Prideaux to West Lyng, where it joined the main Norchester road, was fairly open and passed few side-turnings.
‘Of course it might be like he says, sir, just a business trip or something.’
It might, of course … the chances were even.
‘He don’t seem in no hurry – hardly doing forty.’
Was Dutt deliberately setting out to be annoying?
At West Lyng Gently almost held his breath, waiting for Pershore to choose his direction. If it were left, the man was simply going into Lynton; he had, after all, plenty of business to see to there.