by Alan Hunter
‘And you don’t think he did it?’ queried Gently dreamily.
‘I’m positive he didn’t! I’ve known him for ten years and intimately for eight – saw him every day, had him up to spend the evening, often. I’ll tell you something more. If you get this lad and try to pin the murder on him, I’ll brief the best counsel in England for his defence, cost what it may.’
‘It will cost several thousand,’ said Gently, helpfully.
Leaming ignored the remark. He breathed smoke through his nose under high pressure. ‘I take it that Peter is your guess as well as theirs?’ he demanded.
‘My guessing is still in the elementary stage.’
‘Well, I could see clearly enough what Inspector Hansom thought about it.’
‘Inspector Hansom is a simple soul.’
Leaming’s powerful brown eyes sought out Gently’s absent green ones. ‘Then you don’t think he did it – you’re on my side in this?’
Gently’s smile was as distant as the pyramids. ‘I’m not on anybody’s side,’ he said, ‘I’m just here on holiday.’
‘But you’re assisting on the case? Look here, Inspector, I’ve been thinking this thing over. There’s one thing that’s going to tell a lot in Peter’s favour. It’s the money.’
Gently nodded one of his slow mandarin nods.
‘There was forty-two thousand pounds in that safe, more or less, and they won’t find it with Peter.’
‘Why?’ asked Gently brightly.
‘Why? Because he didn’t do the murder, that’s why. And as soon as some of those notes that are listed start turning up, it’ll be proof positive that the real murderer is still at large.’
Gently surveyed the burnt-down stub of his cigarette thoughtfully, moved over to the chest and stubbed it against the massive iron clasp. Then he raised the lid and dropped the end inside. ‘It might work out if themurderer started on the right side of the forty-two thousand,’ he said, ‘but then again, he might start in the middle …’ And he let the lid fall back with a bang.
Leaming stood, feet apart, watching him closely. ‘At least it’s a good lead,’ he said.
Gently sighed. ‘Police work is full of leads. It’s the tragedy of routine … and ninety-nine per cent of them lead nowhere.’ He came back from the chest. ‘If you’re going back to the city I could use a lift,’ he said.
Leaming dropped him off at Castle Paddock. Gently shambled away, head bent, following the crescent wall at the foot of the Castle Hill, the patriarchal features of the Norman keep silent and peaceful in the dark sky above. From the other side of the Hill rose the glow and the feverish cacophony of the fair. Clark, the owner of the Wall of Death, had tempted back one of his ex-riders. The Greatest Show on Earth continued to do business …
In a quieter corner of the fairground Peter Huysmann’s young wife stood near the door of her tiny cosmos, biting her lips to keep back tears of humiliation and helplessness. Inside were the policemen. With religious thoroughness they were dismembering and examining her private, familiar things. ‘Look,’ said a constable, holding up a cheap little necklet that Peter had bought her on her twenty-first birthday, ‘wasn’t there something like this on the list of stolen properties today?’
Gently came to Orton Place, where a great sunken gap, used as a car park, still offered mute witness of the Baedeker Raids of ten years back. On two sides of the gap blazed the windows of large stores, risen phoenix-wise. But the gap remained a gap. The streets about it were thronged with Saturday-night crowds, gay, noisy, unconscious that somewhere amongst them was a man for whom they were terrible, who feared their slightest glance, who had the mortal horror on him of being seized and dragged to their machine of death. And amongst them too went the hunters, the takers, the accusers, those to whom the killing of Peter Huysmann meant preferment. But they were unconscious of this as of the gap. Habit had staled them both. And after all, someone had done for old Huysmann … hadn’t they?
‘Pink!’ cried an old man, as Gently drew near him, ‘don’t forget your pink!’ Gently fumbled in his pocket for coppers. ‘They did well today,’ said the old man. ‘Did you see the match, sir?’ ‘No,’ said Gently. He took the paper. ‘Isn’t there a home match next week too?’ he enquired. ‘We’ve got the Cobblers coming, sir – it’ll be a good match.’ Gently nodded vaguely. ‘I may see it,’ he said. As he walked on he unfolded the paper and glanced over the headlines. They ran:
MISSED CHANCES AT RAILWAY ROAD
City not flattered by margin
First-half injury to Cummings
Gently pursed his lips, folded the paper and put it carefully away in his pocket.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS RAINING.
A generous stream of water escaped from a blocked gutter two stories higher and battered insistently on the zinc-shod window-sill of Gently’s window. He raised his head, frowning. Waking up to rain filled him with a sort of hopelessness, a feeling that here was a day to be got over and dismissed as quickly as possible, a day when all normal business ought to be postponed. He blinked and reached out for the cup of tea that should have been there.
Down below in the little dining-room Gently was the only guest at breakfast. It was Sunday, of course … for the rest of the world. But there was a fire and a sheaf of Sunday papers, and the breakfast was a fairly lavish plate of bacon, egg, tomatoes and fried bread. Gently turned over a paper as he ate. The Huysmann business hadn’t built up yet, there was only a short paragraph headed: TIMBER MERCHANT STABBED TO DEATH. He sifted it with a practised eye to see if his name was mentioned. It wasn’t.
Feeling fuller and better, Gently donned his raincoat and sallied forth. The rain was pelting down out of a low, monotonous sky and the streets were practically empty. In front of the pathetically gay awnings of the provision market a gang of men were shovelling bruised and rotten fruit into a lorry. Behind them rose the pale pastelled mass of the City Hall with its dim portico and slender naked tower. Gently plodded on through the city centre to the castle and the cattle market.
There was something ominous about the deserted fairground. The booths which had yesterday been wells of colour and bright lights were now blinded with screens of old canvas, taut with the rain and flapping dismally. The avenues of alleys between them had ceased to be channels of raucous delight, showed the black, cross-grooved tiles of the cattle market, threatening the ephemerality of usurping pleasure. Gently made his way to the Wall of Death. At the back was a lean-to with one side canvas. He pushed up the flap and went in.
Inside was a bench on which stood one of the red-painted motorcyles, its engine in the process of being stripped down, while another machine leaned against the end of the lean-to. Across from the flap was the entrance to the well, with the ramp up which the riders went. From this came tinkering sounds. Gently went through. Between the cambered bottom and the outer wall a man was crouched, tightening down the bolt which secured a strengthening strut. He looked at Gently suspiciously. Gently shrugged, leaned against the wall, took out his pipe and began to fill it.
Having locked the bolt with wire the man came out. He was short and stuggy, and his brown, porous face looked as though it had been squeezed up in a pair of nutcrackers. He rolled a cigarette, peering at Gently sharply as he licked it.
‘Police?’ he asked.
Gently transferred the flame of his lighter from his pipe to the stuggy man’s cigarette. ‘CID,’ he said casually. The stuggy man’s hand trembled and he drew at the cigarette powerfully.
‘Your outfit?’ enquired Gently.
‘You know it is.’
‘You must be Mr Clark.’
‘Who’d you think I was – Nye Bevan?’
Gently shook his head seriously. ‘Why did Peter go to see his father yesterday afternoon?’ he asked, then leaned back against the wall again to give the stuggy man time to think it over.
There was a pause of quite some moments. The stuggy man puffed at his cigarette with industrious energy, flicki
ng it nervously at the end of each puff. Gently drew in smoke with slow deliberateness. There was a ratio of about three to one. At last the stuggy man said: ‘S’pose he just went to say “hullo” to his old man.’
Gently removed his pipe. ‘No,’ he said, and put his pipe back.
The stuggy man’s cigarette nearly burst into flames. He said: ‘I don’t have to tell you anything!’
Gently nodded indefinitely.
‘You can’t do nofink to me if I keep my trap shut. Why can’t you leave us alone? I told them all they wanted to know last night!’
‘You didn’t tell them what I want to know.’
‘Well, haven’t you got enough against him, without looking for any more?’
Gently turned over his pipe and let the top ash fall into a little pool of water gathering on the floor. He surveyed the stuggy man with distant green eyes. ‘There’s a very good case to be made against Peter Huysmann,’ he said. ‘If he’s guilty, the less that’s found out the better. But if he’s innocent, then everybody concerned had best tell what they know. But perhaps you think he’s guilty?’
‘Naow!’ The stuggy man flipped ash in a wide arc. ‘Pete never did a thing like that. You don’t know Pete.’ He faced Gently fiercely.
‘Then the best way you can help him is to answer my question.’
The stuggy man threw down his cigarette-end and ground it to pulp beneath his foot. ‘I know you!’ he burst out, ‘I know you and your questions! It’s all very well now, but when it gets to court it will all be twisted against him. I seen it happen before. I seen the way they went to work to hang old George Cooper. All very nice they were, as nice as pie – they only wanted to help him! But what happened when they gits him in court? Every mortal thing what people had told them was used against him – every mortal thing.’
He broke off, breathing heavily through his flattened nose. ‘So don’t come telling me how I can help him, mister,’ he concluded. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, d’ye see?’
The growing pool of water on the floor made a sudden dart forward at a sunken tile. Gently moved his foot to higher ground. ‘Let’s put it another way,’ he said smoothly. ‘There’s a sufficiently sound case against Peter Huysmann to put him in dock and probably hang him. Any further evidence will simply reinforce the case. So it might be good policy to please the police rather than tease them … isn’t that sense?’
The stuggy man’s eyes blazed. ‘You haven’t got nofink against me, mister!’ he exclaimed.
‘I’m not suggesting we have. Though we might have, some day … it’s worth remembering.’
‘They was at me last night that way – says they might find the Wall was dangerous. But I know where I stand. It isn’t no more dangerous here than it was at Lincoln or Newark, nor anywheres else. And I told them so.’ He spat into the pool of water.
Gently sighed, and mentally cursed the large feet of Inspector Hansom, whose prints were so painfully visible. The stuggy man produced his tin of tobacco again and began the nervous concoction of a fresh cigarette. Gently lit it for him absently. The rain continued to fall.
‘I saw him ride yesterday,’ said Gently, apropos of nothing. ‘He’s a good rider.’
‘He’s the best man on the Wall in England,’ jerked the stuggy man.
‘You wouldn’t want to lose him.’
‘I shan’t, if I can help it.’
‘If he gets off he’ll inherit his father’s business.’
The stuggy man shot him a guarded glance, but said nothing.
‘Unless he’s been cut off, of course,’ added Gently. ‘I’m told his father intended to make a fresh will.’
The stuggy man drew in an enormous lungful of smoke and jetted it out towards the canvas flap.
‘It could be he went to see him about that,’ continued Gently, ‘and then, in the course of the quarrel that followed—’
‘Naow!’ broke in the stuggy man.
‘Why not?’ queried Gently. ‘It’s the line that logically suggests itself …’
‘He didn’t go about no will!’
‘You’ll have a hard time convincing the City Police that he didn’t. It’s the obvious reason, and the obvious reason, right or wrong, is peculiarly acceptable to juries.’
‘But I tell you he never, mister – he knew all along that the old man was going to cut him out!’
‘Then,’ said Gently, sighting his pipe at the stuggy man’s heart, ‘why did he go?’
The stuggy man gulped. ‘I offered him halves in the Wall,’ he said. ‘He reckoned the old man would put up five hundred to be rid of him.’
‘Ah,’ said Gently dreamily, ‘how you make us work for it – how you do!’
He knocked out his pipe and moved over to the canvas flap. The world outside had an arrested, gone-away look, dull and washed out, a wet Sunday. Instinctively, you would be indoors, preferably with a fire. Gently hovered at the flap a moment. He turned back to the stuggy man.
‘Where’s Peter Huysmann now?’ he asked.
‘Where you won’t bloody well find him!’
Gently shrugged reprovingly. ‘I was only asking a civil question,’ he said.
Huysmann’s caravan was small and cheap, but it had been recently re-painted in a dashing orange and blue: neatly too. Some time and pains had been lavished on it. It stood somewhat apart from its neighbours, beside a plane tree. One entered by steps and a door at the side. Gently knocked.
‘Who is it?’ called a voice, subdued, coming with an effort.
‘A friend,’ replied Gently cheerfully.
There was movement inside the van. The door was pulled inwards. A young woman of twenty-three or-four stood framed in the tiny passageway. She was brown-haired with blue-grey eyes and round, attractive features. She had a firm, natural figure. She wore an overall. There was a frightened look in her eyes and her mouth was held small and tight. She said: ‘Oh – what is it you want?’
Gently smiled reassuringly. ‘I’ve come to be a nuisance,’ he said. ‘May I come in?’
She stepped back with a sort of hopeless submission, indicating a door to the left of the passage. Gently inserted his bulky figure with care, pausing to wipe his feet on the small rectangle of coconut-matting. It was a minute sitting-room which at night became a bedroom and at mealtimes was a dining-room. In the centre was a boat-type mahogany table, narrow, with wide, folded-down leaves, on which was a bowl of daffodils. There were three windows with flowered print curtains. A settee built along the wall on the right unfolded into a double bed and opposite it, on the other wall, was a cupboard with drawers, on which stood a row of Penguins and cheap editions of novels. Facing the door hung a framed photograph of Peter in an open-necked shirt.
Gently chose a small wooden chair and sat down. ‘I’m Chief Inspector Gently of the Central Office, CID,’ he said, ‘but don’t take too much notice of it. I don’t cut much ice in these parts.’ He looked around him approvingly. ‘I’ve often thought of buying a caravan like this when I retire,’ he added.
Mrs Huysmann moved across behind the table and sat down on the settee. She held herself very stiffly and upright. Her eyes never wandered from Gently’s face. She said nothing.
Gently glanced at the photograph of Peter. ‘How old is your husband?’ he enquired.
‘Twenty-nine, in August.’ She had a soft, low voice, but it was taut and toneless.
‘I’ve only met him once – if you can call seeing him ride meeting him. I liked his riding. It takes real guts and judgment to do that little trick of his.’
‘You’ve seen him ride?’ For a moment she was surprised.
‘I was here yesterday. I’m on holiday, you know, but they roped me in on this business. I believe they’re sorry they did now. I’m so hard to convince. But there you are …’ He raised his shoulders deprecatingly.
She said: ‘You want to ask me something.’ It was between a question and a bare statement of fact, colourless, something to be said.
‘Yes,’
Gently said, ‘but don’t rush it. I know how painful it is.’
She looked down, away from him. ‘They took my statement last night,’ she said.
There was a moment during which the rain beat remotely on the felted roof, an ominous moment, razor-sharp: and then tears began to trickle down the tight, mask-like face. Gently looked away. She was not sobbing. The tears came from deeper, from the very depths of humiliation and fear and helplessness. She said: ‘I can’t tell you anything – I don’t know anything … they took it all down last night.’
Gently said: ‘They had to do it, you know. I’ve got to do it, too. Otherwise there may be an injustice.’
‘He didn’t do it – not Peter – not Peter!’ she said, and sank forward with a great sigh, as though to say that had drained away the stiffness in her body. She was sobbing now, blindly, a foolish little lace handkerchief crumpled up in a ball between her hands, the shock and the pent-up horror of the night finding outlet at last. Gently moved across and patted her shoulder paternally. He said: ‘Cry away now, like a good girl, and when you’ve finished I’m going to tell you a secret.’
She looked up at him wonderingly, eyes glazed with tears. He went on: ‘I oughtn’t to tell you this – I oughtn’t even to tell myself. But I’m a very bad detective, and I’m always doing what they tell you not to in police college.’
He moved away to the other side of the caravan and began looking at the books. She followed him with her eyes. There was something in his manner that struck through the bitter confusion possessing her, something that gave her pause. She choked into the handkerchief. ‘I’m – I’m sorry!’ she faltered.
Gently took down a book. ‘You’ve got Mornings in Mexico,’ he said absently. ‘I read an extract from it somewhere. Can I borrow it?’
‘It’s – Peter’s.’
‘Oh, I’ll let you have it back. There’s nothing at my rooms except a telephone directory, and I’ve read that.’
He came back and sat down beside her. She sniffed and tried to smile. ‘I didn’t mean to cry,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ Gently produced his bag of peppermint creams and proffered them to her. ‘You’ll like these – I’ve been eating them off and on for twenty years. You try one.’ He took one himself, and laid the bag open on the end of the table.