by Alan Hunter
Gently elevated an eyebrow.
‘Yes, I know I pooh-poohed it when you suggested it the other day, but I’ve heard a bit of gossip about it since then.’
‘Where?’ said Gently, eating.
‘I was in that snack-bar across the street from the yard – I heard it mentioned there. Quite confidently, you know, as though there was no doubt about it.’
‘Could be just gossip,’ said Gently.
‘You think there’s nothing in it? But there could be some connection there, when you think about it. Just suppose he’d got her into trouble … they’d be in a mess, wouldn’t they? Both of them …’
‘You’ve got a theory about that …?’
‘Well … somebody did the old man in … and there must have been a reason for it.’
‘Yes, there must have been a reason …’
‘Of course, there’s the money to think of. If Fisher did for the old man with the idea of clearing the way to marry Gretchen, there’d be no point in his pinching it.’
‘There’s a great temptation in ready money.’
‘You’re right, of course … do you think he did it?’
Gently smiled at the river-side willows. ‘I may have an answer to that one shortly.’
Leaming ate and was silent for a short spell. Gently plied himself appreciatively with pork, and added a few more potatoes to his plate … after all, what does one’s figure matter when one is the wrong side of fifty?
Leaming said: ‘When I was talking to you about the money turning up, I didn’t know that one note was going to turn up so quickly … and right in the wrong place, too.’
Gently said: ‘Mmp.’
‘But it’s still a good angle, don’t you think? That money’s got to turn up some time.’
‘It’s not all that easy to trace when it does turn up … it may have gone through a lot of hands.’
‘There’s that, of course … but once it starts turning up you’re pretty sure that Peter’s in the clear.’
‘Could be,’ said Gently.
Leaming laughed. ‘For all I know, of course, that’s what’s happened … maybe that’s why Peter wasn’t charged. Well, if that’s the case, you may well say you’ll have an answer shortly.’ He glanced at Gently interrogatively.
‘And if, in addition, someone cracked …’
‘You mean Fisher?’
‘Perhaps.’
Leaming went back to his eating.
Gently said: ‘There’s a time in every case that I’ve had anything to do with when you suddenly find yourself over the top of the hill … usually, there’s no good reason for it. You just keep pushing and pushing, never seeming to get anywhere, and then some time you find you don’t have to push any longer … the thing you’ve been pushing starts to carry you along with it. It’s odd, isn’t it?’
Leaming said: ‘And you’ve reached that stage in this case?’
Gently shrugged. ‘I’ve got that feeling …’
Leaming studied his plate without expression, making small, deliberate movements with his knife. Gently chewed a piece of roll and washed it down with beer. Across the lawn he could see a dinghy, a class-boat, tacking wistfully against the tide, long, painfully slow tacks amongst the trees, with scarcely enough breeze to give it headway. Back and forth it went, its helmsman, patient and determined, moving across with each new tack … it seemed like a machine which had lost its raison d’être, still obstinately performing its functions but going nowhere. Gently returned his eyes to the table and found that Leaming was staring at him.
‘You do any sailing?’ asked Gently.
‘I’ve got a one-design in the boat-house.’
‘What do they fetch these days?’
‘You might pick one up for two-fifty.’
‘That lets me out … I’m only a policeman.’
The housekeeper took their plates and served the sweet, which was rhubarb pie and cream. Gently went to work with unabated gusto. ‘You’ve a good cook,’ he said, between mouthfuls. Leaming smiled and picked up his fork and spoon. ‘I have to do entertaining sometimes …’
The dinghy had made the next bend at last and Gently, outside the rhubarb and cream, was looking round for the coffee coming in. ‘By the way,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘I knew there was something I meant to ask you about …’ He got out his wallet and extracted the green card from it. ‘Know anything about these people?’ he asked.
Leaming took the card while Gently made room for his cup of coffee. ‘That’s Huysmann’s writing …’ said Leaming. Gently took three lumps of sugar and began stirring them. The housekeeper retired with her tray.
‘I found it in Huysmann’s desk this morning,’ said Gently helpfully. ‘I thought I’d heard the name before somewhere …’
Leaming looked from the card to Gently and back at the card again. Then he turned the card over and appeared to study the verso. Gently seemed not to watch him.
‘It’s one of his notes all right,’ said Leaming at length, ‘he was for ever scribbling things down …’
Gently took it back from him. ‘Miss Gretchen verified the handwriting … it is the firm I should like to know about.’
Leaming eyed him intently. ‘It’s a firm we do business with,’ he said evenly.
‘What sort of business?’
‘We supply them with sawn-out timber.’
‘And have you been connected with them very long?’
‘Oh … quite a few years.’
‘Ten years, say?’
‘Not so long as that.’
Gently reinserted the card in his wallet and tucked it into his pocket. ‘I wonder why Mr Huysmann made a note of the firm’s name … as though it were unfamiliar?’ he pondered.
Leaming shrugged slightly. ‘It may have been to jog his memory about a contract.’
‘But why write out the name in full? … Also, I don’t remember coming across it when I went through the books.’
Leaming stared straight ahead of him. ‘We keep separate books for that firm,’ he said.
‘Separate books? Why is that?’
‘We supply them with sawn-out stuff that hasn’t been through the mill … we simply act as middlemen. The stuff is processed at Starmouth and we bring it up for them. We take about fifteen per cent on it.’
‘Isn’t it unusual for a milling firm to supply timber which has been milled elsewhere? I should have thought it would have been more profitable to have supplied timber from one’s own mill.’
‘You have to do it sometimes, when the mill is working at capacity.’
‘But this has been going on over a number of years.’
Leaming bit his lip. ‘I imagine Huysmann is the only one who could give you an answer to that … and he won’t answer any more questions.’
‘I thought that perhaps his manager could have told me.’ Gently drank his coffee, looking at Leaming across the cup. ‘It’s an interesting problem … I should like to know more about it. Have you got these people’s address?’
‘Actually, I don’t think we have.’
Gently’s eyebrows lifted. ‘But surely you must have …?’
‘No.’ Leaming put down his cup and faced Gently. ‘You see, Inspector, they pay cash on delivery. We simply bring the wood up and they collect it and pay. And that’s all we know about them.’
Gently shook his head puzzledly. ‘I never did know much about business …’ he said. ‘All the same, I’d like to look over the books. Was it a very large turnover?’
‘About twelve thousand a year … but we only took fifteen per cent on that.’
Leaming rose, producing his gold cigarette case as he did so. Gently accepted a cigarette. ‘I shall have to be getting back,’ Leaming said, ‘sorry if I have to rush you.’ Gently followed him out to the Pashley and settled his bulky figure in the seat. ‘It was a very good lunch … you must ask me again some time.’ Leaming smiled automatically and sent the Pashley bounding down the drive. ‘I like having a ch
at over lunch,’ he said, ‘I think it helps to keep you in perspective … don’t you?’
Queen Street was somnolent in a warm afternoon. The mild, sun-in-cloud sky produced no shadows, only a pervading brightness, and the few vehicles making their way to and from the city seemed to move drowsily, as though the machines themselves were infected by the atmosphere. Even the sawmill seemed subdued, and the bundling and clanking noises from the breweries sounded sleepy and far away. Gently stood on the pavement feeling stupid. He had overeaten rather at lunch.
He pulled himself together and went into Charlie’s. Two of the inevitable transport drivers sat at a table eating rolls and drinking tea, one of them wearily turning the pages of a ragged Picture Post. The girl Elsie was at the counter. She sniffed as Gently entered and poked her head round the curtain, then disappeared through it. A moment later, Charlie himself came out.
‘I was hoping you’d look in,’ he said, a gleam of satisfaction in his eye.
‘You’ve got something to tell me?’
‘Something what happened about half an hour ago.’ He darted a quick glance at the two transport drivers and another at Gently. Gently leaned across the zinc-topped counter. ‘He was in here having his lunch,’ proceeded Charlie in a lowered tone, ‘and he’d got the girl Susan with him – right friendly they was together – having a long talk about something or other … they was over there in the corner.’
Gently leaned forward a little further.
‘I brought their stuff out for them, and I got to hear a little bit of what they was saying. It was about you asking Miss Gretchen questions, Inspector, how you’d been there a long time this morning, and how she’d listened to it and how it was all about Mr Fisher. And they was that friendly together, you’d hardly believe it. He give her some sort of trinket – a bracelet, I think it was, anyway it was something what pleased her – and when I take their tea over, I heard him arranging to take her out.’
Gently’s lips formed a soundless whistle. ‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Heard it with my own ears!’
‘And she agreed?’
‘That she did, first time of asking.’
Gently slowly shook his head. ‘Fisher seems to have got a very long way in a very short time … a very long way.’
‘That’s how it struck me, sir. And I couldn’t help bringing to mind how he’s been talking this last day or two about how things was going to change and all that. Well, they seem to have changed now all right, and that’s a fact.’
Gently said: ‘There’s only one thing that has any weight with Susan …’
‘But that isn’t all, sir. Fisher, he come back here a few minutes later, seems like he was looking for somebody. “What’ve you lost?” I say, a bit sharp-like. “Never you mind,” he say, “but if that b–– Inspector Gently comes snooping around here, just you tell him I want to see him, see?” And out he stalks again. So what do you make of that?’
Gently shook his head again. ‘He didn’t say where I could find him, I suppose?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t …’
‘Never mind, Charlie – you’re doing well. Keep your eye on him.’
Gently went out of Charlie’s with slightly more zest than when he had entered it. Things were undoubtedly whipping up a bit, he told himself. Something was beginning to move … He glanced up and down Queen Street for a sight of the familiar figure in the American-style jacket, then ambled slowly away in the direction of the city. At Mariner’s Lane he came to a standstill. Had Fisher gone back to his flat? But it was a long climb up there … and Gently had overeaten at lunch. Moreover, he could still see the fragment of masonry lying at the side of the pavement where he had placed it … and Fisher might be quieter when he dropped the next piece. So Gently continued to promenade along Queen Street.
He passed the Huysmann house, aloof and withdrawn, its great street-ward gables almost windowless, wended round thick-legged women pushing decrepit prams, stopped to light his pipe in a yard-way. He had just completed this operation when the American-style jacket loomed up beside him. He turned his head in mild surprise. ‘You do it better than a policeman …’ he said.
Fisher’s dark eyes glared at him. ‘You been looking for me?’ he asked smoulderingly.
‘I thought you were looking for me,’ said Gently.
‘I got something to say to you.’
‘So I gathered, one way or another.’
Fisher indicated the yard from which he had emerged. ‘Come up here, Mr Inspector Gently … I’m not telling it to half Norchester.’
Gently moved into the derelict yard, glancing round quickly at the disintegrating walls, at rotted flooring from which the nettles sprang, at falling plaster chalked on by children. Fisher sneered: ‘You don’t need to be afraid … nobody’s going to jump on you.’ Gently shrugged and puffed complacently at his pipe.
‘You been trying to get Miss Gretchen to say I was up at the house on Saturday,’ began Fisher challengingly.
Gently removed his pipe. ‘Well – weren’t you?’ he asked.
‘That’s what you’d like to know, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve been getting at all the while?’
‘It’s one of the things,’ admitted Gently.
‘And now you’re going to hear about it – straight – just like it happened!’
Gently blew an opulent smoke-ring. ‘You wouldn’t like to step into headquarters for this little scene, I suppose?’ he enquired.
‘What – and have it all taken down and twisted about by you blokes? What a hope!’ Fisher laughed raucously. ‘You just listen to it here, if you want to listen.’
Gently nodded gravely. ‘There’s just one thing I’d like to know first … why are you telling me this now, when you took such pains to hide it before?’
Fisher glowered at him. ‘It’s on account of you getting at Miss Gretchen.’
‘I didn’t think you worried a great deal about Miss Gretchen these days.’
‘I aren’t worried about her – but if she’s going to tell her tale then I’m going to tell mine … see?’
‘Sort of getting it in first …’ murmured Gently.
‘Never you mind.’ Fisher came a little closer to Gently, but getting into the line of fire of the smoke-rings he moved back again. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘just suppose I was there that afternoon – suppose he was there – suppose we were in her room together all the time that was going on – that don’t make us murderers, does it?’
‘It makes you liars,’ said Gently affably.
‘But it don’t make us murderers … that’s the thing. Naturally, you weren’t going to expect us to be mixed up in it if we could help it.’
‘Not even with a man’s life at stake?’
‘Well, how could us being mixed up in it help him?’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Gently. ‘Just keep right on.’
‘All right, then, so I was there. I got in through the kitchen while there wasn’t no one there and went up into her room.’
‘What time was that?’
‘How the hell should I know what time it was? It was after lunch, that’s all I know about it. She come up a little bit later on.’
‘With a cup of coffee?’
‘All right – she’d got a cup of coffee! And I suppose you’d like to know what we was doing up there, as well?’
‘No,’ said Gently, ‘no, it might amuse the jury, but it isn’t strictly relevant … pass on to the next bit.’
‘Well, then, during the afternoon there was somebody come to the door, and I go out on the landing to see who it is … like you know, it was Mr Peter. Miss Gretchen, she come out too. We stood there listening to what was going on … you could hear some of it up on the landing. Then the old man shrieked, and Miss Gretchen she go rushing down to see what had happened.’
‘Why didn’t you go?’ asked Gently.
‘I wasn’t bloody well supposed to be there, was I? We didn’t know the old boy was done for
… anyway, back she come and tell me what it is, so I say: “You and me is outside this – we’ll go out and make it look like we haven’t been here this afternoon,” and that’s what we did, Mr Inspector Gently, so now you know.’
Gently puffed three rings, one inside the other. ‘You went out through the study,’ he said, ‘so you saw the body. Where was it lying?’
‘It was by the safe. You don’t think we moved it, do you?’
‘How was it lying?’
‘It was face down with the legs shoved up a bit.’
‘Was the knife there?’
‘… I can’t remember every squitting little thing!’
‘But this isn’t a squitting little thing, and it’s not one you’re likely to have missed. Was it there?’
‘I tell you I can’t remember …!’
‘Was it because you didn’t look very closely … because it wasn’t, in fact, the first time you had seen the body?’
Fisher’s eyes blazed at him. ‘All bloody right! It was there – stuck in up to the hilt. Now are you satisfied?’
Gently smiled up towards Burgh Street. ‘I’m beginning to be …’ he said.
‘You’re still trying to get me to say I see it done – that’s what you’re at!’
Gently shrugged and puffed smoke.
‘You may try – but it isn’t going to get you anywhere, see? I’ve told you what happened that afternoon, just like it was, and I’ll swear to it in court if need be. But that’s all you’re getting out of me!’
‘Even if Peter Huysmann hangs?’
‘If he got into trouble that’s his look-out – not mine.’
Gently sighed, and turned to regard a blue-chalk mannequin which leered surrealistically from an obstinate patch of plaster. He poked it tentatively. It came crashing down amongst the nettles. ‘That girl Susan … she certainly gets around,’ he said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ growled Fisher.
‘Oh … it was just a passing thought. Aren’t you taking her out tonight?’
‘Suppose I am – what’s it got to do with you?’
‘It just set me wondering … that’s all.’