Gently Does It

by Alan Hunter

  Gently shook his head. ‘It’s mostly one witness against another at the moment. We’ve got to have proof.’

  ‘We’ll get proof. I’ll get a warrant and take his flat apart, brick by brick, and if the money’s there we’ll find it. And I’ll make him talk, if I have to question him from now to Christmas.’

  ‘He won’t talk if he’s the murderer.’

  ‘Then if he doesn’t talk I’ll charge him with it.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be too hasty about that …’ began Gently, and broke off. Hansom came striding into the room, followed by Police Constable Letts. ‘Look at this!’ boomed Hansom, ‘look at this!’ And he waved a limp piece of paper under the super’s nose. The super stared at it. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What is it!’ ‘It’s another of the Huysmann notes – it’s just been turned in by the bank!’

  The super grabbed it as though it were a rare visitant from another world. ‘Where did they get it?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘It was paid in this afternoon by “The Doll’s Hospital”.’

  ‘By the what?’

  ‘“The Doll’s Hospital”.’

  The super goggled at Hansom. ‘And what the blazing blue hell is “The Doll’s Hospital” …?’

  ‘Excuse me, sir …’ Constable Letts slid round the mass that was Hansom. ‘“The Doll’s Hospital” is a toy-shop in St Benedict’s, sir.’

  ‘And what the devil has that got to do with the Huysmann case?’

  Gently said: ‘What sort of toy-shop is it?’

  ‘It’s one of those that goes in for Meccano sets and that sort of thing, sir.’

  ‘Does it sell scale model aeroplanes?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It’s got a window full of them.’

  ‘Fisher!’ yipped Hansom, catching on with commendable suddenness. ‘He told us he built scale models in his spare time.’

  The super shot a meaningful glance at Gently. ‘You wanted proof, by golly …!’ He turned to Hansom. ‘We’re pulling in Fisher right away. Wait here till I get warrants – I’m in on this party – and send a patrol car round to his flat.’

  Ten minutes later the super’s Humber bumbled over the ruts of Paradise Alley and pulled up beside the patrol car. A police sergeant ran round and saluted. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anybody at home, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Is the door locked?’ snapped the super.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Smash it in, then.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  The super, Gently and Hansom climbed out and watched the sergeant direct smashing operations. It was not the best of doors. It yielded easily to one constable-power. The super, eager to draw blood, went bounding up the narrow stairs, Hansom in close pursuit. Gently followed at a more sedate pace. ‘He’s not here!’ bawled Hansom, emerging from the bedroom. ‘Try the lounge,’ suggested Gently, ‘it’s a bit before his bedtime …’ He wandered into the kitchen after the super, who was making great play with a wall-cupboard full of junk. ‘Hell’s … bells!’ came from Hansom. ‘Chiefy – for God’s sake come and look at this lot!’ ‘What have you found, Hansom?’ barked the super. ‘Just come and look at it!’ The super bounced across the dingy landing, Gently following. Hansom stood back, tallow-faced.

  Sprawled on the floor of the sitting-room, mouth open, eyes staring, was Fisher. His throat was cut down from the ear on the right side. A blood-stained razor, which Gently recognized, lay near his right hand and on the couch near him, neatly stacked, stood a fabulous pile of treasury notes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GENTLY, HAVING SEEN enough, went out and sat in the Humber while the police medico made his examination. After him came the photographer, whose flash-bulbs could be seen popping through the unmasked window. Hansom and the super came out in conference with the medico. ‘… Naturally, it’s always possible,’ said the medico, ‘any self-inflicted wound may have been the result of an attack … we can only offer proof the other way round, viz., that a certain wound could not have been self-inflicted. But there is no suggestion of that here. I am perfectly satisfied that this is a bona fide case of suicide.’

  ‘I wasn’t querying the present case,’ grunted the super. ‘I could see that for myself with half an eye.’

  Hansom said: ‘And Gently recognizes the razor … it’s the one he cut out the models with.’

  They came up to the car and Gently got out. ‘You might well say that Fisher was getting worried,’ said the super to him, a trifle grimly.

  ‘He didn’t seem so terribly worried when I last saw him … just a bit on edge.’

  The super shook his head. ‘You must put the fear of the Lord into people without realizing it. Well … I suppose it’s saved a deal of trouble and expense, though personally I should have got a lot of satisfaction out of putting him in dock. We can let young Huysmann go now.’

  Hansom said: ‘I still can’t quite get this straight … I feel like a kid who’s got his sums wrong. But I hand it to you, Gently. You were right and I was wrong … I reckon they don’t put you in the Central Office at the Yard for nothing.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one who was wrong,’ growled the super. ‘It just goes to show … you need specialists when it comes to homicide.’ He glanced at Gently, half-admiring, half-jealous. ‘I suppose it gets to be an instinct when someone’s been on the job as long as you have.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘I started with an advantage … I saw young Huysmann riding on the Wall. One doesn’t do that sort of thing straight after murdering one’s father.’

  ‘All the same … it was a top-grade job.’

  Gently smiled wanly at them. ‘I’m glad you’re pleased with me, just this once,’ he said, ‘because you’re not going to be pleased with me for very long.’

  ‘What? How do you mean, Gently?’ The super glanced at him quickly.

  ‘I mean that unlike yourselves, I do not regard the death of Fisher as being suicide.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘On the contrary, I am as positive as my specialization and acquired instinct can make me that it’s murder.’

  There was a pause, fraught and ominous. Three pairs of eyes stared at Gently as though he had suddenly touched their owners with three red-hot pokers.

  ‘You’re off your chump!’ bawled Hansom, finding his voice. ‘You – you’ve got murder on the brain!’

  ‘It’s utterly preposterous!’ snapped the police doctor.

  ‘Really, Gently, I completely fail to understand—!’

  Gently bowed and let the storm pass over his head. ‘I don’t expect you to agree with me until you’ve heard my reasons … but that is my conviction.’

  ‘But there is nothing – nothing whatever to suggest an attack!’

  ‘It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!’

  Gently turned to the furious little police doctor. ‘Were you able to form an opinion as to the direction in which the cut was made?’ he enquired mildly.

  ‘Direction? What in the world has that got to do with it?’

  ‘I’d like to have your opinion.’

  ‘As far as I can say it was made upwards, from the base of the throat to the ear. But—!’

  ‘If the cut were self-inflicted, isn’t it more likely to have been made in the other direction … from the ear downwards?’

  The little man fumed at him. ‘It could be made in either direction – it is only slightly more likely to have been made downwards.’

  ‘And wouldn’t you say it was still more likely to have been made on the left side of the throat … bearing in mind that the razor was ostensibly held in his right hand?’

  ‘I think this is all highly irrelevant, Gently!’ broke in the super. ‘It’s ridiculous to suppose that you can deduce murder from such trivial considerations.’

  ‘I’m not deducing murder from them … I’m simply demonstrating that the cut was made in the least likely of three ways.’

  ‘But there is no guarantee that a suicide will choose the likeliest way! If you had see
n as many suicides as I have …!’ The medico, his professional skill called to question, fairly chattered with rage. ‘And how likely would it be for an attacker to make the cut upwards? You tell me that! How do you attack a man and cut his throat in that direction?’

  Gently extended a disclaiming palm. ‘Suppose you had to cut Fisher’s throat … how would you do it?’

  ‘It is not a question of how I would do it!’

  ‘But suppose you did?’

  The little man glared at him. ‘I should do it – like this!’ And he made a downward slash that whistled past Gently’s neck.

  Gently shook his head gravely. ‘You’d be a very brave man to do that,’ he said, ‘much braver than I should be … also, you’d have to be lucky. Now if I wanted to cut Fisher’s throat … neatly, and without noise and personal danger … I should wait till he was bending over something … something like a bag containing forty thousand pounds, and then I’d do it – like this!’ And he spun the little doctor round, pushed him into a bending position, and drew his right hand smartly across his struggling victim’s throat.

  ‘I should also be in a good position to avoid the subsequent rush of blood,’ he added, thoughtfully.

  ‘All right, Gently, you’ve shown us that it could be done!’ snapped the super, ‘and where precisely do we go from there?’

  ‘That’s right,’ echoed Hansom, ‘who’s it going to be this time – the housekeeper?’

  Gently said: ‘The person who killed Fisher was the same person whom Fisher saw killing Huysmann. He killed Fisher for three reasons. First, Fisher was blackmailing him. Second, there was a risk that the money he paid Fisher would be traced back to Fisher, and thus to himself. Third, he knew that I had discovered his motive for killing Huysmann, and that he would have to make some sort of move to draw the police off. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize he would make it quite so soon.’

  ‘And who is this mythical person, Gently?’

  ‘He is Leaming, Huysmann’s manager.’

  Hansom set up a howl. ‘What – Leaming kill the old man? You’re bats – completely bats! Why, Leaming had the one alibi that stood the steam-test – he’s fire-proof!’

  ‘It was a good alibi,’ Gently admitted reluctantly, ‘but that’s all it was – an alibi. He probably parked his car at the ground, where no doubt it was known to the attendants. There was then nothing to prevent him from making his way through the crowd back to the yard. I am not certain of his exact movements, but I imagine that he watched the quarrel from the summer-house and emerged from it soon after Peter Huysmann left. With regard to the alibi, I questioned him about the football match on the Saturday evening before he had time to gen up on it. He had three things to tell me about it and they formed the three headlines in the pink’un, in exactly the same sequence. On the following day he had the match at his fingertips – he even knew the precise minutes when the scores were made, a detail which a man on the terrace is never aware of.

  ‘Also on Saturday evening – and later during the questioning – he introduced obliquely every point which would tell against Peter. Under cover of a pretended solicitude he suggested things which were absolutely damning – such things as Huysmann’s resolution to cut Peter out of his will, which he represented as being of recent origin. In addition to this …’

  ‘Hold hard!’ broke in the super, ‘you’re making my head spin, Gently. There doesn’t seem to be any end to you. When you made your report in the office an hour ago it was Fisher, Fisher, Fisher. So we go out, and find it was Fisher. And immediately you turn the record over and begin on Leaming. If this isn’t a sudden spasm of madness, would you mind telling me why you didn’t mention Leaming in the office, but only now when the case has cancelled itself out?’

  Gently sighed deeply, and felt around for the support of a peppermint cream. ‘I was going to tell you about Leaming,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t get a chance. You’re all so impulsive round here. I’d just got through telling you what I knew about Fisher when Hansom came in with the note and you straightway jumped to the conclusion that Fisher was the man. I didn’t say he was … in fact, I was pretty certain that he wasn’t, and what we’ve found up there convinces me to the hilt. Fisher was an extrovert if ever there was one – he would no more have cut his throat than spoken English. But you got so sold on the idea, and I wanted Fisher picked up for questioning … so I let the rest of it ride till we’d laid hands on him.’

  ‘Then you’re not just hanging out this case for the fun of it?’

  Gently looked shocked. ‘Really, superintendent!’

  ‘All right, all right! Now – you say Leaming killed Huysmann. Why?’

  ‘Because Huysmann had discovered how Leaming bought his cars and his houses and his hand-made cigarettes.’

  ‘And how did he do that?’

  ‘He was flogging timber on the side, about one-fifth of the entire intake … twelve thousand pounds’ worth a year. That was the leak which Peter said his father suspected, and it had been going on quite a few years. Mind you, Leaming didn’t scoop the entire twelve thousand. The tug-skipper and his mate were in it, though I don’t think they knew much, and there was a mysterious firm called “The Straight Grain Timber Merchants” who took the stuff away. I imagine they’re dissolved as from today, but we might get a line on them … the tug-men may talk, with a little persuasion. There’s another angle in the books. I went through the Huysmann books on Sunday, so I knew the “Straight Grain” outfit was not in the regular line of business with them. Leaming has got a very thin excuse that they kept separate books for the “Straight Grain” transactions and he’s prepared to produce them: I think an expert comparison between the two sets of books will give us an opening.’

  The super said: ‘Granted that you’re right about Leaming’s fiddling, how do you know that Huysmann had found out about it?’

  Gently drew out his wallet and produced the green postcard. ‘I found this in Huysmann’s desk. According to Miss Gretchen it is the most recently received card – it is postmarked on the twentieth – and Huysmann took it with the rest of his mail on his last trip to London. Ostensibly it was during this trip that he got scent of the “Straight Grain” set-up, and though he may not have tumbled to the significance of it straight away, his suspicions were aroused and he made this note of the name. That gives us a further angle. If we trace Huysmann’s movements on that trip we may find the source of his information … though the trail has got a little sketchy now Fisher’s dead.

  ‘When he got back off his trip I imagine Huysmann began to make some guarded enquiries about “Straight Grain”. He apparently found out enough, and it’s my conjecture that his visit to Leaming’s office last thing on Saturday morning was to summon Leaming to produce an immediate explanation. It isn’t difficult to imagine Leaming’s reaction to that. He might be able to satisfy other people with his twin set of books, but there was no prospect of satisfying Huysmann. He faced a long term of imprisonment, plus utter ruination – you will remember in conjunction with this that the last firm he managed went bankrupt, though he got clear from that one – and Leaming was not the sort of man to let that happen if there was a loop-hole. And there was a loop-hole. He could silence Huysmann.

  ‘Consider for a moment how favourable the circumstances were for such a step. First, it was well known that Leaming spent his Saturday afternoons at the football. Second, it was known that he proposed to spend that Saturday afternoon at the football – he would have warned his housekeeper that he wanted lunch promptly, and his gardener was expecting to get a lift down with him. Third, nobody knew that Huysmann had summoned him to his study. Fourth, the study was isolated from the rest of the house, and fifth, it could be entered quite secretly by way of the yard.

  ‘Everything, then, favoured the attempt. I don’t know whether the theft of the money was premeditated, because he didn’t know that the safe was going to be open. It may have been an afterthought when he saw Peter given one of the notes, or to
suggest an outside job if Peter got off, or simply from greed. With regard to weapons, you will notice that in both murders he used the weapon on the spot, that they were the same class of weapon, and that they were used from the same position – behind. The knives in the study he had always known about. You will remember how well they were placed for an attacker entering from the garden – especially a tall attacker. The razor he had undoubtedly seen on his previous visit to the flat … I am conjecturing that he went to the flat previously for his first deal with Fisher.

  ‘Huysmann, then, was disposed of, with the unlooked-for piece of luck of Peter being on the spot to collect the blame. Leaming’s alibi was fire-proof, he made a good impression on the police, and a little annoyance of myself asking to see the books could be attributed to a policeman’s officiousness. Everything was going swimmingly … until Monday morning. On Monday morning Fisher visited Leaming’s office – I saw him – and Leaming made the spine-chilling discovery that the murder had been witnessed. And it had not been witnessed by his best friend.

  ‘The bone of contention between Leaming and Fisher was the maid, Susan. Fisher had always had a fancy for her, but he was never in the running – it took money to get Susan – and he bore Leaming a deep grudge about her. Naturally, with Leaming completely in his power, his first demand was for Susan … with a small cut in the forty thou, to be going on with. And he got her. That same evening Leaming picked her up and brought her into town, told her abruptly that everything was over and left her flat. The deal then was for Fisher to take up the running, but he was a little late on cue. Susan, reacting to a crisis like most women, went in search of a cup of tea, and while she was getting it she bumped into me. She told me the story without much prompting – also, she told me about Fisher’s affair with Gretchen and about Gretchen’s pregnancy. I kept her by me the rest of the evening … when we left the café Fisher was there, watching. Later in the evening I met him at Charlie’s, in Queen Street, and he tried to find out what Susan had told me.

  ‘Fisher was beginning to get worried by then. I had been up to his flat in the morning and he had seen me interrogating a little boy who makes a playground of the ruins up there, and probably guessed – which was a fact – that I had obtained an account of his movements on Saturday afternoon which did not tally with the one he’d put on record. Also, I hinted to him that I knew of his affair with Gretchen. This upset him so much that he made his clumsy attempt at inspectorcide … I was beginning to know far too much.’