Gently at a Gallop

by Alan Hunter

‘Charlie?’

  Gently said nothing.

  Mrs Berney laughed scornfully. ‘You’ll never know what a joke that is,’ she said. ‘Lachlan’s the only poet round here, the only one capable of writing like that. If Charlie had wanted to send someone a poem, he’d have got it from the Golden Treasury.’

  ‘Did your husband have a typewriter?’

  ‘Yes – and it doesn’t have type like Lachlan’s.’

  ‘I’d like to see it, Mrs Berney.’

  ‘Please do. Then you’ll know for a fact that I’m not a liar.’

  She jumped up. Gently followed her out of the room and along the hall. She threw open the door of a small, bleak study, furnished with a desk and a filing-cabinet. On the desk stood a typewriter. It was one of the smaller Olivettis. Mrs Berney took a sheet of paper from the desk drawer, threaded it into the typewriter, and hammered out a sentence with two fingers. She raised the sheet.

  ‘Now are you happy?’

  Gently stared at her, then pulled out the sheet. He laid it on the desk, side by side with the poem. The type was different – but the paper matched.

  ‘Of course . . . a coincidence.’

  ‘Not even that!’

  She snatched open the drawer from which she’d taken the paper. The paper was protruding from a blue packet labelled: Crampton (Stationers), The High, Low Hale.

  ‘Our only stationers, Superintendent. And the only typewriter bond they sell. If you live round here you use that – so your precious coincidence falls flat.’

  Gently shrugged, still gazing at the poem.

  ‘But it’s all too ridiculous,’ Mrs Berney nagged. ‘If you won’t believe me, ask Lachlan – it’s as simple as that. He’ll tell you.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ Gently said.

  ‘And it’ll be the truth!’ Mrs Berney stormed. ‘If you think he’d pretend it was his when it wasn’t, you don’t know poets, that’s all.’

  Gently tapped the poem. ‘Perhaps more important! Who was the lady this was written to?’

  She tossed her hair furiously. ‘Ask him that too. Myself, I didn’t have the nerve.’

  ‘She’s fairly obviously a married woman,’ Gently said.

  ‘That would scarcely worry a poet.’

  ‘A woman not easy to gain access to.’

  ‘So perhaps her husband keeps her locked up.’

  Gently paused to study her: tall, defiant, her fine eyes blazing disdain, her pear-like stomach carried swaggeringly, as though the fact of motherhood was impersonal to her.

  ‘This isn’t a game, Mrs Berney,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to find your husband’s killer. We need your help – even if it means your acknowledging that your husband was unfaithful. You must know something. Why not tell us?’

  She stared back at him, her eyes steady. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. If it was as you think, I couldn’t tell.’

  ‘But you’d guess something?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m probably too young and inexperienced. He wasn’t sleeping with me much anyway – I wouldn’t have it, with me like this.’

  ‘Perhaps you weren’t very close to him at all?’

  The disdain sparked afresh. ‘I was his goddess! Charlie was crazy, demented about me. If you don’t understand that, you understand nothing.’

  ‘But you weren’t letting him sleep with you?’

  ‘It didn’t matter. He’d do anything I asked.’

  ‘Wasn’t that quite a big thing?’

  She drew herself tall. ‘Charlie loved me,’ she said. ‘He really loved me.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  GENTLY KEPT THE poem; Docking took down from Mrs Berney a list of the guests at the birthday party. Still angry-eyed, she watched them from the porch as they went down the steps to the Lotus. Gently tinkered the car down the drive and through the village to the coast road, then parked on a piece of bald verge. He handed the poem to Docking, and began filling his pipe.

  Docking read the poem frowningly.

  ‘I don’t know about this, sir,’ he said. ‘But I reckon you brought out one point back there. She wasn’t madly in love with Berney.’

  Gently puffed smoke through his window. ‘She didn’t have to be,’ he said. ‘He was twice her age, an old friend of the family. A bit of affection was all it needed.’

  ‘I reckon he was barmy, sir, marrying her.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a quiet life,’ Gently admitted.

  ‘With a temper like that, sir. She’d ride him rotten. You can’t wonder he was back to chasing other women.’

  ‘So what about the poem?’

  Docking did some more frowning. ‘Well, anyway, sir, it makes sense,’ he said. ‘And the bloke who wrote this was really skirt-struck. So perhaps that answers one or two of your questions.’

  ‘You mean, about Berney’s behaviour?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. He was standing on his head over this woman. She wasn’t just a piece he was going to lay. He’d have jumped through hoops for this one.’

  ‘She must be some woman,’ Gently said.

  Docking swayed his shoulders. ‘That’s a matter of taste, sir. Some men’ll blow their top for a woman that you and me wouldn’t see anything in.’

  ‘Like Mrs Berney.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Docking nodded. ‘She isn’t one I’d want to have truck with. Of course, she’s handsome, very handsome. But somehow . . . well, she leaves you cold.’

  Gently puffed. ‘Who do we have on the list?’

  Docking took out his notebook and read the list through. Along with the Risings, Redmayne and Lachlan Stogumber it contained two married couples and four couples with names linked.

  ‘I don’t know all of them, sir,’ Docking commented. ‘But it looks the way she was telling us. There are a lot of youngsters, perhaps friends of hers. There’s nobody here we know connects with Berney.’

  ‘Any raving beauties?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’

  ‘Horsemen?’

  Docking shook his head. ‘I’ll have Bayfield check the list for us, sir. But just now all I know about is the Risings.’

  As though he’d given it a cue, the R/T clicked and came through with a message from the Panda car at Clayfield. Gerald Rising had been seen riding in from the heath, from the direction of High Hale. Gently acknowledged. He glanced at Docking.

  ‘Let’s get over there, sir,’ Docking urged. ‘Rising’s the best prospect we’ve got, and this’ll give us a handle with him.’

  Gently puffed a couple of times, then started the engine and stirred the gears. Quite suddenly they were drifting along at seventy, with Docking gripping the grab-handle and staring hard ahead.

  Clayfield consisted of a string of cottages separated from the road by a small green, and facing acres of salt marsh, beyond which low dunes hid the sea. A dreary village; it had no trees. The cottages looked weather-worn and unprosperous. A blackboard, nailed to the palings of one of them, offered fresh samphire for sale.

  A single, narrow road led inland, and into this Docking directed Gently. The Lotus nosed upwards between steep banks shaggy with rank grasses, ragwort and scabious. Then the road levelled. On the left stretched heath, viewed between tangled thickets of bramble; on the right, among a few wind-bitten oaks, stood a red-brick house with a range of outbuildings.

  ‘That’s Rising’s place, sir . . . another old rectory.’

  Gently grunted and turned in at the gates. A short, rather weedy drive led them to a sweep at the front of the house. An extension of the drive passed to the left. Gently let the Lotus idle along it. It brought them to a stableyard and a railed paddock set out with a number of low jumps. A woman in riding drag stood in the paddock, giving instructions to some children mounted on ponies. As the Lotus halted, the first of the ponies began bumping energetically towards a jump.

  ‘She’ll be Mrs Rising . . . ?’

  Docking nodded. She was too far off for them to see her features. The tailored drag showed a full
figure and gave a firm line to her strong bust. As they watched, the pony rattled the jump, and her voice reached them, clear and pleasant. Then she moved a few, confident steps and signalled the next pony to the jump.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me?’

  Gently turned. A man had silently come up behind them. He was tall, in his middle forties, and wore breeches and an open-necked shirt. He had a seamed, tanned, square-boned face and short, wiry hair, going grey. His eyes were narrowed, as though he had spent a lot of time looking into the sun.

  ‘Gerald Rising?’

  ‘That’s me.’ He spoke with a hard, down-under accent.

  ‘I’m Chief Superintendent Gently.’

  Rising’s thin lips curled. ‘I’m expecting you. Marie just rang to say you were around.’

  ‘Marie?’

  ‘Mrs Berney.’

  ‘That was considerate of her,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, we’re considerate people round here,’ Rising said. ‘Step out and make yourselves at home.’

  Gently and Docking got out of the Lotus. Rising stood watching them with his half-grin. In a battered way, he was a handsome man, with a boyish cast beneath his lines. He stood jauntily, thumbs hooked in pockets, body slanted back a little from the hips. His shirt was of navy-blue linen and his breeches a grey cavalry twill.

  ‘So why were you expecting us?’ Gently asked.

  Rising nodded his head towards the stables. ‘I’m the lad who owns the horses,’ he said. ‘Where else would any policeman start looking?’

  ‘And that’s the only reason?’

  ‘About it.’ Rising’s eyes slitted a little. ‘Unless you’ve come up with something new, something that isn’t in the grapevine.’

  ‘What would that be?’ Gently said.

  Rising shook his head, grinning. ‘Play it square, sport,’ he said. ‘I’m not guessing up answers for you.’

  Gently nodded, his stare blank. ‘Where were you this afternoon?’ he said.

  ‘Exercising a horse,’ Rising said. ‘I’ve just come from rubbing him down.’

  ‘Do you mind if we see him?’

  ‘Should I mind?’

  ‘It’s up to you,’ Gently shrugged.

  Rising paused, then he unhooked his thumbs. ‘This way, gentlemen,’ he said.

  He led them across the paved yard to a range of recently built stabling. Horses, hearing the clump of his boots, pushed their curious muzzles over the half-doors. Rising buzzed and made throat noises to them and gave them fondling pats as he passed. He stopped at a door near the end, over which was leaning a tall, munching chestnut.

  ‘Meet Ned,’ he said. ‘Ned Kelly. Ned, these gents are a couple of policemen.’

  The chestnut curled its lip and blew softly through its nostrils, then went on stolidly with its munching.

  Gently patted the handsome muzzle. The chestnut eyed him with complaisant interest. He let his hand stray over its neck, his fingers burrow in the coarse mane.

  ‘Oh, it’s damp all right,’ Rising said. ‘Fresh sweat. Why should I kid you about the horse?’

  ‘You tell me,’ Gently said. ‘What was he doing over at High Hale?’

  ‘High Hale?’ Rising’s eyes puckered. ‘Who says he was over at High Hale?’

  ‘Wasn’t he?’

  ‘No, he darned well wasn’t! I took him for a loosener to Clayfield Warren.’

  Gently glanced at Docking, who nodded unwillingly. ‘It’s in the same direction, sir,’ he said. ‘Clayfield Warren’s towards Hale, but up this end and going inland.’

  ‘And that’s where he went,’ Rising said. ‘Look, what the devil is this all about? If you think I’ve been up to something, why not ask me straight out?’

  Gently gave him a flat stare. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but I do mind,’ Rising said. ‘I’ve been sitting on a bomb ever since Tuesday, just because I happen to run a stable. And it’s all a load of old cobblers. You’ve been up a creek from the start. If Charlie was killed by a horse like you say, there’s only one around here could have done it.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘You should know.’

  ‘Not one of mine!’ Rising snapped. ‘If I had a horse with a crook temper I soon wouldn’t have any customers.’

  ‘And it was that sort of horse?’

  ‘What else? No ordinary horse would attack a man.’

  ‘Not if he was put to it?’

  Rising feinted a spit. ‘Can’t you see that’s where you’ve gone wrong?’ he said. He came closer to Gently. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘There’s a horse, a stallion, with a vicious temper. We’ve had him here on service a couple of times, and I wouldn’t let a customer as much as see him. He’s on the spot. He gets loose. He runs into Charlie along that gully. Charlie sees he’s a stray and he makes to collar him – and whacko! That’s Charlie’s lot. Doesn’t that make sense – a lot more sense than somebody having a go at Charlie?’

  Gently hesitated. ‘Which horse is this?’

  ‘The one that’s been under your nose all the time! That evil black bastard at the Home Farm. His stable’s only a mile from where you found Charlie.’

  ‘A black horse?’

  ‘Right. A black. Bred a hunter, stands eighteen hands.’

  ‘With a killer temper?’

  ‘Right again. Nat Creke can handle him, but I wouldn’t try.’

  ‘Creke’s the farmer, sir,’ Docking put in. ‘We have checked that horse sir, if you remember. It was in its stable all day Tuesday. Creke exercised it in the evening.’

  Rising laughed. ‘That’s Nat’s tale. Show me how you’re going to prove it.’

  ‘Can you disprove it, sir?’ Docking said.

  Rising slitted his eyes at him, laughed again.

  Gently gave a few pats to Ned’s munching muzzle. ‘So we’ll follow it up,’ he said. ‘It’s a possible theory. And meantime you weren’t at Low Hale this afternoon – just out of curiosity, to look at the spot?’

  ‘No I wasn’t,’ Rising said. ‘I was where I told you.’

  ‘Then we’ll get on to something else,’ Gently said. ‘Last Sunday Berney and his wife were here riding. Perhaps you can tell me something about that.’

  Rising pulled back a little, his eyes probing, his heavy hands crooking at his sides.

  ‘That’s a queer sort of thing to ask me,’ he said. ‘What’s last Sunday got to do with it?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ Gently said. ‘The Berneys did come here riding, didn’t they?’

  ‘Suppose they did,’ Rising said. ‘Sunday’s the day when everyone comes.’

  ‘So tell me about it,’ Gently said.

  Rising shook his head, his hands working. ‘It was just like any other Sunday,’ he said. ‘Charlie rang in the morning to book two horses. We were full up in the afternoon. Charlie’d booked for three p.m. Leo Redmayne and her brother were here. They all went riding down to the beach.’

  ‘They went together?’ Gently said.

  ‘Near enough,’ Rising said. ‘Marie and her brother went off first, then Leo, then Charlie. Charlie’s saddle was loose, he says, so he waited for me to tighten the straps for him. But the beach was where they were going. They’d decided that before they mounted.’

  Gently nodded. ‘What other riders went that way?’

  Rising flipped his hand. ‘I don’t keep an eye on them. Jill took her pony-string down there, but mostly the customers stick to the heath.’

  ‘Your wife went that way?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe she can tell you.’

  ‘She set out about the same time as the Berneys?’

  ‘She let them go first to get them out of the way. The pony-string isn’t a fast mover.’

  ‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘So it went like this. First, Mrs Berney in company with her brother. Then Mr Redmayne. Then Mr Berney. Then your wife with the string of ponies.’

  ‘Right,’ Rising said. ‘Is that supposed to add up to something?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘
Would you say it did?’

  Rising slitted his eyes for a moment, then hooked a thumb in his breeches pocket.

  ‘Let’s come to that party now,’ Gently said. ‘When did you get your invitation?’

  ‘They spoke to Jill about it,’ Rising said sulkily. ‘I was out with a starter when they got back.’

  ‘Didn’t you want to go to it?’

  ‘Right,’ Rising said. ‘There’s plenty to do here without parties. Only Jill and Marie are great buddies, so it was fixed up over my head.’

  ‘Jill and Marie,’ Gently said. ‘So you went to this party a bit reluctantly. But no doubt you cheered up when you got there – a few drinks, dancing, some amusing people?’

  Rising aimed a kick at the stable wall. ‘All right, it wasn’t so brilliant. I’ve been to some other parties of Charlie’s, and they had more steam than Monday’s.’

  ‘How wasn’t it brilliant?’

  ‘It didn’t jell. Charlie and Marie didn’t circulate. Marie was stuck with her brother and Leo. Charlie acted like he couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘He stayed in the background.’

  Rising nodded. ‘That’s what you want to hear, isn’t it? And it’s true enough, he just sat around. The party was dead on its feet by eleven.’

  ‘Didn’t he dance?’

  ‘Yes. With his wife.’

  ‘With nobody else?’

  Rising hesitated. ‘If he did, I didn’t notice,’ he said. ‘I happened to be dancing with my wife, too.’

  ‘Of course,’ Gently said. ‘And there were no incidents.’

  Rising swung his foot, said nothing.

  ‘Then . . . or later.’

  Rising looked at him. A flush was showing in his creased cheeks.

  ‘Now look,’ Rising said. ‘Me, I’m an Aussie, and I don’t much like your bloody methods. Where I come from we talk straight, and if that won’t do we try this.’ He stropped the knuckles of one hand across the palm of the other. ‘So what are you getting at, sport?’ he said.

  Gently laid a finger on Rising’s fist. ‘This won’t help you,’ he said. ‘Drop it.’

  Rising’s eyes thinned. ‘You think I wouldn’t,’ he said.

  ‘I think you wouldn’t,’ Gently said.

  Rising snatched his fist away suddenly. ‘You bastard,’ he said. ‘You’re on about Jill and Charlie, aren’t you? That’s how your stinking policeman’s mind works – Jill and Charlie, and me for patsy.’