by Alan Hunter
Gently hunched his shoulders chastenedly and made a chessmove with the peppermint cream. ‘It could even have been dropped off the pier,’ he murmured.
‘My guess is it came off a ship,’ said Copping. ‘There’s no doubt about the fellow being a foreigner. Anyone could see that at a glance. The ethnologist who saw him reckoned he was a Slav of some sort, Central European. He could have gone overboard in the Wash somewhere and hooked on to that current.’
‘And that would mean trying to pinpoint a ship of some or any nationality which was in the Wash about midnight on Tuesday,’ said the super, ‘and just suppose we found it, what good would it do us?’
‘It’d be outside our jurisdiction,’ said Copping brightly.
‘Unless it was a British ship,’ hazarded Gently.
‘In which case we would have heard something before now,’ said the super with a note of finality. ‘No, Gently. I appreciate your attitude. It’s your business to see that no stone is unturned and I can see that you propose to carry it out. But I think you’ll have to agree in the long run that everything that can be done has been done. Where there’s no identity, no apparent motive and no hopeful line of inquiry, then to proceed with a case is simply a formality. You must do it – that’s your business: but I’m afraid that in this instance it will be a very thankless task.’
‘And yet this man was murdered,’ said Gently slowly. ‘Somewhere there’s someone who will kill more readily another time if we don’t put a finger on him …’
‘I know, I know!’ snapped the super, ‘but idealism is no use if there’s no prospect of implementing it.’
Gently sighed and heaved himself out of the rather bleak chair which was maintained for visitors. ‘There’s nothing else you want to tell me?’ he inquired.
‘I’ve told you everything that we know.’ The super paused, frowning. Then he looked at Gently a little more kindly. ‘Don’t think we’re against you … I assure you it isn’t that. If you can do anything with this affair I shall be the first to congratulate you, and Copping here will be the second.’
‘Hear, hear,’ responded Copping, though perhaps more from duty than conviction.
‘I’ve arranged lodgings for you and the Sergeant in Nelson Street. There’s a private office here you can use for interrogations. If you need a car you have only to ask for it, and any other assistance we can give.’ The super stalked round his desk and held out his hand. ‘The best of luck, Gently,’ he said warmly, ‘I only wish it had been someone with no reputation to lose.’
Gently shook the extended hand woodenly. ‘I’d like to see the body,’ he said.
‘I’ve a full set of photographs and a copy of the pathologist’s report for you,’ replied the super. ‘Copping will give them to you along with his own report.’
‘I still want to see the body,’ said Gently.
The super shrugged. ‘Very well, then. Copping will take you round.’
They filed out in strict order of rank, Gently, Copping and Dutt, the latter having been a silent and respectful auditor of the conference in the office.
‘We’ll take a car,’ said Copping, ‘it isn’t far to the mortuary, but you can put your bags in and I’ll drop you at your lodgings.’ He dodged into his office and came out with a file. ‘These are the reports and the photographs – for what they’re worth.’
Gently took them with a solemn nod.
The mortuary was a neat modern building of pastel-tone brick and had double doors of a reddish wood with lavish chromium-plated fitments. But it smelled exactly like all other mortuaries. Copping explained their errand to the sad-faced attendant. They were ushered into the dim and odoriferous interior.
‘He’s had company,’ observed the attendant, indicating a second draped form, ‘they pulled her out of the river up by the yacht-station.’
‘You’d better watch they don’t get into mischief,’ said Copping callously.
The attendant laughed a ghoulish laugh and twitched the sheet from corpse number one.
‘Voilà,’ said Copping, ‘the cause of all the trouble.’
Gently stepped forward and conducted a stolid examination of the wax-like body. It had no humanity now. There was nothing about it to suggest the warmth of life, the kindling of a soul. And the attentions of the pathologist had done little to help matters, though he had tidied up afterwards with needle and gut.
Sergeant Dutt made a hissing sound. ‘No doubt about him being a foreigner, sir,’ he said, ‘there’s a bit of the old Eyetye about him, if you ask me.’
‘Age?’ demanded Gently through his teeth.
‘Early forties is their guess,’ returned Copping.
‘Much force?’
‘One stab busted a rib. There’s three in the lung and one in the heart. Penetration about four inches. Double-edged blade about three-quarters of an inch wide. And his wrists had been tied.’
‘Poor beggar!’ exclaimed the warm-hearted Dutt, ‘they never give him a chance.’
‘And those?’ jerked Gently, indicating a group of brownish marks just above the pathologist’s neat stitches.
‘Burns,’ said Copping, ‘that’s what the report says.’
Sergeant Dutt caught his breath. ‘I’ve seen burns like that before, sir … during the war when I was in France …’
‘I know,’ said Gently, ‘I’ve seen them too.’
He turned away from the slab and stood looking at the narrow window with its bar and pebble-glass pane.
‘They didn’t just want his life, they wanted something else too. I wonder what it was … I wonder why it was so important?’
Copping laughed harshly. ‘When you know that you’ll have solved the case,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here. The smell gets on my stomach. You’ve done me out of my tea, bringing me to this place just before I knock off.’
CHAPTER TWO
BODY ON THE BEACH: YARD CALLED IN, ran the headline of the evening paper, Chief Inspector Gently To Take Charge, New Move In Riddle Of The Sands. It continued: ‘There were fresh developments today in the murder mystery which has come to be known as “The Body On The Beach Murder”. The Starmouth Borough Police acknowledged the gravity with which they view the case by calling upon the services of Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Gently, well known in Northshire for his handling of the Sawmill Murders, has been assigned the task and this afternoon he arrived in Starmouth to take over the investigation. Superintendent Symms told our reporter in an interview today that sensational developments in the near future are not expected and that the arrival of Chief Inspector Gently was purely a routine step.’
There was also a photograph of Gently which the Norchester Evening News had kept in cold storage from his last visit, but fortunately it wasn’t recognizable …
All along the Front they were talking about it, from the bowling greens in the north to the funfair in the south. It was really making the week for them, holidaymakers and residents alike. Publicity it was, Publicity with a capital P – it dragged in excursionists to be plucked and made the holidaymakers feel that their stay would be truly memorable. For how often does a first-class murder turn up on one’s doorstep during a holiday? A classic murder with stabbing, mystery, the Yard, and all that? They even had the spot marked X for them, thought Gently, as he turned away from the crowd which still milled excitedly on the beach: the Starmouth Borough Police, nothing if not thorough, had set up a ponderous post to mark the site of the discovery. Nobody took it seriously, that was the trouble … the police had already written it off as unsolvable, and everybody else looked on it as a bigger and better side-show. Even Gently himself was being infected by the feeling. He had been practically tipped off that he didn’t have to exert himself.
And yet it was still there, up in the mortuary. That shrunken husk of what had once been a man. A foreigner, they all said, as though it were something subhuman – a foreigner whom they couldn’t really care about, though he had been tortured, killed in cold blood and thrown into th
e sea, to be washed up, troublesome and unwanted, on their holiday shore … just a foreigner: one didn’t bother too much about him.
But suppose one did bother, thought Gently, where did one begin on such an impossible business? He had taken the only step that suggested itself. He had got Dutt to phone headquarters to have the prints transmitted to Paris. Where did one go from there – what was one to try that the so-efficient Starmouth BP hadn’t tried already? He sighed, and sat down heavily in a deckchair which still remained on the evening sand. He was still baulking, and he knew it. He still couldn’t get his shoulder under the thing. There was something about just being in Starmouth, quite apart from anything else, that sapped his power of concentration. Those tight-fitting knickerbockers, for instance … And where were the donkeys …?
Behind him the lights blazed and jewelled as far as the eye could see, outlining buildings, flashing on signs, revolving on the sails of the windmill which reared further down. The two piers presented a strong contrast. The virile Albion seemed to burn and throb with illumination, to assert itself by sheer candlepower; the Wellesley contented itself with graceful and glittering outlines, making it appear, with its Winter Gardens, like an iced-cake shored-up above the sea. And there was the great evening medley of the Front, the undertone of the traffic, the beat of ten thousand feet, the shrieks and cries of ragamuffin children, the tinkle and soughing roar of mechanical music and the intermittent spang and crash of a shooting saloon not far away.
And then, of course, there was the sea, the sea that knew the secret, the heavy-looking evening sea that hissed and chuckled near that solitary post.
Gently took out his pipe and lit it. There had to be something, he told himself obstinately. After all, that man must necessarily have been murdered not very far away and murder under the best conditions is apt to leave traces. He blew out the match in a gust of smoke and held it poised in the air beside him. Except if it were done at sea, of course … but one mustn’t begin by assuming that.
Suddenly, the match disappeared from his fingers. It went so quickly and so silently that for a moment Gently simply sat still in surprise. Then he jerked his head round to see by what agency the match had taken flight. But there was nothing to be seen. There was nobody within yards of the back of his chair. The nearest people to him were two uniformed Americans with their inamoratas and they were patently occupied with quite other things. Puzzled, he returned to his meditations. He puffed at his pipe, his empty fingers taking up the same position as before. And then, just as suddenly, with the lightest of twitches, the match reappeared in its former situation.
This time Gently got up. He got up with an alacrity unexpected in a bulky man of fifty summers. But his haste was quite needless, because the worker of these miracles was merely crouching behind the chair and it made no attempt at flight when Gently pulled away the chair and exposed it.
‘And who may you be?’ demanded Gently, realizing then whom it could be no other.
‘I’m Nits – I’m Nits!’ piped the halfwit, staring up painfully with his bulbous eyes. ‘I know who you are, they told me who you are! I know – I know!’
Gently released the chair slowly and reseated himself, this time with his back to the sea. ‘So you do, do you?’ he said, ‘and who did they tell you I am?’
‘You’re a policeman!’ chattered Nits, ‘you’re a policeman, though you haven’t got a hat. I know! They told me! You want to know about my man who wouldn’t wake up.’
Gently nodded profoundly, keeping his eyes fixed on the halfwit’s. ‘And what else did they tell you about me?’ he queried.
‘They said I mustn’t talk to you – ha, ha! – they said you might take me away and lock me up. But’ – Nits assumed an expression of exaggerated cunning – ‘I know you won’t do that.’
‘And how do you know I won’t do that, Nits?’
‘Because I haven’t asked for any money. That’s why they locked me up!’
Gently puffed at his pipe, still keeping the staring green eyes engaged. This was it, the solitary link – an idiot who ought to be in a home. Not even a rational creature, however stupid. Just an idiot, someone who couldn’t testify anyway. As he sat there, smoking and brooding and watching the ragged Caliban crouched in the sand, he seemed to hear a mockery in the tinkled outburst of music and a laughter in the shuffling of feet on the promenade. What was the use of it? And who cared two hoots, really?
‘So you found the man who wouldn’t wake up …’ he murmured.
Nits nodded in energetic glee.
‘Just there, where they’ve put the post.’
Nits’s head bobbed ceaselessly.
‘And you tried to wake him up … then you went and told a policeman … and the policeman tried waking him up too.’
The head never wavered.
‘You’ve no idea how he got there?’
The head changed direction agreeably.
‘You didn’t see anybody around before you found him?’
‘My part,’ said Nits, his features twisting into an absurd mask of aggression, ‘nobody come on my part of the beach.’
It was just what was in Copping’s report. The efficient Inspector had covered the ground admirably. Nits had told what he knew, and he didn’t know anything: it just so happened that the corpse had been washed up on ‘his’ part of the beach.
‘You were told not to talk to me,’ said Gently wearily, ‘who was it told you that?’
Nits grinned and chattered but made no intelligible reply.
‘And why did you talk to me, after being warned not to?’
The halfwit frowned ferociously and turned his trouser-pockets inside-out. ‘The other man – he took it away!’
‘Took what away?’
‘My knife – he took it!’
Gently smiled and felt for the little broken-bladed penknife. Nits gabbled with joy and snatched for it with the speed of a striking snake. But Gently had already experienced a sample of the halfwit’s snatching and he held the knife carefully out of range.
‘Who was it told you not to talk to me?’ he demanded.
Nits chattered and tried another sudden grab.
‘You get it when you tell me, not until.’
Nits made all sorts of fierce faces, but Gently merely made as if to return the knife to his own pocket.
‘Jeff!’ piped the halfwit suddenly, ‘it was Jeff and Bonce – they told me.’
‘And who are they?’
‘I don’t know – I don’t know!’
‘You know their names – you must know something else about them.’
‘I just see them, that’s all.’
‘See them where?’ persisted Gently, ‘see them here – on the beach?’
But the halfwit relapsed into a mewing and gabbling, and refused to make himself any further intelligible. Gently sighed and tossed him the knife. It was plucked out of the air as though by the lash of a whip and Nits capered off, clutching it to his bosom, his two trouser-pockets still turned inside-out.
‘Whoa – wait a minute!’ called Gently, rising to his feet.
He produced a florin and held it out between thumb and finger. The halfwit paused in his flight, hesitated, and then came sidling back, spaniel-like, his chin tucked in until there seemed nothing of his face below the two bulging eyes. He didn’t snatch at it, as Gently expected: he reached up and took the coin quietly from Gently’s hand. Then he crept closer still, crouching, cringing almost, and stared up with his faceless eyes.
‘The man who wouldn’t wake up!’ he piped, but in a sort of whisper.
Gently nodded silently.
‘Different … different!’
‘Different from … what?’ murmured Gently.
‘From when he was awake.’
‘From when he was awake!’
Nits went into one of his fits of nodding.
‘Hold it!’ exclaimed Gently, feeling his universe beginning to rock, ‘did you know him, Nits – did you know him w
hen he was awake?’
‘I knew him – I knew him!’
‘But when did you know him – and where?’
Nits screwed his face up into an expression of rage and shook his head. Then he pointed to the tip of his almost non-existent chin.
‘Hair!’ he chattered, ‘hair – when he was awake!’
The next moment he was capering over the beach again, leaving Gently with his eyebrows hoisted in almost comical surprise.
Twilight had become dusk and the lights which had sparkled like fugitive jewellery were now glowing and full. The blazing Front had a strange glamour about it, as though it belonged to a different world, and the holidaymakers too seemed to partake of the strangeness. Perhaps it was simply the multiplicity of lights destroying the shadows, perhaps only the sense of anonymity and freedom … they felt changed and in some way abnormal.
Gently picked his way through the promenade crowds and paused at the edge of the carriage-way. He felt changed also, though his changedness was due to something quite different. He’d got a lead, that was it. He’d found something to hang on to in this slippery orphan of a case.
Almost jauntily he crossed the carriage-way and directed his steps to a phone-box on the other side.
‘Chief Inspector Gently … is Inspector Copping in, by any chance?’
The switchboard girl thought he might be if Gently would kindly hang on. Gently grunted and wedged himself into a supportable position in the corner of the box. Outside he could see the front of the amusement arcade from which blared much of the canned music which disturbed that part of the promenade – a striking blaze of light in the shape of three feathers, with a lurid red arrow snapping backwards and forwards as though working up to burst in through the door. And there was some jutting neonry which said LICENSED BAR … a ritzy sort of touch for an amusement arcade, thought Gently.