Gently by the Shore

by Alan Hunter

  And the name was Max. Max, in a light grey suit with a blue bow tie. Max, who came from somewhere where they didn’t ‘sir’ people. Max, who was friendly. Max, who was quite a gent. Max, who had sat at that same table from Wednesday till Tuesday, eating his chicken, his Dover sole and chips, and drinking the wine Withers brought him from over the road … and Max, who had finished up as Exhibit A on the mortuary slab exactly a week after his first appearance. He was getting into focus, that one. Gently was beginning to see him, to fit him in. And over all there was his foreign-ness, pervasive and misty, his Franco-German-Russo-what-have-you foreign-ness …

  Withers returned with Gently’s roast beef and the lager. He seemed to have been gone a good deal longer than was strictly necessary, even allowing for the trip across the road. Gently raised his eyebrows to the unhappy man.

  ‘Talked it over with the boss, Withers?’ he inquired affably.

  ‘I-I beg your pardon, sir!’ stammered Withers, spilling some lager.

  ‘Never mind, Withers … and don’t be well-bred about the vegetables.’

  The waiter served, and Gently picked up his knife and fork. It was odd, but he hadn’t been feeling hungry when he came into the cafe …

  ‘Sit down,’ he mumbled to Withers, ‘you’ll give me indigestion, jiffling about like that.’

  ‘I b-beg your pardon, sir, but really I ought to be getting on with my work … there isn’t n-nothing I haven’t told you, honest …’

  Gently beamed at him over a mouthful of lager. ‘Nonsense, Withers, we’ve only just begun …’

  ‘It’s making extra work for the others, sir,’ persisted Withers, encouraged by the beam.

  ‘Sit down!’ retorted Gently with a slight touch of Bogartesque.

  Withers sat down at great speed.

  ‘… Now,’ continued Gently, after a certain amount of plate-work, ‘we got to him ordering the chicken and sending out for some wine. What sort of wine did he send for?’

  ‘Just red wine, sir. I got him a brand they specialize in over the road.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. Did he express his satisfaction?’

  ‘N-no sir, not really.’

  ‘Did he order the same wine the next day?’

  ‘He asked if they hadn’t got another brand … I couldn’t understand the name he gave it.’

  ‘What did it sound like?’

  ‘It just sounded foreign, sir …’

  ‘Like what sort of foreign?’

  ‘I d-don’t know … just gibberish.’

  ‘Did you ask if they’d got it?’

  ‘No, sir. I couldn’t say the name.’

  ‘So what did he have?’

  ‘I got him Burgundy, sir, when he wanted a red, and Sauternes when he wanted a white.’

  ‘And that was satisfactory?’

  ‘He seemed a bit surprised at the price, sir.’

  ‘He was a foreigner, Withers.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I dare say that had something to do with it.’

  Gently brooded a moment over a roast potato. Then he halved it meticulously and transported one half, suitably garnished with gravy, to a meditative mouth. ‘What did he have for sweet, Withers?’ he asked through the potato.

  ‘Ice-cream, sir.’

  ‘Not much to be deduced from that … was his coffee black?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Did he smoke …? Cigarettes …?’

  ‘He bought a box, sir.’

  ‘A box, Withers?’

  ‘Twenty-five Sobranie, sir.’

  Gently raised an eyebrow. ‘And what particular variety?’

  ‘Just Balkan Sobranie, sir. He bought a box every day after that …’

  ‘He seems to have been a well-heeled foreigner, Withers.’

  ‘Yes, sir. He never tipped less than half a crown.’

  Gently finished his roast beef and motioned to have his plate removed. Withers took it adroitly and produced a cold sweet from a side-table. It was a trifle, a robustly constructed affair involving sliced pineapple, and Gently inserted a spoon in it with unabated gusto.

  ‘Of course, he asked a few questions,’ volunteered Withers, beginning to feel that Gently wasn’t so bad after all. ‘He wanted to know if we got many foreigners in Starmouth.’

  ‘Mmph?’ grunted Gently, ‘what did you tell him?’

  ‘I told him we scarcely saw one – not a right foreigner … just midlanders and such-like.’

  ‘Yanks,’ mumbled Gently.

  ‘Well there … we don’t count them.’

  ‘Was he happy about the situation?’

  ‘It didn’t seem to worry him, sir. He said we might have him around for a bit … and later on, of course, he picked up with a woman …’

  Gently made a choking noise over a segment of pineapple. ‘What was that, Withers …!’

  ‘He picked up with a fern, sir. Brought her in to lunch here on the Tuesday.’

  Gently got rid of the pineapple with a struggle. ‘So he did … did he! Just like that! Why the flaming hell didn’t you say so sooner?’

  ‘You never asked me, sir!’ exclaimed Withers, surprised and apprehensive, ‘it wasn’t nobody really, sir … just one of the girls you get around here during the season …’

  ‘Just one of the girls!’ Gently gazed at the wilting waiter. Then he took himself firmly in hand and counted ten before firing the next question. ‘You know her name? It wouldn’t be Yvette, by any chance?’

  ‘No, sir! I don’t know her name! I’ve never had nothing to do with women of that class …’

  ‘She’s the little dark one with long slinky hair.’

  ‘But this one’s a blonde, sir – quite well set-up. And her hair is short.’

  ‘Nice legs – smooth, rounded knees.’

  ‘I d-didn’t notice, sir …’

  ‘Don’t lie at this stage, Withers!’

  ‘I thought they were bony, sir – I did, honest I did!’

  ‘She speaks with an educated accent.’

  ‘Not this one, sir – she’s terribly common!’

  ‘You’d recognize her again?’

  ‘Of course, sir. Anywhere!’

  A telephone began pealing at the counter inside the cafe and Gently relaxed his hypnotic attention from the freshly-shattered Withers. ‘Go and take it,’ he purred, ‘it’s probably for me.’

  Withers departed like greased lightning. He was back inside seven seconds.

  ‘A S-sergeant Dutt, sir, asking for you …’

  Gently made the phone in even better time than Withers.

  ‘Gently …!’ he rapped, ‘what’s new with you, Dutt?’

  ‘We’ve placed him, sir!’ echoed Dutt’s voice excitedly, ‘he was missing from a lodging in Blantyre Road – disappeared on Tuesday evening and nothing heard since. The woman who let the room identified him straight away. His name was Max something – she didn’t know what.’

  A faraway look came into Gently’s eyes. It was directed at the ceiling, but in reality it plumbed sidereal space and lodged betwixt two spiral nebulae.

  ‘Get a car, Dutt,’ he said, ‘come straight down here and pick me up …’

  ‘Yessir!’ rattled Dutt, ‘I’ll be with you in ten minutes.’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ mused Gently, ‘that’ll just give me time to drink my coffee … won’t it, Withers?’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BLANTYRE ROAD WAS a shabby-genteel thoroughfare which began at the top of Duke Street and meandered vaguely in a diagonal direction until it joined the Front a good way south, where hotels had already begun to thin out. It was at its best at the top end. Just there it skirted a small park or garden, and the houses which faced it, Edwardian Rococo, had a wistful air of having known better times and more civilized people.

  Outside one of these a crowd had collected. It spread along the pavement in both directions and was a model of quietness and patient expectancy. On the steps behind them the careful Copping had stationed a uniform-man, but his aut
hority was somewhat vitiated by the presence of three gentlemen with cameras supported by four gentlemen without cameras – a contingent possessed of far more glamour than a mere police constable.

  ‘Blimey!’ exclaimed Dutt, as he, Gently and Copping came dramatically on the scene in the back of a police Wolseley, ‘there wasn’t a soul about here half an hour ago.’

  ‘That woman must have blabbed,’ snapped Copping, ‘I sent Jennings down to try and stop it … blast her tattling tongue!’

  ‘Of course, she’s got a perfect right to …’ murmured Gently.

  The Wolseley made a three-point landing opposite the door and the police constable marched down to give them his official greeting.

  ‘Sorry about this here, sir,’ he apologized to Copping, ‘that was all done before I arrived …’

  ‘Never mind – never mind!’ barked Copping, ‘just keep those wolves there out of the house, that’s all.’

  He strode up the steps, an impressive figure. Gently followed with Dutt at a more sedate pace. The flashbulbs popped and the crowd rippled.

  ‘How about a statement!’ demanded a reporter, pushing up, notebook at the ready.

  ‘Nothing about a statement!’ boomed Copping, ‘if you want a statement, come to headquarters for it.’

  ‘A statement from you, then,’ said the reporter, turning to Gently.

  Gently shrugged and shook his head. ‘Did you get one from Mrs Watts?’ he inquired.

  ‘We were actually getting one when the constable interfered …!’

  ‘Then you probably know more than I do just at the moment …’

  He pushed past and up the steps.

  The interior of the house was as pleasingly period as the outside. Inside the front door was a long, narrow, but lofty hall, a good deal of it occupied by a disproportionately wide staircase. At the far end another door led into the back garden, a door equipped with panes of red and blue glass. There was a certain amount of upheaval apparent, quite incidental to the main theme – it was a lodging-house Saturday, one set of guests departed, the other not yet arrived. At the foot of the stairs lay a bundle of dirty sheets, in the dining-room, its door ajar, a heap of tablecloths and napkins … Entr’acte, thought Gently. The phrase epitomized Starmouth on a Saturday.

  Copping had marched ahead into Mrs Watt’s private parlour, from whence could be heard issuing the landlady’s strident and aggressive tones.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re making all this fuss now, I’m sure … I told the man who called round here on Wednesday … well, is it my fault if you didn’t know about the beard?’

  ‘There must be some mistake, mam,’ came the discomfited voice of Copping, ‘I’m sure O’Reilly …’

  ‘Mistake, Inspector! I should just say there was a mistake. My daughter Deanna and my husband Ted both backed me up about it … “Beard or no beard,” I says, “the man on that photograph is our number seven” … and that was on Wednesday, Inspector, yet you come worrying me today of all days, a Saturday, and Race Week – it’s too bad, it is really! If it’s not making me all behind with my work, it’s what my people are going to think with all that lot gawping outside …’

  Dutt gave Gently a knowing wink. ‘Aye, aye! I was waiting for him to run into that lot.’

  ‘Somebody’s boobed, Dutt.’

  ‘Yessir … and it isn’t you and me.’

  Gently pushed in at the parlour door. It was a small but expensive room. The gilt-edge of Mrs Watts’s season expended itself on radiograms, television sets, slow-burning stoves, carpets and furniture notable for its areas of glossy veneer. The available floor-space was a trifle restricted by these evidences of wealth. It occurred, where it occurred in small islands of gold mohair. On the largest of these, which adjoined the multi-tile hearth, Mrs Watts was conducting her attack, while a red-faced Copping had got himself wedged into a triangle between a radiogram and a television set.

  ‘What do you send them round for?’ continued the stalwart matron, snaking a glance at the new intruder en passant. ‘What’s the idea of wasting our time asking questions when you aren’t going to believe us anyway? Is that how you run the police in Starmouth? Is that why they keep putting the rates up?’

  ‘I assure you, mam, if you’ll let me explain …’

  ‘Oh, I don’t doubt, you’ll be a wonderful one for explaining. And I dare say your explaining will get the work done by the time my people start coming in. If you ask me, Mr Inspector, we need someone in Starmouth who can teach you your job … that body on the beach was a show-up for you, wasn’t it just …?’

  ‘Ahem!’ coughed Gently, appropriating some mohair behind the door.

  Mrs Watts shook her platinum locks and presented a square chin at him. ‘And who’s this?’ she demanded of Copping, ‘how many more have you brought down here to waste my time?’

  ‘This is Chief Inspector Gently, mam!’ explained the squirming Copping, ‘he’s in charge of the case … he wants to ask you a few questions.’

  There was a pause while Mrs Watts digested this information. Then her expression underwent a change, passing from steely aggressiveness to steely affability. ‘Well!’ she said more placably, ‘well! And aren’t you the gentleman they’ve sent from Scotland Yard to clear up this body-on-the-beach business?’

  Gently nodded gravely.

  ‘The same Chief Inspector Gently that did that case at Norchester?’

  ‘The same, Madam.’

  ‘Well!’ repeated Mrs Watts, ‘of course, if I’d known that …’ She favoured Gently with a smile in which steeliness was still the principal ingredient. ‘Do please sit down, Inspector … I shall be pleased to be of any assistance. Deanna!’ – her voice rose to a shout – ‘Deanna, leave what you’re doing and make a pot of tea, do you hear?’

  There was a faint acknowledgement from without and Mrs Watts, satisfied, ushered Gently to the room’s most dramatic and veneer-lavish chair. He contrived to avoid it, however, and it was Copping who became the victim …

  ‘Now,’ pursued Mrs Watts, ‘I’d like you to know, Inspector—’

  ‘Just a minute,’ interrupted Gently, ‘has the room been interfered with?’

  ‘The room, Inspector …?’

  ‘Number seven – the room from which this man disappeared?’

  Mrs Watts looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know what you mean, interfered with. I’ve changed the sheets and pillow-cases, and Ida (that’s the maid) has polished and hoovered, but that’s all … there’s nothing been moved about.’

  Gently sighed softly to himself. ‘Well … we’ll look in there later, if you don’t mind. Now about the man himself…’

  ‘I recognized him directly, Inspector. There was never any doubt.’

  ‘You recognized him without the painted-in beard?’

  ‘As soon as I clapped eyes on the photograph … “Yes,” I says to the man, “that’s our number seven. Only he’s got a beard,” I says, “a lot of it – all over his face.”’

  ‘And that was on Wednesday, the day after your lodger was missing?’

  ‘That’s right – Wednesday evening. Naturally, I didn’t pay too much attention to him spending the night out … you can’t be too particular about that sort of thing, Inspector. But when it got near tea-time and still no sign of him …’

  ‘You rang the police and were shown the photographs. You acted very properly, Mrs Watts.’

  ‘But the man didn’t believe me, Inspector – I could see he didn’t!’

  Copping made a rumbling noise. ‘It was O’Reilly,’ he brought out, ‘he was going on transfer to Liverpool the next day … he didn’t want to believe it …’

  Gently nodded comfortably to one and the other. ‘Everyone is human … even the police. And of course you recognized the touched-up photograph, Mrs Watts?’

  ‘Naturally I did – and so did Deanna – and so did my husband Ted, who was in after his lunch.’

  ‘You’d be prepared to swear to the identity in court?’
/>   ‘I’d take my Bible oath on it, Inspector … and so will they.’

  Gently nodded again and felt absently in the pocket where he stowed the peppermint creams. ‘When was it he arrived?’ he asked, struggling with the bag.

  ‘It was last Wednesday week – in the morning, just after breakfast.’

  ‘Go on. Describe what happened.’

  ‘Well, I answered the door, Inspector, and there he stood. “I see you’ve got a room vacant,” he says – only he had a queer way of slurring it, as though he were trying to be funny – “do you think I might see it?” he says. I mean, the cheek of it, Inspector! People are usually glad enough to get rooms in the middle of the week at this time of the year, without being awkward about it. And him a foreigner too, and smelling as though he’d just walked off a fishing boat …!’

  Gently paused in the act of transporting a peppermint cream to his mouth. ‘A fishing boat?’ he queried.

  ‘Yes – that’s just the way he smelt. Mind you, I don’t want to accuse him of having been a dirty man. It was something that wore off later and the first thing he did was have a bath. But there’s no doubt he had a fishy smell on that particular morning … well, I nearly slammed the door in his face!’

  Mrs Watts pulled herself up in a way which reminded Gently of a baulking mule.

  ‘How was he dressed … can you remember?’ he asked.

  ‘He’d got his light grey suit on – he nearly always wore that … a bit American, it was, with one of those fancy backs to the jacket.’

  ‘Tie?’

  ‘That was a bow.’

  ‘Hat?’

  ‘He never wore one that I can remember.’

  ‘Did he have some luggage with him …?’

  ‘He’d got a couple of cases, one bigger than the other … the big one is still in his room.’

  ‘How about the other – what happened to that?’

  ‘I suppose he took it with him, Inspector. He always did when he went out … he seemed to think there was something very precious about it.’

  ‘Did you see him leave with it the last time you saw him?’