Gently by the Shore

by Alan Hunter

  ‘No … I didn’t see him after I’d given him his tea. Deanna saw him go out, perhaps she noticed. Deanna!’ – Mrs Watts’s voice rose piercingly again – ‘come in here – the inspector wants to ask you a question!’

  ‘Coming, Ma!’ replied a sugary voice just without the door, and a moment later Deanna made her entrance bearing a chrome-and-plastic tea-tray.

  ‘Put it down here, Deanna – I’ll pour it out.’ Mrs Watts was obviously proud of her daughter and wanted her to be admired. ‘This is Chief Inspector Gently down here about the body on the beach … don’t be afraid of him, my dear, there’s no need to be shy.’

  Deanna wasn’t shy. She beamed at Gently with a mechanical smile which had haunting overtones of Mrs Watts in it, then seated herself next to him. She had a cat-like grace too studied to be pleasing. She was twenty-one or -two.

  ‘My daughter’s on the stage, Inspector,’ chattered Mrs Watts, sploshing tea into straight-sided cups with lustred rims, ‘she was in the pantomime last season … just in the chorus, you know.’

  ‘I understudied the principal boy,’ beamed Deanna.

  ‘They’re going to give her something bigger this year … of course, she’s home with me during the summer.’

  Gently accepted one of the straight-sided cups and stirred it with a spoon that had a knob of black plastic to its spindly shank. ‘Getting back to your lodger …’ he murmured.

  ‘Of course, Inspector.’ Mrs Watts handed a cup of tea to Dutt behind the television. ‘Deanna dear, you saw him go out on Tuesday … the inspector wants to know if he had his case with him.’

  ‘I don’t really remember, Ma … I didn’t know it was going to be important.’

  ‘But it is important, dear … you must try to think.’

  ‘I am trying, Ma, but it isn’t any good.’

  ‘What time was it when he went out?’ asked Gently.

  Deanna curled round in her seat to him. ‘I just can’t remember, Inspector … isn’t it awful of me?’

  ‘What were you doing when you saw him?’

  ‘Oh … I was going up to my room to get ready for the Tuesday dance at the Wellesley.’

  ‘How long would that have taken you?’

  ‘About an hour … aren’t I terrible!’

  ‘And then your boyfriend called for you?’

  ‘Well yes, he did, Inspector!’

  ‘And what time was that?’

  ‘It was a quarter past eight … he was late.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Deanna.’

  In his veneered throne Copping stirred restlessly. ‘How about the visitor’s book – what did he put in there?’ he asked.

  Mrs Watts’s chin took on an ominous tilt. ‘He didn’t put anything in there. They don’t, most of them, until they’re going.’

  ‘They should,’ said Copping stoutly, ‘they should make an entry as soon as they arrive.’

  ‘Well, they don’t, Mr Nosey, and that’s all there is to it. And if you’re going to make trouble out of it you’ll have to make trouble for everybody in Starmouth who lets rooms …’

  Gently made a pacifying gesture. ‘But surely he gave a name, Mrs Watts? Naturally, you would ask for that …’

  ‘Of course I did, Inspector. And he gave it to me without any hanky-panky – only it was such a peculiar one that I couldn’t even say it after him. So he just laughed in that rather nice way he had and told me to call him Max … and that’s what we all called him.’

  ‘Didn’t you inquire his nationality?’

  ‘He said he was an American but if he was, he hadn’t been one for long, not with that accent.’

  Gently sipped some tea and looked round for somewhere to put his cup. ‘How long was he going to stay?’ he asked.

  ‘Just on to the end of this week – I hadn’t any room for him after that. I’m usually full up right through, of course, but it just so happened through an illness …’

  ‘Quite so, Mrs Watts. And did he pay up till the end of the week?’

  ‘He did – it’s one of the rules of this establishment.’

  ‘There seemed to be no shortage of money with him?’

  ‘Not him, Inspector. He’d got a whole wad of notes in his wallet – fivers, most of them.’

  ‘Did he ask any questions before he took the room?’

  ‘Well, the usual ones … how much it would be, if we’d got a separate bathroom and the like.’

  ‘Did he ask about the other guests, for instance?’

  ‘Yes, he did, now you come to mention it. He asked if they were all English and if they had all arrived the Saturday before.’

  ‘And did that suggest anything to you?’

  ‘He seemed a bit anxious about it … I thought he might be expecting to run into somebody he knew.’

  ‘Somebody pleasant or somebody unpleasant?’

  ‘Unpleasant, I suppose … if he really is the one you picked up on the beach.’

  ‘Did he suggest that from the way he spoke?’

  ‘Well no, Inspector, he didn’t actually …’

  Gently prized up a peppermint cream from the dwindling stock in his pocket. It induced that faraway look in his eye which Mrs Watts mistook for profound cerebration, but which in reality was connected with his solvency in terms of that important commodity … though Starmouth was pretty good peppermint cream country at most hours of the day and night.

  ‘Was he a good mixer?’ he asked absently.

  ‘Oh, he got on with everyone, though I wouldn’t say he made friends. But he got on with them. They all liked our Max.’

  ‘Was he regular in his habits?’ Gently yielded up his cup for a second fill from the hotel-plate teapot.

  ‘I dare say he was … as people go when they’re on holiday.’

  ‘Tidy … a good lodger?’

  ‘Oh yes … most of the time.’ A frown hovered over the steely eyes as she handed Gently the freshly-filled cup. ‘He left his room in a bit of a mess when he went out that last time, but probably he was in a hurry … you haven’t always time to clear up after you.’

  ‘A mess …!’ Gently hesitated in the act of plying his plastic-knobbed spoon. ‘What sort of a mess?’

  ‘Well, if you ask me, Inspector, he’d lost something and was trying to find it quickly, that’s what it looked like. The wardrobe was open, the drawers pulled out of the dressing-table – right out, some of them – and if he hadn’t up-ended his suitcase on to the floor then he’d given a good imitation of it. And the bed, too, I should say he’d had that apart, not to mention turning up a corner of the carpet. It was a proper mess, you can take it from me!’

  Gently drew a long breath. ‘But of course,’ he said expressionlessly, ‘of course you cleared it all up again, Mrs Watts?’

  ‘I did, Inspector,’ the regal matron assured him, ‘I can’t stand untidiness in my house, no matter from whom.’

  ‘Ahh!’ sighed Gently, ‘I needn’t have asked that one, need I …?’

  The room faced back with a solitary and not-very-large sash window overlooking a small backyard. It was a typical lodging-house ‘single’, about eight by ten, not much more than a cupboard in which had to be packed the bed, wardrobe, dressing-table, chair and the tiny fitted wash-basin which tried to substantiate the terms Mrs Watts charged for such accommodation. The walls were papered in an irritable grained brown friezed with orange and green, the floor had a strip of carpet which echoed these colours. The bed and other furniture were of flimsy stained wood, late thirties in vintage, and the light-shade was a contraption of orange-sprayed glass with a golden tassel for the flies to perch on. In essence it bore a generic resemblance to the parlour downstairs, thought Gently. There was the same over-crowding and full-bodied vulgarity. It was only the cash index that varied so considerably.

  Beside the bed stood an expensive looking suitcase, a rather jazzy affair styled in some sort of plastic with towelling stripes. Copping bent down to pick it up, but Gently laid a sudden hand on his arm. ‘Wat
ch it … I want this place printed,’ he said.

  ‘Printed?’ Copping stared in surprise. ‘There can’t be much left to print after all this clearing-up …’

  Gently shrugged. ‘If there is, I want it.’

  ‘But what does it matter – we’ve got three witnesses at least to identify him?’

  ‘It isn’t only him that interests us …’

  He moved to the window, leaving Copping still staring.

  The window was part open at the top. Immediately below it were the red pantiles roofing the outside offices, at the end of which could be seen part of a corrugated steel water-butt. The yard itself was no more than twenty yards long by ten wide. It was separated from its neighbours and the alley on which it backed by grimy brick walls. In the far corner a sad laburnum trembled, in the centre rotted a part-buried Anderson shelter, while close at hand there roosted three dustbins, one of them with its lid at a rakish angle …

  Gently produced a not-perfectly-clean handkerchief and closed the window. ‘Look,’ he said to Copping, pointing to the catch.

  Copping looked intelligently. ‘It’s broken,’ he said.

  Gently nodded and waited.

  ‘Done from the outside – forced up with a chisel or something …’

  Gently nodded again.

  ‘Hell’s bells – the room’s been burgled!’ exclaimed Copping, suddenly catching on. ‘It wasn’t the boyo who left it upside-down – it was somebody else – somebody looking for something he left behind here!’

  ‘Which is why I’m printing the place …’ murmured Gently helpfully.

  ‘It’s plain as a pikestaff – I can see the whole thing! He sneaked in up the alley – got in through that broken gate down there – climbed on to the roof by the water-butt and the down-pipe – forced up the catch!’

  ‘Hold it,’ interrupted Gently. ‘Dutt, step up here a moment.’

  Dutt, who had been lingering respectfully in the passage, came quickly to the window. Gently spoke to him without turning his head.

  ‘Over there – where the coping’s knocked off the wall … don’t make it too obvious you’re looking.’

  ‘I can see him, sir,’ muttered Dutt, ‘if he’d just turn his loaf a fraction …’

  ‘But who is it!’ interrupted Copping, shoving in, ‘is it someone you know—?’

  ‘Back!’ rapped Gently, ‘keep away till Dutt has had a good look … there, you’ve scared him … he’s off like a hare!’

  Dutt raised himself from the stooping position he had taken up. ‘It was him, sir,’ he asserted positively, ‘I saw the scar as he turned to run … you can’t mistake a face like that.’

  ‘I saw it too, Dutt, right down his cheek.’

  ‘He must have copped a fair packet somewhere …’

  ‘Also he has a strange interest in what goes on …’

  ‘But who is he?’ yapped Copping again, ‘what’s it all about, this I-spy stuff?’

  Gently smiled at some spot that was miles behind Copping’s head. ‘It’s just a little thing between Dutt and me,’ he said, ‘don’t let it bother you … it’s all over now. Suppose we do what you wanted and take a look in the suitcase?’

  They retired from the window and a disgruntled Copping demonstrated how to open a suitcase before it had been printed. It was a charmingly well-filled suitcase. It contained an abundance of shirts and socks and underwear, besides some hairbrushes and toilet accessories which the tidy Mrs Watts had garnered from wash-bowl and dressing-table. And the contents were determined to be helpful. There were makers’ labels attached to some of the clothes, names and patent numbers stamped on other items … even the suitcase itself had a guarantee label tied to the lining with blue silk. Gently had never seen such a helpful lot of evidence …

  ‘It’s American,’ declared Copping brightly, ‘look at this one – “Senfgurken Inc., NY” – and that razor – the toothbrush, even. It’s all Yank stuff, right through.’

  ‘And all brand new,’ mused Gently.

  ‘He must have bought it for the trip and he can’t have been over here long. Or maybe he’s a service-man on leave and fixed himself up at his P.X. Anyway, we know where to start looking. If his embassy doesn’t know about him, the US Army will.’

  ‘I wonder …’ Gently breathed.

  ‘Eh?’ stared Copping.

  ‘Of course, he said he was an American …’

  Copping’s stare became indignant. ‘Who else but a Yank could get hold of this stuff? And who would want to fake up some American luggage, here in Starmouth? What’s the point?’

  Gently shrugged and dug up the last of his peppermint creams. ‘That’s what I’d like to know,’ he said.

  ‘He’s a serviceman got in some bad company, you take my word. It’s happened before in Starmouth … he’s a deserter, that’s my bet.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘It doesn’t fit in. There’s nothing American about Max except his clothes, and even they seem too good to be true. No … everything about him is wrong. He just won’t add up into a good American.’

  ‘He might add up into a bad one,’ quipped Copping, but Gently didn’t seem to be listening.

  ‘The suit – his dark suit! What happened to that?’

  ‘His dark suit?’ echoed Copping.

  ‘The one he wore on Sunday. Look in the wardrobe, Dutt. It may still be hanging there.’

  Obediently Dutt pulled out his handkerchief and unlatched the wardrobe door. Sure enough a dark suit hung there, a shouldery close-waisted number in discreet midnight blue. Dutt turned back a lapel to show the tailor’s label. It was of one Klingelschwitz, operating in Baltimore.

  ‘Still American,’ commented Copping, a shade triumphant.

  ‘Go through the pockets,’ ordered Gently dully.

  Dutt went through them. There wasn’t even any fluff. But as he was re-folding the trousers something small and bright fell from one of the turn-ups, a little disc of metal. Copping swooped on it and held it up.

  ‘His lucky charm. He ought to have had it with him on Tuesday.’

  ‘A circle with a line through it!’ exclaimed Dutt, ‘there’s something familiar about that, sir – I’ve seen it before somewhere.’

  ‘So have I.’ A gleam came into Gently’s eye. ‘I saw it last night on the ring of a Mr Louis Hooker. I wonder if Louey has ever been to America …?’

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE SUPER WAS out when they arrived back at headquarters – rather to Gently’s disappointment, because he would like to have bounced some of his findings on that sceptical man’s desk. But the super was out: he had received a hot tip about his forgery scare, said the desk sergeant, and had departed with Bryce and two uniform men at a high rate of knots.

  ‘He’s got a warped sense of value,’ pouted Gently to Copping. ‘In some places it’s homicide that gets top rating …’

  ‘You’re forgetting he handed that baby on to you,’ grinned Copping, ‘he’s got an alibi now.’

  ‘I still think a little bit of audience reaction is called for.’

  They went into the canteen, where Copping did the honours. It was rather a dull place. The walls were distempered in a dingy neutral tint, the inadequate windows both at one end, the paint worn on lino-top tables and the bentwood chairs looking as though they had been rescued from a jumble sale.

  ‘They’ve talked about refitting it for years,’ Copping apologized, ‘but somehow the finance committee never quite gets round to it … the food’s all right, though. We made a stink about that a couple of months back.’

  Gently examined a plate of sausages and beans apathetically. ‘You have to make a stink at intervals if you want to keep them up to scratch …’

  ‘Yes, but you should have seen what it was like before then!’

  Gently shrugged and embarked on his sausages.

  ‘We get in touch with the US authorities now?’ inquired Copping, after a silence broken only by the incidental noises made by ingesting policemen.

&n
bsp; ‘Nmp.’ Gently pursued an errant bean round the rim of his plate.

  ‘The military’s got good records … they could tell us straight away.’

  ‘Never mind. Some other time.’

  ‘They’d know in town …’

  ‘I know, but never mind.’ Gently swallowed the tail-end of a sausage and grounded his knife and fork. ‘Your print king,’ he said, running his tongue round his lips, ‘what’s his name?’

  ‘Dack’s your man. Sergeant.’

  ‘He’s reliable … really?’

  ‘You trained him, so he’d better be.’

  Gently nodded and added a mouthful of strong tea to the sausages. ‘Get him on the job. I can’t spare Dutt just now. See that he does everything that might give something … inside drawers as well as out … and then in the yard, at the back of that down-pipe … he’ll probably have to dismantle it. Don’t wait for me. If you get results, rush some copies to town and check your own files.’

  A smile spread over Copping’s heavy features. ‘What about Mrs W’s new lodger?’

  ‘Nothing about Mrs W’s new lodger … he can sleep under the pier for all I care. When you’ve finished in there, seal it up and leave a uniform man in charge.’

  ‘I don’t pity the poor swine …! Where can I get you?’

  ‘Oh … I’ll look in later, or maybe ring.’

  ‘You’ve got something else?’

  ‘Could be,’ returned Gently evasively, ‘and then again, it couldn’t.’

  He drank some more tea while Copping indulged in speculative ratiocinations. ‘It’d be easy to give the US military a ring … just to be sure.’

  ‘No,’ said Gently, kindly but firmly, ‘we’ll leave them to concentrate on Western Defence or whatever else it is they do in these parts …’

  The Front had become its old gay self again by evening. Everybody hadn’t arrived yet – there were still momentary appearances of towering coaches hailing from Coventry, Leicester, Wolves and Brum, dusty from long journeying, their passengers lolling and weary – but enough had already arrived, enough had checked in at their lodgings, deployed their belongings, washed, changed, tea’d, and now sallied forth, cash in hand – they really spent with a will on the Saturday night. Remote from it all, the sea looked cold. Nobody wanted the sea on that day of the week. It was there, it was the alleged attraction, but that was all … and in the setting sun it looked cold and hard.