Gently by the Shore

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Ho yes, sir?’ came the publican’s anxious voice from the other end.

  ‘You told us in your statement that after you had changed the note you heard there were some counterfeit ones going about. I want to know where you obtained that information.’

  ‘Yes, sir! Certainly, sir! It was a bloke in the bar what told me that.’

  ‘A bloke you know?’

  ‘Ho no, sir. Quite a stranger.’

  ‘He was in the bar at the time of the transaction?’

  ‘No, sir, not as I remember. The first time I noticed him there was when the young feller went out.’

  ‘You mean he came in while the transaction was in progress?’

  ‘Must’ve done, sir, ’cause he soon ups and tells me to watch my step with regard to Yank money. “Wasn’t that a hundred-dollar bill?” he says. “Ah, it was,” I says. “Then it’s ten to one you’ve been had,” he says, or words to that effect, “there was a sailor got copped with some this afternoon.”’

  ‘Oh did he …?’ Gently exchanged a glance with Dutt.

  ‘Yes, sir … God’s honest truth!’ The voice on the phone sounded panicky. ‘I don’t have no cause to lie, now do I—!’

  ‘All right, Biggers … never mind the trimmings. What else did this man tell you?’

  ‘Well, he told me I could get five years, sir, and that I ought to hand it over to the police … naturally, me just having paid ten quid …’

  ‘We know about that. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘No, sir … not apart from ordering a whisky. It was nearly closing-time.’

  ‘Would you recognize him again?’

  ‘Ho yes, sir! Like I was telling you, I never forget a face.’

  ‘Can you describe him?’

  ‘Well, sir … he wasn’t English, that I can say.’

  ‘Did you notice a mole on his cheek by any chance?’

  ‘No, sir. No. But he’d got a scar running all down one side …’

  Gently hung up the instrument and leaned on it ponderingly for a few moments. His eyes were fixed on Mrs Davis’s flowered wallpaper, but to a watchful Dutt they seemed to be staring at something a good six feet on the other side of the wall. Then he sighed and straightened his bulky form.

  ‘So there it is, Dutt … our clincher. And they even knew about McParsons … eh?’

  Dutt shook his head ruefully. ‘They must have quite an organization, sir …’

  ‘An organization!’ Gently laughed shortly. ‘Well … we’d better get our own organization moving, too. Go back to headquarters, Dutt, and tell them to put a man each on the two stations and another on the bus terminus, and to warn the men on the docks to keep their eyes double-skinned. It’s an even bet that our scar-faced acquaintance is well clear of Starmouth, but we can’t take any risks … Then give Special a ring and let them know.’

  Dutt nodded intelligently. ‘And the clothes, sir …?’

  ‘Get them sent to the lab, and the paper and string. Oh, and that cab-driver … the one who picked up Max and Frenchy on Tuesday night … see if you can get a line on him, Dutt.’

  ‘Yessir. Do my best.’

  Gently scratched a match and applied it to his pipe. ‘Me, I’m going to pay a little social call in Dulford Street. I think it’s time that Frenchy assisted the police by supplying the answers to one or two interesting questions.’

  Dulford Street was a shabby thoroughfare adjoining the lower part of the Front. It began as though by accident where some clumsily-placed buildings had left a gap and proceeded narrowly and crookedly until it got lost in a maze of uncomely backstreets. There was a feeling of having-gone-to-seed about it, as though its original inhabitants had given it up in despair and left it to go its own way. From one end to the other it could boast of no fresh paint except the lurid red-and-cream of an odiferous fish and chip shop.

  Gently eyed the assemblage moodily and applied to a new bag of peppermint creams for encouragement. Sunday was obviously an off-day in Dulford Street. The signs of life disturbing its charms were few. On the right-hand side was a frowsy little corner-shop with some newspapers in a rack at the door, and at the entry from the Front lurked a furtive and ragged figure … Nits, who had been following Gently all the way along the promenade. Gently shrugged his bulky shoulders and pushed open the clanging door of the newspaper shop.

  ‘Chief Inspector Gently … I wonder if you can give me some information?’

  It was a white-haired old lady with beaming specs and an expression of anxious affability.

  ‘What was it you were wanting?’

  ‘Some information, madam.’

  ‘The newspapers is all outside … just take one, sir!’

  ‘I want some information.’ Gently raised his voice, but the only effect was to increase the old lady’s look of anxiety. He pointed out of the dusty window.

  ‘That apartment over there … do you know who lives in it?’

  ‘Oh yes, I do! She isn’t nothing to do with me!’

  ‘Is that her permanent address or does she just make use of it?’

  ‘Eh … eh?’ The old lady peered at him as though she suspected him of having said something rude.

  ‘Is that her permanent address?’ began Gently, fortissimo, then he shook his head and gave it up. ‘Here, how much are these street directories?’

  ‘They’re sixpence,’ retorted the old lady sharply, ‘sixpence – that’s what they are!’

  Gently put a shilling on her rubber mat and made a noisy exit.

  Frenchy’s apartment, flat, or whatever other dignity it aspired to was situated above a disused fruiterer’s shop. The shop itself had been anciently boarded up, but the degree of paintwork it exhibited matched evenly with that of Frenchy’s door and the windows above, leaving no doubt about the contemporaneity of the decoration. Gently tried the door and found it open. It gave directly on to uncarpeted stairs which rose steeply to a narrow landing. At the top were two more doors, one with a transom light which did its best to illumine the shadow of the landing, and at this he knocked with a regular policeman’s rhythm.

  ‘Who is id …?’ came Frenchy’s croon.

  ‘It’s Chief Inspector Gently. All right if I come in?’

  There was a creaking and scuffling, and finally the sound of shuffling footsteps. Then the door opened to display a draggle-haired Frenchy, partly-clad in a green dressing-gown. She glared at Gently.

  ‘What are you after now?’

  ‘I’m after you,’ said Gently cheerfully, ‘weren’t you expecting me to call?’

  Her eyes narrowed like the eyes of a cat. ‘You’ve got nothing to pinch me for … you bloody well know it! Why can’t you leave a girl alone?’

  Gently tutted. ‘This isn’t the attitude, Frenchy. You should try to be co-operative, you know – it pays, in your profession.’

  ‘That’s none of your business and you ain’t got nothing on me!’

  Gently shook his head admonishingly and pressed past her into the room. It wasn’t an inviting prospect. The furniture consisted of an iron bedstead, a deal table and three cheap bedroom chairs. The floor was covered with unpolished brown lino, the walls with faded paper. At the window, curtains were drawn to keep out the sun, but in spite of this the room was like a large and unventilated oven, an oven, moreover, that possessed a vigorously compounded odour, part dry rot, part cigarette smoke and part Frenchy. Gently fanned himself thoughtfully with his trilby.

  ‘Doesn’t seem a very comfortable digging for a trouper like you, Frenchy,’ he observed.

  ‘What’s it got to do with you?’ spat Frenchy, closing the door with a bang.

  ‘And you’re travelling light this season.’ He indicated a dress and a white two-piece which hung on hangers from a hook in the wall.

  ‘If you’re going to pinch a girl for being short of clothes …!’

  Gently concluded his unhurried survey with the dishevelled bed, some empty beer-bottles and a chamber-pot. ‘And then again, my dear, this
place is in the wrong direction …’

  ‘Whadyermean – wrong direction?’

  ‘It isn’t in the direction the taxi took.’

  ‘What taxi – what are you getting at?’ Frenchy whisked round fiercely to confront him.

  ‘Why … the taxi you and Max took from outside the Marina at about 10 p.m. last Tuesday. It went off towards the North Shore … that’s in a diametrically opposite direction, isn’t it, Frenchy?’

  The sudden pallor of the blonde woman’s face showed up the dark wells of her eyes like two pools, but she took a furious grip on herself. ‘It’s a filthy dirty lie … I didn’t take no taxi! I was in “The Feathers” at ten … ask anyone who was there … ask Jeff Wylie – it was him who came away with me!’ She broke off, breathing hard, crouching as though prepared to ward off a physical blow.

  Gently’s head wagged a measured negative and he felt in his pocket for some carelessly-folded sheets of the copy-paper. ‘It won’t do, Frenchy … it isn’t good enough any longer. I’ve got a couple of statements here which tell a different story.’

  ‘Then some b––’s been lying!’ Frenchy tried to snatch the sheets out of Gently’s hand.

  ‘Nobody’s been lying and you’ll get a chance to read these in a couple of minutes. Now sit down like a good girl.’

  Frenchy hovered a moment as though still meditating an attempt on the papers. Then she swore an atrocious oath and dumped herself down on the side of the bed, an action which endangered the decency of her sparsely-clad person. Gently turned one of the chairs back-to-front and seated himself also.

  ‘First, I’d better have your name.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Frenchy … it suits everyone else round here.’

  Gently clicked his tongue. ‘Let’s not be childish, Frenchy. Why make me bother the boys in Records?’

  ‘Trust a bloody copper! So it’s Meek, then. Agnes Meek.’

  Gently scribbled it in his notebook. ‘And where do you hail from, Agnes?’

  ‘I was born and bred in Maida … but don’t use that filthy bleeding name!’

  ‘And when did you come up here?’

  ‘’Bout Whitsun or just before.’

  ‘And whose idea was it?’

  ‘Mine – who the hell’s do you think it was?’

  ‘Now Frenchy! I’m only asking a civil question.’

  ‘And I’m telling you I came up on my own! Don’t you think a girl needs a holiday?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘It’s up to you … So you’ve been living at this address since Whitsun?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And nowhere else at all?’

  Frenchy swore a presumable negative.

  ‘How did you find it? Who’s your landlord?’

  ‘Why not ask your pals up at the station – they’re supposed to know every bloody thing going on round here!’

  Gently sighed sadly. ‘You’re not being helpful, Frenchy … and I had hoped you were going to be.’ He served himself a peppermint cream and chewed it sombrely for a moment. ‘Well … to come to the business. I’m pinching you for conspiracy to burgle, Frenchy—’

  Frenchy screeched and shot up off the bed. ‘It’s a frame-up, that’s what it is, a filthy, stinking—!’

  ‘Shh!’ murmured Gently, ‘I don’t have to warn an old-stager like you.’

  ‘They’d say anything in a jam, dirty little bastards!’

  Gently handed over his sheets of copy-paper. ‘In effect they said this … and there’s a certain amount of evidence to back them up.’

  Frenchy seized the sheets and went over to the window with them, turning her back on Gently. It didn’t take her long to extract the gist of them. There was a moment when she discovered how she had been double-crossed that added three distinct new words to Gently’s vocabulary.

  ‘It’s a filthy bag of lies!’ she burst out at last. ‘The – little liars – they’re trying to pin it all on me!’

  ‘They seem to have made a job of it, too …’

  ‘There isn’t a word of truth!’

  ‘But there’s some evidence that goes with it …’

  Frenchy stormed up and down the muggy room with perspiration beading on her pasty face. ‘You know what it is … You know why these pigs have said this. It’s because I wouldn’t go to bed with them … that’s what they’ve wanted! They’ve wanted to be little men, to go to bed with a woman … they’ve been hanging round me ever since I came up here. But I don’t go to bed with children … nobody can blame me for that! … and now they’re in trouble they’re trying to blame me – somebody it’s easy to get in bad with the police!’

  ‘Whoa!’ interrupted Gently pacifically, ‘it’s no use getting out of breath, my dear. Somebody had to tell them about that suitcase and where to find it …’

  ‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t know nothing about it.’

  ‘Then who did – who else knew about it?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? Perhaps they saw him carting it around and got the idea it was something valuable …’

  ‘Who told you he was given to carting it around?’

  ‘Nobody told me—!’

  ‘And how did they know where he lodged – that he was out – that for some reason he’d left it in his room?’

  ‘They could’ve watched him, couldn’t they?’

  ‘They aren’t professionals, Frenchy.’

  ‘They’re sneaking little swine, that’s what they are!’

  She flung herself at the bed and disinterred some cigarettes from under the pillow. Gently produced a match and gave her a light, steady brown fingers against her trembling pale ones. She swallowed down the smoke as though it were nectar.

  ‘You know, Frenchy, it isn’t burglary you’ve got to worry about … we aren’t terribly interested in that. It’s the way your customer finished up on the beach the next morning that’s the real headache.’

  ‘He wasn’t my customer – I never knew him!’

  Gently shook his head. ‘I’ve got another witness who saw you with him, quite independent. Do you remember having lunch at the Beachside Cafe?’

  ‘I was never in the place!’

  ‘And now, according to these two statements, you were the last person we know to see Max alive …’

  A shudder passed through the blonde woman’s body and she had to struggle to keep her hold on the jerking cigarette.

  ‘Weight it up, Frenchy … it’s a nasty position to be in.’

  ‘But mister,’ – her voice was hoarse now – ‘it wasn’t nothing to do with me – nothing – I’ll swear to it!’

  Gently shrugged and picked up his hat to fan himself again.

  ‘I didn’t have no hand in it … honest to God!’

  Gently fanned himself impassively.

  ‘I didn’t – I didn’t – I didn’t!’ The voice was a scream now and she threw herself on her knees in a fit of anguish. ‘You got to believe me … mister … you got to!’

  Gently nodded a single, indefinite nod and went on fanning.

  ‘But you’ve got to, mister!’

  Gently paused at the end of a stroke. ‘If,’ he said, ‘you didn’t, Frenchy, then the best thing you can do is to come clean …’

  ‘But I can’t, mister!’ Her face twisted in indescribable torment.

  ‘You can’t?’ Gently stared at her bleakly and recommenced his fanning.

  ‘I can’t – I can’t! Don’t you understand?’

  ‘I understand there’s a murder charge being kept on ice for someone.’

  Frenchy moaned and sank in a heap on the floor. ‘I didn’t do it,’ she babbled, ‘I didn’t do it … you got to believe me!’

  Gently bent over and picked up the cigarette, which was making an oily mark on the dubious lino. ‘Listen, Frenchy, if it’s any consolation to you, I don’t think you knocked off Max, and I’m not personally trying to pin it on you. But you’re obviously in it up to your neck, and unless you make yourself useful to us you’re going to
have a pretty rough passage in court. Now what about it … suppose we do a deal?’

  ‘I can’t, mister – I daren’t!’

  ‘We’ll give you protection. You’ve nothing to be afraid of.’

  The dyed-blonde hair shook hopelessly. ‘They’d get me … they always do. They don’t never forget, mister.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Gently stoutly, ‘this is England, Frenchy.’

  Her haunted eyes looked up at him, hesitating. Then she gave a hysterical little laugh. ‘That’s what Max thought, too … he’d be safe once he got to England!’

  They went down the naked stairway, Frenchy clicking her high heels, Gently clumping in the rear. She had put on her white two-piece with its red piping and split skirt, and there was almost a degree of respectability about her make-up. At the bottom she fished a key out of her handbag and locked the street door. Gently took it from her and slipped it into his pocket.

  ‘And to save a little trouble …?’

  Frenchy sniffed and tossed her head towards the corner shop. ‘Mother Goffin over the way … and don’t let her kid you up she’s deaf.’

  ‘I won’t,’ murmured Gently, ‘at least, not twice in one day.’

  They proceeded towards the Front, Gently feeling a trifle self-conscious beside so much window-dressing. At the corner of the street lurked Nits, his bulging eyes fixed upon them. As they drew closer he sidled out to meet them.

  ‘Giddout of the way, you!’ snapped Frenchy, angering suddenly. But Nits’ attention had focused on Gently.

  ‘You leave her alone – you leave her alone!’ he piped, ‘she’s a good girl, you mustn’t take her away!’

  ‘Clear out!’ screeched Frenchy, ‘I’ve had enough of you hanging round me!’

  Gently put his hand in his pocket for a coin, but as he did so the halfwit came flying at him with flailing arms and legs.

  ‘You shan’t take her away – you shan’t – I won’t let you!’

  ‘Here, here,’ said Gently, ‘that’s no way for a young man to behave—!’

  ‘I’ll kill you, I will, I tell you I’ll kill you!’

  ‘And I’ll bleedin’ kill you!’ screamed Frenchy, catching Nits such a cuff across the face that he was almost cart-wheeled into the gutter. For a moment he lay there, pop-eyed and gibbering, then he sprang to his feet in a whirl of limbs and darted away down Dulford Street like a bewildered animal.