Gently in Trees

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Did Stoll tell Miss Britton she would have to get out?’

  ‘That was the message,’ Walling nodded. ‘Also he hinted about the will. Said he would have to revise his previous dispositions.’

  ‘The will was specifically referred to?’

  ‘Yes – yes! Though he didn’t actually say what he was going to do.’

  ‘What did he say, then?’

  ‘Well, he wanted them to sweat on it, so he said he would let them know the details when he’d talked to his lawyer.’

  ‘About the will?’

  ‘Yes, about the will. And about when Maryon would have to get out. Because there was no doubt about that, you know. Maryon and Jennifer were getting the boot.’

  Gently puffed once or twice. ‘And after the row?’

  Walling made a furtive snatch at his locks. ‘After the row we left for town. There was nothing to stay for, after that.’

  ‘You travelled with Stoll?’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘Did he refer to what had taken place?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. He didn’t talk at all. He was in one of his brooding fits.’

  ‘He didn’t discuss other matters? Like filming wild-life.’

  ‘No. He scarcely said a word.’

  ‘Before the row, did he talk about that?’

  Walling shook his head. ‘No. Nothing at all.’

  ‘So you, of course, wouldn’t have known his programme?’

  Walling stared. ‘How should I?’

  ‘Being such an old friend,’ Gently said. ‘Often invited down to Brayling. Surely you’d have given Stoll a hand with his hobby?’

  Walling’s eyes widened. ‘B-but no, I never did! Adrian rarely took anyone filming with him. It was something he did quite on his own – all we knew about it was the film show, afterwards.’

  ‘Have you never been in the Chase with him?’

  ‘No – scarcely ever! A picnic once, two years ago.’

  ‘At the Warren Ride site?’

  Walling shook his head, stupidly.

  ‘Near Mogi’s Belt?’

  Walling’s head continued shaking.

  ‘Still, you’ve had plenty of opportunity,’ Gently said. ‘You could have familiarized yourself with the forest. You could have discovered the attraction of Mogi’s Belt. It could have been you who sent Stoll there.’

  Walling wailed and grappled with his hair.

  ‘We have only your word that you didn’t,’ Gently said.

  ‘It sounds like a case to me, sir,’ Lyons said blandly. ‘Especially with this package tour swindle in the background.’

  Gently puffed. ‘Well?’ he asked.

  Walling got up from his chair. He was shaking. ‘I want my lawyer!’ he quavered. ‘I’m not saying any more. You haven’t been fair. I want my lawyer.’

  ‘He can’t alter the facts,’ Gently said.

  ‘I want him,’ Walling said weakly. ‘I want him!’

  Gently considered the financier through an issue of smoke. ‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘That will do for now.’

  ‘That will d-do . . . ?’

  ‘For now,’ Gently said. ‘Which doesn’t mean we shan’t be back later.’ He trailed another thoughtful ribbon of smoke. ‘Send in Messiter, will you?’

  Walling gaped, and his eyes rolled. For a moment it seemed he was going to speak; then his twitching mouth closed, and he wobbled unsteadily to the door.

  Messiter answered questions flatly, standing before Gently with quiet poise. Walling had departed on Saturday at ten-thirty a.m. and returned at nine p.m. on Sunday. Messiter had packed him a weekend bag. Walling had stated he was visiting a relative; he had a married sister living in Hove with whom he occasionally spent a weekend. Messiter recalled no visit from Stoll on Thursday, but added that he was absent during the afternoon.

  ‘And where did you spend your weekend?’ Gently asked.

  Messiter didn’t flicker an eyelid. ‘After Mr Walling left I tidied the flat, then I went up town to do some shopping. I had lunch at the Isola Bella, in Frith Street. In the afternoon I visited the Museum. I returned here to have my tea, and in the evening I practised a violin part. When Miss Nina came in from the theatre I made her a light supper. On Sunday I visited friends at Hampstead, walked on the Heath, then played music with them.’

  ‘You remember it very well,’ Gently said.

  Messiter accepted the compliment without comment.

  ‘How much did you see of Stoll?’

  ‘Mr Stoll was a frequent visitor.’

  ‘But what sort of terms were you on?’

  ‘Mr Stoll was a close friend of Mr Walling’s.’

  ‘Didn’t he ever talk to you about his hobby?’

  ‘I had few conversations with Mr Stoll.’

  It was stony ground; Gently gave up, and they left the overcrowded, aromatic flat. Lyons produced the keys of Stoll’s flat and let them in through a gilt-ornamented door. Inside, he turned eagerly to Gently.

  ‘What do you think, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you’d better check Walling’s alibi, and leave him to the Fraud Squad for the moment.’

  Lyons’s face fell. ‘I’d like to pull him in, sir.’

  ‘Then you’ll be pulling in his lawyer as well. Check the alibi. Walling isn’t going to run. If the alibi is punk you’ll have something to hit him with.’

  ‘Sir, I’ll take a chance that he’s chummie.’

  Gently shrugged and pushed past him into the flat.

  It was a smaller flat than Walling’s, but it contained one considerable room. By contrast it was sparsely furnished, mostly with expensive reproduction pieces. The suite in the large lounge was Adams; the chairs tended to be grouped at one end. Immediately one got the impression of a projection room, and the projector was there, in a mock-period cabinet. In place of Walling’s litter of sheet-music and books was a tidier litter of duplicated scripts. They were strewn on the carpet around the Adams sofa, on which one lay open, its face to the cushions. Lyons picked it up.

  ‘ “The Romantic Painters”,’ he read. ‘ “5. Parkes Bonington. By Ivan Webster.” That’s what Stoll was working on, sir, on Saturday. It’s a new TV series for the autumn.’

  ‘Then he must have called in here after he left Television Centre.’

  ‘Yes, sir. He had his Bentley at the Centre. He’d have come back here to pick up the van. He rents two garages in the mews.’

  Gently took the script. It was cut and annotated in slashing red pencil. The notes were scribbled in a semi-legible hand that combined flaring capitals with inchoate minuscules. ‘No! No! ! !’ ‘Cut to 76! ! !’ ‘All ref. to S. OUT! ! !’ At first sight it seemed virtually impossible to pick up what thread of the script was left. Gently dropped it back on the sofa.

  ‘Did Stoll mention his plans to anyone at the Centre?’

  ‘Nobody I’ve spoken to,’ Lyons said. ‘You get the impression that Stoll wasn’t a chatterer.’

  ‘Comment on his manner?’

  ‘Nothing useful. He blew his top on two occasions. But that was how he used to work, how most directors carry on.’

  ‘When did he leave?’

  ‘Six-thirty.’

  ‘He would have to have eaten somewhere.’

  ‘Out,’ Lyons said. ‘He didn’t eat here. His daily woman found it tidy.’

  ‘Try to trace the restaurant,’ Gently said. ‘His contacts that evening are top priority. Anyone Stoll may have dropped a word to. We must know how chummie tracked him out there.’ He brooded. ‘Allow an hour for the meal. Then he dropped off the script and perhaps collected some gear. That would make it around eight when he set out. Which means he reached Latchford at about ten.’

  ‘When it was getting dark, sir.’

  Gently nodded. ‘Probably quite dark, when he got to the forest. Meaning any picnickers or visitors had left, and not a soul around to see. Like Metfield, I think Stoll wasn’t followed in there, because following lights would be too conspicuous.
So chummie had to know where Stoll was heading – and if Walling is chummie, we’ll have to show how he knew.’

  ‘Understood, sir,’ Lyons said bleakly.

  ‘And that’s just a beginning,’ Gently said. ‘Because unless we can also show him buying a bottle of gas, there’ll be little bonus in setting up Walling.’

  Lyons chewed his lip disconsolately: this really did sound like the thumbs down! But then his attention was attracted by a Volvo which was trying to park at the kerb outside.

  ‘Sir – that’s Nina Walling!’

  Gently turned to regard the Volvo. It was being manoeuvred by a dark-haired young woman with pale, dolly-bird features.

  ‘Ask her to step in.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  Lyons promptly slipped out of the room. Along with Nina Walling sat a yak-haired young man, and in the rear of the car, another trendy couple.

  Lyons returned not only with Nina Walling, but also with her attendant Struwwelpeter. The latter, viewed at closer quarters, seemed less youthful; he was probably about thirty-five. Nina was tall, and looked strangely sexless in a flowing, ankle-length gown: a small face on a long neck over a draped, stick-like figure. She had Walling’s nose, in a more delicate form, but otherwise her features were fine and sharp. Her eyes were pale violet. They observed Gently with contemptuous hauteur.

  ‘You wished to talk to me about Adrian?’ Her voice resembled Walling’s, but had a chilling precision.

  Gently nodded woodenly. ‘But I’d prefer to talk to you on your own.’

  ‘Oh – this is Ivan. You will want him too. He was working with Adrian last week. Evidence of state of mind, you know. From what I’ve read it could have been suicide.’

  Gently glanced at her companion. ‘Ivan Webster?’

  ‘Right on the button, fuzz,’ the Struwwelpeter replied. He had bold, humourless grey eyes, and a beak-like nose: avine features.

  ‘So what was his state of mind?’ Gently asked.

  ‘Bloody,’ Webster said. ‘Extra bloody.’ He nodded towards the script on the sofa. ‘He hung enough rewrite on me to keep me sweating for a week.’

  ‘Would that be unusual?’

  Webster eyed him. ‘No. He was always a sod to work with. Only last week he was busting all records. Like there was something special eating him.’

  ‘Do you know what it was?’

  Webster paused. ‘Is it a secret?’

  ‘I’m asking you,’ Gently said.

  ‘Oh, it isn’t a secret,’ Nina Walling said impatiently. ‘Not to me and not to Ivan.’

  ‘Because we relate, you know,’ Webster leered. ‘The liberation thing. You catch it, fuzz?’

  Gently hunched a shoulder. ‘So now you can tell me.’

  ‘It was his deal with Daddy,’ Nina Walling said promptly. ‘Daddy is having some trouble with his package tour business, and Adrian got uptight and wanted to pull out. Adrian was always in a twist about money. He couldn’t freewheel with it like Daddy.’

  ‘Stoll told you about it?’

  ‘Of course not! Daddy told me about it, on Friday. But it would have worked out all right. Adrian knew he could trust Daddy, really.’

  ‘When did you last see Stoll?’

  ‘Midweek sometime. I think it was Wednesday.’

  ‘Not since then?’

  ‘No. We didn’t live in each other’s pockets.’

  ‘Not the liberation thing?’

  Webster chuckled sardonically, but Nina Walling seemed not at all put out.

  ‘We related,’ she said. ‘The father-daughter thing. It was a liberation that Adrian needed.’

  ‘And helpful to you?’

  ‘Of course. What’s wrong with people helping one another?’

  ‘In this case it seems to have affected some other people.’

  ‘Whom Adrian had been helping for a long time anyway.’ She hesitated, her eyes firmly on Gently’s. ‘I didn’t want to cause them trouble,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t bugging Adrian to unrelate with them. That was his decision entirely.’

  ‘So he told you of his intentions?’

  ‘Yes. He was going to make a clean break. I think it was largely that he’d grown away from Maryon. Which is something that happens all the time.’

  ‘Did he mention any provision for her?’

  Nina Walling shook her head. ‘But she had been living off him for years.’

  ‘His will?’

  She shook her head again. ‘But I’m certain he would have seen her all right,’ she said.

  ‘He wasn’t a bad bastard,’ Webster murmured. ‘Like just a bastard, period, period.’

  Gently considered Webster expressionlessly. ‘What was your relation with Stoll, precisely?’ he said.

  Webster laughed. ‘I’m a scriptwriter,’ he said. ‘One of those people Adrian ate before breakfast. But I lived with it, fuzz. First and last, I worked with Adrian for four years. In a hateful way we kind of related. Like I read his mind better than most.’

  ‘How long have you known Miss Walling?’

  Webster double-took. ‘Now you’re getting naughty thoughts, fuzz. I didn’t gas Adrian, though sometimes I might have done. Like someone else got in first.’

  ‘You think it’s a joke?’ Gently said.

  ‘I think it was suicide,’ Webster said. ‘Him getting in a twist thiswise, thatwise, and finding it kept adding up to zero. It’s a soft way to go, sniffing gas, like going to sleep without setting the alarm. And Adrian was a loner, an upshut guy. As a character, I can see him wanting to bust out.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Brayling?’

  ‘Yah.’

  ‘You know the forest?’

  ‘I know bits.’

  ‘Then let’s hear what you were doing last weekend.’

  Webster rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Fuzz,’ he said, ‘you are lovely. You are a very nice person. Give me time, and I could relate. But all last weekend I was in town.’

  ‘Doing what in town?’

  ‘Like first I was eating in the Centre canteen. That was after Adrian had blown, remember? Then I went home to work on the script.’

  ‘Went where?’

  ‘My flat in Battersea, just off Albert Bridge Road. After which I collected Nina from the Capri, and we had a drink, and I drove her home. Want me to go on?’

  Gently said nothing.

  ‘All of which I confirm,’ Nina Walling said frostily.

  ‘Oh, but he’s so lovely,’ Webster chanted. ‘Get that Squaresville jaw. I’ll have to use him, somewhere.’

  ‘And now,’ Nina said, ‘perhaps we can go – if you’ve finished with the corny questions. Have you finished?’

  Gently shrugged. The two of them went out, Webster to wait in the car.

  Lyons was staring uncertainly at Gently. ‘Were you serious about that fellow, sir?’ he asked.

  Gently made a face. ‘I don’t know. Just that he seemed to be asking for a try-on.’

  ‘I can’t see any motive for him,’ Lyons said doubtfully. ‘Stoll would be worth more to him alive than dead.’

  ‘Still,’ Gently said, ‘you may as well check him.’

  Lyons sighed to himself, very softly.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LATCHFORD HAD CHANGED in a number of ways since Gently was there a decade earlier. The main road now sliced through the north of the town, which put him at fault when he drove in. The industrial sector and the raw overspill estates had further encroached on the silent brecks: a more extensive urbation, though still wholly alien, still seeming at the frontiers of a hostile land. But the change was most subtle in the old town, which apparently hadn’t changed at all; where the same narrow, crooked, rather seedy streets spidered round the small market-place and the Regency town hall. Now it had a bruised, fading look, as though over-punished by traffic and people – still hanging on to its rigid identity, but growing ghostly, like the brecks. Latchford, the new technological community, was shaping this spectre in its midst: and raising along with it
a strange question – who, in truth, was haunting who?

  But there was nothing ghostly about Metfield, who seemed a different man on his own patch. He came down the steps of the police station to welcome Gently with a confident hand. A press photographer recorded the event, while his colleague tried for a statement: Gently murmured generalities about a routine exchange and hastened into the station. Metfield bustled after him, full of buck. He ushered Gently into his office.

  ‘No go at the other end, sir?’

  Gently sighed and took a seat. ‘I wouldn’t exactly say that. Lyons is continuing his investigation.’

  ‘But this Walling chap – you’ve cleared him?’

  ‘Walling has given us an account of his movements. Lyons is checking it out now. It may be difficult to prove much against Walling.’

  ‘That was my opinion all along, sir.’ Metfield dropped happily behind his desk. ‘It has to be someone who knows the forest. Nobody else is worth considering.’

  ‘A local man.’

  ‘No question, sir. Or someone who’s lived round here for a while. And that’s the cousin, Edwin Keynes. He’s the only one who could have set it up.’

  ‘With or without collaboration.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Metfield nodded vigorously. ‘They’re all in it, that’s my belief – Keynes, her, the daughter, and the painter who’s living with him. All we need now is a bit of luck, so that we can show they knew what Stoll had in mind for them.’

  Gently crossed his legs cautiously. ‘We can probably show that.’

  ‘We can, sir?’ Metfield’s eyes sparkled excitedly.

  ‘Walling coughed. He was a guest at Brayling Lodge the previous weekend. A row started when Stoll caught his cousin and Maryon Britton kissing. They revealed that they were aware of Stoll’s relations with Miss Walling, and Stoll gave the Brittons notice to quit, and spoke of making a fresh will.’

  ‘Then we’ve got them, sir!’

  Gently grinned at the local man. ‘Perhaps not quite.’

  ‘But why not, sir? This Walling can’t go back on his cough.’

  ‘He might,’ Gently said. ‘But we can put pressure on him, so I don’t think he will. But that still gives us only motive and propinquity, neither of which are hard evidence. Unless you can add something?’