by Alan Hunter
‘Only not by me,’ Keynes grinned. ‘I wouldn’t have told him, out of principle – I think badgers should have their privacy respected. But he was told by someone, that’s pretty plain. He would never have discovered it for himself. Adrian wasn’t the type to go vaguely rambling, to see what the fates had to offer. As far as I know, his only other safari into the forest was to photograph deer, and that was arranged for him by Larling, the ranger – whom I imagine you will have questioned.’
He paused. Gently said nothing.
‘No,’ Keynes said. ‘So he didn’t get it from Larling. Unlikely anyway, since the Forestry are very properly jealous about things like badger setts. Which leaves it something of a mystery. Outside the Forestry, there can be very few people who know of the sett – and none, I would have thought, who had it in for Adrian. Which I take it is the theory you have in mind.’
‘You seem familiar with the Forestry,’ Gently said.
‘You can’t live here and not be,’ Keynes agreed.
‘I understand they publish some excellent literature.’ Keynes let smoke trickle from his nostrils. ‘Are you referring to a certain Trail pamphlet?’
Gently hunched a shoulder, watching him.
‘Yes, it’s a possibility,’ Keynes said. ‘If one knew that Adrian had such a pamphlet in his possession. Did he?’ His eyes held Gently’s. ‘I see. You must have found one in the van. And it’s not the sort of thing one would have expected him to buy, so we assume it was given him by the murderer.’ He nodded slowly. ‘It could have been enough. Adrian was never short of shrewdness. But once more, you’re looking for a man with some small knowledge of Forestry matters.’
‘About whom you can make no suggestion,’ Gently said.
Keynes smiled. ‘Nothing helpful.’
‘A man so like you that he could be you?’
‘I don’t know such a man,’ Keynes smiled.
‘We did, of course, find a pamphlet,’ Gently said. ‘Exactly as your prescience suggests. It had been marked up for further guidance. Hand me that ballpen from your pocket.’
Keynes hesitated, his smile thinning. Then he unclipped the pen and passed it over. Gently sketched a line with it across his palm. The colour of the ink was royal blue. He handed the pen back.
‘Anything else?’ Keynes asked.
‘Yes. There was a latent fingerprint on the pamphlet. Have you any objection to us taking your fingerprints?’
Keynes’s smile broadened again; he shook his head.
‘Right, then,’ Gently said. ‘Perhaps now we can get to the real business. I want a full picture of what happened here on the evening of last Saturday. In fact, we’ll begin a little earlier than that. You can give me your movements for the whole of Saturday. And it will help us both if you can give me also the names of some independent witnesses. Am I making it plain?’
‘Too plain,’ Keynes grimaced. ‘Are you sure you shouldn’t be giving us a caution?’
‘Would you say that was necessary?’
Keynes rocked his shoulders. ‘Just my big mouth,’ he said. ‘I’m easy meat for you.’
He knocked out his pipe humbly and sat back, hands in the pockets of the jeans. Maryon Britton sat stiffly; Jennifer Britton with her leg swinging. From behind Gently, a faint rustle marked the turning of a page in Metfield’s notebook.
‘We’ll begin with you, Mrs Britton.’
Maryon Britton gazed at him stonily. ‘I’ve made one statement already,’ she said. ‘I don’t see why I should have to make another.’
‘Starting with Saturday morning,’ Gently said.
Maryon Britton pouted. ‘I had my bath. Breakfast. Mrs Nixon arrived. I took the car into the village, shopping. To the butcher’s, the baker’s and Hensman’s Stores, all of whom will remember me. Back to cook lunch. Eating lunch. Paying Mrs Nixon. Reading in the garden. Jenny was playing tennis at the sports ground; when she came in we had tea. Then we watched TV for a while, and after that Edwin came.’
‘Did you make any phone calls?’ Gently asked.
‘One to Edwin at lunchtime.’
‘Did you receive any?’
‘No. And the only letters were bills.’
Gently nodded. ‘Mr Keynes?’
‘I had a bath, too,’ Keynes grinned. ‘Also breakfast. But I’m afraid the rest of my day was not quite so well documented. I was writing reviews for the best part of it, which is a sad thing to be doing on a Saturday. Then I switched on the box and caught a bit of the second Test. Lawrence was with me in the morning – at least, he was working in his studio. But after lunch he was at tennis, with Jenny. So I could have been up to all kinds of devilment.’
‘Was your car in use?’
‘Not till the evening. Lawrence walked down to the sports ground.’
‘Did you make any phone calls?’
‘I rang Television Centre, to ask Ivan Webster if Adrian was coming down.’
Gently hesitated. ‘Then you know Ivan Webster?’
Keynes ghosted a shrug. ‘Only in passing. He’s been down here with Adrian a few times. I knew they were working together just then.’
‘You spoke to him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘He told me that Adrian wasn’t happy with the script. Said they’d likely be working late. He didn’t know if Adrian was planning to come down.’ He paused. ‘I couldn’t very well ask him to ask Adrian. Adrian would have guessed who was wanting to know.’
‘And why did you want to know?’
Keynes glanced at Maryon Britton.
‘Oh, he’s had it out of me,’ she said huffily. ‘Adrian was bringing down the will with him to burn in front of us. That’s it in the briefcase.’
Keynes jingled some change in his pocket. ‘There you have it, then,’ he said. ‘Lots of motive. You have just to decide if we’re the sort of people who would kill for money. And naturally, we were wanting to know when the volcano would erupt, which was my reason for ringing Webster.’
‘Mrs Britton suggested it, when she rang you at lunchtime?’
Keynes shook his head. ‘My call was prior.’
‘Did you mention the reason for your inquiry to Webster?’
‘I did not. I scarcely know him.’
Gently paused. ‘Then wouldn’t it have seemed odd to him that you applied to him and not directly to Stoll?’
Keynes’s eyes were thoughtful for a moment. ‘Yes, you’d have supposed so. But in fact he behaved as though my inquiry was quite natural.’
‘As though, perhaps, he knew the reason for it.’
Keynes nodded. ‘Interesting, isn’t it? But of course, he’s a pal of Nina Walling’s, and she would’ve had the news from Adrian.’
Gently grunted. ‘Getting back to your movements. Can anyone place you at your cottage during the day?’
‘There’s Fred Bishop. He’s the milkman. He called to be paid, at about ten-thirty.’
‘Nobody else?’
‘No.’
‘In the afternoon?’
‘No.’
‘So you can prove nothing about your movements.’
‘Not a thing.’ Keynes grinned. ‘I’m the man you should really be going after.’
His flecked eyes rested on Gently’s, smiling, alert, poised. Mrs Britton was also watching Gently, but her handsome eyes were anxious. As she watched, her hands drew together, and a little white showed at the knuckles.
Jennifer Britton’s leg swung impatiently.
‘Don’t I get into this act?’ she demanded. ‘After all, I’m an unstable teenager, and thoroughly subversive. I could easily have done it.’
‘You foolish girl!’ her mother burst out. ‘Don’t you know better than to talk like that?’
Jennifer Britton tossed her ash-blonde locks and gazed expressively at the ceiling.
‘Very well,’ Gently said. ‘Now we’ll hear from you.’
‘Oh, how kind,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘I took the car into Latchford before M
other had it, and, inter alia, bought some things at Leeks.’
‘Leeks . . . ?’
Metfield cleared his throat. ‘They’re the local iron-mongers, sir. Gardening requisites and the like. Also agents for a certain product.’
‘Gas,’ Jennifer Britton said promptly. ‘Bottles and bottles of glorious gas. A department that handles nothing else. Where we bought it during the power cut. And hoses too, all sorts of hoses – they’re sure to stock the brand you want. And I was there on Saturday morning, which that nice young assistant will certainly remember.’
‘You idiot!’ her mother hissed. ‘You went to buy some secateurs, and you know it.’
‘Shush, Maryon,’ Keynes smiled. ‘Let Jenny tell her story in her own inimitable way.’
‘Did you buy secateurs?’ Gently asked.
‘That was just my cover-up,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘And there was nothing to stop me from buying gas and a yard or two of hose as well. In fact, I could have dropped it off at Mogi’s whatsit, all ready for Adrian later on. No reason why not. Adrian could have told me he was camping there that night.’
‘We could, indeed, assume that,’ Gently said gravely.
Jennifer Britton glanced at him with narrowed eyes. ‘So why don’t you?’ she said.
‘I’ll consider it, Miss Britton. But first, I’d like you to continue your statement.’
Jennifer Britton gave a snatch with her head. ‘The rest of it isn’t worth having,’ she said. ‘All goody-goody. I went around with mother and was seen in exactly the same places as she was. Then after lunch I went to tennis, where we had a tournament with Latchford “A”. About sixty witnesses, or thereabouts. And so home to tea and the box.’
‘Did you drive to tennis?’
‘Actually, no. The sports field is two hundred yards down the road.’
‘Did you win the tournament?’
Jennifer Britton checked; then cuttingly rolled her eyes to the ceiling again.
‘Thank you,’ Gently said. ‘Now we’ll deal with the evening.’ He turned to Keynes, who sat beaming at him. ‘You first. I want a statement in detail, from the time you left your cottage until you returned there.’
Keynes eased back a peg on the sofa, his beam fading to an appealing smile.
‘In detail,’ he said. ‘That’s asking a bit much. But I’ll do the best I can for you.’ He wrinkled his brow. ‘Lawrence came in at five – and to answer your question, they’d won the tournament. So then we had tea, which was a mixed grill, and tidied up, and came round here. Time, I should think, around seven; but I had no particular reason to notice.’
‘When was the visit arranged?’
‘Well – it wasn’t, really. We spend most of our evenings together. And that evening we were anticipating Adrian, so our coming here was taken as read.’
‘Any further phone calls?’
‘None.’
‘Did you walk or drive?’
‘We drove.’
‘So like that there were two cars here at the Grange.’
Keynes looked at him, and slowly nodded.
‘Go on,’ Gently said.
‘Well, I parked in the yard, then we joined the ladies in here. We talked for a bit about the Adrian business and whether he really meant to chuck Maryon out. Honestly, I thought he would have cooled off it, because the strength of his affair with Nina was obvious. She was playing him along, and he must have known that, with all his shrewdness and experience of starlets. And meanwhile, Maryon was an excellent housekeeper. She could always be relied on to entertain his guests. So why chuck her out? I still think he wouldn’t have done it, even though he meant to change his will.’
‘Thank you, Edwin,’ Maryon Britton said. ‘I’m sure you were wrong – but thanks, anyway.’
‘And you three and Lawrence Turner were all present,’ Gently said.
‘Oh yes, but not for long,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘Lawrence was bored by it, and so was I. We went for a stroll – in the forest, of course.’
‘When?’
‘Oh . . . pretty soon.’
‘At about half-past seven,’ Keynes said.
‘When did you return?’
‘Who knows?’ she shrugged.
‘Getting dusk,’ Keynes said. ‘Around ten.’
Gently nodded. ‘Then you and Mrs Britton were alone here from roughly half-past seven till ten. You had been discussing what Stoll intended. What else happened during that time?’
‘Nothing,’ Maryon Britton said bitterly. ‘We were waiting for him – don’t you understand? Waiting for Adrian. Just like characters in some beastly play by Becket.’
‘That’s about it,’ Keynes agreed. ‘When you’re waiting, nothing ever happens but waiting. You talk and pour a drink and perhaps watch the box, but all you’re really doing is waiting.’
‘You never left this room?’
‘Maryon made some coffee. I went through to the kitchen with her. We talked of holiday plans for a while, but the conversation always came back to Adrian.’
‘You had no visitors?’
‘None.’
‘Phone calls?’
‘None again.’
‘And you made none – say, when it got late, when you might have started wondering what had happened to Mr Stoll?’
Keynes shook his head. ‘We didn’t do much wondering, because we didn’t know for sure if Adrian was coming. He’d left us to sweat, and we were doing it. He might easily have put off coming till the next weekend.’
‘Webster told you he might be working late. It would have been a natural thing to put through a call to TV Centre.’
‘We just weren’t in the mood,’ Keynes said. ‘We didn’t want to know – he would either come or he wouldn’t.’
‘And what’s more,’ Maryon Britton said, ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to give him the satisfaction of us inquiring after him.’
Gently shrugged massively. ‘So you didn’t inquire,’ he said. ‘You just passed the time talking and making coffee. But at some point you must have decided that Mr Stoll wasn’t coming, and that his cousin could safely spend the night here. When was that?’
‘Well . . . when it got later,’ Maryon Britton said edgily.
‘But how late?’
‘I don’t know! Naturally, when it got later, we stopped expecting him.’
‘For example, you had never known him to arrive here late when his work had detained him in town?’
‘Well – yes,’ she said. ‘It happened once or twice. But it wasn’t something he made a habit of.’
‘So why were you so certain on this occasion?’
‘I wasn’t certain! We took a chance.’
‘It was me who was certain,’ Jennifer Britton said tonelessly. ‘I told them that Adrian wasn’t coming.’
‘Oh, be quiet, be quiet!’ Mrs Britton wailed.
‘Why?’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘We want the truth, don’t we?’ She gave a hysterical little laugh. ‘You’d better ask me,’ she said to Gently.
Gently considered her for a moment. She still sat relaxedly, her leg swinging. But there was a flush on her thin cheek, and her eyes were large and febrile. She was avoiding his gaze, looking beyond him; she was quivering slightly under his scrutiny.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell me the truth, Miss Britton. How did you spend that evening?’
‘Oh, of course, you’ll be questioning Lawrence,’ she said. ‘So I couldn’t tell you a fib, could I?’
‘All your accounts will be checked.’
‘Yes, and Lawrence is such a ninny. Though it would be his word against mine, wouldn’t it? You would have to make your choice about that.’ She smiled strangely. ‘He wants to marry me,’ she said. ‘But that’s neither here nor there. We went up through Taylor’s Spinney, as far as the river, and sat on the grass by the bridge.’
‘Which bridge is that?’
‘Oh, just a bridge. But there’s a telephone box right beside it. Not that I rang Adrian, or anythi
ng like that . . . but I could have done, couldn’t I?’
‘Did you?’
‘You can ask Lawrence.’
‘Of course she didn’t!’ Mrs Britton snapped. ‘She’s a stupid little girl, trying to make a mystery, and no idea how serious it is.’
‘But I could have phoned Adrian . . . or anyone else.’
‘Oh, I could shake you!’ Mrs Britton cried. ‘Superintendent, you had better ask Lawrence the truth of it. At least he has some common sense.’
Jennifer Britton smiled at nothing. ‘I didn’t ring him,’ she said. I’d no need to. Because I knew – I’d known all day – that Adrian was never coming back to us.’
‘How could you have known?’ her mother stormed.
‘I just sometimes know things,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘And I knew this. A sort of echoey sadness. I told you about it when I came in.’ She glanced at Keynes. ‘You remember.’
Keynes chuckled. ‘Yes, I do. But I don’t think it impressed us very much, Jenny. It was after you went to bed that we decided he wasn’t coming.’
‘But you do remember?’
He nodded.
‘It was real, quite real,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘All day, whenever I looked at something of Adrian’s, I felt this queer sadness, so that I wanted to cry. And then, in the evening, I understood it – he wasn’t coming back, then or ever.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ her mother cried.
‘So I didn’t ring anyone,’ Jennifer Britton said. ‘It was all going to happen, and I knew it was. Though I didn’t actually know how or where.’
‘Are you going to believe this?’ demanded Maryon Britton of Gently.
Gently shrugged. ‘Miss Britton seems very definite. But perhaps we should pass second sight for the moment, and return to the bare facts of her statement.’
Jennifer Britton flushed deeply. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Lawrence was horrid. He didn’t understand me at all that evening. I shan’t marry him, and that’s that.’
‘How long were you beside the bridge?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you see anyone there?’
‘A stupid angler. But he was down the bank, among the rushes, and getting eaten alive by swarms of midges.’
‘Did you meet anyone at all who would have known you?’
‘No. Because we were keeping away from people. We came back by Grimshoe Loke and the forest, and we didn’t meet anybody at all.’