Gently in Trees

by Alan Hunter

  ‘Like him?’

  Turner was silent for a space. ‘I . . . admired what he did. He was an artist, a true artist. There was no getting away from that.’

  ‘But did you like him?’

  Turner wrestled with the glass. ‘He wasn’t . . . he was different from other men. He had this gift, this great gift. It somehow . . . swamped him. You had to accept that.’

  ‘You found him inhuman.’

  ‘In a way – yes!’

  ‘Egotistic and calculating.’

  ‘Well . . . yes . . .’

  ‘Other people didn’t count. He just drove them.’

  ‘I suppose so . . . it seemed like that.’

  ‘So he was asking for what he got.’

  ‘No!’ Turner raised his eyes to Gently’s. ‘It wasn’t like that. You couldn’t really hate him. Because you felt he couldn’t help himself, either.’

  ‘That’s a charitable viewpoint.’

  ‘But it’s true. Everyone had that feeling about Adrian. He had this talent which he had to live with, and it didn’t give him room to be like other people. He had to be a dictator; that was his job. He could only work by imposing his will. Every creator must be a dictator, but Adrian’s material was human beings. So in a way, he had to keep acting like God, and if he lost the touch he couldn’t do his job.’

  ‘You would have thought it was something he could have left in town.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘I think he tried. But he couldn’t really let up, ever. Just as I can’t let up seeing things as pictures.’

  ‘So you admired him though you didn’t like him.’

  ‘I think . . . perhaps, I liked him too.’

  ‘Did he buy your pictures?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. But once he invited me to stay in town.’

  ‘What was that about?’

  Turner shuffled the glass. ‘I think just that he thought it would do me good. You know, meet people, get in the swim. There’s nothing of that sort doing out here.’

  ‘And did you meet people? For example, Nina Walling?’

  Turner coloured faintly. ‘Yes, I met her. But I had met her and Ivan Webster before, when Adrian brought them down to the Lodge.’

  ‘Friends of yours.’

  ‘No – never!’ He jerked the glass, slopping some water. ‘I don’t think they were friends of Adrian’s either, whatever was going on between them.’

  Gently nodded. Turner gulped some water. Metfield’s pencil scribbled, and was silent.

  ‘You were at the Lodge last Sunday week?’

  ‘Yes,’ Turner said. ‘I was there.’

  ‘Was Mr Stoll very likeable on that occasion?’

  Turner stared at the glass. ‘They were all upset.’

  ‘They?’

  He shrugged weakly. ‘It was nothing to do with me, was it?’

  ‘I would have thought it had some connection.’

  Turner studied the glass and said nothing.

  ‘For example,’ Gently said. ‘Mr Stoll expressed intentions which would have been very detrimental to your friends. Detrimental to Mr Keynes. Detrimental to Miss Britton.’

  Turner flushed. ‘It was still none of my business . . . !’

  ‘Aren’t you informally engaged to Miss Britton?’

  ‘I . . . no! There’s nothing definite. . .’

  ‘But you have proposed to her?’

  ‘It . . . it’s been mentioned.’

  ‘Then in that case,’ Gently said, ‘you must have been deeply interested in Mr Stoll’s intentions. Because they affected your future prospects equally with those of Miss Britton and her mother. They would also affect your immediate prospects as the protégé of Mr Keynes, who would no longer be able to rely on Mrs Britton when he was going through a bad patch. On the whole, you would be the most affected – because you are the one who is nearest the breadline.’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t think of it like that!’

  Gently spread his hands wearily. ‘You, of course, are the dedicated artist who never thinks about these things?’

  ‘No, but—!’

  ‘So you thought about it! Just like the others, you thought about it! And you came to the conclusion that the only answer to the problem lay in the removal of Mr Stoll.’

  ‘But that’s not true!’ Turner hanged the glass on the table.

  ‘Not true that Mr Stoll’s death would be the answer to your troubles?’

  ‘Not true that I thought it . . . that I—!’

  ‘Just when did you get the stain on those tyres?’

  Turner stared at him, eyes wide, mouth contracted and in a droop. The glass was bobbing in his hand and threatening to decant its contents.

  ‘You’re trying to make me say things!’

  ‘I want the truth.’

  ‘No – you think I’m guilty now.’

  ‘If you are not, you can explain to me. When did you get the stain on the tyres?’

  Turner groaned and closed his eyes. Somehow he got the glass back safely on the table. He drew his shaking hand away from it and passed it over his brow.

  ‘On Sunday.’

  ‘At what time?’

  ‘It was the evening. After tea.’

  Gently waited till Metfield’s pencil ceased to flow across the page.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I was on my own . . . the police weren’t interested in me then. But I knew . . . I thought I had better find out all I could about it. So I borrowed the car and went along there.’

  ‘How did you know where to go?’

  ‘We were up at the Lodge that afternoon when the police told us. They mentioned the place. They seemed to think it could have been suicide.’

  ‘And you knew the place they spoke of?’

  ‘Yes. I’d been round there once with Edwin.’

  ‘Who showed you the badger sett, of course?’

  Turner hesitated; nodded. ‘So I drove round there. And I met the police driving the caravette towards town. So I thought it would be safe to carry on. There was nobody about when I got there.’

  ‘What exactly did you hope to find?’

  Turner stared at the glass for a moment. ‘I don’t know. Something – anything. I felt I just had to go and look.’ He shuddered. ‘I knew you would get round to me. You would have to start thinking the way you are thinking. Once you had checked up properly on the others I would stick out like a bent penny. So I had to do my best, to be ready for you, to find out everything I could. But it amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? You’re going to have me in the end.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘Is that a confession?’

  ‘I didn’t kill Adrian,’ Turner said.

  ‘Then your fingerprints couldn’t be on the caravette.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘I’ve never been near it.’

  ‘Nor on documents inside the caravette.’

  Turner’s eyes were uneasy. ‘I don’t see how they could be.’

  ‘Say, on a map?’

  He kept shaking his head.

  ‘A certain pamphlet?’

  Turner just looked blank.

  ‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘So let’s hear your version of how Mr Stoll discovered the badger sett. I’m sure you’ve been giving the matter some thought, at intervals of checking up on the police.’

  Turner coloured again. He sipped water. ‘Somebody must have told Adrian,’ he said. ‘Adrian wouldn’t have gone looking for it himself. He had other people do his research for him.’

  ‘Go on,’ Gently said.

  Turner licked his lips. ‘Well . . . somebody who knows the forest pretty well.’

  ‘Like Mr Keynes?’

  ‘Yes . . . like that. Or one of the rangers . . . somebody.’

  ‘Somebody,’ Gently said. ‘And when would they have told him?’

  Turner jiffled with the glass. ‘Well, probably during the week. Otherwise he’d have been filming the previous weekend. But he didn’t bring his gear with him then.’

 
; ‘Couldn’t he have been told during that weekend?’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ Turner said. ‘Edwin and I were the only visitors, and the row began soon after we got there.’

  ‘The row in which you took no part.’

  Turner jerked the glass. ‘Yes, I told you.’

  ‘So that you, at any rate, finished up on speaking terms with Mr Stoll?’

  Turner nursed the glass and said nothing.

  ‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘You had kept in the background. Mr Stoll wasn’t aiming at you. He perhaps wasn’t conscious that you were involved in the measures with which he was threatening the others. You, after all, were his great admirer. He had responded by inviting you to stay at his flat. It might even have been that he had some notion of taking his cousin’s talented protégé. So you weren’t in opposition during that row; you were neutral, or a silent ally. And later on, during the week, it was open to you to visit him, or at least to communicate in a friendly way. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘I didn’t visit him!’ Turner exclaimed.

  ‘No phone call, followed by a letter with an enclosure?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘But there could have been,’ Gently said. ‘And that’s the point, isn’t it? There could have been.’

  He sat back, studying Turner, who was crouched, and clutching the glass like a weapon. The young man’s smoky dark eyes stared back at him with a fearful, baffled expression.

  ‘Yes, there could have been,’ Gently mused. ‘And then it would all fit together. We could show how Mr Stoll came to be where he was, and how his killer knew he would be there. We could show motive, premeditation and opportunity, backed by evidence of presence at the spot, plus some knowledge of bottled gas derived from its use during emergency power cuts. Which, of course, is enough to be going on with while we complete our investigation.’ He paused. ‘Have you any comments?’

  ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t!’

  ‘Didn’t you return to the Lodge on the Saturday night and take Mr Keynes’s car from the yard?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You didn’t pick up a gas bottle and a length of hose, and drive into the forest?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You didn’t kill Mr Stoll?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then,’ Gently said, ‘who did kill him?’

  Turner was sitting up straight, his eyes wild, his hands clenched: now his mouth dropped open stupidly and his eyes seemed to lose focus.

  ‘Not – not me!’

  ‘So who?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Turner gabbled. ‘Me – I’m the only one who could have, might have – you can’t suspect any of the others.’

  ‘Not Mr Keynes?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Mrs Britton?’

  ‘Oh, no!’

  ‘That leaves Miss Britton.’

  ‘Oh God, never! You couldn’t believe that of Jenny.’ He gasped for breath. ‘Look, it wasn’t us – you must know it wasn’t us! We’re people, civilized people, we’d never have dreamed of such a thing. Even me – I know I look guilty – you’ve got to think that I’m guilty – but even me – how can you really believe that I would kill Adrian?’

  ‘Perhaps nobody killed him,’ Gently grunted. ‘Perhaps that’s a dummy lying in the morgue.’

  Turner banged his fist down. ‘But it wasn’t us! Why can’t I get you to believe the truth? And if it wasn’t us, it was nobody here – it must have been that gang up in town – they’d do it, too, I know they would – and that’s where Adrian was all week!’

  Gently gazed at him. ‘What gang?’

  ‘The Wallings – Webster – their hangers-on! They’re callous, immoral. They’d do anything. That’s where you should look – not down here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Gently said. ‘Now suggest their motive.’

  ‘I don’t know of any motive.’

  Gently clicked his tongue. ‘That’s too bad! When your own motive sticks out a mile.’

  ‘Look,’ Turner exclaimed desperately. ‘There’s got to be one! If you ask around you’re sure to find it – a motive big enough – bigger than mine – a motive –!’ He broke off, panting.

  ‘Well?’ Gently said.

  Turner was staring unseeingly, his breath coming in suppressed gulps. His fingers crooked and uncrooked, the nails scraping the bare table-top. Then he shook his head idiotically.

  ‘No – no good – you wouldn’t swallow it! Not from me. But there has to be a motive – and you can find it – if you’ll only look!’

  ‘And that’s all you’re telling me?’

  Turner’s head bobbed slackly.

  Gently sighed and rose from his chair. ‘Then now we’ll give the truth a little help. Inspector Metfield will take your dabs.’

  Turner submitted to the process sullenly, then relapsed into his hunched slump over the table. They took the dabs card into Metfield’s office and made the comparison with the dab on the Trail pamphlet. Another negative result – the others had been Keynes and the two Brittons. Which, of course, didn’t prove that none of them had handled it: merely that if they had, there was no proof. The two searches, overseen by Metfield’s sergeant, Shadwell, had been similarly unproductive.

  Metfield regarded the evidence sourly.

  ‘That’s our clincher gone,’ he said. ‘But like you said, we’ve enough to go on with. I reckon it would stick with what we’ve got.’

  Gently drew on his pipe; then shook his head.

  ‘You don’t reckon so?’ Metfield said.

  ‘No. It’s only half a case yet. A good defence counsel would rip it to shreds. Also’ – he idled smoke – ‘what was your impression of Turner?’

  ‘Turner?’ Metfield stared. ‘I’d say he’ll crack in twenty-four hours.’

  Gently got up and went over to the window, where he stood puffing with his back to Metfield. The local man gazed after him apprehensively, at the solid figure with its heavy shoulders. Gently removed his pipe.

  ‘Turn him loose.’

  ‘Sir!’ Metfield half-choked on his tongue.

  ‘We don’t have a case against him that will stand up, so we can’t charge him. Turn him loose.’

  ‘But – but—!’ Metfield came to his feet, colour flooding his stubbly jowls. Gently turned mildly from the window to survey his disturbed colleague.

  ‘Look! I don’t think he did it, though someone may have used him to set it up. So I’d sooner he was running loose than being sick over issue tables.’

  ‘But we can’t just let him go, sir!’

  Gently smiled silkily. ‘Yes we can. We’ve given him a little touch of the plague, and now I want to see where he’ll carry it.’

  Metfield gulped. ‘A touch of what plague, sir?’

  ‘Fear,’ Gently said. And resumed his pipe.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  OVER A CUP of tea in bed the next morning, Gently reviewed that snap decision. Had he talked himself into it a little, in the way he had handled the Turner interrogation? He examined each stage of the questioning critically. No, he had reserved his judgement till the end. At no point had he allowed himself to treat Turner as any other than an urgent suspect. If the evidence of the fingerprints had been positive he would have accepted it and begun the marathon process of cracking Turner; it was not till then, till the prints failed to match, that he had permitted the judgement suddenly to click. So why now was he querying it, checking it through cautiously, wondering if he was quite so certain this morning?

  Turner had received his release in silent stupor, as though unable to grasp what was being said to him. Gently had handed him over to Keynes, who had returned to wait for him after accompanying Sergeant Shadwell to the search of Deerview Cottage. If Keynes was surprised, he had concealed it. This was what he had been expecting, his smile seemed to say. Gently had had his turn with Turner, as with the others, and now they could all call it a day. A bit of obligatory routine . . . and of course, Gently would kindly release the car?

  And
Gently had released it, just like that, as though agreeably confirming the Keynes script: the car having been minutely scrutinized in the meantime, and samples taken from the tyres and underbody. The two of them had then driven away, using the rear access to avoid the reporters, with Turner sitting dazedly beside Keynes, and Keynes waving cheerily to Gently and Metfield.

  A tactical mistake? Gently poured more tea from the Sun’s generous plated teapot. No . . . in some way it was right. It fitted the style which the case was insensibly developing. The case needed rope, room to breathe . . . a decisive move at this point would be a mistake.

  He checked his watch, then lifted the phone. After a few more sips he was through to Lyons. Lyons had been to Brighton the previous day and had returned convinced that Walling’s alibi was faked.

  ‘This Vivian Chance is a proper nana, sir. He’s been done a couple of times for soliciting. One involved a kid under age. I doubt if counsel would risk calling him.’

  ‘What’s his story, then?’

  ‘Nothing he can prove. He has a flat in a block facing the front. Separate entrance in a side-road. Lock-up garage at the rear.’

  ‘Still, what’s he saying?’

  ‘Same tale as Walling, sir. That Walling was there when he says he was. Arrived Saturday lunchtime, left at seven-thirty on Sunday.’

  ‘And didn’t leave the flat all that time?’

  ‘Yes, sir. They went for a drive on Sunday. Into Lewes then down to Eastbourne, and a picnic on the downs at Beachy Head.’

  ‘But no witnesses.’

  ‘None, sir. Unless they were spotted at Beachy Head. But it’s pretty thick there on Sundays, and that was the only place where they’re supposed to have stopped. I checked with the other residents in the block and with the occupant of the flat overlooking the garages. Then I hunted up Chance’s milkman, to see if he’d ordered extra on Sunday.’

  ‘And had he?’

  ‘No, sir. The usual two pints.’

  ‘That would do, if they skipped the cornflakes.’

  ‘But it was his regular order for Sundays, sir,’ Lyons said patiently. ‘You’d have expected him to increase it, if he had a guest.’

  Gently grunted. ‘He could have forgotten! We still can’t prove Walling wasn’t in Brighton.’

  ‘And he can’t prove he was, sir,’ Lyons said firmly. ‘And that’s all I’ll need when I pull him in.’