Gently in the Past

by Alan Hunter

  Eyke jumped to his feet. ‘It wasn’t mentioned at the inquest.’

  ‘Obviously not,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘And perhaps you can’t blame Quennell for wanting to keep the story simple.’

  ‘Sir, this is a fit-up!’ Eyke exploded. ‘Him and Mrs Quennell have worked it up between them. It’s only his word and hers – and that’s just what you would expect.’

  ‘Hold it,’ Gently grunted.

  ‘But it’s a fit-up from start to finish!’

  To Reymerston, Gently said: ‘Did anyone else hear about this from Quennell?’

  Reymerston hunched. ‘I had it from Ruth, I can’t tell you any more than that. It may be something, may be nothing, but in my position one can’t be choosy. You asked me for an alternative, and I’m marking your card with Raymond Tallis.’

  Yet ... wasn’t there still something left unsaid? Gently stared into the slightly mocking eyes. Reymerston was so relaxed, his touch so light; it was impossible to get from him more than he gave. And you wanted to believe him ...

  ‘Have you any more to tell me?’

  Slowly Reymerston shook his head. ‘I’ve done my best. Now it’s up to you to dig around, old lad.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I shall do that.’

  ‘One thing, though.’ His eyes became serious. ‘Go easy on Ruth. Pretend that she’s innocent, then you won’t be sorry later on. Ruth has been through it these last two days ... and I love her. Don’t treat her rough.’

  Gently only nodded; he rose. Reymerston came with them to the door. Eyke was still fuming as they walked to the car, but catching sight of Gently’s expression, stayed silent.

  THREE

  AND IN SILENCE they drove along Hare Lane to its junction with the sloping green, and so back to the village street and parking at The Gull, already well filled. Then Gently said:

  ‘I take it that we know Raymond Tallis’s movements for that afternoon?’

  Eyke flushed and stared fiercely at a family party just decanting from an Allegro: the man, colourfully dressed in beach gear, caught the look, winced and stared back indignantly. Eyke waited for him to lock up and shepherd his brood into The Gull. Not looking at Gently, he replied:

  ‘As a matter of fact, sir, we do.’

  ‘Well?’

  Eyke turned goadedly. ‘Look, sir! I don’t know what Reymerston said to you in private, but my bet is it was a lot of flannel that he knew I wouldn’t buy. Raymond Tallis has never come into it. There isn’t a blind reason to sus him. His wife took the Quennell girl shopping, that’s all the connection with it he’s got. I haven’t talked to him, because there was no reason to, and nothing I’ve heard since alters that.’

  ‘But you do know his movements.’

  ‘All right, sir, I do. But that was something by the way. I rang the yacht club secretary about Quennell and he happened to mention Tallis too. Tallis was due for line duty but excused himself at the last moment – a bit of property he’d had the chance to look over. That meant that Quennell should have taken over the duty.’

  ‘Another last-minute cancellation.’

  ‘I don’t see you can make a lot of that, sir.’

  ‘Where was the property?’

  ‘At Welbourne, six miles off.’

  ‘Which means that he too must have passed by where it happened.’

  ‘But so must everybody else, sir. There’s only the one road in and out.’

  ‘The list so far reads Tallis, Mrs Tallis and Quennell’s daughter, and Frank Quennell, with Reymerston chalked in.’

  Eyke glowered at a fresh set of lunchers, who this time luckily failed to notice. The Gull was filling up. At the other end of the parking, drinkers clustered at outside tables beneath gay sunshades. A double-gabled, white-plastered building, the hotel had a huge corroded anchor set in flowers beneath its sign.

  ‘Listen, sir. We’re getting off the track. All this is just Reymerston flying his kite. He wants to con us into forgetting that he hasn’t a leg to stand on.’

  Gently gestured. ‘Neither have we.’

  ‘You can’t get over that letter, sir.’

  Reluctantly Gently nodded. ‘But that’s the queerest thing in the whole business.’

  ‘I don’t see that, sir,’ Eyke said positively. ‘That’s the bit they can’t argue away. And the more they try the plainer it gets that she wrote it and palmed it off on Quennell. Who else could have done that? Or would have? It comes back to her every time. And I reckon she’s the one to put the pressure on. Reymerston’s a clever boy, but his girl friend’ll crack.’

  ‘Once,’ Gently shrugged, ‘we had the Major cracking.’

  ‘And perhaps we should have finished him, sir.’

  ‘You still think that?’

  Eyke said nothing but sat gazing at the flaking anchor.

  Could you believe Reymerston? For a moment there he had a whole new plausible angle going . . . you accepted his innocence, accepted his ideas and felt the case was opening out. But then, when you sat back and looked at it ... how else would a clever, guilty man respond?

  In sudden repulsion from the present business he found his mind flashing back to the empty flat, a grey image out of time that wafted its smell in his nostrils. Nothing to go back to ...! He grunted:

  ‘Well, at least let’s have some lunch.’

  While in Rouen, perhaps talking about him, Gabrielle and Andrée would be lunching too.

  Quennnell’s house, The Uplands, stood in a private road that opened off the street almost opposite Hare Lane. It was one of several pleasant houses standing well back among their trees and shrubs.

  You turned through an open wrought-iron gate into a drive of granite chippings and made a sweep through rhododendrons to come out before the attractive redbrick house. Probably built in the last century, it was roofed with blue pantile, and had a row of dormer windows and a sundial over its porch. Before it ranged a lawn and flowerbeds bright with dahlias and Michaelmas daisies, about which were fluttering Peacock and Red Admiral butterflies; then behind the house, past a large brick garage, you could see kitchen gardens; while overhead spread the crown of a big copper beech.

  ‘A few bobs’-worth here, sir ...’ Eyke murmured.

  Gazing, Gently felt a pang of resentment. Others could live in such homes as this while he, he was stuck with his flat and his villa at Finchley! He could imagine Gabrielle coming out of that porch, or loitering with the flowers on the perfect lawn ... but it had to stay a commuter’s dream. He knew it, and the pang went deep. He growled:

  ‘Whose is the Mini?’

  One was standing on the chippings by the porch. Quennell’s Rolls, no doubt, was safely cocooned behind the doors of the garage.

  ‘That’s Mrs Quennell’s car, sir. The son has a TR7.’

  ‘And the daughter just has a bike.’

  ‘Well ... yes, sir.’ Eyke sounded uneasy.

  Gently parked and they got out. Doors were open right through the house; from the porch one looked down a parquet-floored hall to a bright patch of colour, a lawn at the back. There a woman was seated on a bench and beside her, on the grass, Fiona Quennell. Fiona Quennell was sitting stiffly, gazing straight ahead, but at that distance her face was a blur. Gently rang, and chimes pealed in the house; in a moment Fiona Quennell had sprung to her feet. For an instant she stood poised, gazing towards them, then she took to her heels down the lawn. The woman, who had also risen, was calling:

  ‘Fiona, come back ... there’s nothing to be afraid of!’

  But Fiona didn’t come back, and finally the woman made a helpless gesture. She turned towards the house, where a second woman had already appeared from a doorway.

  ‘All right, Maudie. I’ll get it.’

  She came on steadily up the hall.

  ‘That tricky bitch!’ Eyke was muttering. ‘We’ve lost her again ... at the back, there’s a rear access.’

  ‘Andrew rang telling me to expect you, but I had hoped that my son would be here.’

  What one n
oticed first about Ruth Quennell was a timidity in her manner. Her eyes, grey-blue, met yours but then flickered away evasively: she spoke looking past you, as though catching sight of something distant.

  ‘If you would prefer to have someone present ...’

  They were entering a spacious lounge, a room panelled unexpectedly in limed oak, giving it a suave, soothing appearance. It was daintily furnished; a suite of a settee and six chairs covered in flowered cretonne; in the hearth stood a bowl of flowers, and above the hearth hung a framed photograph of a Dragon yacht.

  ‘No, thank you. There’s only Maudie, and she’ll be wanting to get away.’

  What you noticed next was the likeness to her daughter in the wide cheekbones, straight nose and shapely jaw. A woman in her mid-forties and not pretending to anything else; her soft hair was streaked with grey and she wore no hint of make-up. Yet she was attractive; it was difficult to place. A simple blouse and skirt merely suggested a good figure.

  ‘All this must be very upsetting for you.’

  ‘Please – I’ve done my share of crying! Now I just want to get it over. For Fiona’s sake more than my own.’

  ‘Your daughter is still disturbed.’

  ‘Very disturbed.’ Ruth Quennell’s mouth quivered. ‘This isn’t the first time she’s been upset. We’ve had trouble with her before.’

  She seated herself at one end of the settee and, after a pause, Gently took the other. The room was fragrant: it was partly the flowers, partly a sweetness from the oak panelling. Sun entered it through tall sash windows hung with curtains in a beige velour.

  ‘You realize how important it is to establish your movements on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘Yes, I realize.’

  ‘Also your husband’s movements and those of the rest of your household.’

  She nodded nervously. ‘I’ve been through it in my mind a hundred times at least. But I can think of nothing. On Saturday, everything went on as normal.’

  ‘May I mention the letter?’

  At once she was agitated, her hands creeping together on her lap. But she answered calmly:

  ‘I can only repeat that I have never written any such letter.’

  ‘Yet the handwriting was yours?’

  It was mine. But all the same I didn’t write it.’

  ‘Do you know anyone who can imitate your hand?’

  She shook her head, her hands working.

  ‘Andrew will have told you we never wrote letters. And never would I have written such a letter as that.’

  ‘Would you have an example of your daughter’s handwriting?’

  Her eyes jumped wide in sudden dread.

  ‘You can’t be suggesting ...?’

  ‘If I may, I would like a sight of her hand.’

  Ruth Quennell was trembling; but after a moment she rose and went to a bureau. There she shuffled through loose papers to return with some sheets of foolscap. In silence she handed them to him. They were sheets of an essay, probably homework. The style of the writing was vague, incoherent; quite unlike the firm hand of the letter.

  ‘Fiona would never do such a wicked thing.’

  ‘But your daughter would know of your acquaintance with Mr Reymerston.’

  Ruth Quennell’s face was hot. ‘She may have known of it, but she would never have dreamed of giving me away. You don’t understand.’

  ‘She was on your side.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could put it like that!’

  ‘But towards her father ...’

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me. Simply, there wasn’t any sympathy between them.’

  ‘She would know, of course, that you and he were estranged.’

  Ruth Quennell’s hands were twisting continually. ‘Most of her life she’s known about that, which is probably the reason she is how she is. It’s never been a secret. Since Fiona was born my husband had been unfaithful to me, first with one woman, then another, at last with that woman in his employ. It got to be the usual state of affairs. In a sort of way, it was a settled household.’

  ‘Yet your husband remained jealous.’

  ‘Because he treated me as property.’

  ‘Who he wouldn’t let go to another man.’

  ‘Oh ... please!’

  She was trembling pitiably, the last words coming as half a sob.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Quennell ...’

  ‘I know you have to ask me these things. But it’s not what you think. I couldn’t have left Fiona, and Andrew understood that.’

  ‘Divorce was out.’

  ‘Yes. Oh yes.’

  Across on a hard-bottomed chair, Eyke stirred.

  ‘Describe to me, if you will, the events that took place on Saturday.’

  He was feeling an urgent desire to smoke, and in fact had noticed evidence of a pipe-smoker’s having inhabited the room. On a stool by one of the chairs stood a large glass ashtray, while on the bars of the fire-grate nearest the chair, where you’d knock out a pipe, were a few black flakes. Quennell’s chair . . . ? Looking around, he spotted a pot-bellied jar standing on a shelf.

  ‘As I told you, everything was normal.’

  ‘For example, how did your husband spend the morning?’

  ‘Oh ... Frederick. For a time, after breakfast, he was in the study writing letters. After that he went down the garden – to pick apples, I believe. Then, just before lunch, he came in to wash and change his gear.’

  ‘At lunch he seemed quite as usual?’

  ‘I’m used to him being silent at table. We had little to say to each other, and I don’t remember any special remark.’

  ‘His attitude was normal.’

  ‘Yes . . . I think so.’ She coloured as she added: ‘To be truthful I was thinking of other matters, and wanting lunch over as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Your son I believe was absent.’

  ‘Frank left after breakfast.’

  ‘What was your daughter’s attitude at lunch?’

  ‘Fiona was always nervous in her father’s presence and Saturday was no exception.’

  ‘Did they speak to each other?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Fiona was only toying with her food. Then she excused herself because she had to get ready to go out with Julie Tallis.’

  Gently hesitated. ‘She is friendly with Mrs Tallis?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Ruth Quennell sounded mildly surprised. ‘Fiona especially. We used to live next door to them before Freddy bought The Uplands. I think perhaps Arthur Tallis was more like a father to her than Freddy was. It was when poor Arthur died that we had trouble with her before. Then there’s Paul, the son. Fiona and he grew up together. He’s a very nice boy, just starting his second year at UEA.’

  ‘Your families see a great deal of each other.’

  ‘Of course. We’ve always been close.’

  ‘There would be a common bond in sailing.’

  ‘Ray and Freddy often crewed for each other. Paul has crewed for Freddy too ... though not so often, lately. I’ve never taken to it, nor has Frank. And Fiona will never go near a yacht.’

  ‘Arthur Tallis’s death didn’t put them off?’

  ‘That was an accident in a thousand.’

  Clearly Reymerston hadn’t broached his ideas to her; her posture now was more relaxed. To her, the Tallises were an innocent subject, a relief from the trend of Gently’s questions. Yet, if there were anything in it, must she not have had at least a glancing suspicion?

  ‘Raymond Tallis appreciated your husband’s business ability.’

  She nodded indifferently. ‘The firm was Freddy’s life. Perhaps that’s what led to us drifting apart. Freddy didn’t really have time for a wife.’

  ‘So Raymond Tallis stepped down.’

  ‘Oh, Ray! Ray needed someone to replace his brother. Ray had always played second fiddle, and being leader of the band didn’t suit him at all.’

  ‘It was a natural adjustment?’

  ‘Really, Freddy took over from the time poor Ar
thur went.’

  Either she was a consummate actress or Reymerston’s red herring was exactly that.

  ‘Coming back to the Saturday morning. Did your husband have any visitors?’

  At once she tensed again, the greyish eyes slipping past him.

  ‘Not visitors. There was Jackson, the gardener, who was here until twelve. And Maudie comes in Saturday mornings, but Freddy didn’t speak to her.’

  Gently glanced at Eyke: Eyke shrugged.

  ‘We had a word with Jackson, sir. Says Mr Quennell was with him down the garden till he left. That was after twelve, sir. Mr Quennell kept him late, making a clamp.’

  ‘Who else visited the house that morning?’

  ‘Just the tradesmen,’ Ruth Quennell said. ‘I paid the milkman and the butcher myself. The postman came before we were up.’

  ‘Your husband had mail?’

  ‘Two bills.’

  ‘Would you have known if he had a visitor?’

  Her hands were working. ‘I was helping Maudie, first in the bedrooms, then in the kitchen. I think I would have known.’

  ‘Where was your daughter?’

  ‘Fiona was in her bedroom doing school-work. Then she came down here, I think ... now I remember! She was talking to Paul.’

  ‘Paul Tallis?’

  ‘Yes, Paul. He was going to the football at Ipswich. He invited Fiona to go with him, but she was already fixed up with Julie.’

  ‘Paul Tallis was here?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. I tend to look on him as one of the family. He was here for about half an hour. But that was when Freddy was in the garden.’

  ‘Just talking to your daughter.’

  Ruth Quennell nodded. ‘They are more like brother and sister, you know.’

  Gently stared at Quennell’s chair. Just the faintest strand of a connection? Or – was it? But for Reymerston he would have dismissed it out of hand ...

  ‘So that was the morning up to lunch. Your daughter has left the table. Was the domestic present?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then we’ll take it from there. And I would like times.’

  Her mouth was quivering again and she was keeping her eyes on the carpet. Guilty or innocent, it must be an ordeal to have to live through those moments again. Gently had deliberately indicated the scene when, for the last time, she’d been alone with her husband: hated perhaps, but the father of her children, the companion of years, and once a lover. Across the table with the empty dishes all that had ended ... how?