by Alan Hunter
‘Hasn’t she said it?’
‘Is that a mark against me? Naturally, I haven’t asked her yet. But unless you clap me in jail I shall ask her – once this business has been cleared up. So here’s to detection.’ He drank. ‘Dare I ask how it’s coming along?’
Perhaps only Reymerston, in such circumstances, would have asked that question outright. Gently drank too.
‘I’ve just rung my wife.’
‘No problems at home?’ Reymerston asked.
‘No problems. But she’s in France, so I had to make the call from the desk.’
‘Scarcely entre nous,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘But you’re welcome to use my phone if you like. Will she often be in France?’
‘She has a business there.’
Reymerston nodded and drank.
Yet wasn’t it preposterous to be chatting like this with a man who remained the principal suspect? As though somehow his guilt or innocence belonged to a different order of things? Gently hunched over his glass. Beside them last orders were being called. If he could have made that call again, alone, in a silence far removed ...
‘Is the moon up, old lad?’
‘The moon ...?’
‘We could take a stroll along the beach.’
Gently stared at him ‘Why do that?’
Reymerston smiled back. ‘Just a thought. You seem in need of someone to talk to.’
The devil take him! Yet it was true: he felt a need to wind down with someone. And Reymerston ... why not? If he kept his wits about him ...
‘All right.’
They drank up together and set down glasses side by side.
‘The truth is,’ Reymerston said, ‘I’m in much the same boat. I couldn’t get my woman alone, either.’
The moon was up: bright and clear it shone on house-front and gable, lighting the way to a low lane that led by a flood wall to the sand dunes. They pushed by tamarisk and bramble and passed a line of silent beach huts; then below spread the beach and the shimmering flakes of combers.
All was plain in the cold light: northward, the jet-like piles of the jetty; southward, the outward sweep of the bay, stretching afar, with a shadow of cliffs. Rashes of shingle divided the beach between the soft sand and the firm; wash spread over the latter, leaving dark stains of seaweed.
The air was cool but not chill; the rustle of surf made a continuous rumble.
‘Almost unpaintable,’ Reymerston said, as they reached the firm going and set off along the tideline. ‘Heaven knows I’ve tried, and Crome before me, but all we’ve done is make pictures. Perhaps you can’t paint moonlight, or not on the sea. There doesn’t seem the right sort of paint on the palette.’
‘Perhaps you should leave it to the likes of Debussy.’
‘Debussy saw it through cellophane,’ Reymerston said. ‘He was making pictures too. But then you walk down here, smell the seaweed, and despair. Art has limits. All you can do is pick your spot and try to reach it.’
‘This afternoon I spoke to one of your patrons.’
‘Sarah Jonson,’ Reymerston said. ‘She rang me.’ He strode on silently for a space. ‘What did you think of her house?’
‘I’d like to buy it. But I daren’t.’
‘You’d be an idiot not to if it suits. Heatherings is special. You could search the county and never find another like it.’ He paused again. ‘It would suit you better than Tallis.’
‘Sarah Jonson talks too much,’ Gently said.
‘Not too much,’ Reymerston said. ‘Just a mention of why you were there. I may have led her on. And Tallis was late.’
‘People sometimes are late,’ Gently said.
‘Touché,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘But I was waiting to emerge from Hare Lane when he passed up the street. At around one forty-five.’
Gently didn’t reply. They kept walking over the flat, crunchy sand, the moon’s path on their left dredging flashes from the sea. Very far out a tiny mist of light marked a position on the horizon: a vessel, hull-down. Like the moon, she went with them.
‘This evening, I talked to Paul Tallis.’
Reymerston let a few strides go by. Then he said: ‘Paul’s a likeable youngster. And, of course, he’s thick with Fiona Quennell.’
‘I found him puzzling.’
‘Puzzling ...?’
‘I couldn’t make up my mind about him. Whether he was naïve or rather clever. At times he seemed both.’
‘Probably naïve,’ Reymerston said. ‘But I think I know what you mean. Paul has had to face up to a few things and sometimes he strikes you as a bit withdrawn. A pity, because he has a nice nature. Ruth is very fond of Paul.’
‘At home, he lives in the Tallis cottage.’
‘Yes.’ Reymerston let it lie.
‘Apparently, out of deference to the newly-married couple.’
Again Reymerston took strides before replying.
‘You want to know if you can trust him, don’t you?’
‘What are his relations with his stepfather?’
Reymerston shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen them together, but according to Ruth, pretty rugged. He only visits the house in his stepfather’s absence and otherwise cuts him when they meet. That’s hearsay, agreed. But perhaps you shouldn’t trust any allegations he makes against his stepfather.’
‘Or the reverse?’
‘The reverse ...?’
‘When he sets out to defend his stepfather?’
Reymerston shook his head. ‘If that’s the case, I can well imagine you being puzzled! May I know from what?’
He stared closely at Gently, his face gaunt under the moon. Gently said nothing. Walking on the inshore side, he had his face in shadow.
‘Are you thinking Paul is tied up in this?’
‘Perhaps Paul. Perhaps Fiona Quennell.’
‘Not Fiona,’ Reymerston said definitely. ‘Paul if you like, but not Fiona. That’s too outré. Fiona wouldn’t. But if it comes to that, why would Paul?’
‘Did Fiona know about you and her mother?’
‘Not till now, as far as I know.’
‘She is apparently unstable.’
Reymerston kept staring, feet crunching ahead through small shingle. At last he turned away.
‘No. You’re backing the wrong horse, old lad.’
‘She loves her mother ...’
Reymerston’s reply was a simple toss of the head.
They had come half a mile or more, with the darkness of cliffs drawing sensibly closer. The soft rumble of surf, by repetition, had reduced itself to an unregarded accompaniment. The sound was isolating: they walked contained in it, along the moon-drawn line between sea and shore. Breaking foam seemed more solid in the moonlight, a hesitating sculpture in silver-white.
Reymerston said: ‘Do you know this coast?’
‘I’ve had other cases this way,’ Gently said.
‘Will your wife like it?’
‘She comes from Normandy.’
‘Ah,’ Reymerston said. ‘Then she’ll like it.’
‘Do you know Normandy?’
‘I’m a painter.’
‘She comes from Rouen.’
‘I know Rouen. What’s her name?’
‘Gabrielle.’
‘Gabrielle,’ Reymerston repeated.
Before them stretched an encroachment of the sea that would have called for a detour.
‘This will do, I think,’ Reymerston said. ‘Let’s sit a moment in the sandhills.’
They crossed shingle and soft sand of the beach and climbed the low dunes. Behind them lay salt marsh with a heavy dark of distant trees. From up there the moon’s path reached longer and the broken line of surf extended south to an infinity. A light breeze blew on the tops, warm, and sufficient to stir the marrams.
They found a bank of sand and sat. Reymerston picked up a fat pebble to toy with. Then he pitched it at the beach, where it landed on shingle with a ringing sound.
‘Have you talked to Tallis, old lad?’
> Gently gazed at the sea and said nothing.
‘What did you make of him?’ Reymerston asked.
Gently went on watching the sea.
Reymerston laughed. ‘You won’t tell me, so let me put the case to you. You’re stuck between us, him and me. Because we’ve both got the same things going for us. Isn’t that true?’
Still Gently said nothing.
‘My side we know about,’ Reymerston said. ‘So let’s talk about Tallis. I know, and probably you know, that he left home with plenty of time in hand. Yet he was nearly an hour late at Heatherings, leaving a gap which you’d want him to explain. And he did explain it, only my guess is that his explanation explained nothing.’ He glanced at Gently. ‘Any comment?’
Gently jammed an empty pipe in his mouth.
‘Taken as read, then,’ Reymerston smiled. ‘Like me, Tallis doesn’t have an alibi. Now we come to motive, and I would be surprised if you hadn’t faced him with that. He has it in handfuls. He was over a barrel after what happened on Spindrift. Exactly how far over a barrel only he knows, but it was evidently enough. So how would he play it? By protesting his unfailingly cordial relations with Freddy Quennell, and by representing his promotion as an astute piece of business. And you, of course, stony-faced, took it all for what it was worth: not very much. And so, like me, Raymond Tallis has a fat motive.’
Gently sucked air through his pipe, but didn’t otherwise interrupt his meditation. Reymerston felt for another pebble; he juggled it between his hands.
‘Next, the letter. Allow it is the forgery which I, of course, know it to be. How did it get to Freddy Quennell? Well, you’ve been talking to friend Paul. Paul was at The Uplands on Saturday morning, Ruth remembered that; and now you’re interested to know the precise relations between Paul and his stepfather. Not much doubt about what you’re thinking: that Paul worked the letter off on Quennell – with or without Fiona’s connivance, though innocently, we agree. Now he’s standing by his stepfather, while poor Fiona is in shock; but that’s how Freddy Quennell got the letter that sent him on his merry way.’ Reymerston grinned ruefully. ‘Or, alternatively, the letter originated with Ruth and me.’ Unmoved, Gently sucked his pipe. Reymerston tossed the pebble and caught it.
‘No proof – that’s your real problem. Nothing solid either on Tallis or me. You have to believe it of one or other of us, but there are difficulties either way. Tallis gives explanations you can’t check while I simply stick with a plea of innocence. But the letter got left on the body, and I have a track record for disposing of evidence.’ He tossed the pebble. ‘And now, old lad, you sit here letting me talk my head off, hoping no doubt I shall drop a clanger that will put my guileless shoulder into your clutches.’
He threw the pebble; this time it landed with a thump in soft sand; then he, too, pulled out a pipe and stuck it empty in his mouth. Now two faint smudges of light were moving imperceptibly at the sea’s rim, while, from the direction of town, one could catch the red stare of the Wolmering Light.
‘What tobacco do you smoke ...?’
‘Here.’
Reymerston tossed him his pouch. It contained a Scotch mixture, cut broad and with a fair proportion of latakia. They filled and lit; Reymerston lay back against the marrams. Below them, the moonlit surf had a frolic appearance, almost animal.
‘You know ... I’m getting weary of tragedy.’ The red blinks from the light were catching Reymerston’s face. ‘One way or another, it seems to have followed me all my life.’
‘You mean what happened over there,’ Gently said.
‘No, before that. A couple of years earlier it was my wife.’ His mouth twitched. ‘She had a lover who she used to visit when I was absent on business. I knew, and I didn’t care. She thought she had pulled the wool over my eyes. Every time I arrived home she took care to be there before me. Then one night she was late and probably driving like a lunatic. She overtook a line of cars and got squeezed between the last of them and a truck.’
Loosing smoke, Gently said: ‘Yet you made it pay off.’
Reymerston stared, then shook his head. In an ironic sort of way, I suppose you could call me a lucky man! Linda died, and it gave me perfect cover for my resignation and disappearance. They saw me as a broken man. But my plans had been made long before.’
‘To you, her death was no tragedy.’
‘All such deaths are a tragedy,’ Reymerston insisted. ‘I didn’t hate Linda, I wished her well. For ten years her life was mingled with mine. Her dying was atrocious. My grief wasn’t acted. Simply, she wasn’t the right woman for me.’
‘And since then you have lived alone.’
He nodded. ‘For that reason, partly. But partly because alone was what I needed to be. I had to come to terms with myself, and anyone else would have got in the way.’ He sighed suddenly. ‘But partly that. In the long run, it’s people who count. Like it or not, you belong to them and bleed when they’re torn away.’
He brooded for a time over his pipe.
‘Then that Selly woman found me. A pitiful, futile creature who came homing in like an act of doom. Yet – why to me? If she had wanted to end it, she had only to walk down the beach.’
‘Your luck again,’ Gently said.
‘My luck.’ He took a number of quick puffs. ‘You know, all I can feel about her is a sort of bewildered anger.’
‘Against her?’
‘Not against her. Probably more against myself. That I was overcome and did what I did, I swear without consciously sinister intent. If I had known that night what I’ve learned since I would have given the poor wench some money. I wept when I left her out there. The futility of it stunned me.’
‘Yet you disposed of the evidence.’
‘Why not. I felt more sinned against than sinning.’
‘Have you told Mrs Quennell?’
Reymerston sank his head. ‘Not yet. But I shall have to.’
He sucked defiantly on his pipe. Gently continued to smoke placidly. Only a few of the bright stars were visible behind the brilliance of the moon. The breeze shaking the marrams made a papery sound, oddly suggesting the noise of insects; it brought with it the warm, musky smell of sere vegetation.
‘Marion couldn’t take it. You remember Marion?’
‘Marion ...’
She had been the headmistress of Huntingfield School. And suddenly, surprisedly, Gently did remember her: then realized why he had suppressed the memory. She’d resembled Gabrielle. A little older, but a similar cast of feature and sturdy figure, the same firmness of speech and manner. She and Reymerston had had a liaison.
‘You confessed to her?’
‘I felt I had to. She was so cut up about the Rede girl. I was to blame. I should have owned up earlier. Marion could never forgive me for that.’
‘You didn’t know the Rede girl would behave so foolishly.’
‘But if I’d gone to you earlier she’d have been under no pressure. Yet if I had done, would you have believed me?’
Gently puffed. Most probably he wouldn’t!
‘She had met Vivienne.’
‘I know.’
Marion Swefling had taken prompt action. After learning of sex orgies involving three pupils, she had gone to have it out with Vivienne Selly. And that had been the last blow, for Vivienne. She had made a pitiful attempt to seduce Marion Swefling. Then she had reached the end, broken, isolated: it could have been the sea, but she chose Reymerston.
‘Marion handled her better than I did.’
‘Miss Swefling was responsible for what happened after.’
‘Marion was ...?’
Gently nodded to the stars. Yes, looking back, that must have been the critical moment. Shocked and disgusted by Vivienne’s behaviour, Marion Swefling had hastened from the cottage. She had been too insensitive: hadn’t realized the bitter need of the other woman. She represented the pride, the standing of the successful world to which Vivienne had appealed for so long, and so hopelessly. Contemptuously,
she had rejected Vivienne Selly. And Vivienne could take no more.
‘Vivienne tried to make love to her.’
‘She told me.’
‘How would you expect her to react to that?’
‘In her profession, Marion Swefling had experience in handling emotional females.’
‘You didn’t know Vivienne.’
‘Because I got to know her I had to believe what you told me. But Marion Swefling was guilty too. If it’s any consolation, she was your accomplice.’
Reymerston was silent.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She took another post, up in Yorkshire. But we’d broken up long before that. It was about then that I crossed the river.’
He rose, stretched and knocked out his pipe. Now the moon was dulling over with some wisps of wrack. For a moment Reymerston stared again at the winking town lights, then dropped his eyes to the still-seated Gently.
‘Have you settled about me yet?’
Gently looked up at him. ‘Along with me, you have to convince Eyke.’
If Ruth is innocent, wouldn’t I be?’
‘Mrs Quennell doesn’t know what we know.’
‘That once I killed ...’
He stood silent for a time, a downcast figure against the sea. At last he shrugged, rather pettishly.
‘Come on ... I’m for bed!’
So they walked back over the tops, going single file through the sandy gaps. At The Gull they parted; in the park before it, Gently’s Princess was the only car.
EIGHT
NEVERTHELESS IT WAS a long time before he got to sleep that night. His bed was too soft, and the moaning of the surf, though distant, kept him wakeful. At Lime Walk it had been the traffic, which at Finchley he’d long ceased to notice; not because the sound had been louder at Lime Walk, but simply because it was different. Here there were no sounds at all except that vigilant, monotonous scouring. And somehow it sounded threatening, as though it were merely biding its time.
He slept at last, to wake with a throbbing head and foul mouth. But now the sun was out of the sea and the latter scaled with flashing light. He peered at it heavy-eyed for a while before collecting his toilet bag and shuffling off to the bathroom. He’d only had a couple of pints ... had they come from the lees of the barrel?