by Alan Hunter
‘And then my cousin and her husband came to live in Chelsea. Previously I had seen very little of her, since her home had been in Northamptonshire.’
Janice, like himself, was now an orphan. Her father, the late lord’s youngest cousin, had been killed in an air accident in the Thirties, leaving not much behind him, and Janice had passed from Girton to a library appointment in Edinburgh. There she had met her future husband, Desmond Page. Their courtship had been interrupted by the death of Janice’s mother, but Desmond, in the interim, had passed his final exams, and now he had an appointment in a London hospital under the eye of a distinguished surgeon. He was thought by many people to have a great career in front of him.
Two years later he died, a victim of a post-mortem infection.
‘Mrs Page was cut up?’ suggested Gently, as Somerhayes’s voice faltered to a stop.
The nobleman nodded silently. His face in the firelight looked drawn and puckered.
‘A very expressive phrase, Mr Gently… yes, she was terribly cut up. She had nobody in the world to turn to. It was a godsend that I was there to help her through it.’
‘She stayed in London, did she?’
‘Yes, she stayed in London. She continued to live in their Chelsea flat in a state of — how shall I put it? — suspended animation. It was as though for a time she couldn’t believe it had happened. She tried to continue her existence as though Desmond had just gone away, perhaps, and one day she would hear his car pull up again in the mews down below. Grief is a terrible thing, Mr Gently.’
But the months had passed, and Janice began to emerge from the shadow that had fallen across her path. In the meantime Somerhayes’s political life had gone from bad to worse. He could not forget his early brush with Jepson. So much of what the young Marxist had flung at him seemed to be illustrated by the workings of the machine of which he was a part. He witnessed the persistent operation of self and class interests. He saw how truth could be muzzled, facts distorted, justice mocked in the name of expediency. And he made a bad name for himself by some very peculiar speeches. He was distrusted by both sides equally, and rated as being ‘unsound’. The crisis came when the Silverman bill for the abolition of capital punishment was presented to the Lords. As a life-long abolitionist he had seen in this a charter for a new and better phase of civilization. He could not believe it would be rejected. There were no class interests at stake, it touched nobody’s pocket. The question was entirely a humanitarian issue, to be decided on humanitarian grounds. And yet, it was rejected. More, it was rejected in a way that made Somerhayes feel it impossible for him to remain longer a member of that betraying convocation.
‘One learns to forgive selfishness in politics, and dishonesty, and passion; but inhumanity one cannot forgive, or forget, or silently condone.’
He had made a bitter speech and left the House determined, he had said, never to set foot in it again while men were made of stone. The heart of politics was corruption, and he must turn his back on them. He knew what he would do. If he was not permitted to serve humanity as a law-giver, he would serve it by way of art. Himself a dying branch on a dead tree, he could yet provide the means for a genuine creator to express his vision. And so he had made his proposition to Brass, and Brass, having looked all round it to make sure that his independence wasn’t threatened, had consented. Janice had also been approached and had agreed to join in the venture. The looms and equipment were purchased, six weavers assembled, and now, eighteen months later, Merely Tapestry was a name beginning to be conjured with by interior decorators.
Gently sat in silence as Somerhayes, by the change in rhythm natural to an orator, indicated that he had come to the end of his long relation. What was it this man had been trying to tell him? What was the implied relevance of this excursion into autobiography? There had been no further mention of Earle, none at all. Presumably, from his knowledge of subsequent events, Gently should now be in a position to elucidate the significance of what he had been told…
‘A winter’s tale, eh, Mr Gently?’ Somerhayes was regarding him with his strange, sad little smile.
‘An assembly of factors.’ Gently heaved his bulky shoulders.
‘You begin to see my point?’
‘Perhaps… I begin to see something.’
‘As things have turned out, how can one believe that your presence here was simply an accident?’
Gently grunted, and felt around for a match. ‘Mind if I put a question?’
Somerhayes nodded slowly.
‘In this assembly of factors… would Mrs Page be an important one?’
Somerhayes continued to nod.
‘In fact, you’re in love with her?’
‘Yes… I have been for a very long time.’
‘And she with you?’
‘No. I do not think so. Naturally I have never mentioned it to her, and she was greatly in love with her husband.’
‘Then you don’t think’ — Gently struck a match fiercely — ‘that she was interested in Earle?’
A flicker passed over the crimson-lit face. ‘Of that I could not be certain…’
‘You saw what I saw — more, probably.’
‘I saw she was amused by him.’
‘More than amused.’
‘It might have appeared…’ Somerhayes broke off, raising his hand. From the far distance of the night had come a sound of singing, accompanied by what sounded like a bassoon, a trombone and a trumpet. Clearly it came to them in the book-lined room, the words if not distinct, distinguishable by virtue of their familiarity.
‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night
All seated on… the ground…’
Somerhayes rose from his chair. ‘You must excuse me, Mr Gently. Those are the carol-singers from the village. They pay a visit to the Place every Christmas… I must go and put in an appearance.’
Gently shrugged and blew out his match. Somerhayes left the room, not by the main door but by a smaller one concealed to look like an open-fronted bookcase. Outside, the carol-singers continued with their second verse:
‘“Fear not,” said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troub-led minds…’
Gently sat up suddenly. A sound other than that of singing had struck his ear. Softly, furtively, the latch of the main door had been released… the door he clearly remembered Somerhayes closing when they had entered. He was across the room in a moment. Outside the hall was empty, but at the far end of it another door was just closing. He rushed to it and threw it open. It gave an icy blackness. He fumbled along the wall for a switch, but there was no switch to find, and hearing a door open further on, he gave up the attempt and made for the sound. He was in the state apartments… obviously. Heavy, carved furniture under dust-sheets met his groping hands and sent him stumbling. It seemed an age before he got to the end of the room. The door was ajar, and once again he felt for a light switch that wasn’t there. He stood quite still, listening. From very far away he could still hear the carol-singers and their brass accompaniment. Otherwise there wasn’t a sound. He was alone in the dark with his breathing. Or was the breathing all his…? Was there another pair of lungs just a few feet away?
He may have heard something or it may have been pure instinct that sent him leaping and sprawling and tumbling away from the spot where he had been standing. At almost the same moment there was a violent crashing sound, and something ponderous and irresistible went trundling along the parquet floor. He fought desperately with the tangle of objects into which he had fallen. Footsteps sounded, running towards the lighted hall. Scrambling up on his feet, he chased after them towards the distant slit of light, but when he arrived there the hall was conspicuously and bafflingly tenantless.
A moment more, and Somerhayes came hastening round the corner of the corridor, alarm on his face.
‘Good heavens, Mr Gently, what on earth was that appalling noise?’ he exclaimed.
‘I don’t exactly know.’ Gently threw a keen
glance at him. ‘Perhaps if you can get some lights on down there, we’ll be able to find out.’
Somerhayes darted to a switchboard concealed behind a sliding panel, and immediately lights blazed in the great state room beyond the door. Gently led the way through it to the chamber where the disturbance had taken place. It was a long, comparatively narrow gallery lined with antique busts on pedestals. And the cause of the crash was not far to seek. An enormous marble bust, about three times life-size, lay gazing eyelessly at the ceiling from its resting place on the floor. Lying prone by the wall, its finial almost flush with the side of the doorway, was the ten-foot alabaster pedestal on which the bust had lately resided.
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, going down on one knee by the bust. ‘It’s the Merely Euripides — no wonder there was a din!’
‘It’s not damaged, I trust?’ observed Gently ironically.
‘No, it’s not damaged — in any case it’s only a late Italian copy.’
He got to his feet and came back to the doorway. In the parquet floor was a welted bruise that had been made by a cannon-ball.
‘But think — if anyone had been standing there. They would have been killed in an instant.’
Gently nodded his mandarin nod. ‘They would, wouldn’t they?’ he replied, poker-faced.
Through the state room came running Mrs Page with Brass and one of the weavers. Somewhere out on the terrace the carol-singers were giving the final chorus of their hymn.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ Odd thing, that blasted bust falling over like that,’ brooded Sir Daynes as he presided over the Manor House breakfast-table the next morning. ‘Can’t see it has any connection with our job, though, eh, Gently?’
‘Mmp?’ Gently was busy with his liver and kidneys.
‘Just damned odd — I mean, it might have killed someone. Pity there weren’t a few confounded busts on the stairs, eh?’
It was a happy thought, and Sir Daynes pursued it. A well-toppled bust on the landing in the great hall would have satisfied the best of policemen. Busts did topple — they had had a bona fide example of it — and what would have been more likely than for the half-cut American to have embraced a pedestal on his trip across the landing, and gone to his doom, manifestly by his own hand? But alas, it was one thing with busts and quite another with truncheons. One did not embrace a truncheon, or having embraced, collect a fractured skull; neither, unfortunately, did truncheons wipe and hang themselves back on the wall after such encounters. Sir Daynes shelved the question of busts with a frown and came back to more practical matters.
‘What did Henry talk about? Feller seems to have a crush on you.’
Gently shrugged as he unrinded a gammon rasher. ‘Talked about himself… not about the murder.’
‘Poor Henry,’ said Lady Broke. ‘He ought to talk to someone. He’s always bottled it up too much, I’m sure that’s half his trouble. What did he tell you, Inspector? Is there any chance of his marrying Janice?’
‘Hrmp! Hrmp!’ interrupted Sir Daynes hurriedly. ‘Shouldn’t say things like that just now, m’dear — position a little delicate, y’know — sub judice and that sort of thing.’
‘Sub judice?’ echoed Lady Broke. ‘What in the world do you mean, Daynes? Surely you don’t suppose that poor Henry is involved in this dreadful affair, do you?’
‘Of course not, m’dear, of course not!’ Sir Daynes turned a shade pink in his embarrassment. ‘But just at the moment, m’dear — best to be cautious. Never know how far a careless word may go, and that.’
Lady Broke considered this while she sugared her coffee. ‘Daynes,’ she said, ‘you do think Henry may be involved!’
Her husband grumbled and snorted and twice emitted a ‘preposterous!’
‘You do,’ repeated Lady Broke. ‘I know by the way you’re behaving, Daynes. And really, I’ve never heard of anything quite so ridiculous. Why, we’ve known Henry since he was a little boy in a sailor suit. I practically mothered him, Daynes — Tony and he used to go birds-nesting together.’
‘I’ve already said, m’dear!’
‘Yes, I know what you’ve said. And I know what goes on in that silly policeman’s mind of yours. But you listen to me, Daynes. I’m not often wrong in these matters. Henry is the last person in the world to offer violence to anybody — he’s been anti-blood-sport for years, and an abolitionist nearly as long. Doesn’t character go for anything in these foolish enquiries of yours?’
Sir Daynes rumbled helplessly and made a despairing gesture to Gently. ‘There’s the feller who fancies Henry — I tell you, I’m trying to keep the man out of it!’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Broke firmly. ‘You don’t think hardly of Henry, do you, Inspector?’
Gently reached for his coffee and made unintelligible noises…
‘Didn’t get very much from those weaver people,’ muttered Sir Daynes as the Bentley again turned its bonnet towards the Place. ‘Dyson put them through it, but it was the same damn thing over and over. Got the impression they’d talked it over y’know — always tell, with that sort of thing.’
‘Anything fresh on Johnson?’ Gently ventured.
‘Not sure I’d tell you if we had, damn your impertinence. But we haven’t, and that’s the truth. Only got the feller’s own statement. I thought that young feller, Wheeler, was going to let something slip, but dash me if he didn’t close up like a clam when we came to Johnson. Still got the servants to run through, but I don’t expect much there.’
Things, however, had brightened up during Sir Daynes’s absence. The conscientious Dyson, a great believer in repetition, had had a further session with the weavers, as a result of which young Wheeler had unclammed a few degrees. The strong man of the Northshire Constabulary’s CID met his chief with a manner of something like excitement.
‘I think I’ve got hold of something important, sir, something that will strengthen our case quite a bit.’
‘Hah?’ exclaimed Sir Daynes eagerly. ‘What’s that, Dyson, what’s that?’
‘It’s young Wheeler, sir. He’s admitted some information about Johnson.’
‘Johnson!’ cried Sir Daynes. ‘Well — go on, man — come to the point!’
‘It seems, sir, that Johnson has had a bit of a crush on Mrs Page since he’s been here. He’s never come out in the open with it, but these weaver people have noticed it, and if you ask me, sir, they were in a bit of a collusion to keep it from us.’
‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sir Daynes again. ‘Knew it, Dyson, knew it. So that’s what they were holding back on. Go on — what did Wheeler say?’
‘Well, sir, Wheeler isn’t what you’d call an observant type, and according to what he says he’d never added up the score until he heard one or two of them talking about it last night. Then he started remembering various little points about Johnson’s behaviour when Mrs Page was around, and decided there was something in it. This morning, when I had another go at him, he let it out.’
‘Fine, Dyson, fine.’ Sir Daynes hugged himself with delight and took several paces up and down the great hall, where Dyson had intercepted him. ‘But we’ve got to get the others to admit it too, Dyson — this feller is just the thin edge. Won’t do just to have a witness who remembers because he was given a nudge — want simple, direct testimony on an important point like that. Have you been at the others?’
‘Not since I’ve spoken to Wheeler, sir.’
‘Hammer away at them, man, hammer away. We’ll get what we want now one of them’s loosened up. By Jove, this is a turn up! Jealousy on top of the rest! No doubt, Dyson, that Earle was making a play for Mrs Page — hrmp! — in spite of the fact that Janice wouldn’t have looked at him.’
‘So I understood, sir.’
‘You understood rightly, Dyson. Get your men in the blue drawing room, and start having these people brought in.’
‘I have, sir. Everything is ready.’
‘Smart feller, Dyson.’ Sir Daynes clapped him on the back. ‘Oh
, and just one other thing. You’ve seen those fellers in the drive?’
‘You mean the reporters, sir?’
‘I do, Dyson — sitting there in their blasted cars, like a lot of pike watching for a minnow. Well, I won’t have them in — make that quite clear to them. There’ll be a handout later on, and I hope they get confounded frostbite.’
A constable was dispatched to deliver this high decree — which was, in fact, a repetition of a lower-level directive already imposed — and Sir Daynes, after stamping around in the hall for a few minutes in case Somerhayes should appear to greet him, turned to set off for the north-east wing. His intention was interrupted, however, by a sudden screaming of brakes and a rattle of gravel from out on the terrace. A car door was slammed with impetuous vigour; heavy steps pounded over the gravel and up to the door. No bell was rung, no knocker was rapped; the sacred front door of Merely Place, for the first time in its two centuries, was ravished by the application of an irresistible shoulder.
‘Where,’ enquired a voice of thunder, ‘where is the goddam boss of this crazy, tinpot, two-bit outfit?’
Sir Daynes drew himself up to his full six feet. He squared his shoulders, set his lips and thrust out his jaw. And he went to do battle with this untimely eruption of the United States Air Force.
‘I’m Colonel Dwight P. Rynacker, USAF, commanding officer of Z Wing at Sculton Airfield — and I’m telling all and several that I’ve got some questions that need short, sharp answers!’
He was a heavily built man of fifty or so with a melancholy, jowled face but tigerish, slate-grey eyes. He stood about five feet ten, and in spite of the cold, wore no greatcoat over his brass-decorated two-tone uniform.