Gently Down the Stream

by Alan Hunter

  ‘I admit … it rather puzzled me.’

  ‘Ah! It rather puzzled you! Well, it isn’t going to puzzle me, Gently. There’s been too much puzzling in this case already. Now we’re going to have some action – a lot of action! Hansom, get back in that car. We’ll leave the chief inspector to do his puzzling while we tackle this thing like common, everyday policemen!’

  There was a relaxed murmur amongst the river-dwellers as the super’s Humber departed, as though the great man’s presence had burdened their independent spirits. Gently, of course, was another matter … apart from being a resident he had a chameleon-like quality of blending with his environment. They crowded round him as though he were their personal representative with the latest news.

  ‘What are they goin’ to do, mister?’

  ‘Why did Joe Hicks do for our Annie …?’

  ‘They aren’t goin’ to make trouble, are th’?’

  ‘Yew don’t think that wa’nt none of us!’

  Gently gazed at the nondescript group with a humorous wonderment.

  ‘You – lot – of – baboons!’ he exclaimed at last. ‘Don’t you realize you’ve brought this on yourselves? If you could have told me last night who spread that rumour about Hicks, Annie Packer would be with us now – and Dutt and myself the only coppers for miles! Why do you have to be so infernally dumb?’

  They shuffled a bit and looked rather abashed. Ted Thatcher eased back his greasy cap and scratched beneath it.

  ‘Now hold yew a minute, bor!’

  ‘Yew can’t remember evra mortal thing!’

  ‘An we reckon we know now ennaway …’

  ‘What was that?’

  Gently turned to the last speaker, who chanced to be the slattern. She met his eye defensively.

  ‘Well … don’t it seem obvious? We’re been talkin’ it over b’tween us.’

  ‘Tha’s right,’ put in Thatcher, ‘I know she told me.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘W’poor ole Anna.’

  Intelligence dawned in Gently’s eyes.

  ‘Let’s get this straight! Is this something you’ll swear in the witness-box, or is it something you’ve dreamed up because Annie doesn’t live here any more …?’

  They murmured indefinitely. Thatcher was the only one who stood his ground. Annie had told him and he had questioned the slattern’s son about it … whereupon the slattern thought she might’ve heard it from the kids after all.

  Gently sighed and shook his head.

  ‘But there weren’t any strangers around yesterday afternoon – people who don’t usually come here …?’

  He went over to Annie’s wherry. Four frightened little faces stared up at him out of the hatch.

  ‘Who’s looking after the kids?’

  The slattern, it appeared, was seeing they were fed and was keeping an eye on them.

  Inside the low, wide cabin it was close and redolent with boat-smell, paraffin, blankets and a subtle tincture of Deep River. On one of the berths lay the slim form of Pedro the Fisherman. His pale face was half-turned into a cushion and there were silent tears running down it. Gently touched him on the shoulder. He moaned and sat up dazedly.

  ‘You – you slept here last night?’

  The Italian’s haunted eyes looked vacant, but he nodded as though he understood.

  ‘With Mrs Packer – with Annie?’

  Now he shook his head. ‘In da … da forra-peak.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Tears welled up again as Pedro tried to find words.

  ‘We finish da music … go to bed. Sometime I don’t sleep … hear her get up, go ’way. I hear. Da sound … lika da bird, pzzzzzt! Nodding else … nodding at all … I go to sleep.’

  ‘When was this, Pedro?’

  ‘When … I dunno. One hour, two hour.’

  ‘But there must have been a splash! Didn’t you hear that?’

  Pedro shook his head stupidly, then his face twisted and collapsed, and he sank back sobbing on the bunk.

  Gently took a quick look round the cabin and went back on deck.

  ‘Who was it found her?’

  He was a sad-looking man answering to the name of Dido Plum. He had just been setting out in his dinghy for the village. As he was passing Annie’s wherry he had seen something white down amongst the weeds. He had prodded it with his oar …

  ‘Show me where it was.’

  Dido led him up to the bows of the wherry and pointed to a spot slightly ahead of them. If you had toppled off the bows you might have fallen right there … with a splash. And with a bullet through the head you ought to have left a little blood somewhere …

  Gently frowned, and stooping, raised the hatch of the forepeak. Below him lay a disordered bunk. On a shelf opposite was Pedro’s concertina, lying unlatched and sagging drunkenly, beside it a silly little posy of marsh-flowers stuck in a potted-meat jar. Gently dropped the hatch back expressionlessly.

  ‘Who saw the body … what was she wearing at the time?’

  She’d been wearing a night-gown, it appeared, and a knitted cardigan over it. And slippers, but one of them was still in the Dyke somewhere.

  ‘What would she have got up for?’

  There were guffaws and tittering, and glances at a sheepish-looking Ted Thatcher. He grinned at Gently and turned on the others in mock indignation.

  ‘Don’t know what yew’re all lookin at me for! Ennaone’d think I made a habit of strange women.’

  ‘Well don’tch’?’ shouted someone and there was a ripple of laughter.

  Gently said: ‘You were dancing with her last night.’

  ‘W’yes … but that i’nt the same as what this dirta-minded lot seem to think!’

  ‘She could have arranged to see you later.’

  Ted gave him a wink. ‘Yew’re nearla as bad as they are, an tha’s pretta bad!’

  ‘Did she, or didn’t she?’

  ‘She di’nt then – though I woon’t say she ha’nt got a mind tew. But that wa’nt noth’n definite, an’ I aren’t agoin’ to have m’reputation dragged in the mud!’

  It was suddenly comedy, that tragic occurrence on the river-bank. Perhaps it was reaction, perhaps it was the East Anglian resentment at being thrown emotionally off balance. But the comic side had come uppermost and the river-dwellers wanted it to stay uppermost. They insisted in finding something superlatively funny in the idea of the dead woman creeping out to meet Thatcher.

  ‘Were you expecting her?’ persisted Gently.

  ‘W’not exacla … but I woonta been surprised.’

  ‘Did you stay awake, for instance?’

  ‘What me – for that ole bitch!’

  ‘Then you didn’t hear anything – your boat is moored quite close?’

  ‘That i’nt apurpose either – onla b’cause there i’nt no room with better compana!’

  He had heard something, all the same. When Gently could steer him away from the gallery he admitted to having been awakened. He had then heard the same sound that Pedro described.

  ‘Like an ole swan that was, or like a cute when she’s a-sittin’ on some eggs. “Pssssh!” that go, onla a bit more wicious-like.’

  ‘Didn’t you get up to see what it was?’

  ‘W’no … I’m tew far uppa the tooth to get up evra time I hear a funna noise.’

  ‘And you’ve no idea of the time?’

  ‘Blast yes – yew can see me strikin a light to have a look!’

  Like Pedro, he had heard no splash, and like Pedro he had dropped off to sleep again. Two other witnesses, the slattern and a little man with a big moustache, contributed substantially similar evidence. The little man could add a trifle more – he had stayed awake longer. Ten minutes or so after the hissing there had been a subdued bump, as though somebody had stepped cautiously into a dinghy, and there followed a number of similar noises occupying several minutes.

  ‘But not a splash?’

  ‘No, there wa’nt no splash.’
/>   ‘And of course you don’t know the time?’

  ‘I don’t – but I could hear “Moanin’ Minnie”, if tha’s enna help to yew.’

  ‘Moaning Minnie’ was the automatic foghorn off the coast, ten miles distant. It had probably been booming all night.

  Gently bit his lip and stared about him at the rough, worn grass of the river-bank. Why wasn’t there any blood? Cheerful Annie had looked as though she had plenty!

  He had got the tragedy into some sort of focus now. In his mind’s eye he could see what had gone on here while he was sleeping so peacefully in the nearby bungalow.

  It was twelve when he had gone to bed. Perhaps in deference to the resident coppers, the jollifications on the bank had ended half an hour earlier. A few people had stopped to chat, no doubt, but it hadn’t continued very long. When Gently had doused his light and drawn his curtains it was quiet and still outside. After that, how long had it been? How long had Annie given Pedro in the forepeak to drop off, before she pulled on her cardigan, stuck her feet into her slippers and crept away to try her charms on Ted Thatcher? An hour, perhaps. It would have been around one. At one or just after she had slipped ashore, turned riverwards towards Thatcher’s old tub and …

  But that was where the picture went hazy. For the life of him, Gently couldn’t fill in the next bit. If she’d been attacked between the wherry and Thatcher’s boat, where was the blood? If she’d been enticed to a distance first, how could four people have heard the fizzing of that silenced .22 Beretta? And if, for some inscrutable reason, she had gone to the bows of the wherry … right above Pedro’s head … and been cleanly bowled off into the Dyke, why no splash?

  Once she was dead, the picture grew clear again – at least, the picture of what had happened: the motive wasn’t quite so obvious. Her body had been lowered into a dinghy, the dinghy had been pushed out to the stream-side of the wherry and the body noiselessly jettisoned. So it wouldn’t be found too quickly …? That was just possible. If that were the reason, then it was necessary to jettison the body towards the middle of the Dyke, since it ran shallow near the bank.

  But where was the blood … where was the blood?

  Shaking his head, Gently explored the whole length of the bank, his eye fixed now on the grass, now on the decrepit collection of dinghies belonging to the various boats. The most suspect was Annie’s own, moored between the wherry’s bows and the bank. But like the others it showed nothing more sinister than certain years of undisturbed grime.

  ‘Here, bor … dew yew come an have a look at this!’

  It was Thatcher, who, quietly satisfying his curiosity about Annie’s wherry, had poked his nose into a cardboard box he had found lying with other junk on the cabin-top.

  ‘What is it … the crown jewels?’

  ‘No … but it might blodda-well buy a set!’

  Gently stepped aboard and went over to him. The old sinner’s eyes were almost staring out of his head. Packed in the box, and completely filling it, were ten crisp bundles of one-pound notes … bundles which an experienced eye would estimate at a hundred apiece. And on the lid of the box was written in sprawling block letters: For Annie’s kids.

  ‘Blast!’ barked Thatcher. ‘Cor rudda blast!’

  And it was not, Gently felt, putting it too strongly.

  They found him a sheet of brown-paper in which to wrap the box. The box itself was easily identified. It had been taken from the communal rubbish-heap and was a shoe-box which had been discarded by one of the river-dwellers. Thatcher watched him mournfully as he tied the package up.

  ‘I ’spose them kids aren’t never goin to see that again.’

  Gently shrugged. ‘If my guess is right this money has been stolen.

  ‘But dew your guess is wrong, what happen to it then?’

  ‘That’s a nice point of law … I don’t think I’m qualified to answer it.’

  ‘That must be wunnerfiul to be a copper an turn up evidence like this here!’

  Gently tucked the package under his arm and went down the wherry’s plank. At the rubbish-heap he paused, measuring distances with his eye. Then he stooped and picked up something. It was a tiny tube wrapped in gold foil.

  ‘Blast!’ exclaimed the disgusted Thatcher. ‘He’s even pickin’ gold sovereigns off our blodda rubbish dump!’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AN EXUBERANT DUTT had ridden in with the first load of the super’s search-party. He found Gently picking at his lunch in Mrs Grey’s parlour and wearing the wooden expression which told of much and significant ratiocination. In front of him on the table lay the little gold-wrapped tube, one end closed, one end ragged. It appeared to be filled with a darkish, greasy substance.

  ‘Here we are, sir. How are things at your end?’

  Gently grunted over a forkful of salad.

  ‘I’ve bought a new corpse and been torn off a strip!’

  ‘Yessir.’ Dutt curbed his enthusiasm. ‘I heard all about it up at H.Q., sir. Flippin’ cheek it was, popping the old girl off right under our bedroom window. And why didn’t we hear the shot, sir – that’s what I can’t make out!’

  ‘A “Parker-Hale”, Dutt.’

  ‘You got the gun, sir?’

  ‘No … but I’ve got four witnesses and they all describe the same thing.’

  Dutt whistled softly. ‘But how did he get hold of that, sir …?’

  ‘I don’t know, Dutt, unless he picked up one second-hand and screwed the barrel himself.’

  ‘He’d need tools, sir.’

  ‘There’s a set of dies in the garage.’

  ‘Then you reckon it was Hicks?’

  ‘No, Dutt. It might have been anyone. Lammas might have fitted one himself without knowing he ought to have his licence endorsed.’

  ‘All the same, sir … it doesn’t half point towards the shover.’

  Dutt brooded a few moments to show a proper respect for the problem, but he was obviously impatient to impart his own especial findings.

  ‘Well sir, I takes a squint at the corpse on account of you hadn’t seen it, but what I really has to tell you—’

  ‘You’ve seen the corpse, Dutt?’

  ‘Yessir. Bullet went clean through, forehead to top-back. But—’

  ‘Anything strike you about the night-dress?’

  ‘No sir, ’cept a bit might’ve been torn off the hem—’

  ‘Ah!’ The far-away look came into Gently’s eye. ‘I’d just got round to that angle when you came in …! Now just hold on a minute, Dutt – I’ll be right back with you!’

  And still clutching his fork, he dived out of the room.

  Dutt sighed and cut himself a generous slice of pork-pie. There were times when his senior was a little less than appreciative.

  The fork was still in Gently’s hand when he returned ten minutes later, but in his other hand he now held a sodden strip of rayon.

  ‘There! Would that be the bit torn off the hem?’

  ‘Yessir. Daresay it would. It’s the same material.’

  ‘Exactly, Dutt … and it answers a pressing question. He’d had the corpse in a dinghy at one stage and that corpse would have bled. But it wouldn’t have bled with a bandage tied round its head … that’s why I can’t find any blood in the dinghies. At the same time, it must have bled somewhere before he bandaged it … and then again, why should he bother about the blood …?’

  ‘Yessir. Very true, sir.’

  There was a plaintive note in Dutt’s voice that succeeded in penetrating Gently’s abstraction. He grinned at the sergeant’s expression of injury.

  ‘All right … let’s have the story.’

  ‘Ho, hit will wait, sir. I ham a bit peckish.’

  ‘Go on, you old so-and-so!’

  ‘Don’t want to hinterrupt your cogitations …’

  He thawed out, however, as he remembered the glowing details of his discoveries. Fortune had smiled on Dutt in his investigations at the bus station. At first it looked like being a frost. The co
nductor who had been on the six-twenty bus from Halford remembered nobody of Linda Brent’s description, neither did an inspector who had got on down the road. Dutt had persisted with odd members of the station staff who might have seen the passengers leave the bus, but he got precious little encouragement until he chanced to see a Wrackstead bus pull in. And there he struck oil. Because the romantic young conductor cherished a secret passion for Pauline Lammas and her unexpected presence on the six-fifteen on Friday lingered sweetly in his memory.

  ‘Saw the whole thing, he did!’ related Dutt excitedly. ‘Couldn’t want a better witness, sir. When they comes in after a run they goes and gets their money and tickets checked in a glass-fronted booth affair, and Miss Pauline, she goes and stands in the bay right next door. Of course, this charlie keeps his mince-pies on her, and being as how there was a couple of blokes ahead of him, he’s still there when the Halford bus gets in. And sure enough there’s a fancy dark piece gets off it with her baggage. Up goes Miss Pauline and helps her off with her things, then she fishes in her bag and hands something over.

  ‘And this is the juicy bit, sir – he saw what it was! ‘It was a Yale-type key on a ring with a white tag.’

  ‘A Yale-type key …!’ Dutt had the pleasure of at last seeing his senior sit up and take notice. ‘And what does that suggest, Dutt?’

  ‘Well sir – after giving the matter me best attention–’

  ‘Go on, Dutt.’

  ‘It occurs to me, sir, that Mr Lammas couldn’t have had any hideaway like Hinspector Hansom was led to believe.’

  ‘You mean that otherwise there would have been no need for Linda Brent to collect a key from Miss Lammas.’

  ‘Well, would she, sir? Mr Lammas would’ve give it to her himself. But no – she has to pick it up! So we deduces that the key wasn’t available when Mr Lammas sets out on the preceding Saturday, but was so on the Friday. And from that we further deduces that it’s the key to a rented property, and that Miss Pauline knows where Miss Brent is at this living minute!’

  Gently nodded soberly. ‘And we also deduces something else – that wherever Lammas went on his mid-week trips, it wasn’t to prepare and furnish a hideaway.’