Gently Down the Stream

by Alan Hunter

  ‘She wouldn’t have had any visitors?’

  No, she’d always seemed rather lonely.

  ‘Yesterday evening, for example?’

  It was quite impossible, since they had all gone to a travelling film show in the village hall together.

  ‘One more question … it’s about the mail. Does the post office deliver up here?’

  It did. It came in the mornings. Every morning they had a letter from their daughter Marge, who they’d left at home.

  ‘And Miss Brent has had letters?’

  Miss Brent had had none. She had looked out for the postman, but no letter had ever arrived.

  Gently left them to shake out their sandals.

  Had the luck of good detectives forsaken him?

  On the other side of the sand-hills the children’s cries and booming combers sounded mocking beneath the sun.

  There was sadness in the mien of Superintendent Walker, a brooding, angry sadness born of hunches that hadn’t paid off. This was the second time it had happened and it was damaging to his morale. On the first occasion Gently had been unofficial, which had been a sort of excuse for disregarding him. But on this occasion he had come with full credentials and there was no excuse of any kind. Success, success alone, would have justified the strong man of the City Police in shoving Gently aside. And success, alas, had not come his way in any measurable degree. After a day of hard marsh-frisking, cordons and road-blocks, he was still a Hicks-less super. He had even begun to despair of ever laying hands on that elusive customer. And for this he had said harsh words, for this he had ridden the high-horse, for this he had risked the rap on the knuckles he would undoubtedly get from a Gently-fancying Chief Constable.

  ‘Come in!’

  It was Hansom, looking apprehensive at the rasping tone of the summons.

  ‘He’ll be in in a moment … just parking his car.’

  ‘Is the Brent woman with him?’

  ‘Nope … they carted her off to the Northshire and Norchester.’

  The super drummed viciously on his desk-top.

  ‘Well, he nearly let her slip through his fingers, didn’t he!’

  But there was no latent triumph in Gently’s face as he and Dutt came into the office. Rather it was an absent-minded expression … he hadn’t been saying a word during the drive into town.

  ‘Sit down – make yourself at home!’

  The super’s sarcasm was intended to warn and give notice.

  ‘You know what luck I’ve had – I don’t need to tell you. There’s just one small item that my ham-fisted methods have brought to light, and which wouldn’t have turned up in any other way – that’s it, on the chair.’

  He pointed to a dark garment and a peaked cap of similar colour. Gently picked them up. The garment was obviously a chauffeur’s jacket, cut in navy-blue serge, and it had some rubbed-out staining on the left shoulder and back. There were also a few spots on the left side of the cap, similarly rubbed out.

  ‘Where did you find these?’ Gently’s voice betrayed his interest.

  The super made an ironic gesture. ‘Where does everything pop up? They were in a derelict shack in the carrs, about half a mile above Upper Wrackstead.’

  ‘On which side of the river?’

  ‘On the side opposite from you.’

  Gently pulled out his map.

  ‘I’d like the exact position.’

  The super showed him impatiently. Hadn’t he already investigated it?

  ‘There aren’t any prints, if that’s what you’re thinking about.’

  ‘What’s this line running up here?’

  ‘It’s a dyke from the river.’

  ‘There’d be room to take a boat up?’

  ‘There might, if it was small enough.’

  ‘What about access to the road?’

  ‘It’s like you see – about quarter of a mile from this by-road between Wrackstead and Coleshill. It’s a rough passage through the carrs, but you can get there all right.’

  ‘And this shack – it isn’t recent?’

  ‘Not by fifty years it isn’t. I’m told they grazed cattle there before the carrs grew up … that’s when it was probably built.’

  ‘Didn’t look like he’d been camping there?’

  ‘No.’ The super frowned. ‘There’s only one sign that he’d been there, and that’s the jacket and the cap.’

  Gently nodded from a thoughtful distance. He folded his map and put it away.

  ‘Well … that’s my minor contribution! Now perhaps we can get to yours. You’ll have talked to this Brent woman – what’s she got to commit suicide about?’

  ‘She thinks she knows who did it—’

  ‘Oh does she, by the living thunder!’

  ‘I said she thinks she knows … I’m not at all certain that she does. She wasn’t around at the time and nobody seems to have got in touch with her.’

  ‘Never mind! Who’s her tip?’

  Gently shrugged. ‘She isn’t giving us one. She was able to infer we hadn’t made an arrest … I’m afraid she’s going to be strictly uncooperative.’

  The super said something naughty. ‘She’ll damn well change her mind about that! But just thinking she knows who did it … that’s no reason to turn on the gas.’

  ‘She thinks she’s implicated … and she’s in love with whoever it is.’

  ‘You mean in love with the chauffeur?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Paul Lammas fills the bill.’

  The super stared shrewdly for a moment and then ruffled some report sheets which lay on his desk.

  ‘I’ve been reading a copy of the statements you took this afternoon. I don’t have to ask you what you’ve got from Paul Lammas. And I’ve been thinking, Gently. I’ve been thinking a lot!’

  Gently inclined his head deferentially.

  ‘To begin with, we agree that the chauffeur was only the trigger-puller on this job – I’m talking about Lammas’ murder now. He may not even have pulled the trigger, but whether he did or not, there’s somebody else behind him. Check?’

  ‘Check.’ Gently looked as though he might say something else, but he prevented himself. He’d better not rub it in!

  ‘In the second place, we agree that whoever is behind the chauffeur may have succeeded in getting him out of the country – probably to some place from which he can’t be extradited back again. Check?’

  Gently hesitated. ‘I’m not quite so struck with that theory as I was this morning.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ The super eyed him nastily.

  ‘It’s just a hunch … but I’ve a feeling he may be right under our noses.’

  ‘You’ve got a lead?’

  ‘No, nothing you can really call one.’

  ‘Then damn it, man, stop trying to complicate the issue any further!’ The super was really annoyed. ‘I’ve spent all day coming round to your idea and now you want to slide out of it.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘And it’s the only one that fits the facts. If he hasn’t skipped, where the blasted hell is he?’

  Gently’s shoulders hunched. ‘I don’t quite know.’

  ‘And nor do I – and nor do five score policemen who’ve been raking the marshes for him. If it was Hicks who killed Annie Packer he’d be in a cell by now – but he isn’t, and it wasn’t! Do I have to go on my knees?’

  Gently shrugged again and said nothing.

  ‘Very well – we agree on that one. Hicks is where we’ll never get him. That leaves us to deal with whoever was making use of him – and whoever did kill Annie Packer. Now by your own results we’ve narrowed it down to three, Marsh, Paul and Mrs Lammas, and what we’ve got to decide is whether we should charge one, two or all three of them. They were all on the spot. They all had good reasons! Perhaps you can tell me if you’ve got any favourites among those three.’

  Gently shook his head. ‘It works out pretty even. We can deduce that Linda Brent thinks it’s Paul, but against that it w
as Mrs Lammas who was inquiring where her husband would be and her prints were on the gun-drawer. On the other hand this Marsh would seem to have the strongest motive and looking forward to Annie Packer, he’s the only one with sufficient physical strength to have handled the body as it must have been handled. No … I haven’t any favourites. On the evidence, I wouldn’t dare have.’

  ‘Then we know where we are.’ The super’s jaw jutted decisively. ‘We shall charge all three with conspiracy to murder and to my way of thinking that’s just about the truth.’

  ‘But it won’t stand up.’

  ‘Why won’t it stand up?’

  ‘Because you haven’t got Hicks … a good defence will simply romp home. They can hang it on him in just the way it’s been planned. If you can’t get Hicks you’ll never get a verdict.’

  ‘They may rat on each other – it’s been known before today.’

  ‘But you can’t bank on that.’

  ‘And there’s bound to be some other evidence!’

  ‘I’d like to see it before making a charge.’

  The super didn’t snarl, although he looked as though he would have liked to. But he knew sense when he heard it and this, he knew, was sense. So he contented himself with putting a band-saw edge into the tone of his next remark.

  ‘Then if we never get Hicks, what in the thirty-seven blue moons of Gehenna are we something-well going to do?’

  Gently produced a peppermint cream from somewhere and began chewing it with insubordinate slowness.

  ‘I haven’t got a solution … I only know I’m not happy with the facts. Of course there’s some routine-work we haven’t covered yet, like the outgoings from Mrs Lammas’ banking accounts, and what Marsh’s servants know about his movements last night. I’m not expecting too much from either source. For the rest I just don’t know. I’ve got a hunch that there’s a penny due to drop.’

  ‘But what are you going to do, man?’ exploded the super, not at the moment a great backer of hunches.

  ‘I’m going to charge Linda Brent … can I borrow your phone?’

  The super watched him malevolently as he dialled a number. There had been times before when Gently had made the great man want to tear his close-cropped hair …

  ‘This is Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID. I’ve a statement for you … give me a machine, will you? This evening Linda Brent, etc., wanted by the Police for questioning in connection with the murder of James William Lammas, was taken into custody and charged with conspiring to defraud while an employee of Lammas Wholesalers Ltd.’

  ‘You’ll never make it stick, Gently!’ rapped the super as the phone was replaced.

  Gently supplied himself with another peppermint cream.

  ‘I don’t really mind if I don’t,’ he replied wearily.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  MOVE IN LAMMAS case – Gently Charges Linda Brent. It was bannered beautifully across the morning paper which lay by Gently’s cup of tea.

  Outside, the river-dwellers were stirring about their business. Pedro was off fruit-picking again, Thatcher was digging for worms, the slattern was getting off to school her own and Cheerful Annie’s offspring.

  ‘I see you’re findin’ out things, sir,’ sniffed Mrs Grey as she set down the breakfast bacon. She had always a tear to command since the rumour about her nephew being seen had got about.

  ‘We do our best, Mrs Grey.’

  Gently beat Dutt to the crispest-looking rasher.

  ‘You haven’t found my poor sister’s boy, sir, not with all your tryin’ – and I don’t reckon you will, now, either.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mrs Grey. It’s surprising how they turn up.’

  ‘I know, sir. But don’t it stand to reason? He’s done away with himself, that’s what he’s done, and I say Heaven forgive them what druv him to it!’

  And the poor lady went out in a storm of tears.

  Gently made a face as he took the mustard.

  ‘Another theorist, Dutt … and not a bad one at that.’

  ‘Yessir … we’d look silly if he comes to the surface somewhere.’

  ‘We’d look sillier still if he had a .22 bullet in him!’

  The sun was beaming down with its customary splendour. Nothing was going to spoil this paragon of Junes. On the wicked and the innocent alike it spread its glamour. Colour seemed a new invention, the air a crystalline liquid. Even Thatcher had a romantic look, scruffing away with a handleless trowel – he might have been some old earth god about his masonic delvings.

  ‘What’s three half-crowns worth to you?’

  Thatcher looked up quickly.

  ‘We want the use of a dinghy … yours will do, if it doesn’t leak too much.’

  ‘Ah, but wait yew a minute, bor!’

  Nobody made snap deals with Thatcher.

  ‘Dew yew want it all day that might come a bit more … tha’s what yew might call the Season at this end of June!’

  But Gently didn’t want it all day, and the seven and six changed hands. Dutt was allotted the oars, Gently seated himself in the stern and Thatcher shoved them off with professional panache.

  The river was shut-in all the way to the dyke and the shack where the jacket had been found. Snaked roots of alder reached out from either bank, screens of reed, bramble and wild currant formed a barrier to the eye. The carrs were a secret place. They warned you off with their stockaded boundaries. To get in there you must be prepared to have the clothes torn off your back, the shoes from your feet, and you must suffer beating, scratching, soaking and an overlay of mud …

  ‘Not a place one would choose for a man-hunt, Dutt.’

  ‘No, sir … you takes the words out of me mouth.’

  ‘But a good place to hide something, other things being equal.’

  Gently had the map on his knee and it was necessary equipment. They went past the dyke twice before spotting where it lay. Its mouth was concealed by a floating reed-hover, but even had it not been one would have had difficulty in recognizing the grown-over inlet.

  ‘Get your head down, sir!’

  Gently didn’t need telling. The alder twigs whipped and stung them as Dutt poled in with one oar. In the slip of a dinghy they had to crouch double and every few yards the inch of keel was touching sugarily on the mud. But they weren’t sticking fast – that was the point to be proved! Yard by yard, they were continuing to find clean water ahead. You could get a dinghy up there. Especially if there was only one of you …

  The dyke came to an end as indefinitely as it had begun, simply oozing out of existence in mud and rush jungle. Gently scrutinized what could theoretically be called the bank.

  ‘Of course they didn’t look for this … and of course they didn’t find it!’

  He reached over into a mass of mint and meadowsweet and tugged something out. It was a long, straight rod of willow, which had been pushed slantwise into the greasy peat.

  ‘One should always moor a dinghy.’

  He shoved the rod back again.

  ‘Now let’s see if we can find anything else they didn’t notice!’

  If it had been trying in the dinghy, it was doubly trying out of it. After half a dozen steps, one just forgot about dry feet. And there were brambles like saws, and nettles like wasps’ nests, and the moist, enclosed air made perspiration start at the slightest exertion. There was a track of sorts, or at all events a line of least resistance. Along it had recently sploshed a number of police-issue boots but they weren’t responsible for everything. Gently noticed signs of earlier passages. Here there was a snapped twig with leaves which had withered, there a turned-back bramble trying to grow in its original direction.

  Not recent at all … those dry leaves weren’t properly developed.

  ‘Blimey – just give me the Commercial Road!’

  Dutt was mopping a streaming face and snatching at the rubbish in his hair.

  ‘No wonder the charlies round here live in rubber boots – it’s a marvel they ain’t bo
rn wiv webbed feet!’

  Gently grinned commiseration. ‘Stick it out, Dutt … it’s all experience.’

  ‘Hi know, sir – and I hopes it’s worth it!’

  ‘Here’s the shack now … but I wish we’d been here yesterday.’

  The shack was as the super had described it. It consisted of three sides framed in rough timber and filled with reeds, while some aged reed-thatch served for a roof. It was built on ground that was a little higher and therefore a little drier than the carrs surrounding it. This feature seemed to have made it rather popular with five score of policeman.

  Gently sighed as he cautiously approached it. Yet what was he hoping to find there, after all? Perhaps he was only being fascinated by yet one more fact that didn’t quite fit … wanting to worry at it, to double-check it, to wrest sense out of it somehow. Because there was no doubt that it didn’t fit. It would only have fitted if Hicks had been hiding there. Then one could show how he had slipped out in a dinghy … how he had been secretly provisioned by his aunt … how he had come to kill Cheerful Arnie. It would have been full of possibilities! Only Hicks hadn’t been hiding there. You had only to look at the shack.

  Three parts of the floor was raising a lovely bed of nettles and the fourth part wasn’t large enough to have slept a good-sized dog.

  Gently stood still, staring at it. He was getting depressed and irritated by this perpetual check-mating. At every turn a contradiction was slapped across his face, a twit given to his intolerable ignorance. Was he going to fall down on this case? Had he run into a plan which was going to circumvent him, in all his wisdom?

  A plan … that was the one thing his opponents couldn’t hide. Lammas’ murder hadn’t been a brilliant piece of improvisation, it wasn’t done on the spur of the moment. It looked like that, but it wasn’t. Perhaps that was its weak spot, the flank which he could turn. You looked back to Easter, for instance. So many trails had started there. It was about Easter when Lammas hired the yacht. It was about Easter when he booked the bungalow. It was at Easter when Paul had threatened his mother with exposure. It was about Easter when Lammas began his unexplained mid-week trips. What was the interaction there … who had betrayed which to whom? Paul? Pauline? And the hiring of the yacht itself, what had Lammas been up to with that? Who had he really been expecting to meet when he took the Harrier up Ollby Dyke?