‘Did you hear the whole programme?’ he proceeded.
‘We-ell, I had to go and let Mr Peter in.’
‘What time was that?’
‘It was just as the Rovers scored their first goal.’
Hansom drew his fingers wearily across his face. ‘And what time would that be, if it isn’t too much to ask?’
The constable with the notebook cleared his throat. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the Rovers scored their first goal in the twenty-ninth minute.’
Hansom stared at him.
‘If the kick-off was at three, sir, it would make the time exactly 3.29 p.m.’
‘Ah,’ said Hansom heavily, ‘so it would, would it? Thank you very much. Make a note of it. You’re a credit to the force, Parsons.’
‘I’m a student of soccer, sir,’ said Parsons modestly.
‘So am I,’ said Gently.
Hansom drew a deep breath and looked from one to the other. ‘Why don’t you get your pools out?’ he yapped. ‘Who am I to butt in with my homicide? Send out for the papers and let’s get down to a session!’
Parsons retired to his notebook, crushed, and Gently took out his peppermint creams.
‘Now!’ said Hansom, ‘you appear to have let in Peter Huysmann at 3.29 p.m. Greenwich. Who did he ask to see?’
‘He said he’d come to see his father, Inspector, and asked if he was in.’
‘Was there anything unusual in his aspect?’
‘He did seem a little off-hand, but Mr Peter is like that sometimes.’
‘Did you show him into the study?’
‘I told him his father was there, and then I went back to the kitchen.’
‘It must have been an exciting match,’ said Hansom bitterly. ‘What happened then?’
‘I got on with washing the salad for tea.’
‘How did it come about that you heard Mr Huysmann and his son quarrelling?’
‘Well, there wasn’t a salad bowl in the kitchen, so I had to fetch one from the dining-room. I heard them at it as I was passing through the hall.’
‘Time?’
‘I don’t really know, Inspector.’
‘Nobody scoring any goals?’
‘Not just then.’
Hansom rolled his eyes. ‘I wonder if I could pin anything on those boys for withholding assistance from the police… Was it much before the end of the programme?’
‘Oh yes… quite a long time before.’
‘Did you go down the passage to listen?’
Susan gave him a well-taken look of sad reproof. ‘No, Inspector.’
‘Why not? It should have been worth listening to.’
‘But there’d been so many of them before.’
‘And then, of course, the Albion might have equalized. Did you hear anything at all of what was said?’
‘We-ell, I heard Mr Peter say his father hadn’t got any human feelings left.’
‘And what did Mr Huysmann say?’
‘He said something that sounded nasty, but he had a funny way of speaking. You couldn’t always understand him.’
‘And that was positively all you heard of a quarrel following which Mr Huysmann was stabbed to death?’
Susan frowned prettily and applied her finger to the dimple in her chin again. ‘We-ell, when I was coming back from the dining-room I heard Mr Peter say something about he’d take it, but there’d be a time when he’d give it back.’
‘Have you any idea to what he was referring?’
‘Oh no, Inspector.’
‘You didn’t,’ mused Gently, ‘you didn’t hear anything to suggest that the object referred to… wasn’t… a five-pound note?’
Susan looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
Hansom breathed heavily. ‘So you went back to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Well — what did you do then?’
‘I finished the salad and cut some bread and butter.’
‘Did you hear nothing unusual while you were doing that?’
‘No, Inspector.’
‘Nothing resembling cries or a struggle?’
‘You can’t hear anything from that side of the house in the kitchen.’
‘How about the warning bell on the front door?’
‘I didn’t hear it ring.’
‘After the sports interlude — did you turn the wireless off?’
‘Oh no, it was dance music after that. I had it on all the while. It was Mrs Turner who switched it off when she came in.’
‘How long did it take you to finish preparing the tea?’
‘I’d done by ten past four. After that I made a cup of tea and some toast, and sat down for a bit till Mrs Turner got back at five. It should have been my evening off,’ she added glumly.
‘What happened when Mrs Turner got back?’
‘Well, she took her things off and looked to see if I’d done the tea properly, then she went to ask Mr Huysmann when he’d be wanting it.’
‘And then?’
‘She came back a minute or two later looking as white as a sheet. “Oh God!” she said, “there’s something terrible happened to the master. Don’t go near the study,” she said. It was awful, Inspector!’
‘Mrs Turner sent you for some brandy. Where was it kept?’
‘I got the decanter from the dining-room.’
Gently leant forward. ‘When you passed through the hall to the dining-room, did you see anybody?’ he enquired.
‘No, nobody.’
‘Did you hear or see anything unusual?’
‘I can’t remember anything.’
Gently brooded a moment. ‘Mrs Turner then sent you to telephone the police. Which telephone did you use?’
‘I used the one in the little place under the stairs.’
‘As you entered the hall you met Miss Gretchen. Where did you first see her?’
‘She was just come in. She was taking her hat off.’
‘Was the door open or closed?’
‘It was closed.’
‘Did you hear the warning bell just before or as you were leaving the kitchen?’
‘We-ell… I might have done.’
‘Can you say for certain that you did?’
Susan bathed him in her dissolving smile. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think I can.’
Gently eased back in his chair and studied illimitable realms of space. ‘Do you not think it strange,’ he said, ‘that Miss Gretchen should re-enter the house by the front door with its warning bell, which she was at such pains to avoid when she went out?’
For a brief second the blue eyes stared at him in complete blankness. Then they swam to life again. ‘She’d got an evening paper,’ said Susan, ‘I dare say she’d have said she went out to buy one.’
‘Ah!’ breathed Gently, ‘an evening paper. That’s the second one that’s cropped up in this case.’ He waved her back to Hansom.
‘The Chief Inspector has forgotten to ask you his most telling question,’ said Hansom acidly.
Gently inclined his head.
‘He wants you to tell him if you entered this room any time after lunch yesterday.’
Susan glanced at Gently in puzzlement.
‘Well, go on,’ said Hansom, ‘tell him.’
Gently said: ‘Not after lunch but after you cleaned the room out.’
Susan wrinkled her snow-white brow. ‘I put the flowers in the window. I didn’t go in after that. I don’t think anybody did.’
‘You’ve made him happy,’ said Hansom, ‘you’ll never know how happy you’ve made the Chief Inspector.’ And he laughed in his semi-handsome way.
Alan Hunter
Gently Does It
CHAPTER FIVE
H ANSOM WAS SMOKING again: the air was thickening with the fulsome smell of his Corona. Gently, too, was adding smoke-rings to the upper atmosphere. The constable sniffed in a peaked sort of way. ‘Go on,’ said Hansom, ‘be a devil. Have a spit and a draw.’ The constable said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ and fished out a somewhat tatty cigarette. Hansom gave him a light. He said: ‘The super doesn’t smoke, and he’s the one person around here who can afford to.’ Gently said: ‘You’ll have to transfer to the MP and get the London scale.’ Hansom grunted.
They could hear the rain still, outside. There was a drain by the pavement just outside the big window which made little, ecstatic noises. To hear that made the room seem chill. ‘There’s the chauffeur and the manager and Miss Gretchen,’ said Hansom. ‘Who’d you like to have in next?’