‘The maid Susan — did he chase her?’
‘He may have done, though I doubt whether he had any success. Susan is well aware of her market value.’
‘It is unlikely that Miss Huysmann had anything to do with him?’
Leaming laughed. ‘You couldn’t know how Miss Huysmann has been brought up. She reads nothing but her Bible. She wouldn’t know what to do with a man if she had one.’
Gently said: ‘How long have you been with the firm, Mr Leaming?’
‘It will be ten years in the autumn.’
‘Did you find Mr Huysmann a difficult man to work for?’
Leaming shrugged. ‘You’ve probably been able to form an opinion of what he was like. When I first came, I thought I wouldn’t last a month, but the salary made me stick it out.’
‘It was a good salary?’
‘Oh yes. One must give the old man his due. He’s always paid the best wages in the trade — had to, I suppose, to get anybody to work for him. But that’s not quite fair, though. He had really first-class business principles. He wanted a lot for his money, but he always paid generously for it, and right on the nail. Whatever he was like at home, you could trust him in business to the last farthing. That’s how he built up a firm like this. Nobody was very fond of the man, but they all liked his way of doing business.’
‘And would that sum up your attitude towards him?’
‘I think it would.’
‘You bore him no grudge for his treatment of you?’
‘Good heavens, no! It was rather an honour to be manager of Huysmann’s.’
Gently laid down his pipe and fumbled around for a peppermint cream. ‘I believe you are a bachelor,’ he said.
Leaming nodded.
‘Would that be anything to do with Mr Huysmann?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose it would. He preferred his staff to be unmarried.’
‘Did that mean you would have lost your job if you had married?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that, though he was quite capable of going to such lengths. But I never ran the risk.’
‘It could be a very irksome situation, however.’
Leaming smiled complacently. ‘There are ways of alleviating it.’
Gently bit a peppermint cream in halves. ‘Such ways as Susan?’ he enquired.
‘One could go further and fare worse.’
‘Which makes you positive that Fisher was having nothing to do with her?’
Leaming’s smile broadened. ‘I think you can discount Fisher in that respect,’ he said. ‘As I said before, Susan is well aware of her market value.’
‘Ah,’ said Gently, and ate the other half of the peppermint cream.
Hansom took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t think we shall require you any more for the present, Mr Leaming. Thank you for being so co-operative. We’ll let you get away to lunch.’
Leaming rose to his feet. ‘I’m only too glad to have been of any assistance. No doubt the Chief Inspector has told you that if you put Peter in the dock I shall be your number one adversary — but till then, call on me for any help I can give.’ He smiled at both of them in turn and moved towards the door.
‘Mr Leaming,’ murmured Gently.
Leaming paused obediently.
‘I should like to look over the firm’s books.’
Leaming’s brown eyes flickered, perhaps in surprise. ‘I’ll bring them over for you,’ he said.
‘This afternoon,’ pursued Gently. ‘I’ll come back after lunch.’
‘This afternoon,’ repeated Leaming evenly. ‘I’ll have them here waiting for you.’ He turned towards the door again.
‘And Mr Leaming,’ added Gently.
Leaming stiffened.
‘I suppose you wouldn’t know where one can buy peppermint creams in Norchester on a Sunday?’
Hansom pushed his chair back from the table and stretched his long, beefy legs. The constable shut his notebook and found another stringy cigarette. Gently got up and wandered towards the little pierced window.
Hansom said: ‘Well, what do you know now?’
Gently shook his head slowly, still looking through the window.
‘I guess this Leaming’s the only lad with a pedigree alibi,’ Hansom mused. ‘Hit it where you like, it gives a musical note. What was that stuff about the books?’
‘It’s a wet day, I thought they’d be fun.’
‘You didn’t scare Leaming with it. I’ll bet they check to five per cent of a farthing.’ He dipped the long ash of his cigar into the ashtray. ‘I haven’t heard anything yet to make me think that young Huysmann isn’t our man,’ he said. ‘You’ve started something with Fisher and the girl, but I don’t think it’s going to hold up the case. Mind you, I’ll crack into Fisher. I’d like to know the ins and outs of that business myself. But I don’t think it’ll help you. I don’t think he did it myself and I don’t think you stand a dog’s chance of proving it.’
Gently smiled into the window. ‘There’s so much we don’t know,’ he said, ‘it’s like a picture out of focus.’
‘It focuses sharp enough for me and the super.’
‘It’s taking shape a little bit, but it’s full of blind spots and blurred outlines.’
Hansom said challengingly: ‘You’re pinning your faith on Fisher, aren’t you?’
Gently shrugged. ‘I’m not pinning it on anybody. I’m trying to find out things. I’m trying to find out what happened here yesterday and what led up to it, and how these people fit into it, and why they answered what they did answer this morning.’
Hansom said: ‘We’re not so ambitious. We’re just knocking up a case of murder so it keeps the daylight out.’
‘So am I…’ Gently said, ‘only I like walls round mine as well as a roof.’
Still it rained. A black twig sticking out of the grille over the drain by the Huysmann house cut a rainbow wedge from the descending torrent. Gently stood a moment looking at it as he came out. Hansom had departed in the police car, carrying with him the constable and his notebook. He had offered Gently a lift and lunch at the headquarters canteen, but Gently preferred to remain in Queen Street.
‘Looks like it’s set in for the day, sir,’ said the constable on the door. Gently nodded to him absently. He was looking now along the street towards Railway Bridge, sodden and empty, its higgledy-piggledy buildings rain-dark and forbidding. ‘Where’s Charlie’s?’ he asked.
‘What’s Charlie’s, sir?’
‘It’s a snack-bar.’
‘You mean that place down the road, sir?’
‘Could be.’
‘It’s that cream-painted building about a hundred yards down on the other side.’
‘Thanks.’
He plodded off towards Railway Bridge, his shoes paddling in the wet. They were good shoes, but he could feel a chill dampness slowly spreading underfoot. He shivered intuitively. The cream-painted building was a rather pleasant three-storey house of late Regency vintage. It had wide eaves and a wrought-iron veranda on the first floor, and had been redecorated probably as late as last autumn. It was only at ground level that the effect was spoiled. The sash windows had been replaced with plate glass and the door was a mixture of glass and chromium-plate. A sign over the windows said: CHARLIE’S SNAX. Another sign, a smaller one, advertised meals upstairs. Gently pressed in hopefully.
Inside was a snack-bar and several lino-topped tables, at which sat a sprinkling of customers. Gently approached the man behind the bar. He said: ‘Are you serving lunch today?’
The man looked him over doubtfully. ‘Might do you something hot, though we don’t do meals on a Sunday as a rule.’
‘Where do I go — upstairs?’
‘Nope — that’s closed.’
Gently took a seat at a vacant table by the door and the man behind the bar dived through a curtain behind him. It was not an impressive interior. The walls were painted half-cream and half-green, with a black line at high water mark. The floor was bare, swept, but not scrubbed. An odour of tired cooking-fat lingered in the atmosphere. The clientele, at the moment, consisted of two transport drivers, a soldier, a bus-conductor and an old man reading a newspaper. The bar-tender came back.