‘Hullo, Inspector!’ he said, ‘I didn’t realize you were here… I’ve come to fetch a check-list.’ He glanced at Gretchen in surprise. ‘Why, Miss Huysmann… you’ve been crying!’ he said.
Alan Hunter
Gently Does It
CHAPTER ELEVEN
L EAMING’S VERMILION PASHLEY slid out of the yard with a surge of conscious power and rode superbly down Queen Street towards Railway Bridge. Gently adjusted himself in the well-padded seat and lit a hand-made cigarette. ‘I hope your housekeeper isn’t going to mind my coming to lunch…’ he said. Leaming smiled handsomely. ‘Don’t worry about that. She always cooks for half a dozen.’ ‘If I took home someone on spec my housekeeper would go on strike…’
The Pashley swept over the bridge and into Railway Road. On the right reared the long, high, windowless back of the football-ground stands. Leaming indicated it with a movement of his head. ‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘one of the best grounds outside the First Division. They’ve got another home match on Saturday… the Cobblers… usually a hard game. Going to see them?’
‘I might,’ said Gently. ‘Are you?’
Leaming made a face. ‘This business is meaning a lot of extra work
… we’ve got the accountants in next week. I shall have to spend the weekend preparing for them.’
‘You’ll have to make sure of your pink’un.’
Leaming dashed away some cigarette ash and was silent. The Pashley sped on through the narrow, smoke-visaged streets adjacent to the marshalling yards and out to the east-bound road. Here it went through Earton, a residential suburb built round a village, and the narrow, twisted road packed with traffic gave Leaming plenty of opportunity to display both his car and his skill. They passed Earton Green, a narrow, tree-shaded strip bounded by the Yar, where rivercraft, spick and span from their winter grooming, lay fresh-launched and naked at boat-yard quays. Past the Green the road widened, still going through suburbs, hesitating before it shook off the last straggling cottages and plunged into the country beyond.
Here Leaming gunned the Pashley till it was leaping eastwards in the eighties. He would probably have gone faster, but the road wasn’t built for really high speeds and there was a good deal of outgoing traffic to be passed.
‘Like it?’ he jerked at Gently.
‘Not really,’ admitted Gently frankly.
‘I can get a hundred and fifteen out of her on the Newmarket road — going down to London I reached Hatfield one hour dead out of Norchester.’
‘You must miss an awful lot that way.’
‘I’ve missed everything so far!’
Gently’s ordeal did not last long. Three miles beyond Norchester they came to the side turning which led to Haswick. Monk’s Thatch, Leaming’s house, stood at the nearer end. It was a beautiful modern riverside dwelling standing amongst trees, hidden from the road by a shrubbery. The verandaed front looked over a terraced lawn to the river and a thatched boat-house, standing apart, suggested that Leaming had other interests as well as cars.
Gently said: ‘All this must have cost you a penny.’
Leaming shrugged. ‘My father left me a little money, you know…’
He led the way into the house and showed Gently where he could wash. The indoor appointments matched the outdoor ones in opulence. By the time he was sat down to lunch on a Chippendale dining-room chair, one of a suite, Gently had formed quite a respect for Leaming’s father.
Leaming said: ‘Of course, you must have guessed that I had a double motive in asking you to lunch. I very much want to hear what’s happening with young Peter.’
‘Ah…!’ Gently said, and helped himself to new potatoes.
‘I was flabbergasted when he wasn’t charged. It seemed more than we could hope for… at the same time, it set me wondering what was at the back of it.’
Gently crunched a piece of pork crackling. ‘Just means there’s some doubt,’ he said.
‘You mean you’re on to something else?’
‘Could mean that.’
‘And is it likely that young Peter will be cleared, without it ever going into court?’
‘That depends on a lot of things.’
‘But there’s a good chance of that? I know I’m asking you rather a lot, Inspector, but you can’t know how much this business means to me. Peter has been — well, almost a nephew to me, if you can understand that, and I’ve committed myself to stand by him now, whatever the cost. So if you can give me a little information — strictly off the record — I shall be extremely grateful.’ He glanced at Gently winningly.
Gently laid down his knife and took a thoughtful mouthful of beer. ‘There’s a lot of things to be cleared up,’ he said. ‘Until they are, I wouldn’t be too hopeful.’
‘Is Fisher one of those things?’
‘I think Fisher could give us some interesting information, if he had a mind to.’
‘You know, Inspector, if I had to put my finger on one particular person and say “that’s him”, I should put it on Fisher.’
‘You would?’ mused Gently.
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Have you any especial reason for saying that?’
‘He just seems to me the one person who would do it. Isn’t that your opinion?’
Gently drank some more beer. ‘I suppose he’s quite a likely customer,’ he said.
‘Ah! I thought you would agree.’ Leaming returned to his plate for a moment, then said, through the tail-end of a mouthfuclass="underline" ‘I believe there’s something in that business about him and Gretchen, after all.’
Gently elevated an eyebrow.
‘Yes, I know I pooh-poohed it when you suggested it the other day, but I’ve heard a bit of gossip about it since then.’
‘Where?’ said Gently, eating.
‘I was in that snack-bar across the street from the yard — I heard it mentioned there. Quite confidently, you know, as though there was no doubt about it.’
‘Could be just gossip,’ said Gently.
‘You think there’s nothing in it? But there could be some connection there, when you think about it. Just suppose he’d got her into trouble… they’d be in a mess, wouldn’t they? Both of them…’
‘You’ve got a theory about that…?’
‘Well… somebody did the old man in… and there must have been a reason for it.’
‘Yes, there must have been a reason…’
‘Of course, there’s the money to think of. If Fisher did for the old man with the idea of clearing the way to marry Gretchen, there’d be no point in his pinching it.’
‘There’s a great temptation in ready money.’
‘You’re right, of course… do you think he did it?’
Gently smiled at the river-side willows. ‘I may have an answer to that one shortly.’
Leaming ate and was silent for a short spell. Gently plied himself appreciatively with pork, and added a few more potatoes to his plate… after all, what does one’s figure matter when one is the wrong side of fifty?
Leaming said: ‘When I was talking to you about the money turning up, I didn’t know that one note was going to turn up so quickly… and right in the wrong place, too.’
Gently said: ‘Mmp.’
‘But it’s still a good angle, don’t you think? That money’s got to turn up some time.’
‘It’s not all that easy to trace when it does turn up… it may have gone through a lot of hands.’
‘There’s that, of course… but once it starts turning up you’re pretty sure that Peter’s in the clear.’
‘Could be,’ said Gently.
Leaming laughed. ‘For all I know, of course, that’s what’s happened… maybe that’s why Peter wasn’t charged. Well, if that’s the case, you may well say you’ll have an answer shortly.’ He glanced at Gently interrogatively.
‘And if, in addition, someone cracked…’
‘You mean Fisher?’
‘Perhaps.’
Leaming went back to his eating.
Gently said: ‘There’s a time in every case that I’ve had anything to do with when you suddenly find yourself over the top of the hill… usually, there’s no good reason for it. You just keep pushing and pushing, never seeming to get anywhere, and then some time you find you don’t have to push any longer… the thing you’ve been pushing starts to carry you along with it. It’s odd, isn’t it?’