‘I haven’t done with that one yet…’
‘You’ve got thirty thousand interrogations ahead of you!’ jeered Hansom.
The super cocked his head on one side. ‘It’s no good, Gently, you haven’t got a case, not even the makings of one. If it’s as you say, it can never be proved. And in the meanwhile, there’s nothing in Fisher’s behaviour in conflict with the view that he was the murderer and the thief.’
‘Except that he wasn’t the suicide type.’
‘There isn’t any suicide type!’ broke in the little doctor. ‘Anybody will commit suicide under certain conditions.’
‘Fisher would have stood trial… he was too stupid to want to have avoided it.’
‘That’s quite ridiculous!’
The super said: ‘Even there you’ve only shown that murder was possible, and it’s possible in the majority of suicide cases. You cannot show that murder was likely.’
Gently brooded, felt for another peppermint cream. ‘You’ve searched the flat?’ he asked absently.
‘Of course we’ve searched the flat.’
‘You’ve been through his pockets?’
‘Naturally.’
‘And you found the key?’
The super stared at Gently uncomprehendingly. ‘What key?’
‘The door-key of the flat… it wasn’t in the door.’
‘What are you getting at, Gently?’
Gently ate the peppermint cream slowly and irritatingly. ‘The door was locked,’ he mumbled, ‘if Fisher locked it, you should be able to find the key.’
Hansom said: ‘He’d got a key-ring in his pocket.’
‘One doesn’t keep door-keys on key-rings.’
‘Blast you, Gently!’ exploded the super. He turned on Hansom viciously. ‘What sort of a bloody policeman are you? Go in there and find that key — and don’t come out till you’ve got it!’ He turned back to Gently. ‘All right — so if it isn’t there you’ve made a point — but you haven’t proved your case or anything like it. Meantime I’m giving the Coroner’s Court the OK and this case is going in on its merits. I’m satisfied with what I’ve got. If you want more, you’d better go after it — only you won’t be getting any help from me. Is that clear?’
Gently felt sadly in his pocket and brought out an empty bag. ‘Quite clear,’ he said, screwing it into a ball, ‘quite clear.’
Alan Hunter
Gently Does It
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
T HE CORONER’S COURT sat on the day following and returned on Nicholas Huysmann a verdict of death resulting from a stab wound inflicted by his chauffeur, James Fisher, and on his chauffeur a verdict of felo de se. Chief Inspector Gently, Central Office, CID, gave immaculate evidence and was publicly congratulated by the Coroner both for this and for his ready assistance, although on holiday. Superintendent Walker and the Norchester Police, CID, also came in for congratulations.
The super muttered grimly as they left the court: ‘You given up this Leaming business then?’
Gently smiled and shook his head.
‘Thanks for letting it ride, anyway.’
Gently shrugged, but as he turned away the super caught his arm. ‘I didn’t mean quite all I said last night… I’d like you to keep me posted. And if you need any help — within reason, of course.’
Peter Huysmann had been released the evening before, the charge against him dropped out of hand. He had been at court, slightly dazed by his sudden return to the world, but had only been required to testify to the accuracy of his statement, which was then read for him. For the time being he was continuing to live at the caravan, where he had been received with much rejoicing and congratulation by his late boss and by the fair community in general. It was considered a signal victory over the auld enemy…
Rejoicing there was also at Charlie’s, for Charlie had come to look on the ‘getting’ of Fisher as almost a personal issue. ‘I knew it was him from the start,’ he told a group of lorry-drivers, ‘right from the time Chief Inspector Gently first come in here, I could smell what was in the wind. Ah, he’s a foxy one, he is! He just let the City Police go on thinking it was young Huysmann and then when they got their hands on him, “No,” he says, “you let young Huysmann be. Just give me twenty-four hours,” he says, “and I’ll have the one you want!” Ah, he played with Fisher like a cat with a mouse. Fisher, he thinks he’s this and he thinks he’s that… but all the time the Chief Inspector was getting nearer and nearer to him, taking his time, never in a hurry, till last of all even Fisher can see that the game is up… well, there you are. There was only two ways out, and he took the handiest…’
Gretchen, subdued, bowed, dressed entirely in black, with a veil which hid any expression in her waxen face, had also made a statement which was read for her in court. It had been drafted by Gently and was exquisite in its restraint. At the point where the hiding of the knife was described the Coroner was moved to raise his glasses and deliver a look of reproof, but a closer view of the dark-clad figure decided him to let the matter rest. With Susan, on the other hand, he was positively genial.
Late final editions carried a full report of the inquest, were scanned perfunctorily in cafes and snack-bars and on the crowded buses carrying city workers back to the suburbs. It was a satisfactory but tame denouement. The affair had raised expectations of a hard-fought trial with all the exciting trappings of judicial slaying… quite a fair stretch of innocent entertainment. As the clerk at Simmonds said to Miss Jones (blouses), ‘You can’t get really worked up over a thing like that. But if it had been the son, now…’ ‘Bloody flash in the pan that was,’ said a news-vendor, ‘thank God for the football, that’s what I say.’
Inspector Hansom went about his duties, a wounded soul. He hadn’t had much sleep. Into the small hours of the morning he had been at Fisher’s flat and, at the super’s suggestion, all the area within a key’s throw of the flat, searching for the blasted key that had to be there and wasn’t… as dawn had begun to show far off down the Yar valley he had been assailed by unpolicemanlike thoughts. There was a firm in the city who would turn out an identical key for a couple of bob… and wasn’t it worth a couple of bob to get one’s head down? At the same time, if that key really was missing… and you had to admit that Gently was a clever bastard… Hansom lit a bad-tasting cigar and breathed expensively towards the dawn.
Leaming, well-dressed and impressive, had given his brief evidence to the court with precision and conviction. One felt that here was a man of ability, a man who could handle affairs of moment: a man to be trusted implicitly. The Coroner treated him with deference. As he concluded his short statement he glanced round the court and catching Gently’s eye, smiled to him winningly. Gently smiled also, but it would have been more difficult to categorize Gently’s smile.
A police car still stood in Paradise Alley, lone and smart amongst the derelict houses and blank, shabby walls. Gently nodded to the constable who stood by it.
‘Have they had any luck?’
‘Not so far, sir, but they’re just taking the floor up.’
Gently clicked his tongue. ‘They won’t find it there.’
‘There’s a crack where it might have slipped through, sir… they’ve found the head off an old hammer and a threepenny bit.’
‘Well… tell them not to spend it all at once.’
‘Ha, ha! Yes, sir.’
Gently turned away to the row of empty windows opposite. No fierce little head bobbed up to greet him, but then, it was probably Superman’s bedtime. He shoved open a yawing door and went through. The floor above had caved in long since, leaving a rusty fireplace hanging on the wall in hearthless nakedness. The back of the house was a collapsed pile of rubble. Gently climbed over it and looked down at the desolation below. Walls disintegrating, sagging roofs, piles of rubble surmounted by nettles and ragwort… right down to Queen Street, where the shabby thoroughfare arrested the ruins with a narrow bulwark of vitality. He shook his head and picked his way cautiously through a fragment-strewn yard.