Gently at a Gallop (12 page)

‘And it was all over – a year ago.’

The manager gave some exaggerated nods. ‘Rachel . . . well, I never had it out with her. But of course . . . I mean, it stands to reason.’ He looked wretchedly at Gently. ‘We don’t sleep together. I’ve got a room across in the wing . . . ever since. It can’t be the same . . . Christ knows how we’ll finish up.’

‘But Berney stopped coming here.’

‘No, oh no. He was coming here after that, the bastard. He brought the Stogumber girl here . . . or she brought him, I don’t know quite how it was. Then there was her brother, and the old man’s cousin . . . they’d all come here in a party . . . Rachel, she wouldn’t come down, but me of course . . . you see a hell of a lot, in this game.’

He paused to lick his lips again; his eyes rolled a little, then straightened.

‘Tell you something . . . this is what I reckon. She’d given him a hoist with his own gear.’

Gently checked. ‘How do you mean . . . ?’

The manager nodded his foolish nods. ‘Take my word for it. She’s got a bun . . . but who was the baker, I’d like to know? Not Charlie Berney . . . I’ll swear to that! I mean, the way she treated him was a joke. And he couldn’t see it, the stupid bugger . . . but I could see it, I tell you straight!’

Gently sat very still. ‘She was deceiving him . . . ?’

The manager giggled knowingly and groped for the bottle. ‘She was giving him a hoist . . . that’s rich, isn’t it? One bastard fathered on another, and him innocent as a babe . . .’

He poured more Cognac, chortling tipsily, with moisture beading on his pickled nose. He drank. His swimming eyes tried to settle on Gently’s, but kept missing them, going past them.

Gently got up and went out to the foyer, where there was a pay-telephone for customers. He fed in a coin and dialled the police station. A few seconds later he was connected to Docking.

‘Listen,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve been talking to a genius, a man who can see the obvious when it’s in front of him.’ He wedged himself more firmly into the booth. ‘Forget Berney’s woman. Tomorrow, we’ll be hunting for a man.’

T
HE OBVIOUS
. . . ! And, after he’d slept on it, it remained no less obvious. With the morning sun slanting into his bedroom, Gently lay luxuriously checking over the points.

Now there was logic in that clapped-up marriage, in the mysterious behaviour of a playboy brewer, in the conspiracy of Lachlan Stogumber and the unwidowlike character of his sister . . .

Berney had been hoist. A middle aged Casanova, he’d been twisted round the finger of the haughty Marie. Dazzled by a sudden, miraculous complacence, he’d run his neck straight into the noose. And he’d been hoisted: the doughty warrior had become the gull of a young girl; learning too late that he’d been pre-cuckolded, was a mock-husband: a joke.

Gently stirred comfortably amongst the bedclothes. Starting from there, all the rest fitted! They had probably even a short-list of Berney’s suspects, comprised by the names of those invited to his party. Because the party stood out as an evident ploy. It had been contrived to discover Marie’s lover. Uncharacteristically subdued, Berney had stayed in the background, waiting, watching for the unguarded exchange – which, it turned out, wasn’t to come, since the contemptuous Marie had stuck close to her brother and Redmayne all evening. It was only later she’d made her slip: letting Berney get a glimpse of that damning sonnet.

Gently paused in his thoughts. What exactly had Berney seen? It didn’t have to be the type copy which his wife had produced for the police. Once Mrs Berney realized that her domestic had talked, she could easily have provided herself with a duplicate from her brother’s typewriter. But if there had been an original – say in manuscript, and signed – wouldn’t Berney have known from that the identity of her lover? Which apparently he didn’t, because the next day he’d set his trap to find it out. Gently frowned. Either the typescript was the original, or it was copied from one that was similarly anonymous . . .

One way or another – it had settled Berney! He certainly hadn’t believed that the sonnet was her brother’s. Sick with jealousy, he’d pretended a message calling him to London on business. To make the opportunity more inviting he’d invented a need to stay the night in town; then, after booking in at Starmouth, he’d gone straight to the heath to keep watch.

So far, so good: but here one came to the crux of the mystery. Why had Berney been so inflexibly confident that the rendezvous would be on the heath? He had made the opportunity himself, so there could have been no prior arrangement for him to be privy to, and if he didn’t know the lover’s identity and place of residence, he couldn’t tell if the heath was convenient or not. Yet he appeared to have had no doubts. He had stationed himself unhesitatingly at the entry to the heath. And sure enough, his quarry had turned up, and he had followed her to the meeting-place . . .

Gently reached his pipe from the bedside cabinet, filled it and applied an absent match. As though – this was it! – Berney had guessed who his man was, and on Tuesday was seeking positive proof. He had guessed – and guessed rightly: the lover was going to come over the heath. He was a man who lived on the far side of the heath, who was familiar with the heath: and a riding man.

Gently closed his eyes and puffed. Before him he saw spread again Docking’s map: the two red crosses – not so very far apart – and the heath ranging beyond, to Clayfield. Doubtless Marie had driven on to the heath and had concealed her car at the survey point. She couldn’t drive fast on the rough track, so it was possible for Berney to follow her on foot. Or perhaps he’d hung back, knowing where she must park, and had watched her movements from far off – closing in then, by cutting across, when she began to head for the valley. However it was, she led him to the spot, and to that spot had come the horseman: across the heath. From some compass-bearing on the distant perimeter he’d ridden in . . .

From Clayfield?

Clayfield was farthest, but that didn’t put it out of reckoning. Even on a hot day, at an easy pace, a horse could cover the distance in half an hour. And Rising had horses. He was acquainted with the Stogumbers. His wife, Jill, had taught Marie to ride. He was perhaps the sort of man Lachlan Stogumber might abet against the debauched brewer whom his sister had made use of. Stogumber might even have helped Rising with the sonnet, and typed it himself in case Berney did see it . . . that would square well with the young poet’s character, and account for his confidence that Gently couldn’t disprove his authorship. On the other counts, Rising had been at the party, and Rising had no checkable alibi . . .

Gently blew smoke at the slanted sunlight. Moving now to the other end of the heath! There – it stood out – was the Home Farm, in distance nearest to the place of the meeting. And there was the horse, the killer horse, already with a maimed groom to its record – unridable by anyone but Creke, by his own witness – though the man was almost certainly a liar. Not that Creke rated high as a suspect. One couldn’t imagine him attracting Marie. His literary talent was probably zero, he hadn’t been at the party, and his alibi was sound. It was the horse that didn’t have an alibi, though Creke had done his best to provide it with one: the huge horse, with its satanic temper . . . ready to the hand of a man who dared.

And of course, there had been a man who’d dared.

Gently felt for the matches and relit his pipe. Occupying middle ground, between the Home Farm and Clayfield, the Manor House looked across the heath to the sea. A mile up the road from the stallion’s stable. Say a couple of minutes in a bouncing Renault. A Renault, whose small, close wheels might have left narrow tracks under the trees by the stable . . .

Gently smiled to himself. It fitted almost too well – supposing his hypothesis was the right one. On every count, from alibi to literacy, Redmayne qualified as the hot suspect. It went further. He was an inmate with Marie before her hasty marriage to Berney – and, according to her brother, was exactly the type to whom Marie would feel attracted. Redmayne, as a poet, would probably be a traditionalist. Redmayne had access to Lachlan Stogumber’s typewriter. Redmayne, beyond doubt, would get the poet’s backing in any collision with the law. And to this one could add that Marie sought his company at the party, perhaps in defiance of her husband’s gorgon gaze . . .

A hot suspect? Well . . . yes! But there was one tiny flaw in the argument. Gently impatiently struck another match and puffed rank smoke towards the ceiling. If Marie Stogumber had been pregnant by Redmayne, what was to stop her from marrying her lover? The affair with Berney would have been superfluous if Leo Redmayne had been the man. Possible to think up explanations, like Marie marrying Berney in a fit of pique . . . but probable? Gently shook his head. A fit of pique rarely led to such rashness.

He glanced at his watch. It showed five past eight. He pulled over the telephone that stood on the cabinet. When Docking came on he sounded brisk and mettlesome, as though he’d just stepped out of a cold shower.

‘Don’t wait for me,’ Gently said. ‘Carry on with checking the party guests. And remember, today we’re not pulling punches – we need to get that list sorted.’

‘Sir,’ Docking said eagerly. ‘I’ve been giving it some thought, sir, and there’s one name on the list that really stands out.’

‘Yes,’ Gently said. ‘But that one’s for me.’

‘Sir,’ Docking said.

Gently hung up.

The manager didn’t appear at breakfast, but his wife sat icily at their table by the wall. She had eyes for nobody, certainly not for Gently, and she rose and stalked out while he was still at his porridge.

In the foyer he met a couple of reporters, to whom he gave one of his famous pseudo-statements. Wistfully, they bowled him one or two fast ones, then let him go – knowing their Gently.

He fetched the Lotus and set out through the busy, Saturday-morning town. The sun was spiteful already, sitting lurid in a palish sky. A little thunderish? Towards the sea the horizon was dully clear and hard, while in the windscreen buzzed another black fly such as Docking had executed the day before. Some weather breeding . . .

Coming to the Home Farm, Gently eased the Lotus to a crawl. Creke had cleared his barley. The field by the track lay shaven and empty except for scattered straw-bales. A long way off, on a gentle slope, the orange-painted combine was still chuntering restlessly, but here, where the stable stood shadowy in its dark trees, nothing stirred, no man came. Gently hunched and drove on. This was the way it had been on Tuesday! For a man whose convenience it was to use him the black stallion had waited. For a man who could ride him . . .

The Manor House lay silent in the steep sun, its door and most of its windows wide open. Gently drifted the Lotus through the yews and let it glide to a halt by the brick steps. A movement caught his eye, in the trees to the right. He recognized Redmayne stooping over some object. At the same moment Redmayne caught sight of him, straightened, remained for a second motionless. Then he came slowly forward, carrying something in his hand.

‘Look . . .
Panolis griseovarigata
. There’s a brood making hay of that young
Pinus
.’

He opened his hand to reveal a small, lively caterpillar, with linear stripes of green, white and orange.

Gently stared at it. ‘Is it something rare?’

‘A typical layman’s remark,’ Redmayne grinned. ‘No, there’s nothing rare about this – it’s only too common for some arboriculturalists.’ He turned his hand over, letting the caterpillar climb it, and following its movements with smiling eyes. ‘It’s death to pine trees,’ he said. ‘But what a lovely creature. And the moth too. It’s the Pine Beauty.’

‘Thanks,’ Gently said. ‘I’ll remember that.’

Redmayne laughed and settled the caterpillar on a leaf. ‘So you haven’t called in to naturalize,’ he said. ‘More’s the pity. Who do you want?’

‘I want you.’

‘Do you?’ Redmayne said. ‘Well, I’m probably the most conversible. But I was planning a little ramble on the heath. I suppose we couldn’t combine our activities?’

Gently hesitated. ‘Very well,’ he said.

Redmayne grinned. ‘You won’t regret it. Just give me a minute to go into the house, and then we’ll be on our way.’

He ran up the steps. Gently leaned against the Lotus and began to fill his pipe. All about the Manor was quiet, except for the crooning of wood-pigeons in one of the beeches. A remote place . . . According to Docking’s map, there was nothing nearer to the Manor than the Home Farm, and that was a mile distant. Just the fields, the woods and the heath . . .

He heard steps in the hall and turned, but it was Lachlan Stogumber who’d come to the door. He stood staring contemptuously at Gently and Lotus, his large, goldeny eyes inimical.

‘We’ll have to find you a room, officer,’ he said. ‘What’s the latest – has the horse confessed?’

Gently regarded the young man mildly. He was dressed this morning in a white, Shelleyan shirt, its front unbuttoned to the waist.

‘Perhaps I’ve dreamed up a new mystery woman,’ Gently said.

Lachlan Stogumber laughed jeeringly. ‘You’ll have to do better than dream,’ he said. ‘Jill Rising wasn’t a very bright guess.’

‘Perhaps now I’m a little closer than Mrs Rising.’

‘But not close enough. You’ll never be that.’

‘Perhaps almost as close as I am now to you.’

Lachlan Stogumber paused, his eyes staring fiercely.

‘Yesterday,’ Gently said, ‘I was looking at it one way. Today, I’m looking at it in another. And today it’s fitting a great deal better. We probably won’t need a confession from the horse.’

‘What are you insinuating—?’

Lachlan Stogumber stepped forward, anger thinning his handsome face. But just then Redmayne reappeared to lay a hasty hand on the poet’s arm.

‘Manners, Lally,’ he smiled. ‘Don’t give the Super the wrong impression.’

Lachlan Stogumber jerked his arm away and flashed his cousin a furious glare. For a spell they stood confronting each other, Redmayne calm, Lachlan Stogumber smouldering; then the latter broke away and marched offendedly into the house. Redmayne gave a faint shrug.