Gently at a Gallop (17 page)

‘Who did he go to the party with?’

Docking looked down his nose. ‘That could be a snag, sir. He took a girl called Diane Stevenson, and according to him they’ve just got engaged.’

Gently formed a smoke-ring. ‘Then we’ve lost our motive.’

‘But the rest of it, sir! It fits like a glove.’

‘When was he supposed to have knocked about with Mrs Berney?’

Docking humped his shoulders. ‘Not lately, of course . . .’

That was Brightwell: and none of the others fitted like a glove or anything else. They consisted of three single young men, Stanford, Phillips and Greenhough, and a couple of newly-weds, Paston and D’Eath. The two latter had been accompanied by their wives and the three former by their girl friends. Each gave his place of work for alibi, and where these had been checked they stood up. Paston, D’Eath and Greenhough were horsemen and they patronized the Rising stable; D’Eath, who worked with Drury, the auctioneer, knew Creke by sight, but only as a customer at the livestock market. Stanford, junior partner at the local wine merchant’s, and Greenhough, a surveyor, both admitted to being former admirers of Mrs Berney. But theirs was the same story as Tommy Brightwell’s.

‘Stanford thinks she was frigid, sir,’ D.C. Waters contributed. ‘I had a heart-to-heart chat with him down in the wine vaults. He fancied her a lot and she led him on a bit, but she always clamped down when he made a play. A tease, he says. She liked them to suffer. He reckons Berney was a hero, marrying her.’

‘That’s about what Greenhough said, sir,’ Sergeant Bayfield said. ‘He got to wondering whether the lady was a queer. She’d be all over a woman like Mrs Rising, but when it came to a bloke she’d got nothing for him.’

‘But she used to go out with him?’ Gently said.

‘Oh yes sir, she’d knock around. But mostly her brother and Mr Redmayne came too, and it was just a show or dinner somewhere. Then he’d wangle to drive her home on his own and pull up at a quiet spot. Says she’d let him get worked up over her and then shy off. He never got anywhere.’

‘Could be she is a queer,’ Docking said. ‘There’s something about her, sir. She puts me off.’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ D.C. Waters said slowly. ‘She’s quite a bird. And someone got there.’

‘Perhaps it was bloody ignorance,’ Bayfield said. ‘She didn’t know what it was all about. Then one time someone got to base, and the lady clicked, and made a grab for Berney.’

Gently drew a few times on his pipe. ‘Unfortunately, this isn’t what we’re looking for,’ he said. ‘What we want is a man who Mrs Berney loves, not just a man who may have loved Mrs Berney. He belongs to her past. They must often have been together. In her eyes, he’s a very remarkable man. For some reason, perhaps the simple one, she couldn’t marry him. And he’s horseman enough to manage Creke’s stallion.’ He puffed. ‘I could add,’ he said, ‘that Mrs Berney describes him as being supernatural. But I think we should take a closer look at the mortals before we call in a clergyman.’

Docking’s eyes rounded. ‘She said that, sir?’

‘She said he was invisible, and rode on the thunder.’

‘Jesus,’ Bayfield said. ‘We’re dealing with a nutter.’

Gently nodded. ‘I’m not ruling that out.’

They thought about it silently for a space, each one keeping his eyes to himself. Bayfield, a shiny-faced man with a moustache, had his eyebrows hooked high, as though in indignant disbelief. Waters was absently cracking his fingers; Lubbock, an older man, had his eyes on his knees. Docking was frowning. He had a report sheet before him, and kept fretting at a corner in an irritating way. At last he looked up.

‘Could
she
have done it, sir?’ he said.

Now everyone else looked at Gently. Gently grinned at them through his smoke and added one or two fresh rings.

‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he conceded.

‘I mean, I know she’s preggers, sir,’ Docking said. ‘But she’s pretty limber with it, and it didn’t stop her going riding on Sunday.’

‘She wasn’t riding Creke’s stallion.’

‘No, sir – but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t. Creke can ride it, and he did allow that Mrs Rising might, too. I’d say it was a case of getting to know the horse. I reckon Creke would know how to make him take to you. And Mrs Berney’d know Creke, and she’s the sort who might have a go.’ Docking’s eyes glinted. ‘In fact, it’d fit pretty well, sir,’ he said. ‘A man she might see a lot of – and Creke’s wife can’t be a lot of good to him.’

‘By the centre,’ Bayfield said. ‘That’s an angle, sir.’

‘I reckon it fits all round,’ Docking said. ‘It never needed a man to ride that horse. That’s where we’ve been wrong from the start.’

Gently jetted smoke. ‘Follow it out,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Docking said. ‘Allowing she can ride the horse. Then all she has to do is to get Berney on the heath, and with him as jealous as sin it shouldn’t have been difficult.’

‘Creke didn’t write that poem.’

‘Didn’t need to, sir. It could be the brother’s, like they tell us. She just had to flash it around and make sure that Berney got an eyeful. Then he was set up. When he says he’s going to town, she’s pretty sure what he has in mind. So she lets him stew till the afternoon, then drives to the Home Farm and collects the horse.’

‘What would make him keep watch on the heath?’

Docking hesitated. Bayfield weighed in.

‘He’d know if she spent a lot of her time there, sir,’ he said. ‘And if he didn’t, she could soon sell him the idea.’

‘And him going to the valley?’

‘Well, there,’ Bayfield said. ‘If you ask me it doesn’t mean a thing. When she didn’t turn up where he was staked out, he was bound to hunt around to see if he could spot her.’

Gently puffed. ‘Then there’s our horseman.’

‘Coincidence, sir,’ Docking urged. ‘Could have been Rising every time. And you wouldn’t expect him to admit it.’

Gently smiled benignly. A neat package! And it took care of some other things, too. Stogumber’s halting confession, over-chivalrous when related to Redmayne, fell adroitly into place if it was intended to shield Marie. ‘I deserved a better daughter . . .’ Stogumber had almost sign-posted his motive. Yet, if Creke was Marie’s lover, would he be so callous as to hold the threat of exposing her over Stogumber’s head? Creke . . . Gently clicked his tongue.

‘I doubt if Mrs Berney is a second Lady Chatterley.’

‘Oh, I don’t know, sir,’ Docking said eagerly. ‘You can’t go a lot on that these days.’

‘We’re told she’s frigid.’

‘But that could be just the point, sir. She may have needed a bit of rough to get her going.’

‘Plenty of dollies like that, sir,’ Bayfield put in. ‘Especially the uppity ones. They want a caveman.’

Gently swayed his shoulders. ‘Maybe so! But do they make an idol of the caveman afterwards? Because that’s what we have to assume with Mrs Berney, if we’re to be left with a motive at all. Whoever it is, she worships him, and I can’t see Creke filling her bill. The picture calls for a cultivated man, perhaps a man of distinction.’

‘But she could still have done it, sir,’ Bayfield said. ‘It doesn’t matter if Creke was her lover or not.’

‘It means we’ll need to think again,’ Gently said. ‘If the lover isn’t Creke it blurs a nice, simple image.’

Docking stared glumly at his report sheet. ‘It would come back to this, sir,’ he said. ‘Mr Redmayne.’

Gently nodded. ‘But there’s the problem. We know of no reason why he shouldn’t have married her.’

‘It wasn’t money, sir?’

‘Not unless he’s a liar. And he’s too clever for that.’

‘A religious thing . . . ?’

‘Do you know their religion?’

‘They’re not Catholics, sir,’ Bayfield said. ‘Or I would know it.’

Gently gestured. ‘If we could find one reason, we could sink our teeth in Mr Redmayne. Until we can, he’s laughing at us – and perhaps we’re missing a better prospect.’

‘A better prospect,’ Docking repeated. The phone buzzed, and he grabbed it impatiently. He listened awhile, his face blank, then snapped, ‘O.K.’ and hung up. He looked at Gently. ‘That was the desk,’ he said. ‘Rising’s out there. He wants to talk to us.’ He hesitated, his eyes calculating. ‘Perhaps we were speaking of the devil,’ he said.

Bayfield and the two D.C.s went out, taking with them the fish-and-chip papers and empty bottles. When Rising came in Gently had taken the desk chair and Docking was seated on his right. Rising halted to view this disposition.

‘The Inquisition in session,’ he sneered.

‘You wanted to talk to us?’ Gently said.

‘Yuh,’ Rising said. ‘But like man to man.’

He spun the chair they’d put for him in front of the desk and sat down on it saddlewise, arms resting on the back. He was wearing breeches and a plaid shirt and a smart hacking jacket of soft tweed. He glanced quickly at Docking, then back to Gently.

‘Right, we won’t beat about the bush, sports,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to tell you to stop looking for Berney’s woman, because that’s not what this kick-up’s about.’

Docking gazed at him. ‘You’ve come to tell us that?’

‘True,’ Rising said. ‘That’s the message. I could’ve told you yesterday, but I had reasons. So now I’ve come to tell you today.’

Docking snorted. ‘We know that,’ he said.

Rising’s eyes jumped to him. ‘You know it?’ he said.

‘We’re not exactly stupid round here,’ Docking said. ‘If that’s the lot, you’re wasting our time.’

Rising’s stare hardened. ‘So if you know it,’ he said, ‘what games were you playing out at my place yesterday?’

‘That’s our business,’ Docking snapped. ‘We don’t know anything that puts you in the clear.’

Rising stared a moment longer, then he jumped to his feet. ‘You’re right, sport, I’m wasting your time,’ he said. ‘I should’ve known better than to come round here – you won’t catch me on that kick again.’

‘Whoa!’ Gently said. ‘Sit down, Mr Rising.’

‘I don’t have time to waste either,’ Rising said.

‘Sit down,’ Gently said. ‘There is something you can tell us. What were your reasons for not speaking up yesterday?’

Rising glared at him, his hands still on the chair-back. Reluctantly, he sank back on the chair. ‘They’re about what you might think,’ he said. ‘Loyalty to friends. Or is that something the coppers don’t know about?’

‘Which friends?’ Gently said.

‘Mrs Berney. I didn’t want to drop her in the cart.’

‘But today you’re telling us?’

‘Too right I am. And don’t think I’m feeling a hero, either.’ He scowled at the desk. ‘It’s my skin,’ he said. ‘You’d got me backed into a corner. No effing alibi, a damn fat motive, and even Jill in the bag, too. Loyalty’s a bloody fine thing, sport, but there’s a time and place for everything.’

‘So you knew what was happening between the Berneys.’

Rising sank his head. ‘I did by Monday.’

‘Something at the party?’

‘Yeah, the party. What happened after it, anyway.’

‘What did happen after it?’

Rising wagged his head. ‘The sheilas put their coats in Charlie’s office. We were in there last, when the others had gone, me helping Jill get into her coat. Then we heard Marie give a yelp. We shot out into the hall. She came blazing past us and up the stairs. She’d got a letter in her hand.’

‘A letter?’ Gently said.

‘Looked like one to me,’ Rising said. ‘And there was Charlie down the hall with a face like frozen death. Properly shook me, Charlie did. Looked as though he’d just run into Medusa. I went up and said something to him, but he never spoke a word.’

‘And from this you deduced Marie was being unfaithful.’

‘Deduced is right,’ Rising said. ‘Charlie was hit clean out of the ground. I never saw a bloke so chilled-off as he was.’

Gently gave a little shrug. ‘Strange,’ he said.

‘Huh?’ Rising said. ‘What’s strange?’

‘Berney being so upset. When he’d known for some time that his wife did have a lover.’

‘Yeah, but now he knew who,’ Rising said. ‘He’d read the letter. That was the bit that was knocking Charlie.’

‘The letter would have told him?’

‘Sure,’ Rising said. ‘It had the bloke’s signature. I saw it.’

‘Who?’ Gently said.

Rising rocked his chair back, his narrowed eyes glinting at Gently. ‘Don’t get me wrong, sport,’ he said. ‘I didn’t read the letter. I only caught sight of it whipping past me. But it was headed up and signed, I can give you that straight. And it had been folded up small. There were a lot of creases in it.’

‘Handwritten or typed?’

‘Handwritten.’

‘How much writing?’

Rising weaved his head. ‘I didn’t have time to get my rule out,’ he said. ‘It was just a sheet of notepaper, pretty well written over.’

Gently took the Lachlan Stogumber manuscripts from his wallet and held one leaf up, keeping it distant from Rising.

‘About this much?’

Rising peered at it keenly. ‘Give or take some lines. It was a larger sheet.’

‘Similar handwriting?’

‘Break it down,’ Rising said. ‘All I can tell you was it wasn’t typed.’

‘What about the ink?’

‘It was ink,’ Rising said. ‘Not red, not green. Just effing ink.’

Gently put the leaf away. ‘All the same, you saw plenty – just coming out of the study, with Mrs Berney running by you.’

Rising’s eyes slitted. ‘I saw what I saw. I shan’t lose any sleep if you don’t believe me.’

‘Of course, it lets you out. It wasn’t your letter.’

Rising eased off the chair. ‘You through?’ he said.

‘Just a last question,’ Gently said. ‘Who slipped it to her?’

‘Get stuffed,’ Rising said. He headed for the door. ‘Wait,’ Gently said.

Rising halted.

‘Tell me which of the guests left just before you.’

Rising turned with a leer. ‘Her brother and Leo. And they don’t write letters – they use the phone.’

He slammed out. Gently sat silent, his arms leaning on the desk. Docking was staring viciously after Rising. He had spots of colour in his cheeks.

‘I suppose we can’t tie that joker in, sir?’

Gently shook his head. ‘Not on what we’ve got.’

‘All the same, I’ll fix him with something, sir. The way he drives it shouldn’t take long.’

Gently shrugged and struck a match for his pipe. ‘It doesn’t fit,’ he said. ‘The signed letter. If Berney knew his wife’s lover’s identity, why did he set watch for him the next day?’