Gently at a Gallop (2 page)

‘Is that how you read it?’ Gently asked.

‘Smoke if you damn well have to,’ the A.C. said. He licked his lips and put down his cup. ‘It gives me that impression,’ he admitted. ‘Berney was a womanizer – fact: but they have no evidence of a current affair. And against that he remarried only three months ago. You’d think he’d still be resting on his laurels.’

‘Perhaps his carefree past caught up with him,’ Gently suggested.

‘Blackmail?’

‘Berney would have money.’

‘Why kill him then?’

Gently shrugged. He began to fill his pipe with Erinmore.

‘Berney was forty-five,’ the A.C. said. ‘He gave a birthday party on Monday. Acting normally, you’d say, showing no signs of strain. But next morning he told his wife he had to attend a directors’ meeting in London, which involved staying overnight. And that was a lie. There wasn’t a meeting.’

‘The classic storyline,’ Gently said.

‘Yes, well,’ the A.C. said. ‘But what he actually did was to drive to Starmouth and book a single room in the name of Timson. Note, a single room. No suggestion of a Mrs Timson to follow.’

‘Perhaps she was already there.’

‘Then Berney would still be alive.’

Gently puffed. The A.C. made an impulsive fanning motion.

‘And that’s it – we lose sight of him after he booked at the Britannic at Starmouth. He left in his car at around ten a.m. and some time after that drove to High Hale heath. His stomach contents say he ate a picnic lunch, and there was an empty Thermos flask in the car. He died around four p.m., about a mile from the car, on a remote part of the heath. He wasn’t expected home, so no alarm. A farm-worker found him on Wednesday morning.’

‘And a horse did it – and that’s all they have?’

‘There isn’t much else,’ the A.C. said. ‘They have a witness who saw a horseman on the heath Tuesday afternoon, but too far off for identification. Apparently there’s a riding school three miles away, and they occasionally take riders to High Hale heath. But nothing on Tuesday. The only horse on the spot belongs to a farmer, and that’s accounted for.’

Gently puffed. ‘Then was it a horse?’

The A.C. hesitated. ‘They seemed pretty sure of it.’

‘You could run a man down, dump him on a heath, plant a few horseshoe marks around him.’

The A.C. stared a moment, then shook his head. ‘I don’t think you could get away with that trick. Vehicle-collision injuries are too distinctive. It would need more than faked hoofmarks to pull it off. And don’t forget the horseman.’

‘I wasn’t forgetting him. Somebody saw him a great way off.’

‘He was there,’ the A.C. said. ‘That’s the point. If his presence was innocent, you’d have thought he’d have come forward.’

‘Huh,’ Gently said. He brooded a little. ‘Where did Berney live?’ he asked.

‘At High Hale Lodge.’

‘Is that near the heath?’

‘I don’t have that information,’ the A.C. said.

Gently blew a lop-sided smoke-ring. ‘So Berney takes a day off,’ he said. ‘He’s expecting it to be a night off, too, and he books a room, name of Timson. His wife thinks he’s gone to London, but as far as we know he didn’t leave the district. It reads as though he drove straight back to High Hale, parked, then waited to keep an afternoon rendezvous. Was the car concealed?’

‘Yes,’ the A.C. said. ‘It was driven on the heath and parked out of sight.’

‘Just making points,’ Gently said. ‘But why did Berney wait about there so long?’

The A.C. frowned. ‘We don’t know that he did. There’s no evidence that he drove straight back.’

‘There’s the picnic lunch.’

‘Perhaps he thought he was safest there. Driving about, he might have been spotted.’

Gently nodded reluctantly. ‘We’ll pass that for the present. Berney eats his sandwiches, drinks his coffee. Now, the theory is, he sets off across the heath to a spot a mile distant, to meet a woman. Why so far?’

‘Perhaps handy for her.’

‘Couldn’t he have parked somewhere closer?’

The A.C. gestured with his hand. ‘This is all academic! No doubt it’ll be plain enough when you’ve seen the layout.’

‘What keeps striking me,’ Gently said, ‘is that Berney went to these lengths just to meet a woman. We aren’t dealing with calf-love. Berney was forty-five with, we are told, a long history of philandering. Would this be his style? Wouldn’t you rather have expected him to have made that room at Starmouth a double?’

‘It seems more his mark,’ the A.C. agreed. ‘But we don’t know the circumstances. What are you suggesting?’

Gently shrugged. ‘Points,’ he said. ‘Checking to see if the theory fits.’

He put another match to his pipe, kindly puffing the smoke aside. The A.C. twitched a little but refrained from stronger reaction.

‘Berney meets his woman, then, and while they’re dallying they’re being watched by the aggrieved husband. The husband is mounted; is, we assume, the horseman seen by the witness. The woman departs. Berney heads for his car. The husband follows Berney and rides him down. Husband rides home, stables horse, declares an alibi. Wife supports him.’

‘Well?’ the A.C. asked sourly.

‘It’s half-way credible,’ Gently admitted. ‘The wife would be scared of the husband and would probably feel she was responsible. But the locals haven’t come up with a woman and they haven’t come up with a horse.’

‘Which,’ the A.C. said, ‘is where we came in. Go down there and find them for them, Gently.’

Gently sighed and rose.

‘Any message for Lachlan Stogumber?’ he asked.

‘Tell him to use aspirin,’ the A.C. said. He was reaching for an aerosol as Gently left.

There was mist again on the heath, lying low and smoky in valleys and hollows. The western sky held a tender pink afterglow banded by still, heliotrope clouds. The cool plain of the sea below took a tinge of the pink in its slaty flood. Overhead a few stars prickled. No scent came from the dank heather.

A man was seated on one of the ridges and he had binoculars slung round his neck. He sat as still as the stunted thorn-bushes that grew in a screen about him. He watched and listened. Suddenly, quietly, he raised the binoculars to his eyes. For a long while he remained staring through them, motionless, forearms supported on his knees. Then he lowered them, but continued to sit there, the damp twilight thickening round him. At last he heard a sound, a long way off: the sound of a car engine being started.

Then the man rose, getting up stiffly in a way that showed he was no longer young. But he was tall and strongly framed; very silent in all his movements.

H
OT, PLODDING, AUGUST
sun blazoned the main street of Low Hale as the white Lotus Plus 2 drifted in from the Norchester Road. It was nearing noon, and very warm. Heat was shimmering above parked cars. Men and women in light summer clothes lingered in the shade of the shop canopies. The Lotus crept through very slowly, as though even it were feeling the heat. Its driver, pipe in mouth, peered curiously at the period fronts, the small family shops. Plaster, brick, faced flint, pantiles kiln-hot in the sun: a haphazard place, built in haphazard styles. Half-way along, the Royal William jutted out into the traffic. A big, white-plastered hotel, it carried a Berney’s Fine Ales sign. The Lotus paused there and seemed likely to park where, even in Low Hale, parking would have been naughty; but then it slid on again, silk-smooth, a white fish in the sun-struck street.

At the town’s end, off the coast road, stood a large, stodgy building of Fletton brick. It was shaded by limes and cars were parked before it; the white Lotus joined these.

‘First . . . a drink!’

The ops-room at Low Hale, though dimmed with blinds, was close and ovenish. Coming into it, Gently had begun to sweat as he hadn’t sweated in the moving car.

Five men were waiting for him there: the sharp-faced district Chief Super, Banham; Docking, the C.I.D. Inspector i/c; his Sergeant, Bayfield; and a couple of D.C.s. A reception committee – and Gently had been gracious, shaking hands all round. But now – first things first. What he needed was a beer.

‘Will a lager do you?’

‘Two lagers will.’

Banham smiled politely and signalled to one of the D.C.s.

‘You found it warm coming along, did you?’

‘Yes. It’s a race day at Newmarket.’

Banham whistled sympathy through his teeth. He was a large man, wearing a tight uniform.

They sat down round the desk, leaving the chair behind it for Gently. Docking, tow-haired, earnest-featured, was nursing a fat green file. The lager came: Gently swallowed his first glass in silence, then refilled the glass and set it down on the desk. He looked his audience over.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Some facts about Berney to kick off with.’

They stirred a little. Banham looked at Docking.

‘Well, he was a right bastard, sir,’ Docking began.

‘With the women.’

‘Yes, sir, the women. Didn’t seem able to keep his hands off them. He was paying a couple of maintenance orders, and there were scandals all over the place.’

‘Tell me about them.’

Docking hitched at his file. ‘There was his first wife for a start, sir,’ he said. ‘She’d been married to Laing, Berney’s solicitor, but Laing divorced her, naming Berney.’

‘Then she turned round and divorced Berney,’ Banham chuckled.

‘Yes, sir,’ Docking said. ‘Their marriage didn’t last long. Berney was named in another suit, and his first wife petitioned, using that as grounds.’

‘How long ago?’ Gently asked.

Docking dived into the file. ‘Nineteen-sixty.’

‘But he’s been named once or twice since then,’ Banham said. ‘And we’ve heard of a few cases that didn’t end in court. There was one last year, a fellow called Norman – it’s down in the book as a Domestic Dispute. Norman pasted the daylights out of Berney, but when we got there, Berney wouldn’t complain.’

‘Where was Norman on Tuesday?’

Banham looked at Docking.

‘He’s on holiday in Spain, sir,’ Docking said.

‘Go on, then,’ Gently said, sipping. ‘What else have we got that’s up to date?’

Docking had the file open again. ‘I’ve a list of five here, sir. Of course, you realize, sir, it’s based on gossip. It’s not the sort of thing we can . . . well, verify.’

‘Understood,’ Gently said.

‘There’s Mrs Pleasants,’ Docking said. ‘She’s the doctor’s wife, High Hale village. She’s been seen in Berney’s car. Mrs Drury, she’s the wife of Arthur Drury, the auctioneer. Mrs Wade, her husband is Town Clerk here in Low Hale. Mrs Jefferies, the Jefferies run a guest-house at Clayfield. And Mrs Amies, her husband is the secretary of Gorsehills Golf Club. According to our information, these have all been seen in Berney’s company in the past eighteen months.’

‘Sounds formidable,’ Gently said. ‘And a marriage and maintenance orders thrown in.’

‘I’d say he was a bit of a nutter,’ Banham put in. ‘The devil, you don’t
need
that number of women.’

‘Perhaps he was trying to prove something, sir,’ Docking suggested. ‘Scared about his potency, something like that.’

‘It’s the women who ought to have been scared,’ Banham said. ‘Yet they always fall for this kind of a nutter.’

Gently sipped more lager. ‘You’ll have checked on the husbands?’

‘We’ve reports on all five,’ Docking said. ‘The doctor was out on his rounds that afternoon, but the rest were at their places of work.’

‘How many own horses?’

‘None, sir. But Drury and the Jefferies go riding.’

‘Where?’

‘Clayfield, sir. The Berneys also used to ride there.’

‘It’s about three miles from High Hale,’ Banham explained. ‘A couple called Rising run a stable there. Six or seven hacks and a string of ponies. That’s where the people round here go to ride.’

‘And of course, you’ve checked it.’

‘First thing,’ Banham said. ‘I went over to Clayfield myself. But none of their horses was out on Tuesday, there was just Mrs Rising teaching the children.’ He passed his hand over his brow. ‘Frankly, this is the problem,’ he said. ‘There aren’t many horses near High Hale, and none of them were being ridden on Tuesday.’

Gently shrugged. ‘Wasn’t there one on a farm, somewhere?’ Banham looked at Docking, who looked at Bayfield.