Gently Down the Stream (19 page)

‘Lammas was the only one who could have phoned Hicks and told him to come to Ollby Dyke.’

‘You’re forgetting Linda Brent,’ the super interrupted. ‘She may have known about Ollby Dyke and tipped Paul off.’

‘No.’ Gently shook his head. ‘Paul couldn’t have been tipped off. If he’d known what he was going to do, he’d have fixed the chauffeur before he left. He didn’t need to phone unless his father
hadn’t
arrived at Ollby, which was not the case.

‘I’d got to this stage last night when we brought in Linda Brent. It still wasn’t making sense, in fact I seemed to be back at the beginning again. If nobody else was involved, then Hicks must have killed him for the money … and if Hicks had done that, he was at once the cleverest, stupidest and luckiest criminal I had ever had to do with. In addition to which Linda Brent was violently in love with him!

‘It was a round dozen of contradiction. I knew I must be seeing it cock-eyed. And it only seemed to make matters worse when I saw the cap and jacket and heard about the shack in the carrs …

‘For instance, why would Hicks leave them there, of all places, when he might have stuffed them in the next ditch? If he’d been hiding there himself it would have been a reason. But you could tell me there were no signs of the shack being inhabited and an intensive manhunt had failed to turn up Hicks … so what was it all about? And as you asked me, if Hicks was around, where
was
he?

‘I did the only thing I could think off. I cooked a charge against Linda Brent. If she were right about what she knew then it ought to worry someone, and a murderer getting worried has been known to put a foot wrong.

‘Next, I was interested in the shack. It was too handy for Upper Wrackstead … and it did occur to me that Annie might have been lured aboard a dinghy.’

Gently broke off a little hoarsely. He wasn’t used to speaking at such length. And his pipe kept going out, with all this persistent monologue.

‘Is there any coffee left?’

The super kindly poured him some. It was cold and tasted of grounds, but it slaked a thirsty throat. Outside some stars were sparkling and the traffic was getting thin. Hansom was deciding to risk a cigar, even though he didn’t come from the Central Office.

‘I had a hunch about that shack.’

Gently’s pipe was going again.

‘I felt it would make or break me – I’d got into that state of mind! At first it looked like the latter, though I discovered a couple of things you’d missed. One of them suggested that a dinghy had been kept there, and the other that somebody had been using the place long before last Friday. But that didn’t ring a bell. The dinghy fitted a surmise, the other simply added to the mystery.

‘I stood in the shack by the nettles literally wrestling with those facts. I knew there must be a right way of seeing them and that I’d got the wrong way. I thought back over everything I’d done, everything which had come to light – odd little things, like the way Lammas had changed his shirt, or the way the jerrican disappeared from the garage, or the way we only found his and Mrs Lammas’ prints on the gun-drawer. And always there loomed up the incredible folly of that week on the
Harrier
– against so much careful planning, so much able implementation! And after it the dismissal of Linda Brent to her hideaway and the inexplicable rendezvous at Ollby Quay.

‘Just there, my mind seemed to be wandering. It kept reverting back to an interview I’d had with your County
Drama Organizer. Every time my ideas seemed to be building up to something my thoughts slipped away to that smiling little man and whatever it was he was trying to tell me.

‘Psychology is a curious business. I’m tempted to think that had the solution worked out in my unconscious when I got that hunch about the shack … Anyway, I discovered the local reason why my mind kept slipping – I was looking straight at a strip of paper which had been torn from a carmine greasepaint liner! And then I had it, all in a flash. From then on it was simply a bit of routine. There’s a lot of mystery about a substitute corpse when you don’t know what it is … once you do, the murderer hasn’t got much time ahead of him.’

Gently broke off again, as though that, for him, was the end of the matter. Routine was routine … no need to go into that. The interest lay in how you got to your man.

‘Here, but wait a minute!’

The super thought otherwise.

‘Put the light on, somebody … we don’t have to sit here in the dark!’

Dutt obediently rose to his feet and a glare of fluorescence flooded the bare office. Gently screwed up his eyes and puffed a disapproving cloud of smoke.

‘Did you know he was masquerading as Thatcher, right there on the spot?’

The stars had been ousted from their oblique wedge of sky.

‘He was so damned good at it … I had doubts even then.’

‘But you had Thatcher in mind?’

‘Of course. The date almost clinched it.’

‘Dates? What dates, man?’

‘Easter, principally … That was when Lammas put his plan in operation – he gives you the reason: it was then when his Society fixed the date of their conference. Having got that, he went to work. He booked the yacht and rented the bungalow … and started disappearing on mid-week trips. And at Easter Thatcher drifted into Upper Wrackstead Dyke, complete with a frowzy old houseboat and an alibi for being there only occasionally …’

‘His widow!’ grunted Hansom, whose memory had been stirred. ‘And he was away Friday evening – we heard that right at the beginning.’

‘Yes … we heard it from Annie Packer. There’s an odd twist, if you like.’

‘Then you knew it was Thatcher when you borrowed his dydle?’

The super was going to have it, one way or the other.

‘I told you … I wasn’t quite sure. And I had to prove my theory. I suppose I might have grabbed Thatcher on suspicion and established his identity, but there was just a chance it was someone else … I like to prove before I move.’

‘I don’t see what proof it was against Thatcher, your finding Hick’s denture in the mud.’

‘The denture wasn’t.’ Gently shot a wry glance at Dutt. ‘But the bullets were.’

‘Eh?’

‘They might as well have had his signature on them. Only Thatcher knew what I was up to. There wasn’t a soul about when I borrowed his dydle … it had to be Thatcher with the gun.’

‘It was an unnecessary risk, Gently!’

‘I didn’t know he’d chase after us on the next bus.’

‘A fine mess we’d have been in if he’d knocked off the pair of you.’

‘No doubt he was thinking the same when he saw us with the denture …’

The holy of holies was silent for a space. Four tired policemen pursued their thoughts at their respectively salaried levels. Gently wondered if he would smoke again and decided that he wouldn’t. He’d run out of peppermint creams while Lammas was making his statement.

‘But why did the bloody fool
do
it?’ exclaimed the super at last. ‘He might just have faded away – nobody would have looked too hard to find him.’

‘You’re forgetting his wife …
she
would have looked.’

‘It isn’t motive enough!’

‘Yes … when you remember how he loathed Hicks. But she was the cause of it. She pushed him over. It’s the cold-hearted ones who menace society.’

‘The cold-hearted ones!’ The super mused over the phrase. ‘You can’t make that criminal. I suppose you wish we could?’

Gently’s head shook slowly. ‘They’re not to blame either. They didn’t choose themselves. Society’s crude, you know … it’s a brutal piece of work! All we’ve
achieved so far is done with force … there must be other and better ways of living together.’

‘“Christ knows!”’ the super quoted.

‘Christ knew – but society didn’t.’

‘We were just a lot of policemen – that’s what he was trying to say. We wouldn’t understand – the jury wouldn’t understand – the judge wouldn’t, either. It was only Christ he stood a chance with.’

‘You’re leaving out the hangman!’

Hansom wasn’t soft with killers.

Gently shrugged his bulky shoulders. ‘Christ might understand him, too!’

The money was under the floorboards in the houseboat and in the cracks of the same floorboards they found deposits of blood under deposits of soap-sud. The bullet that killed Annie had been removed, but a freshly puttied hole in one of the cabin doors showed where it had lodged.

Along with the money was a black japanned tin containing Lammas’ make-up outfit. It was an expensive collection with numerous etceteras. There were two sticks of carmine liner, one of them virgin and unused.

The tin was contained in a waterproof bag, since neither the space under the floorboards nor the shack in the carrs had been dry situations. It had spent nearly three months in that shack while Lammas was leading his double life. It had been cached amongst the nettles along with Thatcher’s paunch and costume. It was in the same cache that the blood-stained jacket and cap had been found … Lammas had donned them after
the murder in case he was seen driving away the Daimler.

‘I’m going to cadge a day out of this!’

Gently had finished his report at last.

‘They had our Sunday, didn’t they? Well, they owe me a day’s fishing!’

He folded up the report and shoved it into an envelope. Dutt glanced at him apprehensively – he knew Gently’s state of mind when his chief wanted to score off authority.

‘Daresay they’d let you have it, sir, wevver they knows about it or not.’

‘I don’t care a damn if they would, Dutt. I’m going to have it, and they can go to hell!’

He threw the report down on Mrs Grey’s parlour table and stalked over to the window. There were vacant moorings in the Dyke where the houseboat had been towed away.

‘And I’m not going to buy a licence, Dutt!’

‘No, sir. You won’t buy a licence.’

‘I’m just in the mood to talk to some river police – I should enjoy a little bit of prosecution!’

‘Make you feel like a civvy, sir.’

‘Yes, Dutt – it’d redress the balance!’

Still the sun was burning down, the last sun of June. On the dreamily throbbing hire boats they were reading of the murder. The biggest thing since Christie! ‘Gently Arrests A “Murdered” Man.’ Lammas was a myth already … he’d stopped being human when they clipped on the handcuffs.

‘On second thoughts …’

Dutt waited. Gently often had second thoughts.

‘Let’s catch the next train back to town – I’m fed up with this part of the world!’

Dutt grinned at his superior. How many times had it happened like that? Gently’s kicking never lasted – that was Chief Inspectorial nature.

‘It’ll be shocking hot in the city, sir.’

‘I know. But never mind.’

‘And I reckon we’ve missed the express—’

‘I’d like to sweat on a stopper!’

His eyes met the Cockney sergeant’s. For a moment he couldn’t react. Then he grinned back and shrugged, and patted Dutt’s burly arm.

‘Come in and see the kids, sir,’ said Dutt sympathetically, ‘you’d be surprised the way they grow!’

Gently nodded. ‘I think I’ll do that. It’s a mistake, my being a bachelor.’ 

Alan Hunter
was born in Hoveton, Norfolk in 1922. He left school at the age of fourteen to work on his father’s farm, spending his spare time sailing on the Norfolk Broads and writing nature notes for the
Eastern
Evening News
. He also wrote poetry, some of which was published while he was in the RAF during the Second World War. By 1950, he was running his own book shop in Norwich and in 1955, the first of what would become a series of forty-six George Gently novels was published. He died in 2005, aged eighty-two.

The
Inspector George Gently
series

Gently Does It

Gently by the Shore

Gently Down the Stream

Landed Gently

Gently Through the Mill

Gently in the Sun