Gently Down the Stream (3 page)

‘Were there,’ continued Gently patiently, ‘many boats about when you went by?’

‘W’ yes … tha’s pretta busy this time of year.’

‘Do you remember any of them?’

‘Can’t say I dew.’

‘Were there any in Ollby Dyke?’

‘Not enna yew could see – tha’s tew growed-up.’

‘You didn’t see Mr Lammas, for instance.’

‘Woon’t know him if I did.’

‘He was on the yacht
Harrier
as you probably know.’

‘Nor I di’nt see that neether, so there yew are, ole partna.’

Gently sighed, and felt in his pocket for a peppermint cream. He was obviously pushing his luck too hard at Upper Wrackstead.

‘And what did it buy you?’ jeered Hansom, as they got back into the Wolseley.

‘
Tingere barbam non potes
,’ murmured Gently oracularly.

‘Eh?’ gaped Hansom.

‘Never mind – it’s a classical tag I picked up somewhere. We’ll leave Mr Thatcher with one of his secrets, shall we?’

S
LOLEY’S BOATYARD LAY at the end of a long, low cinder-track, a track which was crowded at each side with yards and bungalows. It consisted of several dry and wet boat-sheds clustered round a cut-in from the river and, on a Sunday afternoon, was deserted by both boats and men. The office was open, however, and Old Man Sloley sat at his desk, a silent figure in frock-coat and peaked cap, his white beard straggling down on the blotter in front of him. He rose stiffly as the three policemen entered.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen … I was expecting a call from you. Have you made any progress in this shocking business yet?’

He indicated one of the more lurid Sunday papers, which was lying on his desk. ‘
BODY IN BROADS
BURN-OUT
’ was the punch-line on page one.

Hansom introduced Gently and the old man shook hands. There was an unexpected fragility about him, as though a gust of wind would have blown him away.

‘Mr Sloley is ninety-two …’ murmured Hansom in an aside.

Old Man Sloley nodded, as though to warn them of his perfect hearing.

‘This has been a grave shock to me, gentlemen, a very grave shock. This firm has never had a breath of scandal attached to its name before.’

Gently assured him that no blame could be placed to the account of Sloley & Son, but Old Man Sloley would not be convinced.

‘It’s kind of you, Mr Inspector, but you haven’t read the papers; there are cruel insinuations being made. And I assure you, that except for my son I would have refused this let. I was not imposed upon by the gentleman describing the young lady as his daughter.’

‘You knew it was not Miss Lammas, sir?’

‘No, Mr Inspector, I have not the pleasure of Miss Lammas’ acquaintance. Neither did I know Lammas personally … the people over the river come mostly from Norchester, you know, they are very rarely seen in the village. But it seemed most peculiar to me that these two people should hire what was veritably a single-cabined yacht, and when I saw them I had the strongest misgivings.’

‘When did the actual hiring take place, sir?’ asked Gently.

‘On the twenty-third of March,’ replied Old Man Sloley, with unpausing precision.

‘In March! Is it usual to book so early?’

‘That is not early, Mr Inspector, it is late. We are usually fully booked by that date.’

‘Was it a personal application?’

‘No sir, it was not. Mr Lammas rang this office and
inquired what we could offer him for the week in question. As it happened I had a cancellation for the
Harrier
and he agreed to take it. When I understood that his daughter would accompany him I pointed out that complete privacy could not be had on such a small boat, but he brushed the objection aside. The booking was confirmed by a letter from his business address and a cheque for the deposit.’

‘You will have that letter, sir …?’

The old man opened a drawer and took out a manilla envelope.

‘I had it ready, Mr Inspector … I felt it might be helpful to you. Here is also our copy of the booking form, together with a plan of the
Harrier
and some photographs of her. Please tell me if you need anything else.’

‘Thank you, sir. It isn’t often we get such thoughtful co-operation.’ Gently tucked the envelope away in his breast pocket. ‘I’d like to know the approximate time at which the yacht was taken over.’

‘Yes, sir. It was at 9 p.m.’

‘You were in the office?’

‘No, it was my son who received Mr Lammas. But I saw them shortly afterwards, when they came down to the yacht.’

‘And you suspected there was no relationship between Mr Lammas and his companion?’

‘I did, Mr Inspector. There was not a scrap of resemblance between them.’

‘Could you describe the lady?’

‘I could, sir. She was above the middle height, a little obvious in her figure and had black, straight hair, worn
somewhat longer than is usual in these days. Her complexion was pale and she had a delicate chin. She spoke quickly in what I may call a rather high-pitched voice.’

Gently nodded to Hansom, who produced his photograph. ‘Would this be her, sir …?’

The old man took it in his knotty hand and examined it attentively.

‘Yes, sir, I think it would. But you must understand she was dressed with greater propriety when I saw her.’

‘Well, that’s settled the identity problem,’ observed Hansom as they went down to the quay, where Rushm’quick awaited them in the yard-launch.

‘Rattled it off like a portrait-parley, he did,’ put in Dutt admiringly. ‘Who’d’ve thought the old gent had a memory like that?’

‘But why did she go off with the chauffeur?’ mused Gently from the back of beyond.

‘Why did she go off with him?’ echoed Hansom.

‘Yes – she didn’t have to, did she? Lammas himself was obviously planning to skip with her.’

‘They might have quarrelled, or she might have preferred a younger man …’

Gently shook his head in the irritating way he had.

Rushm’quick cast off and turned the launch downstream. The river was flocking with pleasure-craft of every kind, drifting yachts, busy motor-cruisers, skiffs, launches and majestic trip-boats. On the south bank were the bungalows. Timber-and-plaster surmounted by deep reed thatch, they nestled under downy willows and behind great velvet lawns. No Moorings, said the
little white noticeboards at their quay-heads, No Moorings, No Moorings. There were no moorings anywhere on that bank.

A mile further down the last bungalow hedged off its lawns from the wilderness, and a tangle of impenetrable alder and willow carr succeeded.

‘Lammas’ place is the other side of that lot,’ remarked Hansom, by way of commentary. ‘Do you want to see them today?’

‘Not today … we’ll let them have Sunday in peace.’

Hansom snorted at such an unpoliceman-like sentiment.

They saw the bungalow, however, when they turned into the broad. It stood far back at the top end, looking tiny and lost in the surrounding carrs and reed-islands. Like most of the outlying bungalows it was high-built on black-painted timber piles, the space beneath being utilized as a wet boat-house.

‘Are there any boats in there?’ asked Gently.

‘There’s a launch and a half-decker – maybe a couple of dinghies.’

‘Lammas do much sailing?’

Hansom extended his two hands. ‘I didn’t get round to his hobbies.’

They throbbed away down the broad and out into the river again.

Now it was continuous, the wilderness, breaking only to disclose reed-choked waterways. Once they passed a headland of firm ground falling down to a little sand beach, but the rest was all carr or shaking reedways. But there was nothing lonely about it. Not on a fine Sunday
at the end of June. Rushm’quick, with three policemen on board, had a tense time of it sticking strictly to the rules in the handbook.

‘Here we are,’ he jerked at last with relief. ‘That’s the entrance to Ollby Dyke … down there at the end of the reach.’

It was necessary to point it out. The inexpert eye would have seen nothing just there except tangled carr and ferocious brambles. But an inlet there was, using a bit of force-work, and on the far side one caught a glimpse of a narrow dyke disappearing into the fastness of the carrs.

‘He must have known the country pretty well …’ brooded Gently. ‘How did he get a yacht up there?’

‘It’d go in all right if he had the mast down.’

‘There’s a keel on a yacht.’

‘Ah, but there’s a spring up Ollby Dyke … that keeps plenty of water in it. Shall I take her in?’

‘No – wait just a moment.’

A couple of hundred yards further down on the other bank the carrs fell away and there, just visible among the bushes, was an old houseboat pulled out. And there was a ribbon of grey smoke rising above it.

‘Someone live there?’

‘Only old Noggins, the eel-catcher.’

‘Let’s go and see him first … we should have something in common.’

Obediently Rushm’quick spun his wheel and sent the launch weaving downstream again.

The eel-catcher sat on an eel-chest in front of his make-shift lodging. He was a little man of
indeterminable age, dressed in a drab jacket and trousers out of which the rest of him seemed to grow, as though it were all part of him. He eyed the launch unfavourably as it pulled in alongside.

‘Yew be careful where yew’re comin – I got a pair of eel-trunks down there!’

‘Think I didn’t know that?’ growled Rushm’quick.

‘Well I’m tellin on yew – jus to make sure!’

He got up reluctantly and came over to them. Gently introduced himself briefly.

‘You didn’t happen to be here Friday evening, I suppose?’

‘Frida evening – w’yes! I had m’nets up Frida.’

‘You were here all the evening?’

‘Ah, most of the day asides.’

‘And do you remember seeing Sloley’s
Harrier
go by?’

‘Thatta dew, and saw the bloke what was on it tew.’

‘Tell me,’ said Gently simply.

The little man’s face puckered up. ‘W’ … that was about eight o’clock time, I reckon. There’d been all sorts goin past – I shoonta noticed in the ordinara way. But this bloke fetches up on the bank here to pull his mast down … naturalla, I keep an eye on him.’

‘And then?’

‘W’ then he start his ingin and slide off again, an the last I see of him was goin up the Deek.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Did you know who he was?’

‘Blast no! Woont know him from Adam.’

‘Or the woman with him?’

‘He ha’nt got no woman.’

‘What was that?’

‘I say he ha’nt got no woman. That was jus him on his lonesome.’

There was a moment broken only by the throb of the idling motor and then Hansom exploded angrily:

‘Of
course
he had a bloody woman – we know all about it!’

‘I tell yew he
ha’nt
,’ retorted the little man obstinately.

‘You mean you didn’t see her – she was in the cabin.’

‘No she wa’nt. He was moored starn-on, an I could see down into the cabin. Sides, why di’nt she help him get the mast down? That wa’nt easa for him, on his own.’

‘She could have been in the WC!’ snarled Hansom.

‘Then she musta been wholla bound up, tha’s all I can say …’

He wasn’t to be shaken – there was only Lammas on the
Harrier
that evening. Neither Hansom’s bullying nor Gently’s more subtle methods would make him modify his statement.

‘What was he wearing?’ queried Gently at the end of it.

‘W’one of them sports shuts an some white trousers.’

‘You’re sure it was a sports shirt?’

‘I aren’t blind, ama? That was a red one.’

‘A tall, heavily built man, was he?’

‘No, that he wa’nt, jus midlin’ an a bit on the lean side.’

Gently nodded absently and signed to Rushm’quick to push off.

‘We may be back for another chat later on, Mr Noggins.’

‘The old fool’s got his lines mixed!’ grunted Hansom as they chugged back towards the Dyke. ‘The woman was out of sight and he’ll swear blind she wasn’t there.’

‘What about his description of Lammas?’

‘That tallies all right … the bits of trouser we recovered were white flannel.’

‘And his build?’

‘Like he said – medium height and spare.’

‘Which leaves the sports shirt, doesn’t it …?’

‘Sports shirt?’ Hansom stared.

‘Yes … didn’t you find the cuff-links with the body? It looks as though Lammas changed his shirt.’

‘Christ yes – he must have done!’ The divine light of ratiocination appeared in Hansom’s eye. ‘Yeh – there might be something in Noggins’s story at that. Suppose he put the female off somewhere down-river – he brings the yacht up here to hide it and kill the trail for a day or two – changes into his city clothes and rings his chauffeur, the chauffeur being paid to keep his mouth shut—’

‘You’re forgetting one thing, though …’

‘What’s that?’

‘He’d got his trail covered for the whole week. He might just as well have lit out on the previous Saturday, saying nothing to nobody.’

Hansom sniffed in a deprived sort of way. ‘We’ve got to make sense of the facts, haven’t we?’

They ducked as Rushm’quick sent the launch slicing through the drooping boughs and bushes that concealed the mouth of the Dyke. On the other side they seemed to be in a different world. Overhead the tangled twigs
of blunt-leaved alder closed out the sky, on either hand the stretching rubbish reached out to brush the launch as it slid past. A green-lit tunnel it was, thrusting remotely into a forgotten land.

Hansom snatched a dead alder burr out of his hair.

‘Thirty years ago there were wherries up and down here every day of the year.’

It was only half a mile long, but there seemed no end to it. One hemmed-in reach followed another with bewildering monotony. And then, just as Gently’s sense of direction was irretrievably lost, the alders parted overhead and they swung out into blazing afternoon sunlight.

They were in a little pool, grown up and almost choked with reeds, water-lilies and a myriad-flowered water-plant. On the far side, against the rotted remnants of a quay, lay the fire-blasted yacht. And by the yacht sat a Police Constable smoking a cigarette, his tunic and helmet hung on a willow-snag.

‘Jackson!’ bawled Hansom, in a voice to wake the dead.

The Constable jumped as though he had been stung.

‘What the blue blazes do you think you’re supposed to be doing – having the day off?’

‘I – I wasn’t really expecting anyone …!’ blurted the Constable, struggling into his tunic.

‘Oh, you weren’t, eh?’ commented Hansom nastily. ‘Thought we’d come by car and you’d hear us in time, didn’t you …?’

Rushm’quick eased the bows of the launch against the rotten quay and they jumped down gingerly on to
shaky green turf. The yacht lay well in under the trees, which bore silent witness to the fierceness of the blaze. It was completely gutted. From end to end the interior showed a blackened mass of ash, nothing remaining of cabin, deck or fitments. Only the engine jutted up near the stern and the charred ribs preserved a pathetic symmetry.