Gently Floating (18 page)

‘But he got angry,’ Gently said.

John French opened his mouth, checked himself. He finished the coffee left in the beaker, set down the beaker on the side-deck. Gently poured some more coffee into the beaker. John French took the beaker in his hand again. He said:

‘I didn’t tell Sid right away. I was trying to plan something out. I told Sid I’d be round that evening about the business. I didn’t see my father all day. It all made me feel ill. I wanted to get away from them all. I nearly went home and packed a bag. I wish I had. That would have been best.’

‘Yes,’ Gently said.

‘So after tea I went to Sid’s place,’ John French said. ‘They were both there, him and his wife, I think he’d got the idea that something was up. I told them. Sid kept looking at me. He didn’t say much at first. Mrs Sid was swearing about my father, saying I could have the law on him for that. Then Sid started on me. It must have been a big disappointment for him. He had to take it out of me at first. He told me he’d trusted me, held me responsible, that it was too late now to back out. He made it seem like I was trying to pull a fast one. I’d never known him like that before. I think it took him a long while to believe that I was telling him the truth. Then he went and stood staring at the wall with his fists doubled, not saying anything. I thought he was going to attack me. His wife, she was scared too.’

John French drank coffee. He said:

‘It was Mrs Sid who talked him round. She’s got her head screwed on right, they both have in the ordinary way. She said it was no use blinding at me, I wasn’t the sort who would welsh on them, we’d better be thinking what we could do rather than calling each other names. She kept on talking to him like that. At last she cooled him off a bit. He came and sat down though he didn’t say anything. She made a pot of tea and kept talking. Then he told her to shut up, he was trying to think, and Mrs Sid shut up. She started making up to me a bit instead, told me I couldn’t help whose son I was. I didn’t like it but she’d calmed Sid down, I just kept quiet, let her carry on. I don’t know how long all this took. It was like a dream. It was getting dark. We could hear Reuben’s. Then Sid said, well if that was the way it was, I would have to raise a loan on my expectations, he’d told the Jimpsons he’d got the money and the money he’d have to have. I said I’d do anything, I didn’t care. Mrs Sid said she knew I’d stand by my word. Sid said yes, that was the way out, and he knew a loan office in Starmouth who might do the job for me. So I said I’d go there the next day, I’d get the money for him if it killed me, and he said no, I wasn’t to take it like that, I’d got to remember it had been a bit of a shock to him. Then he was nice as pie again and Mrs Sid kept coming round me and Sid said he’d better see a man about a dog and Mrs Sid laughed and said we could perhaps manage without him and Sid said he liked his sheets aired. It was just after that we heard the knock.’

John French drank coffee. He said into the beaker:

‘We all guessed who it was. I was scared. I think they were. She kept looking at him, he was screwing his eyes up. Then he said my old man better hadn’t find me on the premises, they’d put me in the bedroom and lock the door, I’d have to keep right quiet. So I went in the bedroom and they locked the door. I think Mrs Sid went back in the sitting room. Then Sid opened the outside door and it was smashed wide open and there was a scuffle of feet and my father’s voice. He was after me, he knew I was there. He was in a terrible sort of passion. At first Sid tried to soothe him a bit but my father was crazy, wouldn’t listen. I don’t remember much what they said. I don’t want to remember. He sacked Sid, called him every name, called his wife names. He was mad. In the end they were fighting. I think my father was getting the best of it. Then Mrs Sid was at the window, told me to get out, I’d have to hide outside, and my father was trying to smash the door down and I jumped out of the window and crawled under the floorboards. They were still fighting. Something hit the floorboards. Mrs Sid must have gone in again. I heard her voice. They unlocked the bedroom. I think my father searched it, looked out of the window. Then they were talking and at last Sid went out and Mrs Sid took my father into the sitting room.’

John French drank coffee. He was trembling. He said:

‘I crawled across under the sitting room, the bungalow’s on piles off the ground. There’s a repair done to the floor there and it’s left a gap and I could listen through it. She was trying to get him to see sense. She told him about the Jimpsons and the dance hall. She admitted things about me, tried to make out she was doing him a service. I don’t think she knew I was listening, she said things she wouldn’t have said. It didn’t have any effect. My father was wild, right off his head. She made a sort of pass at him I think, he said something about sooner bathing in a cesspit. Then he went and I could hear her swearing, stamping about the room and swearing, and after I was sure he’d gone I came out and she was still swearing but she was sitting down. I sat down too. I wasn’t feeling well. She swore at me, swore at him. It was getting late. Reuben’s had finished. I didn’t seem to have any strength left. Then Sid came back, I don’t know when. He drank some whisky, quite a lot. Mrs Sid calmed down, gave me some whisky, put her arm round me, said she hadn’t meant it. I said I’d still go to the loan office. She said yes, she was sure I would. Then I said I’d have to think up a story to tell my father, I wasn’t going to admit that I’d been hiding there. Sid didn’t say anything at all. He sat in the armchair drinking whisky. I was feeling a bit better. I left, went home in the outboard dinghy.’

‘In the outboard dinghy,’ Gently said.

John French drank coffee, nodded.

‘What did you see?’ Gently said.

‘I,’ John French said, ‘I saw my father’s launch.’

He held the beaker with both hands because the beaker was shaking. He said:

‘I, I nearly ran into it. It was on the right-hand side. It was opposite the Speltons’ sheds. It was slantways on, trailing its painter. I pulled up, I could see it was empty, there were lights at Speltons’, they may have heard me. It gave me a fright at first, I thought he was waiting for me, then I could see it was adrift. So I went on.’

‘And left it there,’ Gently said.

‘Yes,’ John French said, ‘I left it, yes.’

‘You didn’t take it in tow,’ Gently said. ‘You didn’t think it worthwhile to look for your father.’

‘But I didn’t know,’ John French said. ‘How was I to know what had happened to him? I wasn’t thinking of anything like that, I was thinking he was hanging about trying to catch me. I didn’t want anything to do with his launch. I didn’t care what happened to it. It had got adrift, that’s all I thought about it. I wasn’t going to put myself out bringing it in.’

‘It didn’t strike you as at all significant?’ Gently said.

‘No,’ John French said, ‘why should it, I was only too glad he wasn’t aboard.’

‘Not after the scene at the bungalow, the fighting?’ Gently said. ‘Sid going out before your father left, coming back to drink, the drifting launch . . . ?’

‘No,’ John French said, ‘no, it’s true, my God I didn’t think that at the time. I thought about it later but not then. If I’d thought about it then I would have done something.’

‘How much later did you think about it?’ Gently said.

‘Later, later,’ John French said. ‘When I got to our staithe, when there wasn’t a boat there. Even then he might have walked, had his car.’

‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘Go on.’

‘That was how it was,’ John French said. ‘I went home in the dinghy, I thought he’d have taken a workboat, I only hoped he wasn’t coming up behind me. But there was nothing at the staithe, nothing coming behind. That’s when I started to wonder about it. And if his launch had gone adrift you’d have thought he’d have gone after it, he’d have had plenty of time before I left the bungalow.’

‘You might have been expected to think that,’ Gently said.

‘I did think it,’ John French said, ‘I’m telling you I did. But he could just have rung the police, come home by road. I didn’t know. Not till I went to the house. I expected to find him waiting for me.’

‘So he wasn’t waiting for you?’ Gently said.

‘No he wasn’t,’ John French said, ‘He wasn’t in the house, not in his bedroom, the door was ajar, I looked in. Then I began to think something had happened, it was midnight, he didn’t come. He was in a rage, he might have fallen in. He wasn’t a swimmer, he’d have drowned.’

‘So naturally you rang us,’ Gently said.

‘How could I?’ John French said, ‘how could I?’

‘You’re certainly on the telephone,’ Gently said, ‘and the number of the police station is on the front of the instrument.’

‘But I’d have had to have told them everything,’ John French said.

‘You’re having to tell it to me now,’ Gently said.

‘And you’re not believing me,’ John French said. ‘They wouldn’t have believed me. They’d have said I killed him.’

‘Whereas,’ Gently said, ‘you say it’s Sid who killed him. Though it’s only your word against his.’

John French closed his eyes. The beaker was slanted in his hands. Some coffee spilled out of the beaker, over his fingers, on to his knees. He didn’t straighten the beaker, didn’t brush at the coffee on his trousers. The coffee made stains on the trousers. Gently took the beaker from John French. John French said:

‘I, I don’t say Sid killed him. That’s what you, you’re making me say.’

‘Is there,’ Gently said, ‘any other way of interpreting the account you’ve been giving me?’

‘Yes,’ John French said, ‘Sid didn’t kill him. I know he didn’t. You’ll have to believe me.’

‘Then if Sid didn’t, you did,’ Gently said. ‘That’s the position we seem to have come to.’

John French swayed his head. ‘I’ve talked to him,’ he said. ‘He came to me. He brought it up. After the body was found. We talked about it. He didn’t see my father again. He knew I was thinking he could have done it. He told me where he went, up the cinder path. I think he was wondering if I’d done it, too. I told him everything. He didn’t do it.’

‘You’ve a touching faith,’ Gently said. ‘You’d better be wrong for your sake. But nobody said your father was killed before you left the bungalow, perhaps you’re the better suspect after all.’

John French’s lips moved. He didn’t say anything.

‘He may have kept watch outside,’ Gently said. ‘He was certain you were there, that you’d come out later. Perhaps the launch wasn’t so empty when you found it.’

‘He,’ John French said. He stopped.

‘You know when he was killed,’ Gently said.

‘I, I don’t know anything,’ John French said. ‘Just what I’ve told you. I can’t tell you any more. I didn’t see it happen. I don’t know who did it.’

‘Yes, that’s what you do know,’ Gently said.

‘No,’ John French said, ‘no, I don’t know. I’ve told you all I can tell you, it’s the truth. Sid’ll tell you the same, he didn’t know you’d get it out of me.’

‘You know who did it and when,’ Gently said. ‘I’ve got nothing out of you I didn’t have before. It wasn’t worth your while to lie any longer so you decided to confess. To put yourself in the clear.’

‘No,’ John French said.

‘You’re shopping Lidney,’ Gently said.

‘Not Sid, not Sid,’ John French said.

‘Yes, Sid,’ Gently said. ‘But you’re implicated. You must be. You started straight away on your alibi. If you were as innocent as you claim you’d have rung the police, not waked the housekeeper.’

‘I couldn’t ring the police,’ John French said. ‘Beattie, I’d thought of that before. If I avoided my father. That was the alibi. To tell him I’d been out sailing.’

‘But when your father was missing?’ Gently said.

‘I, I had to have an alibi,’ John French said. ‘If something was wrong, if I was asked. He might have come back after all.’

‘But you didn’t care,’ Gently said.

‘No, I didn’t care,’ John French said. ‘I do now. I didn’t then. He could be dead. I didn’t care.’

‘So who did it?’ Gently said.

John French closed his eyes, groaned.

‘If it wasn’t Sid,’ Gently said, ‘it was Dave Spelton.’

John French trembled. He said nothing.

‘Yes, Dave Spelton,’ Gently said. ‘If it wasn’t you, wasn’t Sid. Your pal Dave. The yachtbuilder. Waiting in the wings with a hammer.’

‘Oh God,’ John French said.

‘You’d cover up for him,’ Gently said. ‘He’s a symbol. He makes these things. Perhaps he had a right to kill your father. Perhaps he came to the door looking for his sister, had the hammer in his hand, saw his enemy standing there on the plot of land, lifted the hammer, squared accounts. That would fit pretty well wouldn’t it? Fit the facts. Fit the man.’

‘No, not Dave, no,’ John French said.

‘So,’ Gently said, ‘who did it?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,’ John French said. ‘What’s the use of asking me, I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t know.’ He opened his eyes suddenly. He rolled them at Gently. ‘I’m a liar,’ he said, ‘a liar, all I’ve been telling you is lies. I never went to the bungalow at all. I never had a row with my father. I was sailing. I was up here. I was sailing. Sailing. Like I told you all along. The rest is lies. I was sailing.’

‘I see,’ Gently said. ‘I must remember Dave Spelton.’

‘Out sailing,’ John French said. ‘You can’t break it. Out sailing.’

He grabbed the coffee beaker, drained it, hurled the beaker up forward. He was shaking like the reeds. He went to the mudweight, lifted the mudweight. He shoved on the reeds with the boathook, came aft, threw himself down by the helm. The ebb was running,
Shakuntala
moved. The swans oared away from them. Gently was silent.

S
O SUPERINTENDENT GENTLY
came down from Haynor Sounds in the half-decker
Shakuntala
with John French at the helm and no questions asked or answered: very slowly on the ebb tide with a ripple of breeze at rare moments meeting cruisers coming up ugly launches a yacht under power. He disembarked at Haynor bridge. He was more sunburned, perhaps wiser. He said nothing at parting to John French. He carried the lunch-basket and flask into the Country Club. In the lounge of the Country Club he found Inspector Parfitt and Detective Constable Joyce drinking tea, eating toast. He ordered tea and toast from the waitress and joined Inspector Parfitt and Detective Constable Joyce. Inspector Parfitt’s face was shiny. He stared at Gently, drank tea, said: