Gently with the Innocents (18 page)

Gently crossed the snow with a few quick strides. Daylight was brightening the top end of the outhouse. The back door stood open – and lying on the ground near it were the wrenched-off padlock, hasp and staple.

He went in. Dinno’s ‘wrench-thing’ stood against the wall, just inside. Along the passage, into the kitchen, were the wet traces of melted snow. They passed through the kitchen into the back corridor, and down the corridor to the stair. And there, where Peachment had lain, lay Colkett, his dead face grinning towards the kitchen.

His neck was broken. He was tumbled against the wall, and snow-water showed on the stairs above him. He had a wound on his forehead which had bled over his nose and his eyes were open, staring in horror. The knuckles of one hand were bruised and bloody and bruising showed on a protruding leg. The body was ice-cold, like frozen meat. Nevertheless, it had a faint smell of carrion.

Gently heard a sobbing gasp, and looked over his shoulder. Dinno had followed him into the house.

Dinno stood pale, huge-eyed, staring, drinking in the corpse in excited terror.

‘Get out of here!’ Gently bawled.

Dinno turned and ran without a word. Then, reaching the yard, he began shouting hysterically.

‘Old Peachey’s got Cokey . . . old Peachey’s got him!’

I
T WAS A
theory – and four hours later it was still the only theory. Gissing and his men got nothing from the house that Gently hadn’t got in the first five minutes. Colkett had broken in: the snow-water showed he’d gone straight to the little storeroom: and there he’d been attacked by someone – or something – and hurled to his death down the stairs. Same bruising, same look of horror. In fact, a carbon-copy crime.

And like it or not, it gave you a shiver, set you thinking of the supernatural. Peachment, Colkett, both had gone to that room and met something frightful, and died in horror. Some mindless thing. It had stupefied them. They couldn’t resist its demonic fury. And out, out of that room they had gone, flying down the stairs to their dooms . . .

Were such things possible? Had Harrison’s spirit been chained to the room by his gold, a residual evil, that burst into violence when his secret hoard was threatened?

Well – Gently and Bressingham had searched the room without arousing a vengeful poltergeist – and as for the gold, if it had ever been there, it was gone by the time Colkett paid his visit. But perhaps it was the gold being removed that had wakened the ghost in the first place?

Nonsense, of course! And yet . . . That eery little shiver kept coming back.

One thing was certain: they could no longer keep this case off the front page. Dinno had seen to that. He’d sounded a tocsin through Cross. A crowd had begun to gather in Frenze Street almost before Gissing’s men had got there, and Gissing had been obliged to call out more uniform men to clear the yard and seal-off the footway. And the crowd had remained there, freezing in the snow, watching the police comings and goings – their high-spot a glimpse of the shrouded stretcher on which the body was carried out to a van. Wemys, the stringer, was quickly there, and soon now would follow the vultures.

By two p.m. the police were through, and there was nothing left to watch at Harrisons. A Panda car remained to guard it, and a little sleet was dredging Frenze Street.

They held the conference in Gissing’s office, with the i/c, Boyland, sitting in: Gently, Gissing, Sergeant Brewer, and the two D.C.s, Scoles and Abbotts. Gently personally had rung Sir Daynes, but Sir Daynes was still marooned at Merely. He’d fumed helplessly about the County Council, and besought Gently to play it cool with the Press. Well . . . if that were possible! Boyland brought with him a report from the lab. It confirmed that the blood on the cosh was of Peachment’s group, and identified the hose as coming from Messrs Woolworths.

‘At least it connects Colkett with Peachment’s murder.’

Gissing seemed to draw nourishment from the thought. The door had slammed, but – alive or dead – Colkett was still Gissing’s chummie.

‘Do we have any lead at all?’ Boyland asked. ‘I mean, the fact is, there’s a killer loose. When it comes to the crunch, I’m whipping-boy – I’ve got to know where I stand.’

Gissing shook his head. Boyland looked at Gently. Gently took some draws from his pipe.

‘Just at the moment it’s square one . . . Colkett was the man who knew the answers.’

‘So what are we doing?’ Boyland sounded plaintive.

‘We’re beginning again,’ Gently shrugged. ‘The old routine. Checking round Colkett. Watching for the loot to turn up.’

‘But isn’t there . . .
anyone
?’

Gently hesitated. ‘We’ll be checking the movements of a few people. The Hallets, young Peachment, perhaps some others. Plus a lot of leg-work in Thingoe Road.’

‘What about dabs?’

‘We don’t seem to be lucky.’

‘There’s only a few smears,’ Brewer said. ‘We did get some good ones, but they’re Mr Bressingham’s. The Super told us we’d find them there.’

‘And that’s all?’

‘That’s all, sir. Except the water on the floor.’

‘It’s bloody witchcraft,’ Boyland said. He pulled out a sudden, fat sigh.

Colkett hadn’t been robbed. Lying on the desk were the pathetic gleanings from his pockets: coins, cigarettes, an old lighter, a comb, keys, and a wallet containing,
inter alia
, eight fivers. Either the murderer had been in too much of a hurry or else he didn’t stoop to such small game . . . or was there another angle? Had he tried deliberately to give an impression of something uncanny?

Gently stuffed his pipe away.

‘Right – let’s try to make sense of it,’ he said. ‘Colkett was killed for some clear-cut motive. Peachment’s death may have been unpremeditated, but Colkett’s wasn’t. So why did he die?’

Gissing stared heavily. ‘Because he knew too much?’

Gently nodded. ‘A fair suggestion! He was in a position to watch Harrisons, to witness whatever was going on there. And he did witness something – Peachment’s killing – perhaps saw it through the window, from the perch by the wall. The youngsters had kidded him about Peachment’s gold, and the next night he went to see it for himself. So he saw the murder and – this is the point – he tried to cover up for the murderer. The murderer left his cosh on the scene, and Colkett found it and got rid of it. Motive?’

They gazed at him.

‘Blackmail,’ Brewer said.

Gently shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Simply, I can’t see Colkett as a blackmailer – and I think he’d have died the sooner if he’d tried it.’

‘Perhaps the murderer was a friend, sir,’ Scoles said.

‘Perhaps,’ Gently said. ‘It makes more sense. But we’ll leave that point for the moment and see what happened after Peachment’s death. The body is found – the weapon isn’t found, neither is a piece of gold lying by the body. The bruises are odd, but you’ve no other reason for supposing Peachment’s death wasn’t an accident. So the inquest goes off quietly, and for a month nothing happens. Then, surprisingly, I come on the scene, suggesting the police aren’t happy after all. Worse still, I begin leaning on Colkett, and you begin double-checking his movements – and Colkett is vulnerable: he’s already lied to you about his movements on the night of the killing. What does he do? First, something unexpected. He makes a tentative attempt to break into Harrisons. He knows we’ve gone over the house with several combs, yet still his first move is trying to break in there. Now why would that be?’

He looked at Gissing. Gissing frowned and shifted his feet. ‘I don’t know . . . perhaps something he left there. Something we aren’t on to yet.’

‘You mean, that might incriminate him?’

Gissing nodded cautiously. ‘Him or the murderer. That’s how it looks. Or could be just he was on the make . . . he wasn’t particular what he pinched.’

Gently shrugged. ‘We’ll leave that too! But it led to an encounter between me and Colkett. As a result, he probably got the idea that we were ready to pounce on him. The cosh he didn’t think we’d find, but he couldn’t bear to chuck away the coin, so he caught the next bus into Norchester and turned the coin into cash.

‘Up till then, I don’t think Colkett had any settled notion of skipping. It takes a lot to shift a fellow like him, who has lived all his life in a small town. He was in trouble, but he had a ready tongue, and the coin was all that could’ve linked him with Peachment. Now he was clear of it: he could come back and flannel along as best he might. But then he turned the corner of Playford Road, and saw Metcalfe waiting there to grab him. Why? Only one reason – we’d found out about him selling the coin! Now he is scared. The coin is damning. He can’t spruce his way round that. Standing in the snow on the corner, Colkett realizes it must be flight.’

Gently paused.

‘Now consider a moment the situation Colkett is faced with. He’s just walked two miles through a blizzard, and he knows the roads outside are impassable. The trains may or may not be running, but it’s pretty certain we’ll be watching them. And in his pocket he’s got forty-odd quid – not very much for a man on the run! He’s stuck – and he needs two things: shelter for the night, and more cash. The first, if he’s lucky, he can get at the warehouse. But the second . . . what about that?’

Brewer whistled softly. ‘Reckon you’ve got it, sir.’

Gently nodded. ‘It’s a fair bet.’

‘But,’ Gissing said, ‘what was he after? There’s nothing in the house – I’m ready to swear to it.’

Gently gestured impatiently. ‘That didn’t matter! The point is that Colkett
believed
there was something. The kids had sold him the notion that Peachment had a hoard, and his finding the coin there had made it gospel. In the morning, he’d gone there to have a scout round, perhaps only to see if he could spot the hiding-place. But by the evening he was in deadly earnest – somehow, he had to get his hands on those coins.

‘Which of course tells us something interesting. Colkett knew the murderer didn’t get the coins. If they’d ever existed, they were still in the house . . . Colkett, the murderer, both knew it.’

‘Jesus – and Colkett walked into him!’ Brewer exclaimed.

‘The other way round,’ Gently said. ‘Colkett broke in, we know that, so the murderer must have walked into Colkett.’ He hesitated. ‘It calls for a coincidence,’ he said.

‘But hell – it happened, sir!’ Brewer said eagerly.

Gently shrugged. ‘Colkett chased those kids . . . he may have shown himself in Thingoe Road.’

He was silent for a little, sitting drooped, staring at the oddments on the desk.

‘The murderer isn’t very tall,’ he said. ‘It could be a woman, but I think it’s a man. Not very tall, not very powerful, does his work with furious hitting. Peachment caught him and got in his way. The murderer kept hitting Peachment, driving him backwards. Then Peachment fell, which may have been accidental, but with Colkett it was deliberate: Colkett had come for the gold.’

Gissing gave a little groan. ‘And you think . . . Thingoe Road?’

‘A short man,’ Gently said. ‘Perhaps one who nobody would think to fear.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Brewer said. ‘We’ll find him, sir.’

Gently nodded, got to his feet. ‘Thingoe Road . . . house by house. Whoever was out in the snow that night.’

Reporters were waiting in reception and Gently gave them a brief, tight statement. They had their teeth in this one now and showed it by insistent and ingenious questioning. Gently had fobbed them off before – he wouldn’t get away with it twice! Unless he wanted a bad press he’d better play ball, come across with the hard stuff . . .

He got shot of them at last and escaped into the twilit streets. A slow thaw had begun: it was like a cattleyard underfoot. Filthy cars went sloshing by, swidging snow-mud onto the pavements, and a few wretched pedestrains slunk along close to the walls. Gently slithered his way across the market place and down into the funnel of Water Street. It suited his mood, this . . . the darkening wilderness of foul ways. It was the right setting for the crime at Harrisons, inhuman, corrosive, anti-life: rotting snow, rotting life. And the dark coming down again.

He came to Bressingham’s little courtyard and drew off the street into it. Hard edges of cartwheels and the head of a statue broke through the snow that choked most of the enclosure. Bressingham had shovelled a broad path from the shop door to the pavement, and cleared the area before the window. But no customer was peering at his rings.

Gently pushed open the chiming door. Bressingham was sitting at the counter, an evening paper spread before him. He was leaning on his elbows, shoulders round, pince-nez low on his button nose. He looked up quickly.

‘Hullo, Superintendent . . . oh, my gosh! This terrible business.’

Gently nodded and closed the door. He came up slowly to the counter.

‘I’m just reading here . . . of course, I’d heard about it. They took my fingerprints, you know that? . . . but, oh, goodness. I’d got the idea that Colkett was the man you fancied.’

‘I didn’t say so,’ Gently said.

‘No – you wouldn’t, would you?’ Bressingham said. ‘But reading between the lines – and I’m a professional! – that was the impression you gave me. And now . . . ugh – the poor devil. I wish I hadn’t told you about him. He was a worthless sort of creature, perhaps, but . . . gosh, he didn’t deserve this.’

‘Nor did Peachment,’ Gently said.

‘Well, no – nor Peachment neither. But somehow, Peachment . . . he was older, I suppose. It seemed to make it a little less ghastly.’

Bressingham leaned back, staring up at Gently, grey eyes questioning behind their lenses. His plump hands lay together on the counter, the sensitive fingers stirring slightly.

‘You here on business?’

Gently shrugged. ‘I have to put my man in a cell.’

Bressingham shivered. ‘That sounds so . . . inexorable. I don’t think I could ever do your job. How can I help?’

Gently looked away from him. ‘We want information about Thursday evening. We’re asking everyone, trying to build a picture. Between the hours of seven and nine.’

‘Seven and nine.’ Bressingham paused. ‘Curious,’ he said. ‘They were both killed around then. But I’m no good, I didn’t go out. Ursy and I were in all evening.’