Gently with the Innocents (8 page)

‘That was fresh?’

‘I’m trying . . . yes. The chair wasn’t there before.’

‘And the shelves – go over those.’

The young man’s hands were twisting together.

‘Empty . . . I’m sure . . . quite empty.’

‘Not even, say –
a twist of blue paper
?’

It meant nothing, Gently was certain. It just reduced Adrian Peachment to shaking his head. He was baffled. He simply didn’t know why Gently was hammering him about this.

‘All right, then. But your uncle said
something
, he didn’t just lead you up there in silence.’

‘No . . . I forget. You didn’t know Uncle! He’d mutter away, pulling you along with him.’

‘He said something to you about the old house.’

‘Yes, but I don’t remember where.’

‘Wasn’t it up there in the store-room?’

‘Yes – it could have been. I don’t remember!’

‘He was such a vague old man,’ Jeanie put in, loyally trying to relieve the pressure. ‘You couldn’t have a proper conversation with him. He didn’t listen to what you said.’

‘Why was that?’

‘Why? I don’t know.’

‘I’ve heard it suggested he was deaf.’

‘Deaf?’

She looked at Adrian Peachment, but he was too confused to do more than shake his head.

Their tea arrived. Jeanie poured for them with a firm, unhesitating hand. In this slightly more genial atmosphere Gently tidied up details of the alibi.

They’d gone out snogging, that was plain enough, and Adrian had pushed for something more satisfying. After all, she was wearing a modest little ring, and was due to become an Easter bride. He’d stayed for tea. Their evening programme had been a visit to the local flicks. She found she had a headache. Adrian had left. The time, she was sure, was seven p.m.

‘You went to the car with him – saw him off?’

‘No. But I watched him from the window.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘It’s in Broome Road. He didn’t have to go back through the town.’

Then a drive of nearly three hours . . . hadn’t Gently checked it himself this morning? It had taken him two and a half from Finchley, never mind the grind between there and Kensington. If the times were right . . .

He looked keenly at Jeanie, who was eating toast with an elevated finger. She caught his eye and smiled dutifully. No, you really couldn’t believe . . .

‘How long have you known Colkett?’

Adrian Peachment started, letting his cup collide with his saucer.

‘I don’t think I know—’

‘The fellow at the warehouse. He says you’re quite a buddy of his.’

Flush-spots appeared in the young man’s cheeks. ‘I’m afraid I scarcely know him. A couple of times – once I drank some tea with him. I assure you he’s no friend of mine.’

‘Didn’t you tell him to keep an eye on Harrisons?’

‘I . . . yes, just for something to say! I mean, Uncle living alone like that, and not having any neighbours.’

‘You didn’t discuss your uncle?’

‘Well, no . . . that is, only making conversation.’

Gently shrugged and didn’t push it. Colkett, in any case, was a liar.

But then, just as they were leaving, with the embarrassment of young folk, the interview suddenly spilt some pay-dirt. Jeanie, putting on her scarf, remarked nervously, ‘Well, one thing’s certain. People knew about the coins.’

‘Knew about them?’

‘Oh, yes. The kids at school all knew. My brother Jackie came in one day and told us old Peachey was selling his gold.’

Gently went still. ‘How did he know?’

‘Kids’ gossip.’ Jeanie smiled complacently. ‘Young Phil Bressingham heard his father talking about it. Mr Bressingham deals in coins.’

O
NLY GISSING WAS
in the office when Gently arrived back at the station. He listened pokerfaced to Gently’s account of the Edward IV angel and Jeanie’s remarks.

Gissing, you felt, was surprised at nothing: he met it all with a dead bat. Behind the screen of his heavy features he slowly absorbed, brooded, adjusted.

‘I reckon that opens it up a bit, sir.’

Understatements like that were his daily bread.

‘If the kids knew about it, it’d get around. Our chummie could be just about anyone.’

Brilliant deduction! Gently sat on the desk and grinned at the local man. The office was dreary, but it was warm, a place to spin-out and mull-over common-places.

‘I mean . . . even if it was just the one coin, the kids would say it was a sackful. Then if one of our villains got to hear about it . . . what about Bressingham himself?’

‘He has an alibi.’

Gissing nodded blankly. ‘Not that Tom’s ever given any trouble.’

‘Who are your villains?’

‘Well . . . I don’t know. There’s one or two I’ll have a word with.’

Gissing himself had had a little luck. He’d visited a shop in Thingoe Road. A general store, it was where old Peachment had bought his paraffin and tobacco. On two evenings a week they opened late, and October 27th had been such an evening. Though he couldn’t swear to the 27th, the shopkeeper was positive that Peachment had come in one evening that week. He’d bought some matches. Among the contents of Peachment’s pockets had been a new box of Bryant & May.

Thingoe Road . . .

‘He’d have gone by the footway.’

‘Yes, sir. Slap past Colkett’s office.’

‘All the same . . . a bit risky. No way of telling how long he’d be gone.’

‘If Colkett knew where to find the loot, sir, it wouldn’t be very much of a risk. He could slip in there and out again before old Peachey could turn round.’

‘But – he didn’t.’

Gissing condescended to frown. ‘No, sir. He must have struck a snag. Maybe it was the way we thought, after all, and he did knock Peachey about to make him talk.’

Gently struck a mean match.

‘Let’s forget about Colkett for a moment. Peachment goes out into Thingoe Road, and that’s where chummie could have spotted him. Is it a busy place?’

‘Middling busy. Council houses, a bit of traffic.’

‘Kids?’

‘They’ve got their quota.’

‘So?’

Gently put the match to his pipe.

But Gissing, after a pause, dead-batted that one.

‘I don’t know, sir . . . it’s asking a lot. If someone spotted him in Thingoe Road, they’d see he was only going to the shop. Of course, we could do a house-to-house . . .’

He let it linger in the air gloomily.

Gently shrugged. ‘It may come to that.’

Gissing just let it die.

And so, of necessity, they were back with Colkett, their only glimmer of a suspect. Gissing had put a Detective Constable, Scole, on the chore of rechecking Colkett’s alibi.

‘He’ll be in the Grapes now, chatting up a few of the regulars. I’m going round to the Marquis myself. If you’d care to come out for a jar, sir?’

Gently thanked him but declined – there was pheasant on the George’s menu. From Gissing’s manner you couldn’t tell if he were disappointed or relieved.

‘One other thing.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘I’d like a chat with those kids some time.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll round one or two of them up.’

Gently made a face.

‘Not like that!’

But then, after all, he didn’t get his pheasant peacefully, like a private citizen on his honest occasions. First there were reporters laying ambush in the George’s foyer, and Gently knew better than to brush them aside without a statement.

‘Mostly a routine check . . . nobody likes open verdicts. One of the relatives was in touch with the Yard, so they sent me along to make some motions.’

They listened carefully, with hard eyes, trying to catch him in a revealing phrase. No crime reporter worth his salt could quite believe that Gently was routine . . .

‘Who was the relative?’

‘Peachment’s nephew.’

Rule one: always tell them what they’d find out anyway.

‘Can you give us his address?’

Gently obliged. With luck, they’d go haring off to an empty flat in Grout Street, Kensington.

‘You’re treating this as murder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you a lead, sir?’ (Politeness with that one!)

‘No. We’re treating it as murder for the purpose of the check, but it could equally well turn out to have been an accident. I’m here to make certain.’

Some jiffling and staring.

‘What about this rumour that Peachment had found a hoard of gold?’

Gently shrugged smilingly. ‘Put it in your story. But just between us, it hasn’t turned up yet.’

An effective performance: they went away to the phones half convinced there wasn’t a big one here. The odds were they’d just leave a stringer hanging around, unless Adrian Peachment set their noses twitching again.

He washed and went down to dinner complacently, his office door mentally closed. But alack, when he’d barely begun on his minestrone, in walked Sir Daynes Broke.

‘Hullo, you old war-horse!’

Who would have expected him, forty snowy miles from Merely? In fact, he’d been to a Regional Crime Squad conference at Eastwich and was taking in Gently on his way home.

‘There’s a good cross-route, y’know . . . don’t have to bother going through Norchester. I called at the station to have a look at the medal. Oh, glory. My fingers are still itching.’

And of course he stayed to dinner, exerting all the consequence of a Chief Constable. The head waiter, wine-waiter and waitress hovered around him in a sort of ecstasy.

‘This pheasant now . . . fresh, is it?’

‘Oh no, sir. We hang them at least a week.’

‘Ah, so you know what’s what.’

They loved him. They couldn’t have enough of him.

Through dinner he chatted gossip to Gently, who would sooner have concentrated on his food; then, hand on his elbow, he steered him into the lounge and to the best seats by the log fire.

‘Now . . . how is it going?’

The George, you felt, had become Merely Manor when Sir Daynes walked in. Outside, in the very centre of the cobbled courtyard, would be standing his B1 Bentley with its discreet flag.

Gently gave him a résumé. He listened intently, interrupting only at the mention of Bressingham.

‘Know the fellow. Bought a George III guinea off him. Twenty-seven ten, but I had to knock him down.’

‘How much was he asking?’

‘Thirty-five quid. What are you grinning at?’

Gently shrugged.

Again, when it came to the Edward IV angel, Sir Daynes was stirred into an exclamation.

‘The old devil! I’ve wanted one for years. I wonder what else he had his hands on?’

In the end he sat back, staring into the fire, his grey, wiry eyebrows drawn in a frown.

‘An odd sort of business . . .’

As though ensconced at his own hearth, he tossed a few fresh pieces from the wood-basket on to the blaze. ‘Y’know . . . how shall I put it? . . . this has the feel of something unusual. Out here, now and then, a strange thing can happen. We’re not quite twentieth-century in some ways.’

‘Something supernatural?’

‘Don’t be an ass! Though I dare say we have a little mild witchcraft. If people are credulous it’s possible to work on them – saw plenty of that out in Malaya. No, what I’m getting at . . .’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘Look, take incest – there’s an example. Up in town you probably never come across a case, but we’ve got plenty in the villages. And nobody cares very much. It’s been going on since the foundation. You cockneys marvel at your TV sex, but out here they wonder what the fuss is about.’

Gently nodded. ‘So what you’re saying . . . ?’

‘I’m saying this case has got a smell. It may be a straightforward robbery with violence, but it could be something with a rum twist. So keep your eye roving, that’s my tip . . . damn it, man, I’m trying to help you! I’ve got the feel of the place bred in me. I’m trying to let you use my nose.’

But the coins were what really interested Sir Daynes.

‘If we could just turn up that collection!’

In his own mind he was obviously now certain that the Harrisons hoard was a fact.

‘Only to have them through one’s hands . . . pieces like that Innocent medal. I’d make the inventory my self, and the man isn’t born who could hurry me. What are you doing about them?’

Gently had left instructions for the usual routine circularization. Dealers were requested to report any offers made them of valuable antique coins.

‘He couldn’t have got rid of them already?’

Gently smiled, shook his head. Seaby’s had known nothing of any recent eruption of pieces of this class on the market.

At last Sir Daynes talked himself out and Gently saw him into the Bentley. The snow had stopped, but a stingy wind was still whirling the loose flakes. Above black, snow-laden gables a pallid moon chased in the clouds, and nothing stirred in the street beyond the gateway. All you heard was the wind.

He slept well, and made no effort to get down early to breakfast. A tea-tray was brought him by a broad-faced country girl who smiled and lingered to pull his curtains.

‘What’s the weather like?’

‘I don’t know, sir. Reckon that don’t get any warmer.’

Pulling the curtains had admitted a dirty dullness that offered no competition to his bedside lamp.