Landed Gently (16 page)

‘I have served art!’ cried Somerhayes. ‘Give me that at least – creation absolves the greatest of crimes!’

‘You serve yourself,’ retorted Gently. ‘You have never served anything else. And as for crime, it has no absolution but punishment.’

‘Personally,’ said a third voice behind them, ‘I prefer his lordship’s version, Inspector!’ And Leslie Brass stepped suddenly out of the unlit saloon.

‘Keep your voices down, children … I’m getting to be somewhat
de trop
around here.’

Brass had a gun in his hand, a small automatic that Gently recognized as a .22 Unique of French
manufacture
.

‘I don’t want to raise my bag unnecessarily, but you see how I’m placed, my chickens. As I take it, his lordship is just about to rat on me – you used the right weapon, Inspector. Flattery would have got you nowhere!’

Gently shrugged expressionlessly. ‘I was wondering when you’d come out …’

‘Of course you were, my son.’ Brass waved the gun deprecatingly. ‘It’s your business to notice things, isn’t it? If X was listening in on two consecutive occasions, the odds are pretty bright that he would be there the third time. And here he is, toying with his lordship’s gun … What does that suggest to the trained police mind?’

‘You’d never get away with it.’

‘I might, you know, all things considered.’

‘At the moment, Brass, you could get off with manslaughter … It’ll be a different tale if you fool around with that thing.’

‘You visualize the whole plot I take it, my maestro?’

‘You’re thinking you could shoot the pair of us and leave the gun in his lordship’s hand.’

‘Distinctly workable, y’know.’

‘The police aren’t fools.’

‘But they’re thinking along certain lines, Inspector.
They would rush to jump at the wrong conclusion. What could be more natural than for his lordship, being taxed, to draw his gun and shoot you – and then to put an end to things? There’s only my conscience really to worry about … and it’s a pretty elastic article. The first job is the worst, sonny. After that it gets to be routine.’

Gently grunted and turned to Somerhayes. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘You see what you’re protecting? This is crime, not creation. Art doesn’t kill, but greed does.’

Brass gave his cynical laugh. ‘Too true, Professor, too true. I thought you might have been harbouring the idea that I killed Earle for Janice … I did, of course, but only in an incidental way. It’s filthy lucre that makes the world go round.’

‘Don’t say that!’ gasped Somerhayes, still supporting himself by the balustrade. ‘I won’t hear it from you – it’s nothing but your way of talking.’

‘And as I talk I am – just get that into your befuddled brain!’

‘The spirit is there … you cannot blaspheme the spirit!’

‘The spirit my backside – I killed him for the cash!’

Gently never had a chance to stop it. Without warning Somerhayes came flying off the balustrade like a galvanized frog. The inevitable had to happen. He went spinning sideways to the crash and blaze of the gun. At the same second Gently hurled himself on the artist and sent the gun flying over the rail …

‘Traitor!’ cried Somerhayes, clutching his bloody
shoulder on the floor. ‘You should have killed me – why didn’t you kill me?’

‘I would have done, you stupid bastard!’ shouted Brass, dodging Gently. ‘Take it as an omen – your number was on that bullet!’

He dived through the north-west door, slamming it in Gently’s face. When the Central Office man got it open it was to see the door to the staircase slamming a few yards ahead. He burst it open with his shoulder. Brass was tearing up the spiral stairs. A couple of turns behind, Gently panted up after him.

‘Come back!’ he bawled. ‘You’re cornered, Brass. You’ll never get off the roof !’

The artist wasted no breath in reply, but continued his flight down the attic corridors.

Along there it was black as the inside of a hat. Gently could hear his quarry stumbling and bumping up ahead as he plunged after him, similarly handicapped. The door to the hatch slammed, and then the door of the hatch itself. Out in the whining gale that cut over the leads he could just make out Brass sliding and slipping towards the south-east wing. At the angle he must get him – there was no way back from there! But then, at the angle, Brass went over the coping like a monkey, and when he got to it Gently found a fire-ladder leading down to the wing-roof below. He went down the ladder. Brass was already on the far side of the wing. Another ladder took them down to the coach-house roof, and then another one to the garage-yard …

Outdistanced, Gently came to the last ladder just as Brass was reaching the bottom. With a mental prayer he lowered himself over, hung poised, and let himself go … He got Brass all right. He bowled him over like a nine-pin. But unfortunately he got himself as well, and it was some few moments before his wind came back and he was able to renew an intelligent interest in events.

When at last he was able to scramble to his feet, a dazzling beam of light stabbed at him and made him throw up his arm defensively.

‘Waal, waal!’ exclaimed a well-remembered voice. ‘If it isn’t the chief inspector doing gymnastics off the roof ! And who is this other athlete, Inspector – would he be somebody who I ought to know?’

The torch beam lowered and reversed. It revealed Colonel Rynacker, USAF. It also revealed a couple of snowdrops supporting a sick-looking Brass, a Brass who had patently had most of the bounce knocked out of him.

‘Guess I brought these boys along to give a hand to your cops … When we ran across this guy he seemed to think we were hostile. But what goes, Chief Inspector? How come the schemozzle?’

Gently grimaced and felt himself over tenderly. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s just my night for these things …’ 

B
RASS MADE HIS
statement, and a very clever one it was, too. Its sheer, reckless audacity compelled admiration for the man. Undeterred by Gently in his window seat, or Somerhayes, pale from the loss of blood and with his arm in a sling, the artist rolled off a story that either one of them could have punctured in a dozen places. And all the while his green eyes twinkled ironically from one to the other …

He was returning to the north-east wing to fetch his lighter, that was the tale. On entering the great hall by the south-west door to the gallery, he had heard the voices of Mrs Page and Earle raised in the saloon. Naturally, he had been unable to avoid overhearing what was being said, and the purport of it had made him hesitate by the door in case Mrs Page needed assistance. In the event, Mrs Page succeeded in breaking away from Earle. With the final injunction to him that he had better leave in the morning, she had hastily departed in the direction of her own apartment.
For some moments Earle had remained in the saloon, and Brass was about to pass on under the impression that the American had given up his intentions. Before he could do so, however, Earle rushed out of the saloon in obvious pursuit of Mrs Page, and Brass had siezed his arm and attempted to remonstrate with him. The American had refused to listen. He had grappled with Brass and attempted to throw him down. In the course of the struggle Brass was hurled against the wall under the panel of truncheons, and as Earle turned to continue his pursuit of Mrs Page, Brass had seized one of the truncheons and struck the American on the back of the head.

It went without saying that the blow was not intended to be fatal. Brass’s sole object had been to disable Earle and to prevent him carrying out what appeared to be a criminal purpose. Unfortunately he had struck not wisely but too well, and Earle, after tottering a few steps, had toppled lifelessly down the great stairs. Brass, shocked and alarmed at the result of what he had done, but realizing that it would probably pass as an accidental fall, had wiped and replaced the truncheon and left the affair to develop as it might. He had not been apprehensive when suspicion fell on Johnson, since he felt that the police were proceeding on grounds palpably insufficient (here he was obliged to pause while Sir Daynes baronetized once or twice), but in a recent interview with his lordship and Chief Inspector Gently it had been represented to him that his lordship was now under suspicion; he therefore felt
it incumbent on him to confess. He realized that he had done wrongly in attempting concealment. He deeply regretted the trouble and unpleasantness it had caused. If any part of his statement were not quite clear, he would be happy to supply every detail that might assist complete clarification.

Sir Daynes was openly baffled by this masterly blue-print for a verdict of manslaughter. He scratched his grizzled locks and fired a number of his most telling glances at the apparently contrite artist. Things had happened that didn’t seem to have got on the record – odd, preposterous and downright unofficial things! The baronet had the feeling that he was being left out somewhere, and nobody seemed to be rushing to put him in the picture …

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Dyson, charge this feller with manslaughter. I’ll get on to you later if there’s to be any amendment of the charge. Oh, and regarding that other feller, Johnson …’

‘Yes, sir?’ enquired Dyson bleakly.

‘Better drop the charge, man – sort of thing doesn’t do our reputation any good!’

Dyson departed looking as though Christmas hadn’t done much for him, with him his supporters and the handcuffed Brass. Sir Daynes slewed in his chair to confront his lordship and Gently. Colonel Rynacker, who had been a silent witness to the processes of the goddamned, also appeared to have items on his mind.

‘Well?’ demanded Sir Daynes, raking the Somerhayes –Gently sector. ‘You’re not going to tell me it’s as simple
as all that, eh? Got a spoke, haven’t you, to put in that feller’s wheel?’

Somerhayes nursed his bandaged shoulder and glanced across at Gently. It was an appealing,
part-reproachful
, part-admonishing look, and the Central Office man replied with the merest inflection of his shoulders. Somerhayes nodded back an
acknowledgement
that was equally discreet.

‘I do not think there is a great deal to add, Sir Daynes,’ he said in his flat-toned way of speaking. ‘I am prepared to amend my statement, of course, to confirm the fact that Brass was present in the hall—’

‘Yes, yes – don’t doubt it, don’t doubt it!’ interrupted Sir Daynes impatiently. ‘But what about this – hah – interview that’s supposed to have taken place between Gently and you and Brass – bit more than an interview, wasn’t it, judging by results?’

‘It served its purpose, Sir Daynes … I doubt whether it is necessary to encumber your case with the particular details.’

‘Not even though you got winged, man, and Gently had to chase Brass over the tiles?’

Somerhayes squirmed a little and glanced at Gently again. The chief inspector was sitting hunched like an owl in a belfry, an expression of extraordinary blankness on his face.

‘There were factors of this interview, Sir Daynes, which, as a magistrate, I have naturally been obliged to consider with great care. It was a consultation in which, admittedly, a great deal of emotion was involved. Rash
words were spoken in anger, foolish determinations evoked and acted upon. But I believe that the only certain and significant thing to emerge from it is Mr Brass’s willingness to confess, and that the admission as evidence of what preceded it can only be prejudicial to the proper end of justice. You must therefore excuse me from being more explicit.’

‘But damn it all, man!’ exploded Sir Daynes with warmth. ‘If that’s your attitude, what sort of case have we got against this feller, eh? Next thing we know he’ll be getting off clean, with the confounded judge patting him on the back for doing his civic duty!’

Somerhayes smiled thinly and made his little bow. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I am obliged to act according to my conscience, Sir Daynes.’

‘And you, Gently!’ barked Sir Daynes, turning on the Central Office man. I suppose you’re backing Somerhayes up – won’t breathe a word about this afternoon?’

Gently stirred in his window seat. ‘It’s not for me to argue with a magistrate,’ he replied.

Sir Daynes gazed at them nonplussed. Never before had he met such a plain case of obstruction, with so little that could be legitimately done about it. If they wouldn’t come clean they wouldn’t – and there was nothing he could confounded well do to make them! He had got his man, he had got his confession, and what more could a chief constable reasonably ask for?

‘At the same time …’ mused Gently.

‘Eh?’ snapped Sir Daynes.

‘According to
my
conscience, you’d better make that charge murder … with manslaughter, of course, as the happy alternative.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, rising to his feet. ‘As a magistrate, Mr Gently—’

Gently stopped him with a gesture.

‘As a magistrate, my lord, you can appreciate my point. You can appreciate the importance of your will as prosecution evidence. It gave Brass a murderer’s motive. He should be compelled to explain that motive. My conscience doesn’t think that the shadow of the gallows will be a bad thing for Mr Brass …’

Somerhayes sank back trembling; what colour he had had drained out of his handsome cheeks.

‘Perhaps you are right, Mr Gently,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps you are right … I will inform Sir Daynes of the circumstances of the will.’

Gently nodded his mandarin nod. ‘I think that’s best. Especially as Mr Brass is such an admirable explainer …’

The charge was duly amended to murder and the alternative. Sir Daynes, if not happy, was satisfied with the case he was turning in. The feller might get off, in fact it was on the cards that he would, but a brush with the black cap followed by a few years’ segregation would make him think deeply before breaking out again. And, in the meantime, Somerhayes was clear. The son of his old friend was not to be exhibited in the dock at the next Quarter Sessions. By and large, things could have been a lot worse … and damnation! It was still
Christmas, however irregularly the season had started off.

‘I guess the lieutenant stuck his neck out,’ admitted the colonel over a friendly Scotch. ‘If these youngsters will go skirt-hunting in other people’s preserves, then jeez, they’re asking for it, and you can quote Dwight P. Rynacker as saying so. You know something, Bart?’

‘No,’ replied Sir Daynes innocently. ‘I don’t know anything.’

‘I been holding out on you, Bart, I been keeping back Earle’s dossier. I had it here this morning, right in my briefcase, only when you got so goddam rumbumptious I reckoned you could darned well carry on without it.’

Sir Daynes glanced at him indignantly. ‘
Me
get goddam rumbumptious?’ he echoed.

‘Waal’ – the colonel grinned at him out of his jowls – ‘
someone
got goddam rumbumptious, and I guess that dossier stayed right in my briefcase. But I got it here again now, and you can have a go-over. The lootenant wasn’t quite the blue-eyed boy he gave out, Bart. He’d been in skirt-trouble before, here and back home. One time I cracked down on his leave this Christmas, when I found out where he was spending it, but I guess I didn’t like to be hard at this time of the year, and after a man-to-man talk about the facts of life I gave him his pass back. Which just goes to show, don’t it? Ain’t no goddam use being a sentimental colonel!’

‘Feller took me in,’ growled Sir Daynes to his whisky. ‘Damned impertinent and that, but I couldn’t help liking him.’

‘Heck, everyone
liked
him,’ assented the colonel. ‘That’s just where the catch lay, Bart. He’d got a charm index about ninety-five at proof. But the old Adam was tucked away there, don’t you forget it, and all the more dangerous on account of being hid up.’

Gently sat smoking an American cigar and
contributing
nothing to the conversation. He’d been taken in too … if that was how you’d describe it! He could see Earle now, unwrapping his presents on the seat of that first-class compartment. He could hear the young airman’s voice with its thrill of enthusiasm and
expectation
. So there’d been a flaw in that fresh young character, a streak of cold selfishness, perhaps, among the layers of friendly warmth. Was he different in that from the rest of humanity? Was he particularly damned for being imperfect? One took the good with the bad, the rough with the smooth. In the compound of mortality none dared to require perfection. Yet Earle’s weakness had been fatal to him. Out of a thousand chances he had drawn the intolerant one. A cooler, more forbidding, less generous man might never have attracted retribution for his failings, nor ever have gladdened a single soul. Who had Earle taken in? Who had expected him to be a god?

‘Guess I’ll miss him,’ said the colonel. ‘Guess I’ll miss the young hound! He got drafted over here at the same time as me. Came in the same flight, we did, way back in August. Reckon we’ll fly him back, too … His folk’ll expect that.’

‘Hmph! Inquest tomorrow,’ said Sir Daynes gruffly.

‘Yeah … I know the ropes. I’ll have a wagon there to collect him.’

The fire burned red, and Sir Daynes, coming out of a revery with a jerk, suddenly remembered that his spouse was keeping a lonely vigil in the Manor House.

‘Hah – Gently!’ he exclaimed. ‘Better be getting back, man … There’s nothing we can do here, and Somerhayes has gone off to jaw things over with his cousin. Care to join us over at my place, Colonel? I can guarantee the central heating!’

The colonel nodded, getting to his feet. ‘I’d surely appreciate that, Bart, right now.’

‘It’ll be a change of blasted atmosphere – I try to keep business out of the home. Outside it, y’know, I’m the chief constable of Northshire, but once I cross that confounded threshold I’m just Gwendoline’s husband …’

Lady Broke had her skating, and, by way of a special and not-to-be-adopted-as-precedent dispensation, Gently was indulged in another day’s pike-fishing, by means of an air-hole cut in the ice. This proved to be a highly successful operation. The pike, wholly innocent of the dangers of air-holes, almost hung around waiting for the gleam of Gently’s spoon. Certainly, he didn’t get a specimen. The largest, an eighteen-pounder, was no rival for the celebrated heavy-weight that graced the wall in Finchley. But they bit firm and they bit often, and the average weight was gratifyingly high. At the dusky end of the day Gently struck his gear with the
complacent feeling of a man who had really been among the pike, and having been there, had acquitted himself. A snapshot taken by Sir Daynes provided a permanent record of the fact.

Of Somerhayes, Gently saw no more before he returned to town. He did not attend the inquest, which dealt merely with identification, and Sir Daynes, who did, reported that Somerhayes ‘hadn’t got a blasted word for him, not for anyone else as far as he could see’.

‘Poor man,’ commented Lady Broke, whose maternal interest in Somerhayes never flagged. ‘It’s been a shocking time for him, Daynes, truly shocking. I shudder to think of what he must have been through. If I were him I would take a long, long holiday in – you know, the West Indies or somewhere like that. And I would take Janice Page with me. I think it’s ridiculous how he doesn’t marry her!’

Sir Daynes pooh-poohed, but his prescient lady maintained her opinion; and whether the idea was communicated to Somerhayes supersensorily or by more material media, he did, in fact, very shortly depart with Janice for the sunny shores of Jamaica. Johnson, who proved quite capable of the task, was left to manage the tapestry workshop.

‘I
liked
the inspector,’ said Gertrude Winfarthing dreamily, as, with the housemaid, she stripped the now-vacant bed. ‘Give me a ten-bob note he did, which is more than half of them do. An’ he got a
twinkle
in his eye … Did you notice his twinkle, Irene? I reckon a
girl like me could do worse than marry a man like that, spite of his being fiftyish and always got a pipe in his mouth …’