charge, said nothing. The super continued: ‘Do you wish to say anything in answer to this charge? You are not obliged to say anything, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence.’
‘Though not necessarily against you,’ added Gently, in the pause that followed.
Peter looked from one to the other of them, still not quite able to follow the turn things were taking.
‘Do you wish to say anything?’ repeated the super.
Peter licked his lips. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I–I’d like to tell you everything — all I can tell you.’
His voice was slightly harsh, but contained almost no accent. ‘You’d like to make a statement?’ asked the super.
‘Yes, I’ll make a statement. But I didn’t take the bank-note — it was given to me.’
‘You plead not guilty to the charge?’
‘My father gave it to me just before I left.’
The super picked up a pencil and began doodling on a pad in front of him. ‘Before you make your statement I would like to caution you once more. You are quite within your rights to say nothing and we have no power to demand that you shall. You do so at your own risk. I’m not saying this to stop you making a statement, but simply to warn you that you needn’t if you feel it may incriminate you in a possibly graver charge. I can’t put it plainer than that. It’s up to you.’
Peter said: ‘Thank you… but I want to tell you everything that happened.’
He licked his lips again and looked across at the constable with the notebook. Gently wondered: did they tell his wife or did she see it first in the lunch-time papers?
‘You’ve found out how I left home,’ said Peter, ‘you know that my father and I weren’t on good terms. It was my marriage he couldn’t forgive — I was to have married the daughter of a merchant in Rotterdam, somebody rich. They’d worked it all out when I was in the cradle. When I married Cathy I just about ceased to be a son of his.
‘It was pretty hard for me, never having had to get my living before. I knew how to drive a truck, so I got a job with a small transport firm at King’s Lynn, and that went on for about three months. But the driver I was with got mixed up in a robbery — I lost my job and nearly went to prison as an accessory. After that I got in with the fair people and learned to do an act. It didn’t pay very well, so I persuaded Clark — he’s my boss — to let me practise the Wall, and I got so good at it that he took me on as his number one rider.’
Hansom said: ‘What was the act you learned that didn’t pay very well?’
Peter hesitated. ‘It was just one of the little side-show acts.’
‘Anything like knife-throwing?’
‘It was… knife-throwing.’
‘Ah,’ said Hansom, ‘little details like that help to fill in the picture, you know. Don’t leave them out.’
Peter flushed, his lip quivering. He went on, a little sullenly: ‘I’d written to my father once or twice since I went away, but he never answered. My only contact was with Gretchen, whom I saw sometimes when I was in Norchester with the fair. And I used to write to her, addressing the letters to the maid Susan. Then two weeks ago, when the fair was at Lincoln, Clark offered me a partnership in the Wall if I could find up five hundred pounds. It was a very liberal offer… the Wall would clear a hundred pounds in a good week. I told him I would see my father when we got to Norchester.’
The super said: ‘What made you think your father would let you have the money?’
Peter shrugged. ‘I don’t know. We were just coming to Norchester again, so I thought I would give it a try. Five hundred pounds was not much to my father… I thought he would lend it to me. First I sent a note to my sister, arranging to see her as soon as we got into town. She wasn’t very hopeful. My father was still talking of changing his will and he had been in an irritable mood of late — perhaps because he knew I was coming to town.’
Gently said: ‘Could there have been any other reason why he was irritable?’
‘There was business, of course…’
‘Do you know of any particular business reason which might have caused it?’
‘He used to imagine there was a leakage somewhere. But that had been going on for years… I think it was a delusion. My father was a very suspicious man.’
‘Did he suspect anyone in particular?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Do you know how the wages he paid compared with those paid by the trade in general?’
‘I couldn’t say exactly, but he was not the sort of man to pay more than the minimum rate.’
‘Would he have paid more than that, say, to his manager?’
‘No, he couldn’t have done: I can remember Mr Leaming complaining that he was getting only two-thirds of what some managers were paid.’
‘You are positive of that?’
‘Quite positive.’
‘Did it never seem strange to you that Mr Leaming should not transfer to a firm where he would be better paid?’
‘He had a reason for that. Before he came to us he was with a firm called Scotchers’ which went bankrupt. There was no blame attached to Mr Leaming, but he found it difficult to get a position afterwards… he was the first manager to last with us for more than twelve months.’
Gently nodded his mandarin nod to signify that he had done. Peter licked his lips again and continued.
‘After I’d spoken with Gretchen I thought I’d try to raise the money somewhere else. There was a firm called Trustus advertising in the local paper, so I went to them and told them the position. At first I thought I was going to get it. When they understood that I was the son of Nicholas Huysmann they were very favourable. But once they realized that I was on my own and without a fixed address it was different… even though I brought the last balance sheet to show them. I went to another firm after that, Goldstein in Sheep Lane, but it was the same there. So I decided to go through with my original plan.
‘My father was usually busy in the yard on Saturday mornings, so I waited till the afternoon, which he was in the habit of spending in the study going over his books and the like. Clark scrubbed one of the performances at the Wall so that I could have an hour off. I didn’t tell Cathy where I was going because I knew she would be upset… it would be time enough to tell her if I got the money. I left the fairground at about quarter past three.’
‘What makes you sure of the time?’ interrupted the super.
‘There was a performance at three — they last about ten minutes. By the time I’d got out of my overalls and straightened up it would be about quarter past. I went straight down Queen Street and knocked on my father’s door.’
Gently said: ‘Did you notice if there were any vehicles parked in the vicinity?’
‘I can’t remember any. There was still quite a bit of traffic going down to the football match.’
‘Did you see anybody you recognized, or any vehicles you recognized?’
‘I wasn’t thinking much about other people… Susan answered the door, and I told her why I had come. I also asked her where Gretchen was. She told me that my father was in the study and that Gretchen was upstairs in her room. I went along to the study, knocked and entered.
‘My father was sitting at the table facing the door. He rose as I entered.’
‘What did he say?’ demanded Hansom.
‘He said something like: “You! I was expecting you to turn up one of these fine days!” I replied that I had not come to annoy him but about a business matter.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He said that I hadn’t any business to come about and that I could take myself off again. I did my best to smooth him down so that he would listen to me. I admitted that I had been very much in the wrong, and that I did not expect his forgiveness, and let him give me a thorough dressing-down without saying a word. After he had cooled off a little bit I mentioned that I was in the way of setting up in business on my own.’
‘How did he take that?’
‘He took it a good deal better than I expected. I went into details about the partnership, showed him the balance sheet and eventually touched on the five hundred pounds. He said, “Yes, I could see that coming,” and got out the safe key. I could hardly believe in my good luck. He went over and opened the safe and took out a packet of five-pound notes. Then he came back and put them on the table between us. “There,” he said, “there’s five hundred pounds, my little man. Let us say that is what you were worth to me two years ago. But you’ve depreciated,” he said, “you’ve gone down in the market, my son. Today, you are worth only one per cent of your value two years
