‘Then you had your back to the inside door?’
‘Most of the time.’
‘During that interview, did you hear anything that might lead you to believe there was somebody outside that door?’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
‘Would you have noticed, for instance, if your father looked at it in a particular way, suggesting that he had heard or seen something?’
‘I wouldn’t have noticed.’
Gently paused for a moment. ‘From where you were standing, you could see through the outer door into the garden, also the outer gate, also part of the summer-house through the small window?’
‘I suppose I could, but I didn’t notice them much.’
‘Can you say whether the outer gate was open or closed?’
‘It seemed to be closed, but when I went out I found it was slightly ajar.’
‘You saw nobody in the garden at any time?’
‘No.’
‘Nor in the summer-house?’
‘No.’
‘You would not have noticed if the summer-house door was opened or closed?’
‘Yes, I did. It was standing half-open.’
‘Was there anybody in the timber-yard when you went through it?’
‘Nobody.’
‘Or any vehicle?’
‘None.’
Gently spread out his stubby fingers and placed the tips together in strict sequence. ‘Your sister,’ he said, ‘she does not appear to have many acquaintances.’
Peter shrugged and shook his head. ‘It is my father’s fault… she does not know anybody except a few people she meets at church.’
‘What sort of people are they?’
‘Oh… elderly, not very interesting.’
‘Has your sister any admirers to your knowledge?’
Peter’s long face twisted in a wry smile. ‘There was a young fellow once. He was called Deacon… he worked in a solicitor’s office. But my father soon put a stop to that. It happened several years back.’
‘Your father had a plan for marrying you to a Dutch girl. Had he any such plan for Gretchen?’
‘No! That would have cost money… in Holland she would have required a dot. With me, of course, it was different.’
‘If she had a lover, would you expect to be in her confidence?’
‘Well… that’s hard to say. Gretchen is very strange and very religious. She tells me most things, but not all. If it were anything serious I think she would tell me.’
‘Have you ever had any suspicions, say of members of the household
… or the staff?’
‘None at all. But I have been away two years.’
‘Would you be surprised to hear that Gretchen had, in fact, a lover?’
Peter stared hard at Gently. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so. Her religion… it is the sort that would easily turn to something else… a substitution for it.’
‘Would you say it was true that she was very much afraid of her father?’
‘Everybody was afraid of my father.’
‘But Gretchen, perhaps, especially?’
‘In her position, I suppose she was…’
The shorthand constable closed his notebook and Gently, unable to smoke in the super’s office and out of peppermint creams to boot, stretched himself and sighed largely.
‘He’s clever,’ said Hansom, ‘he’s dead clever. And he can tell a story.’
The super tore off his sheet of doodlings. ‘It’s the sort of statement an innocent man might make if he were honest… and a guilty man if he were clever. It doesn’t seem to have helped you much, Gently.’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Gently permitted himself the ghost of a smile. ‘At least we’ve got an indication that there was some other person in the house, besides those we know of.’
‘But that’s all you’ve got, and you’ve been hammering away at it all through the questioning. The really important point, that somebody was at hand during the quarrel, you’ve drawn a blank on.’
‘There’s the chair-marks and the finger-prints,’ mused Gently.
The super made impatient noises. ‘You know how much that’s going to impress a jury. As part of a chain of evidence it would stand up, but taken on its own it would only furnish an opportunity for sonic forensic fireworks by the counsel. Look here, Gently’ — the superintendent adopted a friendly tone — ‘let’s have young Huysmann back and charge him properly, and forget all this other business. I know you think he’s innocent, but he’s got himself into a mess and it’s up to his counsel to get him out of it, not us. We’re just here to get the facts and we’ve got them…’
Slowly Gently shook his head. ‘We haven’t got them… not all of them. For one thing there’s the money, and for another there’s the gentleman who tried to bounce masonry on my head…’
The super’s jaw moved out a good half-inch. ‘Very well, Gently, have it your way,’ he snapped, ‘but by God, you’d better be right! I’m giving you forty-eight hours before I charge young Huysmann: after that, you’re on your own.’
Gently met the super’s eye with a look of mild reproof. ‘I do wish you people would realize that I’m on your side,’ he said.
Alan Hunter
Gently Does It
CHAPTER NINE
E VEN HIS OWN Chief seemed just a little bit against him, thought Gently, dropping the receiver on a long telephone consultation. Chiefy had seen the papers and left instructions for Gently to ring him. ‘I know I can trust you, Gently,’ he had said, ‘and you can’t tell me anything about the attitude of provincial superintendents. But for heaven’s sake bear in mind that you’re unofficial and don’t stir up trouble. If the local gendarmerie think they’ve got a case, well, just let them keep right on thinking — if they haven’t, they’ll find out soon enough when it gets to court.’
Which is as good as telling me to drop it, thought Gently…
He looked down at the dusky city with its ten thousand lights, with the moving jewels that were cars and the sauntering shop-windows that were buses. In the market place they were busy packing up, flowers and vegetables were being dispatched on hand-carts to the subterranean vaults under the Corn Hall. Down London Street came a news-boy with the Late Night Finals: No Murder Charge in Huysmann Case, Final! Final! The day was over, the business was done. Now it was time to pack up, to have tea, to slacken the tireding wheels of commerce. And then there was the pictures or the Hippodrome…
Gently walked down by the Guildhall and crossed over to the brightly lit foyer of a small cafe, the Princess. It had a bowl of fruit in one window and a dish of cakes in the other, and both seemed, to a hungry Gently, well up to chief inspectorial standards. He went in. It was a pleasant, intimate place with oak beams and nooks and a large fireplace in which slumbered a mature fire and a wireless turned down low spoke of football in the midlands. He selected a small, nooky table within fire-range and glanced down the menu.
A tall pretty waitress came to him.
‘Mixed grill,’ said Gently, ‘with two helpings of fried onion. What are the sweets like?’
‘The fruit salad is very good, sir, and there’s clotted cream today.’
