Gently laid down his knife and took a thoughtful mouthful of beer. ‘There’s a lot of things to be cleared up,’ he said. ‘Until they are, I wouldn’t be too hopeful.’
‘Is Fisher one of those things?’
‘I think Fisher could give us some interesting information, if he had a mind to.’
‘You know, Inspector, if I had to put my finger on one particular person and say “that’s him”, I should put it on Fisher.’
‘You would?’ mused Gently.
‘Yes, I would.’
‘Have you any especial reason for saying that?’
‘He just seems to me the one person who would do it. Isn’t that your opinion?’
Gently drank some more beer. ‘I suppose he’s quite a likely customer,’ he said.
‘Ah! I thought you would agree.’ Leaming returned to his plate for a moment, then said, through the tail-end of a mouthful: ‘I believe there’s something in that business about him and Gretchen, after all.’
Gently elevated an eyebrow.
‘Yes, I know I pooh-poohed it when you suggested it the other day, but I’ve heard a bit of gossip about it since then.’
‘Where?’ said Gently, eating.
‘I was in that snack-bar across the street from the yard — I heard it mentioned there. Quite confidently, you know, as though there was no doubt about it.’
‘Could be just gossip,’ said Gently.
‘You think there’s nothing in it? But there could be some connection there, when you think about it. Just suppose he’d got her into trouble… they’d be in a mess, wouldn’t they? Both of them…’
‘You’ve got a theory about that…?’
‘Well… somebody did the old man in… and there must have been a reason for it.’
‘Yes, there must have been a reason…’
‘Of course, there’s the money to think of. If Fisher did for the old man with the idea of clearing the way to marry Gretchen, there’d be no point in his pinching it.’
‘There’s a great temptation in ready money.’
‘You’re right, of course… do you think he did it?’
Gently smiled at the river-side willows. ‘I may have an answer to that one shortly.’
Leaming ate and was silent for a short spell. Gently plied himself appreciatively with pork, and added a few more potatoes to his plate… after all, what does one’s figure matter when one is the wrong side of fifty?
Leaming said: ‘When I was talking to you about the money turning up, I didn’t know that one note was going to turn up so quickly… and right in the wrong place, too.’
Gently said: ‘Mmp.’
‘But it’s still a good angle, don’t you think? That money’s got to turn up some time.’
‘It’s not all that easy to trace when it does turn up… it may have gone through a lot of hands.’
‘There’s that, of course… but once it starts turning up you’re pretty sure that Peter’s in the clear.’
‘Could be,’ said Gently.
Leaming laughed. ‘For all I know, of course, that’s what’s happened… maybe that’s why Peter wasn’t charged. Well, if that’s the case, you may well say you’ll have an answer shortly.’ He glanced at Gently interrogatively.
‘And if, in addition, someone cracked…’
‘You mean Fisher?’
‘Perhaps.’
Leaming went back to his eating.
Gently said: ‘There’s a time in every case that I’ve had anything to do with when you suddenly find yourself over the top of the hill… usually, there’s no good reason for it. You just keep pushing and pushing, never seeming to get anywhere, and then some time you find you don’t have to push any longer… the thing you’ve been pushing starts to carry you along with it. It’s odd, isn’t it?’
Leaming said: ‘And you’ve reached that stage in this case?’
Gently shrugged. ‘I’ve got that feeling…’
Leaming studied his plate without expression, making small, deliberate movements with his knife. Gently chewed a piece of roll and washed it down with beer. Across the lawn he could see a dinghy, a class-boat, tacking wistfully against the tide, long, painfully slow tacks amongst the trees, with scarcely enough breeze to give it headway. Back and forth it went, its helmsman, patient and determined, moving across with each new tack… it seemed like a machine which had lost its raison d’etre, still obstinately performing its functions but going nowhere. Gently returned his eyes to the table and found that Leaming was staring at him.
‘You do any sailing?’ asked Gently.
‘I’ve got a one-design in the boat-house.’
‘What do they fetch these days?’
‘You might pick one up for two-fifty.’
‘That lets me out… I’m only a policeman.’
The housekeeper took their plates and served the sweet, which was rhubarb pie and cream. Gently went to work with unabated gusto. ‘You’ve a good cook,’ he said, between mouthfuls. Leaming smiled and picked up his fork and spoon. ‘I have to do entertaining sometimes…’
The dinghy had made the next bend at last and Gently, outside the rhubarb and cream, was looking round for the coffee coming in. ‘By the way,’ he said, licking his lips, ‘I knew there was something I meant to ask you about…’ He got out his wallet and extracted the green card from it. ‘Know anything about these people?’ he asked.
Leaming took the card while Gently made room for his cup of coffee. ‘That’s Huysmann’s writing…’ said Leaming. Gently took three lumps of sugar and began stirring them. The housekeeper retired with her tray.
‘I found it in Huysmann’s desk this morning,’ said Gently helpfully. ‘I thought I’d heard the name before somewhere…’
Leaming looked from the card to Gently and back at the card again. Then he turned the card over and appeared to study the verso. Gently seemed not to watch him.
‘It’s one of his notes all right,’ said Leaming at length, ‘he was for ever scribbling things down…’
Gently took it back from him. ‘Miss Gretchen verified the handwriting… it is the firm I should like to know about.’
Leaming eyed him intently. ‘It’s a firm we do business with,’ he said evenly.
‘What sort of business?’
‘We supply them with sawn-out timber.’
‘And have you been connected with them very long?’
‘Oh… quite a few years.’
‘Ten years, say?’
‘Not so long as that.’
Gently reinserted the card in his wallet and tucked it into his pocket. ‘I wonder why Mr Huysmann made a note of the firm’s name… as though it were unfamiliar?’ he pondered.
Leaming shrugged slightly. ‘It may have been to jog his memory about a contract.’
‘But why write out the name in full?… Also, I don’t remember coming across it when I went through the books.’
Leaming stared straight ahead of him. ‘We keep separate books for that firm,’ he said.
‘Separate books? Why is that?’
‘We supply them with sawn-out stuff that hasn’t been through the mill… we simply act as middlemen. The stuff is processed at Starmouth and we bring it up for them. We take about fifteen per cent on it.’
‘Isn’t it unusual for a milling firm to supply timber which has been milled elsewhere? I should have thought it would have been more profitable to have supplied timber from one’s own mill.’
‘You have to do it sometimes, when the mill is working at capacity.’
‘But this has been going on over a number of years.’
Leaming bit his lip. ‘I imagine Huysmann is the only one who could give you an answer to that… and he won’t
