‘You’re telling me,’ said Gently. ‘Just keep right on.’
‘All right, then, so I was there. I got in through the kitchen while there wasn’t no one there and went up into her room.’
‘What time was that?’
‘How the hell should I know what time it was? It was after lunch, that’s all I know about it. She come up a little bit later on.’
‘With a cup of coffee?’
‘All right — she’d got a cup of coffee! And I suppose you’d like to know what we was doing up there, as well?’
‘No,’ said Gently, ‘no, it might amuse the jury, but it isn’t strictly relevant… pass on to the next bit.’
‘Well, then, during the afternoon there was somebody come to the door, and I go out on the landing to see who it is… like you know, it was Mr Peter. Miss Gretchen, she come out too. We stood there listening to what was going on… you could hear some of it up on the landing. Then the old man shrieked, and Miss Gretchen she go rushing down to see what had happened.’
‘Why didn’t you go?’ asked Gently.
‘I wasn’t bloody well supposed to be there, was I? We didn’t know the old boy was done for… anyway, back she come and tell me what it is, so I say: “You and me is outside this — we’ll go out and make it look like we haven’t been here this afternoon,” and that’s what we did, Mr Inspector Gently, so now you know.’
Gently puffed three rings, one inside the other. ‘You went out through the study,’ he said, ‘so you saw the body. Where was it lying?’
‘It was by the safe. You don’t think we moved it, do you?’
‘How was it lying?’
‘It was face down with the legs shoved up a bit.’
‘Was the knife there?’
‘… I can’t remember every squitting little thing!’
‘But this isn’t a squitting little thing, and it’s not one you’re likely to have missed. Was it there?’
‘I tell you I can’t remember…!’
‘Was it because you didn’t look very closely… because it wasn’t, in fact, the first time you had seen the body?’
Fisher’s eyes blazed at him. ‘All bloody right! It was there — stuck in up to the hilt. Now are you satisfied?’
Gently smiled up towards Burgh Street. ‘I’m beginning to be…’ he said.
‘You’re still trying to get me to say I see it done — that’s what you’re at!’
Gently shrugged and puffed smoke.
‘You may try — but it isn’t going to get you anywhere, see? I’ve told you what happened that afternoon, just like it was, and I’ll swear to it in court if need be. But that’s all you’re getting out of me!’
‘Even if Peter Huysmann hangs?’
‘If he got into trouble that’s his look-out — not mine.’
Gently sighed, and turned to regard a blue-chalk mannequin which leered surrealistically from an obstinate patch of plaster. He poked it tentatively. It came crashing down amongst the nettles. ‘That girl Susan… she certainly gets around,’ he said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ growled Fisher.
‘Oh… it was just a passing thought. Aren’t you taking her out tonight?’
‘Suppose I am — what’s it got to do with you?’
‘It just set me wondering… that’s all.’
Fisher towered above the Chief Inspector in stupid rage. ‘And so you may bloody well wonder!’ he burst out, ‘you and all the other coppers with you… if I want to take her out, I take her out… and you can wonder till the bloody sky drops on you!’
Gently clicked his tongue disappointedly. ‘I thought you were going to say till a bit of wall dropped on me,’ he said.
Alan Hunter
Gently Does It
CHAPTER TWELVE
M RS TURNER ANSWERED the door when Gently knocked at the Huysmann house. She eyed him inimically with her small mean eyes — she had had her knife into him since the questioning. ‘So you’re here again,’ she said. Gently admitted it gracefully. ‘A fine one you are, coming and upsetting people with your silly questions — don’t even belong here, either. What do you want this time?’
‘I want to see Miss Gretchen again.’
‘Oh, you do? Well, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed. Miss Gretchen’s gone out.’
‘Where’s she gone?’
‘How should I know where she’s gone?’
‘It’s rather important that I should see her just now.’
Mrs Turner snorted and tilted her chin. ‘Strikes me it’s always important when you want to see somebody — leastways, that’s your idea. And it’s on account of you she’s gone out… upsetting her like that!’
‘Have you any idea where she might be?’
‘I told you I hadn’t… might be the Castle, or Earton Park… she used to go there sometimes.’
‘Thank you,’ said Gently, and the door was promptly slammed. Shaking his head, he plodded off towards the city. The Castle… or Earton Park. Or anywhere else in a city of rising a hundred and fifty thou. He took the Castle first because it lay in his way. Stretching halfway round the base of the Castle’s prehistoric mound was the Garden, where once had been the ditch, a crescenting walk, deep-sunken, bisected by the slanting stone bridge which connected the Castle with the cattle market. Here were people enough, strolling amongst the long, sweet-scented beds of wallflowers and beneath the carnival blossom of the Japanese cherry-trees. But there was no Gretchen. Gently glanced up through the elms at the sleepy-faced Castle… but one didn’t seek consolation amongst stuffed birds and man-traps. He went out to the Paddock and sought a bus for Earton Park.
It was a nice park, but a very large one. Its extent and complexity brought a pout to Gently’s lips. But having come, he set about the matter methodically and plodded away across the rose parterre to the avenue of chestnuts, on either side of which old gentlemen were playing interminable games of bowls. Beyond these were the tennis- courts, on which Gently wasted no more than a passing glance. Coming to the Circus with its cupola’d bandstand he paused in indecision. North? South? Long, frequented vistas stretched to the four cardinal points. He took a chief inspectorial sniff and went south.
It was a good sniff. He found Gretchen huddled on a seat beside the great lily pond, staring large-eyed at the shallow water. Gently lifted his brown trilby politely and seated himself at a suitable distance.
Gretchen said: ‘I did not know that you would find me here.’
‘I didn’t know myself until I found you,’ Gently replied, feeling about for his pipe.
‘Please do not think that I came here specially to avoid you… it was just that I had to get away… I could not think in the house.’
‘I think you were wise… a change of venue is helpful.’
Gently went slowly and carefully through the business of filling and lighting his pipe, tamped it down with his thumb and took one or two inaugurating puffs. ‘Have you come to any decision?’ he asked.
Gretchen turned towards him pitifully. ‘It is very difficult… I do not know.’
‘Perhaps I can help you. I’ve just been having a very interesting chat with our friend Fisher.’
‘… Fisher?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he has said something?’
Gently nodded.
