Gently concluded his unhurried survey with the dishevelled bed, some empty beer-bottles and a chamber-pot. ‘And then again, my dear, this place is in the wrong direction…’
‘Whadyermean — wrong direction?’
‘It isn’t in the direction the taxi took.’
‘What taxi — what are you getting at?’ Frenchy whisked round fiercely to confront him.
‘Why… the taxi you and Max took from outside the Marina at about 10 p.m. last Tuesday. It went off towards the North Shore… that’s in a diametrically opposite direction, isn’t it, Frenchy?’
The sudden pallor of the blonde woman’s face showed up the dark wells of her eyes like two pools, but she took a furious grip on herself. ‘It’s a filthy dirty lie… I didn’t take no taxi! I was in “The Feathers” at ten… ask anyone who was there… ask Jeff Wylie — it was him who came away with me!’ She broke off, breathing hard, crouching as though prepared to ward off a physical blow.
Gently’s head wagged a measured negative and he felt in his pocket for some carelessly-folded sheets of the copy-paper. ‘It won’t do, Frenchy… it isn’t good enough any longer. I’ve got a couple of statements here which tell a different story.’
‘Then some b-’s been lying!’ Frenchy tried to snatch the sheets out of Gently’s hand.
‘Nobody’s been lying and you’ll get a chance to read these in a couple of minutes. Now sit down like a good girl.’
Frenchy hovered a moment as though still meditating an attempt on the papers. Then she swore an atrocious oath and dumped herself down on the side of the bed, an action which endangered the decency of her sparsely-clad person. Gently turned one of the chairs back-to-front and seated himself also.
‘First, I’d better have your name.’
‘What’s wrong with Frenchy… it suits everyone else round here.’
Gently clicked his tongue. ‘Let’s not be childish, Frenchy. Why make me bother the boys in Records?’
‘Trust a bloody copper! So it’s Meek, then. Agnes Meek.’
Gently scribbled it in his notebook. ‘And where do you hail from, Agnes?’
‘I was born and bred in Maida… but don’t use that filthy bleeding name!’
‘And when did you come up here?’
‘’Bout Whitsun or just before.’
‘And whose idea was it?’
‘Mine — who the hell’s do you think it was?’
‘Now Frenchy! I’m only asking a civil question.’
‘And I’m telling you I came up on my own! Don’t you think a girl needs a holiday?’
Gently shrugged. ‘It’s up to you… So you’ve been living at this address since Whitsun?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And nowhere else at all?’
Frenchy swore a presumable negative.
‘How did you find it? Who’s your landlord?’
‘Why not ask your pals up at the station — they’re supposed to know every bloody thing going on round here!’
Gently sighed sadly. ‘You’re not being helpful, Frenchy… and I had hoped you were going to be.’ He served himself a peppermint cream and chewed it sombrely for a moment. ‘Well… to come to the business. I’m pinching you for conspiracy to burgle, Frenchy-’
Frenchy screeched and shot up off the bed. ‘It’s a frame-up, that’s what it is, a filthy, stinking-!’
‘Shh!’ murmured Gently, ‘I don’t have to warn an old-stager like you.’
‘They’d say anything in a jam, dirty little bastards!’
Gently handed over his sheets of copy-paper. ‘In effect they said this… and there’s a certain amount of evidence to back them up.’
Frenchy seized the sheets and went over to the window with them, turning her back on Gently. It didn’t take her long to extract the gist of them. There was a moment when she discovered how she had been double-crossed that added three distinct new words to Gently’s vocabulary.
‘It’s a filthy bag of lies!’ she burst out at last. ‘The — little liars — they’re trying to pin it all on me!’
‘They seem to have made a job of it, too…’
‘There isn’t a word of truth!’
‘But there’s some evidence that goes with it…’
Frenchy stormed up and down the muggy room with perspiration beading on her pasty face. ‘You know what it is… You know why these pigs have said this. It’s because I wouldn’t go to bed with them… that’s what they’ve wanted! They’ve wanted to be little men, to go to bed with a woman… they’ve been hanging round me ever since I came up here. But I don’t go to bed with children… nobody can blame me for that!.. and now they’re in trouble they’re trying to blame me — somebody it’s easy to get in bad with the police!’
‘Whoa!’ interrupted Gently pacifically, ‘it’s no use getting out of breath, my dear. Somebody had to tell them about that suitcase and where to find it…’
‘It wasn’t me! I didn’t know nothing about it.’
‘Then who did — who else knew about it?’
‘How the hell should I know? Perhaps they saw him carting it around and got the idea it was something valuable…’
‘Who told you he was given to carting it around?’
‘Nobody told me-!’
‘And how did they know where he lodged — that he was out — that for some reason he’d left it in his room?’
‘They could’ve watched him, couldn’t they?’
‘They aren’t professionals, Frenchy.’
‘They’re sneaking little swine, that’s what they are!’
She flung herself at the bed and disinterred some cigarettes from under the pillow. Gently produced a match and gave her a light, steady brown fingers against her trembling pale ones. She swallowed down the smoke as though it were nectar.
‘You know, Frenchy, it isn’t burglary you’ve got to worry about… we aren’t terribly interested in that. It’s the way your customer finished up on the beach the next morning that’s the real headache.’
‘He wasn’t my customer — I never knew him!’
Gently shook his head. ‘I’ve got another witness who saw you with him, quite independent. Do you remember having lunch at the Beachside Cafe?’
‘I was never in the place!’
‘And now, according to these two statements, you were the last person we know to see Max alive…’
A shudder passed through the blonde woman’s body and she had to struggle to keep her hold on the jerking cigarette.
‘Weight it up, Frenchy… it’s a nasty position to be in.’
‘But mister,’ — her voice was hoarse now — ‘it wasn’t nothing to do with me — nothing — I’ll swear to it!’
Gently shrugged and picked up his hat to fan himself again.
‘I didn’t have no hand in it… honest to God!’
Gently fanned himself impassively.
‘I didn’t — I didn’t — I didn’t!’ The voice was a scream now and she threw herself on her knees in a fit of anguish. ‘You got to believe me… mister… you got to!’
Gently nodded a single, indefinite nod and went on fanning.
‘But you’ve got to, mister!’
Gently paused at the end of a stroke. ‘If,’ he said, ‘you didn’t, Frenchy, then the best thing you can do is to come clean…’
‘But I can’t, mister!’ Her face twisted in indescribable torment.
‘You can’t?’ Gently stared at her bleakly and recommenced his fanning.
‘I can’t — I can’t! Don’t you understand?’
