years!’
CHAPTER FIVE
There were ashtrays about the lounge and as though by tacit consent they all began to smoke. Hansom began it with one of his workaday Dutch whiffs, then Gently produced his weathered sand-blast. Finally the Constable, after many vain attempts to catch someone’s eye, slipped out a small, thin cigarette-case, thus proving beyond doubt that Constables do carry such things about their person.
‘Cancer, my arse!’ observed Hansom crudely. ‘Why pick on tobacco out of all the other things?’
Gently blew a comfortable ring. ‘We’ve been smoking the stuff several centuries now…’
‘I can show you a dozen old boys over ninety — smoked and chewed it since they were in the cradle. If you ask me it’s the cinema that’s the killer.’
‘Or the internal combustion-engine…’
‘Leastways, I shan’t quit before my old man does…!’
There was quite a pleasant haze in the warm air of the lounge by the time Pauline Lammas appeared. She was not put out by it — on the contrary, she paused at the door to light a cigarette of her own. Taller and more robust than her mother, Pauline tended to plainness of feature. She had short, straw-coloured hair, greyish-blue eyes and a thickened nose, and made-up a good deal more than was necessary. She wore a black bodice-blouse and a green skirt.
Gently rose courteously when she entered. From her private cloud of smoke she quizzed him coolly.
‘And — you are Chief Detective Inspector Gently, CID?’
Wooden-faced, Gently admitted it.
‘Really… you’re not a bit how I expected you to be. I’m afraid I’m going to be disappointed — do you mind?’
‘Not essentially, Miss Lammas…’
‘You see,’ she hurried on, ‘I visualized you as one of the younger school of detectives — the sort they make films about, or at least lean and hatchet-faced and — and intellectual looking. But you aren’t. You’re just paternal. It’s difficult to believe that you’re a detective at all!’
Gently cleared his throat, but Hansom gave his harsh laugh.
‘Don’t worry, miss — he hates people to think he looks like a policeman!’
‘Does he really? How strange!’
‘He likes you to take him for a farmer or a commercial traveller!’
‘Ahem!’ coughed Gently loudly. ‘I think perhaps we should get down to business… don’t you?’
Hansom chortled to himself and kicked his large feet happily under the table. Pauline Lamas swept her bushy green skirt flat and sat down with precision timing.
‘Now, Miss Lammas… I understand you were in Norchester all the Friday evening.’
‘Yes, inspector. I’m playing Cordelia for the Anesford Players — our first night is a week today.’
‘It is a pity, Miss Lammas, that this tragic circumstance should have intervened.’
A flicker of emotion twisted the corner of the young girl’s mouth, but immediately she recovered her former brightness.
‘It’s not going to intervene, inspector. Daddy wouldn’t have expected it.’
‘You mean you still intend to play?’
‘Of course — he would have wanted me to. Daddy was a Player himself. Hasn’t anyone told you?’
‘Naturally… if you feel it’s your duty.’ Gently shrugged. ‘Miss Lammas, what time was your rehearsal on Friday?’
‘At half-past seven, at St Giles’ Hall.’
‘Who is the producer of the Anesford Players?’
‘John Playfair — he’s the Drama Organizer. You can get him at his office in Pacey Road or his private address at 40 Birdcage Hill.’
‘Thank you, Miss Lammas! You are correct in assuming that I shall need to get in touch with him. What time did the rehearsal end?’
‘Oh, you know what they are, inspector! They go on till all hours. But I had to leave at twenty-past ten to catch my last bus.’
‘In fact, you were at St Giles’ Hall from the time the rehearsal commenced at seven-thirty until you left to catch your bus at twenty-past ten. Is that correct?’
‘Perfectly correct… you’ve only to ask John Playfair. Or anyone else who was there.’
Gently nodded absently. ‘And what time did your bus leave?’
‘At ten thirty-five from Castle Paddock.’
‘And arrived here?’
‘At eleven o’clock. You get off at Wrackstead Turn.’
‘How about the bus going?’
‘I took the ten to seven.’
‘Then would you be kind enough to tell me, Miss Lammas, what you were doing between the time you finished your early tea served at five-thirty and ten minutes to seven?’
There was the briefest of pauses, just sufficient to warn the alert Hansom that Gently had struck oil of some sort. Then Pauline Lammas laughed, only a fraction off-cue.
‘Of course, inspector… on Friday night I took the early bus!’
‘Why?’ fired Gently.
‘Why-? To do some shopping, I suppose.’
‘What shops are open after six o’clock?’
‘What shops? Oh… I don’t know! It was window shopping.’
‘You took an early bus, simply to window-shop?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘When you are in town every day of the week?’
‘One doesn’t get much time, in business.’
‘Why in fact did you come home at all, Miss Lammas? Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to have had tea in the city and to have gone to the rehearsal from there?’
Pauline Lammas laughed again, this time well on cue.
‘You are a detective, aren’t you, inspector? It wouldn’t do to have any secrets from you!’
‘This isn’t answering the question.’
‘But it scarcely needs answering. I came home not long after lunch. Friday afternoon is slack and I am a privileged employee… why are you trying to catch me out, inspector?’
Gently grunted and struck a light for his extinguished pipe.
‘I shouldn’t have to remind you that this is a serious business, Miss Lammas… we want the truth, and not a special selection from it. I put it to you that you haven’t given me the real reason why you took the earlier bus to town on Friday evening.’
A sullen look crept over the girl’s face. ‘And if I put it to you, inspector, that my real reason had nothing to do with my father’s death — won’t that be sufficient answer?’
‘You must let me be judge of that.’
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t propose to.’
‘That may be unfortunate, Miss Lammas. It may lead me to attach more importance to the circumstance than it deserves.’
‘Then you’ll simply have to, inspector, won’t you?’
Gently puffed silently a few moments, aware of a delighted Hansom at his elbow. Pauline Lammas lit a second cigarette from her first. She reached forward to stub out the butt in the ashtray on the table and Gently noticed a slight tremor in her well-groomed hand.
‘You were very fond of your father, were you not, Miss Lammas?’
