‘He wouldn’t have mentioned meeting Paul outside?’
Mrs Lammas bit her lip.
‘I knew nothing of Paul’s escapade until I got home!’
‘Then that was really all that happened?’
‘Yes. Now you know about everything.’
Gently looked at her ponderingly, and then at the despairing Marsh.
‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘I wonder, Mrs Lammas…!’
The telephone rang. It was Hansom reporting nothing from ‘High Meadows’. Almost as soon as Gently laid it down it rang again, and this time it was Dutt.
‘I got it, sir… it’s in the bag! I found the place at the fifteenth flipping time of asking!’
‘What’s the address, Dutt?’
‘Beach Lane, Summerton, sir. It’s a summer bungalow, like what you said.’
‘Well… get along over! We’ll go and have a breath of sea air.’
‘Yessir. Right away, sir. Be with you in just ten minutes.’
Gently hooked on the phone again and sat staring at the desk in front of him. Then he turned to Mrs Lammas and Marsh.
‘Righto, then. That’s all for today! I won’t say I’m satisfied, because it’d be a long way from the truth. You’ll be good enough not to leave the district. I say this without prejudice, Mr Marsh! I’d like you to hold yourself ready for further questioning.’
Mrs Lammas picked up her bag and gloves. She beckoned to Marsh with a frosty smile.
‘Why bother to conceal anything now?’
He tried to smile back at her.
‘It’s bound to be in the papers — we may as well make the best of it.’
Somehow, Marsh couldn’t echo the buoyancy of his client.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘ I got a feeling we’re near the end of the trail, sir!’
Gently grinned at his colleague’s enthusiasm.
‘I wish I had that feeling… but this case keeps making a fool of me.’
They had had tea in the canteen at Headquarters and were now bowling along in the Wolseley under the unquenchable sun of late afternoon. Right through the Broads ran the road. It crossed three rivers, skirted two broads and opened up on either hand, huge vistas of mysterious marshland. Sails pocked and pointed the blue-gold embroidery. The towers of forgotten windmills stood out like castles of Faery. It was a strange land, a poetic land, a land burgeoning with fable and supernatural story.
And, as a matter of fact, the fishing was good wherever you chanced to drop a line…
‘You say this bungalow was only taken for three weeks, Dutt?’
‘That’s right, sir. Booked by phone on April 5th.’
‘Then he was only planning to stay there till the dust died down.’
‘Or p’raps it was the best he could do, sir. April hisn’t exactly early for booking holiday accommodation.’
They could see the marram hills now. Silver among the green, they peaked and undulated like a tiny range of mountains closing in the horizontal country. Beyond them fretted the invisible North Sea, lazy, treacherous. Before today it had found its way through those grass-whispering ramparts.
‘It’s no good, Dutt — I can’t get a grip on the thing!’
He’d never been so far with a case without an intuition.
‘There’s four of them in it and it might be either one. Or all four together — or several combinations! I suppose we’ll wind up hanging that chauffeur, if we can ever lay hands on him.’
‘You thought to bring a gun, sir?’
Dutt obviously had a theory of his own.
‘Yes — I brought one! Here, you might as well take it. But if you think we’re going to raise Hicks…’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose we might at that. I’m getting to where nothing would surprise me.’
‘If he ain’t hopped it he’s here, sir,’ Dutt retorted doggedly, ‘and since we know he ain’t hopped it, well, here he must be.’
Gently sighed to himself and slowed down to take a turning.
The village showed up, dark, sun-dried brick clustered round a lofty flint-faced tower, nestling in the lee of the marrams. There was scarcely a tree that threw shade. Those that did were scant and dragged backwards by the eternal east wind. Beleaguered by stony fields and sandy heath, Summerton fronted one like an island fortress.
‘Where would Beach Lane be?’
‘Keep yew right on, bor, an yew ’on’t miss it.’
They threaded the twisted village street and came out beyond. An unsurfaced track meandered over the last two hundred yards to the marrams. There it sprawled off left, getting rougher at every yard, and three shanty bungalows lay scattered like dropped toys.
‘Hssh, sir! This last one is it!’
Gently parked the car at some distance.
From the far side of the hills they could hear the dull rumble of breakers mingled with the screams of children, but from the three bungalows came neither sound nor movement. Some towels lay drying in the sun, a bathing-cap hung from a nail.
‘Everyone’s on the beach.’
They went in through a tumbledown gate. It was a poor, neglected little place, obviously put up for letting. Both doors were invitingly ajar and it took not more than fifty seconds to ascertain that three small rooms and a kitchenette were empty. Gently opened the only wardrobe. Two dresses and a costume! And the underwear in the plywood drawers was very strictly feminine.
‘So much for Hicks, Dutt! And look here, in the sink — one cup, one saucer, one plate and one knife.’
‘I just can’t understand it, sir,’ said the crestfallen Dutt. ‘I’ve been working it out, sir, and I could’ve sworn we’d nab him here-!’
‘It’s that kind of case, Dutt. It’s got a down on theory.’
‘But facts is flaming facts, sir!’
‘I know they are… only you’ve got to have all of them. Now put that gun away and let’s see if we can pick up the coy Miss Brent.’
But the coy Miss Brent did not need picking up. She appeared at that moment, coming over the sand-hills. Beautiful and aloof, a striped beach-wrap over her ruched bikini, she swung herself gracefully over the soft-sand track. Then her eyes fell on the two men. She froze into instant immobility. Like a vision of Aphrodite, the coy Miss Brent stood framed in the June sea-sky.
‘You are Miss Linda Brent?’
Gently had no doubt. Even behind sunglasses the heart-shaped face and straight black hair were the counterpart of the photograph he had never ceased to carry. And anyway… no, there could be no doubt!
‘Yes… I am Miss Brent.’
Her voice was pitched high.
‘We are police officers, Miss Brent… we are investigating the death of your late employer, Mr James Lammas.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘And we think that you can help us.’
The age-old phrases! Gently had watched their effect on so many people at one time or another. But here there was fear, mortal, stultifying fear, as though he had announced a present execution. She could scarcely get down off the sand-hill.
