It was only half a mile long, but there seemed no end to it. One hemmed-in reach followed another with bewildering monotony. And then, just as Gently’s sense of direction was irretrievably lost, the alders parted overhead and they swung out into blazing afternoon sunlight.
They were in a little pool, grown up and almost choked with reeds, water-lilies and a myriad-flowered water-plant. On the far side, against the rotted remnants of a quay, lay the fire-blasted yacht. And by the yacht sat a Police Constable smoking a cigarette, his tunic and helmet hung on a willow-snag.
‘Jackson!’ bawled Hansom, in a voice to wake the dead.
The Constable jumped as though he had been stung.
‘What the blue blazes do you think you’re supposed to be doing — having the day off?’
‘I–I wasn’t really expecting anyone…!’ blurted the Constable, struggling into his tunic.
‘Oh, you weren’t, eh?’ commented Hansom nastily. ‘Thought we’d come by car and you’d hear us in time, didn’t you…?’
Rushm’quick eased the bows of the launch against the rotten quay and they jumped down gingerly on to shaky green turf. The yacht lay well in under the trees, which bore silent witness to the fierceness of the blaze. It was completely gutted. From end to end the interior showed a blackened mass of ash, nothing remaining of cabin, deck or fitments. Only the engine jutted up near the stern and the charred ribs preserved a pathetic symmetry.
Gently sniffed at the acrid smell of burned varnish.
‘Was the body this side of the engine or the other?’
‘The other.’
‘Was the petrol-tank that side?’
‘Yes — you can see where it blew out.’
‘There must have been a lot of petrol used to do a job like this… is it safe to go aboard?’
He stepped cautiously on to the hulk and was directly up to his ankles in ashes, which still seemed warm. He kicked them away from the engine and stooped to examine it.
‘Did you find the carburettor?’
‘No, it was too bloody hot to look for carburettors the last time I was here!’
Gently poked about in the ash with his foot and was eventually rewarded.
‘Looks as though it was unscrewed. The cap’s off it, too.’
‘Reckon he took the cap off first,’ put in Rushm’quick knowingly, ‘then it wasn’t coming through fast enough, so he took the carb right off.’
Gently nodded and continued to probe with his foot. Towards the fore part of the hulk his shoe caught something which sounded hollow and metallic. The twisted remains of a jerrican came to light.
‘Is this part of the yacht’s equipment?’
Rushm’quick shook his head.
Gently handed it out and clambered back on to the bank.
‘Well… there’s a nasty job for someone, going through those ashes. We’d better have it towed back to the yard and gone over there. How do you get a car into an outpost like this?’
Hansom led the way along a doubtful track which plunged through the thick of the surrounding wilderness. But a few yards saw them on higher, drier ground and the track widened into a lane.
‘Here you are — you can still see the tracks where he turned the car.’
‘Where does the lane go?’
‘It joins the Lockford-Wrackstead road about a mile from Ollby. The phone-box is at the junction.’
‘No houses about there?’
‘There’s a bloke called Marsh lives in a house a quarter of a mile towards Panxford, but the house stands back amongst trees. He didn’t see anything… no bastard’s seen anything! All we’ve got is the village idiot.’
Gently tutted. ‘You can’t manufacture witnesses. Have you searched the area round here?’
‘We didn’t get time to be really clever.’
‘Then you mightn’t have noticed… that… for instance?’
He pointed to the bole of an alder a few yards off the track. A white flake was showing up against the dark, gnarled bark.
Hansom glared at it as though it were a personal insult. ‘And what’s that supposed to be — the answer to a detective’s prayer?’
But Dutt had already grasped the significance of the white flake and was making his way carefully through the rough grass. Gently waited patiently, Hansom impatiently, while the sergeant performed his operation. Eventually there was a little cluck of triumph from Dutt and he returned to drop something small in his superior’s hand. Gently examined it expressionlessly.
‘Spot any blood, Dutt?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Much or little?’
‘Not much, sir.’
‘Head, I expect. They’d have noticed it lower down.’
‘What I was thinking, sir… about the angle, too.’
‘Would it be too much,’ enquired Hansom with biting sarcasm, ‘would it be too much to ask what all this is about?’
Gently extended his hand gravely and revealed the shapeless chunk of metal Dutt had dug from the tree.
‘It’s about the way Lammas was killed… you can let your pathologist off duty. He was shot through the head with a bullet from a. 22 gun.’
CHAPTER FOUR
It was a pleasant run from the village to ‘Willow Street’, lately the home of James William Lammas. After traversing the beech avenue, the road ran along the edge of the upland just where it fell into the shallow river valley and one caught glimpses of the winding stream low down amongst billowy trees and later of the broad.
‘All this and the best coarse-fishing too…’ murmured Gently at the wheel of the Wolseley. At breakfast that morning he had watched Thatcher fairly scooping bream out of the mouth of the Dyke.
‘You know, it’s rum, sir,’ began Dutt beside him, and stopped.
‘What’s rum, Dutt?’
‘Well sir, it stuck in me loaf what you said about the woman.’
‘What was that?’
‘About her not having to go off with the shover.’
‘It’s a point that needs elucidating.’
‘I mean, sir, it’s pretty obvious that this geezer and her were planning to fade together… it don’t seem natural for her to get the shover to do him in. What’s she going to get out of it what she didn’t have in the first place?’
‘Only the chauffeur… he might be quite a guy.’
‘No sir.’ Dutt shook his head. ‘If she’d been took with the shover there wasn’t nothink in their way… he wasn’t married. And she wouldn’t be carrying on with Lammas.’
‘Unless it was a deep, dark plot.’
‘No sir. It don’t seem right.’
‘What’s the theory, then, Dutt?’
‘Well, sir… I’d say the shover did for both of them and hooked it on his own. It’s the only way what makes sense, the way I looks at it. He knows about the money — it’s got to be on the boat — he goes there ready to do for them and make it look like an accident. When he gets there he finds there’s only Lammas, but if he shoots him first-off down by the car he isn’t going to know that till it’s too late.’
‘And then, Dutt?’
‘And then he goes through wiv it, sir — what else can he do? But somehow he runs across the woman again
