He puffed away absent-mindedly for some minutes, as though his pipe and the fire met all his requirements just then. He could feel them relaxing a little. The reference to ‘local boys’ had set him a little apart from the machinations of the Northshire County Constabulary…
‘Anyone here got a hunch?’
They didn’t rise to it, but then, he hadn’t expected them to.
‘Me, I’m just a visitor… It’s difficult for me to weigh things up. The local lads seem pretty sure of themselves, and perhaps they’re in the best position to judge. This Johnson of yours seems to fly off the handle without much warning.’
Now there was a little stir, and Percy Peacock glanced up at him warily.
‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ our Hugh, except he’s Welsh.’
‘Well, he’s got a deadly right hook on him.’
‘That’s nobbut against him.’
‘It is at the moment… He’s just pasted the local inspector a corker.’
‘Ay?’ exclaimed Peacock. ‘You mean yon object wi’ the teeth?’
‘Inspector Dyson. He took a swing at Hugh.’
Peacock scratched his bald head and tried to conceal his pleasure at this information. One suspected that Inspector Dyson had not endeared himself with the natives…
‘Of course, our Hugh can be obstropulous…’
‘I’m afraid he was guilty of provocation.’
‘At same time, Inspector ought not to have raised his hand to the man.’
‘As you say, he ought not… He’s probably of the same opinion now.’
The atmosphere had definitely warmed up. They had ceased now to watch him with the vigilance of a herd of animals drawn together against a dangerous intruder. Percy Peacock was hiding a grin. Wheeler, the young Yorkshireman, was lighting a cigarette for the ponytailed blonde who had attracted Sir Daynes’s attention. Doris, Peacock’s wife, was encouraging the oval-faced dark girl called Norah to bring her chair nearer to the fire. Insensibly, Gently was merging into this difficult circle…
‘Coom from the Yard, dorn’t you?’
Wheeler glanced at him with naive curiosity.
‘Yes… I’m on holiday up here. Came to do some pike-fishing.’
‘Joost keeping eye on things, like.’
‘Between you and me they think I’m a damned nuisance.’
‘Well, dorn’t run away with t’idea that our Hugh had hand in it.’
‘Mmn?’ Gently puffed indifferent smoke.
‘Might be he took against Bill — dorn’t say he did him in. We knaw our Hugh, and he woona have done a thing like that.’
‘Well, there’s this business of Mrs Page, you know… It gives him a fair size in motives.’
‘It’s something they’re making too much of,’ broke in the ponytailed girl quickly. ‘Half of us never noticed it, that’s how much it showed. Les did, of course. He’s got that sort of mind. And I won’t say I was completely blind to everything going on. But Jimmy there, silly little fool-’
‘Aw coom now, Anne!’ interjected Wheeler, blushing.
‘He never noticed it, and never would’ve done if he hadn’t heard one of Les’s cracks. But of course Jimmy had to be the one to let it slip, and now they’re working overtime on the stupid idea that Hugh killed Bill out of jealousy!’
‘Boot I didn’t knaw!’ protested the unhappy Wheeler.
‘Well, you should have known, Jimmy, that’s all I can say, and if they hang Hugh it will have been all your fault!’
Poor Wheeler hung his head. He was obviously much taken with the piquant little blonde, and much impressed with the heinousness of his blunder. It was Peacock who half-heartedly came to the youngster’s aid
…
‘Give oop getting at t’lad, will you, Anne? Thaws ferrety coppers’d get blood out of stawn, let alawn human being-gs.’
Gently grinned at him. ‘Present company excepted?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say that till I’d seen thee gaw about it!’
Gently took another puff or two without venturing to put a question. There was no possible doubt that the weavers were behind Johnson — not merely as one of themselves, but because they were convinced of his innocence. Surely, then, they would have thought of alternatives to Johnson… and surely one or another of them would have observed something that might point elsewhere?
‘You’re positive that nobody else had a quarrel with Earle?’
‘Nawbody that we knaw — you might look a little higher oop.’
‘Lord Somerhayes, you mean?’
‘I mean it wasn’t one of us — I say nowt apart from that.’
‘Someone must have broken in and done it!’ exclaimed the pony-haired girl. ‘There’s just nobody in the house would dream of hurting Bill. I say the police didn’t look properly when they first came yesterday. If they’d really made a job of it they’d have found where someone broke in, and then all this unpleasantness need never have happened.’
‘A very tempting theory, my dear,’ said Brass, who had just come in. ‘If I were you I’d go and break a window, and then we’ll cart the inspector off to look at it.’
‘Oh, Les, I’m being serious!’ The little blonde sounded aggrieved. ‘You’re always making fun — and there’s poor Hugh in there!’
Brass patted her shoulder matily. ‘Cheer up — they won’t hang Hugh. And descending from the sublime for a moment, what happened to that hank of purple you should have dyed for me before Christmas? I’ve just been hunting through the shop for it, and I’ve a shrewd suspicion it wasn’t done.’
It was, the blonde girl protested, and she gave a minute description of where it had been left. Brass paused to light a cigarette. Around him, the weavers wore expressions of affectionate respect. To them, at all events, Brass was a giant in office, and feeling conscious of their adultation he shot one of his cynical glances at Gently.
‘Want to take a gander at the workshop?’
Gently shrugged. ‘Is it heated, by any chance?’
‘Heated my foot!’ Brass laughed aloud. ‘This is art, my son, pure and unadulterated. Come and have a look, and don’t be such a bloody bourgeois!’
Gently grinned and followed the artist out of the snug common room, albeit with some regrets.
‘Did you get anything out of ’em?’ exclaimed Brass, as he plunged into a frigid corridor.
‘Can’t say I did… except that there was nothing to get.’
‘You’d have been lucky anyway, with Hugh going through the boiler. We’re a clannish lot of bastards, you know. “Nemo me impune lacessit” is our motto.’
‘Do you think Hugh did it?’
‘Me? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. When you get a bunch of misfits together like our tapissiers, murder is liable to be the least of your problems. Why — are you joining the wagon on poor old Hugh?’
‘No… not yet. But I was wondering if you were.’
‘You can count me out, sonny. What gave you the impression?’
‘It was something you said that made Wheeler wake up to the Mrs Page angle. What you say carries weight here, and it just occurred to me that you may have had some doubts.’
‘Not about Hugh biffing the young heathen, you cunning old so-and-so! He’s too old and too disillusioned about women to run amok with truncheons. But hold your breath for a moment. We’re approaching the sacred shrine. In the usual way we make visitors leave their shoes outside the door.’
They had come out into a building that bore all the marks of having been built as a coach-house. The walls at one side had several wide doorways, now bricked up, and the beams overhead suggested that a loft-roof had been removed. A great deal of glass had been let into the roof, in addition to long, steel-framed windows in the walls, and a double row of multiple neons flickered into brilliance as Brass brushed down the switches. There were seven
