‘Maisie was with me — you ask them round the pubs.’
‘I never went near the mill, and you can’t prove I did. As for that cross thing-!’
‘She never had one of those.’
Gently smoked expressionlessly through the clamour of denial. He was wrong, and they were relieved, and the relief betrayed itself in the fervour of their disclaimers.
But he hadn’t been far wrong — that was the point! There was a guilty link between this pair and the stable, and through that with Blythely and Fuller.
Could the stable have been the scene, and Blacker, say… hadn’t Fuller made him foreman?
‘Look here — this is an offer.’
He blew a stream of smoke across the dingy room.
‘If you’ve been concealing knowledge of this business it’s a pretty serious affair. You’re both liable to be indicted as accessories after the fact — which means a stiff sentence if you happen to be convicted.’
‘But if you come clean now I’ll do what I can for you. It may be that you’ll get off with nothing more than a warning. So suppose you do the sensible thing, and tell me what you’re hiding?’
‘But we ain’t hiding nothing!’
Maisie’s battleship chin lifted.
‘How many more times do we have to… I tell you, we don’t know a bloody thing!’
‘And you?’ Gently turned to Blacker.
‘I’ve told you everything I know!’
‘I’m making you both a good offer…’
‘Now isn’t that sweet of a stinking cop!’
‘Right, then!’ Gently levered his tortured hips out of the chair. ‘We’ll do it the hard way, since that’s how you want it — from now on you can consider yourselves as being under surveillance. You won’t leave Lynton and you’ll hold yourselves available for questioning. And heaven help you if we find that you know a fraction more than you’ve told us!’
He didn’t slam the door, which seemed unlikely to survive such a gesture; but the panache of his exit suggested that a door had been slammed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ Paypor — Paypor! Latest on the Mill Murder!’
Gently bought a copy from the vendor shivering by the market stalls.
‘ VICTIM GUEST AT LOCAL HOTEL — Police favour “double cross” theory — “All-Stations” alert for associates.
‘Latest developments in the investigation of the murder at Lynton of Stephen (“Steinie”) Taylor have led the police to one of the town’s most celebrated old Coaching Inns…
‘In an interview this morning with Chief Inspector Gently of the Yard, who is conducting the investigation, our reporter was told that the facts justified the theory that Taylor…’
And there was the picture of Gently outside the hotel, making him look like a congenital idiot.
Soon the grey streets would be lively with the factory workers, grabbing their papers as they hurried in to tea. Did they believe them, these glossied accounts, with their factual-sounding guesses? Over kippers in the kitchen, would they pass current for the truth?
He tucked the paper into his pocket and plodded across the square to headquarters. As he pushed through the swing doors the sergeant on the desk nodded to him respectfully.
‘Has my man left a message?’
Gently had sent Dutt to poke around the docks.
‘Yes, sir, soon after lunch. He rang up from the railway station, sir.’
Nothing if not thorough, Dutt had returned to the station to question some of the staff he had missed earlier. As a result he had found a booking clerk who remembered the departure of Ames and Roscoe.
‘He said to tell you they booked singles to Ely, sir. They were first-class tickets, and the two chummies seemed to be in a big hurry. They went off on the two fifteen London.’
‘Ely, was it?’
Gently made a face. From Ely one could take a train to almost anywhere else in the country.
‘Doesn’t give you much scope, sir.’
The sergeant sounded sympathetic.
‘No — but you’d better get on to Ely for me and see what they can dig up. Oh, and if my man comes in…’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘… tell him I’ve got a tail job for him, and fix him up with a bike. I want him to keep tabs on the foreman at the mill — obvious tabs. I want the fellow worried.’
The mood was still with him, the mood of confident expectation. He’d got his teeth into something, whatever that something was.
On his way back to the mill he turned aside into the drying-ground, pausing again before the enigmatic stable.
There was nobody to be seen there now. The place had a sleepy, neglected atmosphere; all the buildings around seemed to have turned their backs on it. The thumping of the naphtha engine, subdued and asthmatical, owned something of the quality of the cricket in Blythely’s bakehouse.
Wasn’t it the perfect spot for an assignation… or a crime? It was overlooked by nothing except the bleary windows of the mill’s posterior.
He passed on down the passage. In the engine-room two men were standing, apparently engaged in earnest conversation. One of them, the silent one, was the miller; the other — Gently sighed — was Lynton’s egregious mayor-elect.
If only the fellow would leave his tenants to stew in their iniquity!
‘Ah… Inspector!’
Pershore had caught sight of him and came strutting out of the engine-room.
‘I’ve been on the phone — the superintendent informed me of your magnificent progress. Allow me to congratulate you, my dear fellow. I was sure that Press would get a good man down!’
Gently mumbled something, but his eyes were fixed on Fuller. If ever one had seen desperation in a face…
‘Mind you, I was pretty certain of the way things were shaping. As I said to you this morning, it was obvious that his associates… and all the while you were on the trail, my dear fellow — you had as good as got your hand on them! As a citizen of Lynton — not, perhaps, the least eminent…’
‘We haven’t arrested them yet, sir.’ Gently was rude in his interruption. ‘And as a matter of fact, it’s not certain that they did it — the evidence we have can be construed either way.’
‘But upon my word, Inspector-!’
Gently shut his ears to the man’s expostulations. It was Fuller he was talking to, Fuller he wanted to goad. And the hunted look the miller was wearing was more eloquent than a dozen Pershores…
‘But the whole trend of what the superintendent was telling me…’
Blacker had known something damning, it was too transparent.
‘And at Newmarket anything can happen. From my own experience…’
Now Fuller was expecting his imminent arrest.
‘Let’s go into the office.’
‘Eh?’ Pershore broke off offendedly.
‘I said let’s go into the office. I want to talk to Mr Fuller.’
Protesting, the mayor-elect followed the two of them into the office. Fuller, walking unsteadily, led them into that part of it hidden from the road by the screen. His clerk made to rise from her typewriter, but Gently motioned her to remain.
