‘Do you really expect me to remember such things?’
‘Where do you keep the safe key?’
‘Attached to a body-belt, as you are aware.’
‘Was the money ever out of your hands?’
‘Never at any time until I deposited it in the safe.’
‘And you can’t remember whether you drew it before or after you visited the mill?’
‘Not to swear to it, but it might have been after.’
‘How long after you got back did the telephone ring?’
‘Almost as soon as I got in the door.’
‘You kept the case in your hand all the time you were answering it?’
‘I put it on the desk there.’
‘Nobody else was in the room?’
‘Nobody.’
‘You had your eyes on it?’
‘All the time.’
‘And then you put it in the safe?’
‘Yes, just across the room!’
‘Think: did you stop anywhere except at the mill?’
‘I’ve told you already-’
‘May I use your phone, please?’
Pershore watched him loweringly as he dialled the headquarters number. Like many an angry man before him, the mayor-elect had been sobered by the probe of Gently’s interrogation. It was humiliating to be shown how little one really remembered about things…
‘Gently here. Anything come in?’
Through the window came the steady beat of the rain on the lawn and flowerbeds outside.
‘Never mind… get me Inspector Griffin, if he’s there.’
He’d got the meat out of Prideaux Manor: it was up to the local boys to scoop up the gravy. Just at the moment, he could think of much more interesting things to be done.
CHAPTER TWELVE
For a second time that day Gently’s Wolseley came to a halt among the puddles of the mill yard. If anything it was raining harder now, and the light was worse than ever.
The double doors of the engine-room were half-closed to keep out driving rain; a couple of men, making a dash from the sack-store to the passage, had sacks pulled over their heads and shoulders.
Was ever there such a day of rain before? When you pictured to yourself an English spring…
Gently, apparently, was in no hurry. Having parked the car he lit his pipe and remained in the driving seat puffing at it. First Fuller appeared at his door, ghost-like, his dark eyes almost black against his pale face; then the foreman peered out of the hoist-doors above the loading bay, pausing to spit into the yard below.
As for Blythely, he was no doubt having a nap. The bakehouse door stood ajar, but there was no sign of activity within. His wife Gently had seen in the shop. She was reading a woman’s magazine with a glossy cover. Come storm, come shine, the Blythely household continued to go about its routine…
Now there was a movement in the doorway of the sack-store. Blacker had come down and was rolling himself a cigarette. Looking anywhere but at the Wolseley, he licked the paper and dabbed it down; lighting up, he made an exaggerated face as though the match were scorching him.
Then he leaned against the doorpost, exhaling self-conscious lungfuls of smoke. His eyes seemed fixed on a point in the sky above the roof of the cafe across the road.
And still the rain poured out of the sky, and Gently continued to sit in the Wolseley.
Blacker grew restive. He shot a calculating glance at the engine-room, the next point of refuge, then, lowering his eyes, at the front wheels of the Wolseley. He dashed out his cigarette with a nervous movement. Twice he made as though to run for the engine-room doors.
But, finally, it was the Wolseley which attracted him. Like a magnet which he was forced to obey, it drew him away from the quick rush to the engine-room.
Frowning stupidly in the rain he thrust his head close to the driver’s window:
‘You want something, do you, coming here like this…?’
Presumably Gently heard him, though he gave no sign of it. Behind the slightly misted window Blacker could see him smoking in comfortable dryness. Feeling the rain chilling his shoulders, the foreman rapped on the window.
‘It’s about that scooter, ain’t it? I watched the bloke go in after me! I’m getting wet…!’
He was, and no mistake.
‘Why don’t you ask me, ’stead of keeping me standing here?’
Only the rain made him any sort of an answer.
Miserably, the foreman rapped again. Now that he was standing by the car it seemed impossible for him to retire without getting some acknowledgment of his action. His eye fell on the door-handle, but he wasn’t bold enough to turn it.
‘If it’s about the money, that’s what I earned, do you hear! I’ve been saving it up… Mr Fuller, he give me a bonus!’
Surely this should interest Gently, unless he was in some sort of a trance!
‘It’s my wages, that’s what it was… I get sixteen pound a week! I’ve been keeping my eye on that scooter since the other side of Christmas. Why don’t you ask me proper if you want to know? Look, I can’t stop here any longer!’
Nevertheless, he seemed very reluctant to go, though by now his clothes were dragging from him like dishclouts.
‘Haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying…?’
It was almost a whine, a plea to be noticed.
‘It’s the truth, I tell you, those fivers come in my pay envelope! Why can’t you say something, ’stead of just sitting there?’
A smoke-ring appeared perfectly around Gently’s pipe. Blacker could see it circling as it drifted tenuously towards the roof. Cursing, he turned and ran slopping into the engine-room — the swine had wanted him to get wet, that was all that could explain it!
Shaking himself like a dog, he stood between the two doors and scowled at the rainbound Wolseley.
When at last Gently made a move it was for the side door of the miller’s office, but having entered by it he seemed no more disposed to begin business than before.
First, he had got a little wet — that had to be seen to! He contrived to upset the whole office while putting his raincoat to dry on the backs of two chairs. Then he wanted a towel — hadn’t anybody got one? And what about some hot coffee? Surely… with the cafe so close!
If there had been any work going on, it was disrupted by this time. Apart from anything else he had annexed the chairs — two for his raincoat and one for himself. And now that Mary had gone out, wrapped to the eyes, he was amusing himself by tapping out test sentences on her typewriter — surely a Yard man had better things to do with his time?
Fuller, without a dash of colour in his cheeks, got a file out of a cabinet and pretended to be looking through it. Having nowhere to sit he leant against his desk, but somehow he couldn’t find a posture which was comfortable.
‘We’re getting some of these.’
Fuller started at the sound of Gently’s voice.
‘They’re re-equipping some of the offices… a few of us got together. As a rule it’s all done by contract, but we got permission to indent for this model.’
