‘I’ll bet they don’t use half of it… then look at all those outbuildings and things.’
‘There’s a yard or something at the back there, Dutt. You can see the tops of some trees over the roofs of those old cottages.’
‘Our geezer was unlucky, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes… it might have been weeks before the corpse turned up.’
They moved along as far as the cafe, the sight of which provoked less professional thoughts in the mind of the hungry Dutt.
Some last few customers were being served in the shop by a talkative, fair-haired woman. In the office a middle-aged man with dark, bushy locks sat staring at some papers on his desk. As they watched a younger woman came through to him and her sudden appearance made him start perceptibly.
‘Would that bloke be the miller?’ muttered Dutt.
‘It seems a fair bet.’
‘Looks as though he’s got something on his mind.’
‘So would you have if you were on the wrong end of a homicide investigation…’
Gently sighed to himself and felt aimlessly about in the pockets of his raincoat. There was nothing suggestive here at all, nothing in the town, nothing in the mill.
Almost, he began to think, the whole circumstance was accidental… Steinie Taylor had got bumped off in some more promising venue, and his body was dumped at Lynton the more thoroughly to confuse the issue.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this cafe before it closes.’
But Dutt was already turning the handle of the door.
Lynton Borough Police H.Q. had been burned down by incendiary bombs during the war and had since arisen, a tribute to contemporary style, from its literal ashes.
It stood facing the market square where it created no disharmony. The big, frameless windows, pastel brick, and supporting columns of varnished wood blended naturally with the Georgian setting, proving, if it were necessary, that good taste never quarrels with itself.
The super’s office was in keeping with the architectural promise. It was lofty and light and discreetly furnished with chairs, desk, and filing cabinet in two-toned wood, while the carpet, by police-station standards, was unashamedly vivacious.
It had the smell of somewhere new: it smelled of linseed and dyed fabrics and fresh cement.
‘Well, gentlemen, you know the outline of the case.’
Superintendent Press was sitting uneasily behind his desk, his hands moving restively as he talked to the Central Office men.
‘This fellow Taylor and his associates are nothing to do with Lynton. I don’t mind telling you that in our view the culprit will be found elsewhere.’
He was a man in his fifties with fleshy, boyish features. He had hard, greyish eyes and a fruity voice.
‘Your people think it’s a gang killing, and we have found nothing to suggest that it isn’t. The obvious theory is that he was murdered by his associates. The fact that they have disappeared goes a long way to substantiate it.’
Gently nodded absent-mindedly and brought out his pipe. After looking round the town he was prepared to concede this theory as being the obvious one.
‘As to what they were doing in Lynton, your guess is as good as mine. I understand that these three men were in the habit of frequenting racetracks, but there is nothing closer to Lynton than Newmarket and Lincoln. The last racing in the vicinity was at Newmarket three weeks ago.’
In the square below the window a man was feeding the pigeons. The red sky of a fine April evening outlined a satisfying horizon of Georgian roofs and chimneys.
‘We’ve got another idea… we think it might be unconnected with racing.’
‘Wouldn’t that be unlikely?’
‘Uncharacteristic, but then, so is murder.’
The super jiffled with even greater unease.
‘What exactly did you have in mind — burglary, something of that sort?’
No.’ Gently shook his head. ‘That would be too uncharacteristic. Burglary is a specialist crime — you don’t find other criminals casually turning to it. What we should look out for is some sort of a racket, something which has suddenly provided a special opportunity. We’ll suppose that our three men heard about it and came to cash in… then they ran up against some opposition and one of them got killed. The other two, quite naturally, dropped the business like a hot brick.’
‘And all this in Lynton?’
‘We can’t be quite certain.’
‘You can be certain enough of that one thing, Inspector. There are no rackets being operated in Lynton.’
A big diesel truck crossed the square and sent the pigeons momentarily fluttering. The man who was feeding them threw his last fragment and crumpled the bag into a ball.
‘You have some docks here, haven’t you?’
Gently blew a quiet little smoke-ring.
‘Yes… in a small way. Only light-draught vessels can come through the estuary.’
‘Any continental traffic?’
‘A few timber boats from Germany and Scandinavia. There’s a Dutch ship, I believe, which carries on a coal trade.’
‘There might be something there.’
The super frowned at his fingernails.
‘As a matter of fact we did have a case… but no stretch of imagination could make a racket of it. Inspector Griffin, you handled that business. Perhaps you can give Chief Inspector Gently an account of it.’
Inspector Griffin sat up a little straighter. He was a lean, fit-looking man with a severe moustache and a severe manner.
‘February the twenty-third, I think, sir. On information received I detained a German seaman named Grossmann as he was leaving the cargo-vessel Mitzi, arrived from Bremen with a cargo of machine-spares. He became violent and I was forced to restrain him. On being searched he was found to be carrying a package containing several thousand grains of heroin, and more was discovered in his sea-chest. We obtained a conviction, sir.’
‘And that, I think, is our only serious case of smuggling, Inspector?’
‘Yes, sir. For as long as I’ve been on the Force.’
The super extended an exonerated hand. ‘You see? A single case involving a solitary individual.’
‘Mmn.’ Gently puffed steadily. ‘And the person he was going to sell it to?’
‘He’d got no contact, sir.’
Griffin came in like a bullet.
‘He was a rather stupid and uneducated man with no knowledge of what he was doing. Apparently he was under the impression that he could sell heroin to the nearest chemist or doctor. It was obviously the first time he had attempted anything of the sort.’
Gently shrugged and struck himself a fresh light. At all events he was trying to get straw to make some bricks from…
‘There’s nothing else you can think of?’
He was looking towards the super, but his question was addressed to Griffin. The super, he felt, had present visions of a shining, crime-free Lynton.
‘We have our quota of petty crime, but nothing at all out of the way.’
‘No forgeries, defalcations, outbreaks of armed assault — that sort of thing?’
‘Nothing of the sort has come to our notice lately.’
They were on the defensive, both of them. The super had a stubborn expression on his fleshy face and Griffin was intent, ready to throw up his guard.
You had only to suggest for one moment that there might be undiscovered crimes lurking in the district…
