‘And meanwhile, you think that Roscoe…?’
‘He’ll get in touch with Pershore somehow.’
‘We could check his mail and tap the phone.’
Gently shook his head.
‘Look at it from Roscoe’s angle — and he was the brains of the bunch. If he talks he’s admitting blackmail. If he doesn’t we have to prove it. And besides admitting blackmail, he’ll be kissing goodbye to a gold mine.
‘Unless we can catch the pair of them red-handed, we shan’t have the benefit of Roscoe’s evidence.’
‘But Pershore will try to kill Roscoe!’
‘That’s our trump card — and we’ve got to play it.’
The super looked grave.
‘It’s a terrible risk, Gently…’
‘Of course, I shall be prepared to take full responsibility.’
He got to his feet, the cold pipe still lolling from the corner of his mouth. How could he tell them that he could see the whole pattern of it, as surely as though even now it was written up in a report?
‘You don’t have to worry… just keep Pershore from being suspicious. You’ll find it’ll work out. It isn’t the first time…’
‘If he succeeds in killing Roscoe-’
‘We could probably establish method! Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be turning in.’
The super did mind, but he could think of nothing to advance against it. He watched Gently go in helpless silence. When the door closed behind the bulky back his eyes met those of Griffin’s. Suddenly, as though both men were thinking the same thought, each of them shrugged his shoulders.
The car Gently had was the super’s Humber, and it was warranted to do better than a hundred m.p.h. Since Prideaux Manor lay at the end of a cul-de-sac, it was a simple matter to cover it by concealing the Humber in a side-turn at a safe distance.
Twice, during the morning, he and Dutt had seen Griffin go by in a police Wolseley. Agreeable to instructions, the Lynton inspector was doing his best to make a show of proceeding with his investigation. As he returned from his second journey he slowed and pulled into the side-turning.
‘It could be this afternoon — he says he’s got some business to see to.’
‘Business that would take him out?’
‘He didn’t say, and I thought I’d better not ask him. This morning at a quarter past eleven he had a telephone conversation, but he ordered me out of the study, so I don’t know who it was with.’
‘You’re doing a good job.’
Griffin coloured and let in his clutch.
It was an almost perfect day following the miserable one which preceded it. Gently had been prevailed on to remove his jacket, and sat smoking in his shirtsleeves with the door of the Humber ajar. The sky, at first washed clear, was now chequered with small, fleecy clouds. In the plantation which flanked the lane a blackbird was singing; larks rose continuously from the field of young wheat beyond the hedge opposite.
‘What a day for a blinking picnic!’
Dutt, like all cockneys, had a note of mute poetry in his soul.
‘If I had the missus here… can’t you see the nippers rousing around in them trees?’
From the radio they had had a bulletin from headquarters which told them little enough. Upcher, the yacht- owner, had been contacted and given an account of his deal. The price demanded for his craft had been twelve thousand five hundred and not ten, as Pershore had claimed, but the difference could easily be explained as a hoped-for compromise for immediate cash.
Of Pershore’s past there was nothing to relate. After twenty meritorious years at Lynton the trail had vanished into unsubstantial rumour. Griffin had got his prints, and that might lead to something, but failing this it rested solely with Roscoe — a Roscoe picked up alive and communicative.
‘Do you reckon it will be this afternoon, sir?’
Gently knew it would, with the irrational conviction that at times came to him. In every case there was a point when his vision seemed to border on the uncanny. Some people called him lucky, but in fact it went further than that.
‘We might as well have our lunch.’
The St George had put them up a wicker basket of provisions. Undone, it displayed a truly old-fashioned lavishness: there was cold chicken and salad, apple turnover, biscuits, cheese, fruit, and four thermoses of hot coffee. ‘Between you and me, sir, I reckon this Roscoe won’t be such a mug as the other two charlies.’
‘No… but he’s up against a dangerous man.’
‘He could lay for him, sir, and maybe put a bullet in him.’
‘Not Roscoe, Dutt. He’s a professional through and through.’
‘All the same, he’s in a rum position.’
They ate in silence, the countryside about them seeming to drowse in its peacefulness. Nothing passed along their lane or the road leading to the Manor. An early sulphur-yellow butterfly, unsteady in the brilliant sun, was the only moving thing to come their way.
Gently glanced at his watch, which showed twenty minutes to two. If lunch at the Manor was at one, it shouldn’t be long before Pershore and the green Bentley…
He finished his coffee and screwed up the thermos. Just to test his intuition he would have the engine running! Dutt, taking the hint, packed the plates away in the basket. It was as though they had suddenly received a message that the quarry was on his way.
‘If he sees us do you think we can hold him, sir?’
Gently pulled the door shut with a grunted reply. If Griffin had played his part properly Pershore should have no suspicion; if he had, well, there were the patrol cars to reckon with!
It was ten minutes to two when the Bentley swept past the lane-end. Pershore, sitting relaxedly at the wheel, had no eyes for the Humber lying half hidden behind the bend. Gently gave him plenty of rope. The Bentley was not being driven fast. The road from Prideaux to West Lyng, where it joined the main Norchester road, was fairly open and passed few side-turnings.
‘Of course it might be like he says, sir, just a business trip or something.’
It might, of course… the chances were even.
‘He don’t seem in no hurry — hardly doing forty.’
Was Dutt deliberately setting out to be annoying?
At West Lyng Gently almost held his breath, waiting for Pershore to choose his direction. If it were left, the man was simply going into Lynton; he had, after all, plenty of business to see to there.
But Pershore turned right, swinging his big car round leisurely through a gap in the traffic. Wherever he was heading it was not for Lynton. Gently, breathing again, pressed harder on the accelerator. On the busy main road he needed to be closer to his game.
Shimmering under the spring sun, the dark surface extended ribbon-like across the rough heathland of West Northshire. For some miles there were no hedges, and the string of traffic ahead was firmly in view. Pershore made no effort to increase his pace. He seemed quite content to hold his niche between a Zephyr and a red-and-black Velox. If he had any idea that he was being followed, he was giving not the smallest indication of it.
‘Got any idea where his nibs is off to, sir?’
Dutt, as usual, was beginning to puzzle away at it.
‘I doubt whether it’s Norchester.’
‘More like the country, sir?’
‘It could be anywhere, and that’s the truth!’
Dutt pulled out a road map and began to frown over it. In his imagination Gently was already exploring the road ahead. Apart from odd villages the next place was Swardham, then East Cheapham, which was larger, and so to the city. All of them were equally likely or unlikely — you could get to any of them by rail from Ely.
Swardham was coming up now, a straggling, charming country town with a great flint-and-freestone church tower. The main road turned left across the top of a triangular plain, and then twisted downwards past a T-junction with traffic lights.
