‘Do you have a flutter sometimes?’
‘A flutter?’
Fuller could sense a danger which he was unable to identify.
‘I don’t bet a lot, if that’s what you mean. Just a quid now and then on something I fancy.’
‘You prefer to watch them, I expect.’
‘I do, as a matter of fact.’
‘Were you at Newmarket, for example, when they ran the Spring Handicap three weeks ago?’
‘I — no — yes, yes, I was! But what the devil has that got to do with it?’
Gently shook his head indifferently. ‘Nothing, I dare say. Unless you chanced to meet up with Taylor and his pals on the racetrack.’
Fuller didn’t do what he expected, jumping in with protestations of innocence. Instead he remained quite silent, his flush deepening and his lips tightened to control their quivering.
The pounding of the engine across the yard seemed to be vibrating the whole universe.
‘Would you believe me if I said I didn’t?’
‘Why not?’ Gently shrugged. ‘I’ve got no evidence.’
‘I didn’t, you know — I was there with my wife! She’ll swear I was with her every damned minute.’
‘Then I won’t press the point.’
‘But you don’t believe me, do you?’
‘It is immaterial for me to believe what I can’t prove, Mr Fuller.’
Again he was expecting an outburst and again it failed to come. The miller relapsed into an angry silence and stood digging with his nail at a crack in the varnished screen. Outside, two men in dusty denim jackets went lurching across the yard with a coomb sack of grain between them.
‘Can we go over your statement, perhaps?’
‘It’s been gone over — time and time again.’
‘All the same, I’d like my personal impression.’
‘I tell you they’ve had it all — Griffin’s never stopped getting at me.’
‘Wasn’t it at six p.m. when you locked the mill up?’
There was something there, and Gently went after it pitilessly. Griffin had smelt it with his conscientious nostrils, and now Gently had caught the selfsame odour. It was unlikely but it was there — and in the first instance one simply took up the pursuit.
‘What happened when you arrived at The Spreadeagle?’
‘I had some beer and played a game of darts.’
‘And after that?’
‘We had our dinner. It went on till midnight. A lot of people made speeches — you know the sort of thing. A bit near the knuckle, and smuttier as they went on.’
‘You were at table till midnight?’
‘I won’t swear to the hour.’
‘You were not absent, I mean?’
‘I — well, I may have gone to the toilet.’
After dinner the affair became a little more muddled. Almost everyone was drunk or well on the way. There had been more speeches and songs and somebody danced on a table-top. Two revellers passed out and several were being sick in the toilet.
‘You didn’t pass out, though?’
‘No, but I was sick. We had lobster at dinner and it sometimes disagrees with me. I had to go out into the yard to retch and get some fresh air.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Oh — when we got up from dinner. It was all right when I was sitting but it hit me when I got up.’
‘You were out there alone?’
‘Is it usual to retch in pairs?’
‘How long were you out there, Mr Fuller?’
‘My God, you don’t think I timed it! I was there half an hour, perhaps — longer, it might have been. When I came back in I had a glass of tonic water. If you don’t believe me you’d better ask the waiter.’
‘So it was approximately from twelve to half past, was it?’
‘I said before that I couldn’t swear to the time.’
‘According to the proprietor the dinner was over by half past eleven. Would that mean that you were absent for an hour?’
‘Nothing of the sort! It was half an hour at the most.’
‘The Spreadeagle is only five minutes’ walk from here.’
It was a chink, but a narrow one. Fuller could easily have got to the mill and back. But with only twenty minutes to spare — his account checked well with Griffin’s findings — he would need to have been lucky to have murdered and disposed of Taylor.
‘The waiter thinks it was later than midnight when he served you with the tonic water.’
‘I didn’t say it was midnight — that’s what you tell me.’
‘We know you went outside after the dinner, but not when you came back.’
‘If the dinner ended at eleven thirty then I was back by midnight.’
Like Griffin, he found that the chink wouldn’t open. He was getting all the same replies, and it was long odds that they were true.
Unless Fuller had a motive, what was the significance of opportunity? He might have been at Newmarket, but who could swear that Taylor had been there?
As for the vomit, Griffin had duly inspected the yard and noted some…
‘You went home at three a.m., didn’t you?’
‘So the wife says. I went home when it broke up.’
‘You walked, I believe?’
‘In that condition I would hardly have driven.’
‘There are taxis, Mr Fuller.’
‘At that hour in Lynton it’s simpler to walk.’
‘Why did you empty the hopper the next morning?’
About that he talked freely. It had clearly no anxieties for him. Omitting nothing in the report, he described how the consignment of grain had been delayed, how he had put the men on the hopper, and how one of them, Fred Salmon, had fetched him out of the office.
‘We thought it was an accident… a long time ago the same thing had happened. What we couldn’t make out was who the bloke was and what he’d been doing in the mill.’
‘Did anyone act queerly?’
‘We didn’t none of us think much of it. There were a few pale gills about, but what were you going to expect?’
Just that of course, and no other. The phrase summed it up consummately. One saw the silent group of mill workers standing near their grim discovery, the un-reckoned danger of the flour-hoppers brought suddenly and unanswerably home to them.
But for the grace of God…
‘What did they say?’
‘It was me who did the talking.’
‘You’re sure nobody recognized him?’
‘I asked them and that’s what they told me.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I had him put in the sack-store out of the way. Then I phoned the police and sat trying to figure out what he’d been after in the mill. The men knocked off for a cup of tea. I didn’t find them another job until they came back after lunch.’
Now Fuller seemed uneasy again, though heavens knew why he should be. As though the straightforward discovery of the body was a little island of blame-free certitude in an anxious sea.
