‘I still thought it was an accident, of course. It wasn’t till later they came in…’
‘It must have been a grave shock, Mr Fuller.’
The brown eyes jumped up to him. ‘Yes… but in a way…’
They remained looking at each other for a long moment, the miller unable to disengage from the treacherous rapport he had established.
‘You understand… I’d been thinking! There are two ways, and naturally…’
‘You mean that you suspected foul play?’
‘No! But it was so odd, his being there. We didn’t know him, we’d never seen him… his clothes and everything. It simply wasn’t natural. I couldn’t help feeling…’
Gently held his eyes mercilessly and let him stumble on.
‘It was a premonition, don’t you see? I suddenly felt I was in… no, not that… but it was going to make trouble. Mr Pershore wouldn’t like it, you see? He hates any scandal! And then the reputation… wouldn’t do the business any good. Altogether I had an idea… you understand me?’
He faltered to a stop, and Gently hunched a careless shoulder. So it hadn’t been a shock to Fuller when he had heard that Taylor was murdered! But then, who wouldn’t have thought about it and had his premonitions? Good Friday, as a matter of interest, had occurred on the thirteenth.
‘You were right, weren’t you? It’s made a bit of trouble.’
Fuller nodded in relief. ‘Yes… that’s what I was trying to say.’
‘Everyone was suspect even though they were in the clear.’
‘God, yes! That’s the feeling. And I could sense it coming on.’
‘But you had seen nothing to substantiate that feeling?’
‘No, not a thing.’
‘You didn’t know Taylor and you’ve never met any of these people?’
Gently displayed half a dozen photographs among which were those of Ames and Roscoe.
Fuller examined them and shook his head.
‘I don’t know any of them from Adam.’
‘Then that’s all for the moment. But now I should like to see over the mill.’
There was no help for it, he was plodding in Griffin’s footsteps. He hadn’t got an inch further than the Lynton man’s report. Fuller had roused both their interests only to lull them both to sleep again. He impressed one unfavourably, but on the balance one could attach no importance to it.
‘That’s the sack-store in there if you want to take a look at it.’
The surface of the mill yard was uneven and broken by decades of lorries. A dozen plump pigeons ran on it — Lynton was a great place for pigeons.
‘The engine-room doesn’t connect with anywhere. As I told you, we keep it locked.’
An elderly man in oil-stained dungarees came to the door, wiping his hands. Behind him the huge fly-wheel quivered as it spun. A smaller wheel drove the strap which connected to some overhead shafting. A twirling governor kept the whole amazing contraption in order.
‘The kids come and look at it — they take a short cut through the drying-ground. If you go down the passage there you’ll see what I mean.’
The passage was the division between the biggest mill building and the bakehouse block. The layout was a rough square of which the passage opened an inside corner.
Between the two blocks ran a narrow bridge at first-floor level, beneath which was one of the doors to the mill.
‘Does Mr Blythely have the key of the door across the bridge?’
‘That’s right, we both have one. I use the back of his place as a store. The blokes keep their bikes in the room underneath — Inspector Griffin went over it, but I don’t think he found anything.’
He didn’t, it was in his report. He had ransacked the entire premises and found nothing except flour dust.
‘What’s this drying-ground you talk about?’
‘Keep going and you’ll come to it.’
The passage turned a corner and then ended in an open space hemmed in by a high wall and the backs of uninhabited cottages. It was about sixty yards by fifty, part cinder, part grass, with two or three overgrown pear trees grouped at one spot. A few old posts for drying-lines still formed a triangle in the middle. At the corner against the bakehouse stood a dilapidated stable with a hayloft over it.
‘There’s a blasted right-of-way through here… you come in from Cosford Street by that other passage in the far corner. It’s not a short cut at all, but the kids always use it. And of course they make this a playground… that’s how our windows get broken.’
‘It looks ideal for kids.’
‘They’re into everywhere.’
‘Is that stable in use or is it just falling down?’
Fuller looked at it frowningly. ‘It belongs to Blythely… he hasn’t used it for years. I keep some hay in the loft to sell to odd customers.’
‘And the kids romp in there?’
‘Yes — I suppose so.’
Gently’s eyebrow lifted imperceptibly at the abruptness in the other’s tone. Fuller looked discomposed and was feeling for a cigarette.
‘Of course, neither of you keeps a horse…?’
‘Not since Blythely bought a van — and that was before the war.’
With a sort of violence Fuller crossed to the stable and threw open the doors. Inside was a collection of rubbish which plainly precluded recent equine occupation. The horse-collars and harness hanging from pegs were gaping and perished with age.
‘No horses — you see?’
Gently nodded gravely.
‘I watch them and bet on them, but I was never fool enough to own one… now if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get on with showing you the mill.’
Gently followed him back into the passage and through the door beneath the bridge. Inside the smell of grain and flour was so strong as to be almost overpowering.
‘It’s just shafting down here — watch yourself as you go under! On the next floor are the rollers, then the purifiers. The bolters are right at the top.’
All the building was a-shudder with the thud of the engine. Hidden machinery murmured and rumbled about them. On a wide wooden floor, polished smooth by the passage of grain, lay a spreading pile of reddish wheat; two men with wooden shovels were feeding it into a shute.
‘This stuff’s Canadian.’
Fuller was having to raise his voice.
‘We mix it with the English to get a proper blend. People talk about the home-grown product, but they’d soon complain if they got it unblended.’
They kept going up by means of heavy wooden steps. It was not until the third floor that they came to the open mouths of the flour-hoppers. Four in line, protected by a single wooden rail, they descended like tapering wells to the sacking-room on the first floor.
One of them was full, one of them half-full. For a moment the snowy contents amazed one with their innocence…
‘Drop anything in there and it simply keeps going. It’s not like water. There’s no support at all.’
‘Which one did you find him in?’
‘That one at the end. Some diseased grain had gone through, and it turned the whole hopper foisty — we were busy at the time, so I left it just then.’
‘Wouldn’t you say the person who dropped him in there had some idea about mills?’
Fuller flushed as he said: ‘He knew where to find the hoppers, didn’t he?’
They went down past the rolling machinery to the sacking-room with its dust-hazy atmosphere. Here the mouths of the hoppers, each provided with a damper, were extended by sleeves of canvas to a convenient level.
