CHAPTER FOUR
Dutt departed in the Wolseley, which Dyson had left at their disposal, and Gently had tea and toast in a corner of the lounge. Almost automatically he passed the guests under review; they fell, he noticed, into roughly two classes.
There were the youngsters, most of whom seemed to be on their own. Their ages appeared to range from about sixteen to twenty. Then there were the elderly people, some, no doubt, retired: a few of them, like Colonel Morris, were residents at the Bel-Air.
In between there was very little, and only one couple had young children. They were a pair from Wolverhampton and spoke with a broad Midland accent. Gently set down the husband as being a factory foreman or minor works official.
The teenagers were very conservative and wore almost identical clothing. It consisted of jeans and printed shirts, worn indiscriminately by both the sexes. The young men had crew cuts and the girls the gamine or urchin. They were a noisy crowd but strangely polite. They came, it seemed, from prosperous middle-class homes.
The older people were a very mixed bunch. They ranged from Colonel Morris, with his rougish eye, to a pair of severe old maids who were probably schoolteachers. One of them was a clergyman who loved to brandish obsolete words. Another, from his conversation, had trained racehorses in the north of England.
But they had this in common: they were civil and well bred. Even the Wolverhampton couple were on their mettle and determinedly fitting in. It was Mixer who didn’t fit, who stuck out like a bunch of garlic. From their attitude it was clear that he’d been cold-shouldered from the first.
Gently watched him now, new-towelled and dressed, eating teacakes at his table. Those who were nearest had their heads turned and the rest were refusing to see him. Sometimes a teenager threw him a quick look, then muttered a few words which provoked a giggle. Rosie and the other waitress attended to him with disdain: one could hear him eating the teacakes from the other side of the lounge.
A complete outsider! Couldn’t even he feel it? Mustn’t it have been the same when Rachel Campion sat opposite him… except that, one and all, the male guests had been making eyes at her?
Even the conversation ignored him. It was running on anything but the tragedy. As though they had conspired to turn their mental backs as well, they deftly avoided referring to the subject. It was nothing to do with them — they weren’t people of that sort! By accident, perhaps, or managerial error.
Why did Mixer come here in the first place, or was it just that he didn’t care?
Gently watched them leaving the lounge, one after another; first the teenagers in a body and then the others at intervals. Mixer was among the last to go. He had a surprising appetite for teacakes. Colonel Morris, thinking he was unobserved, pinched Rosie’s behind and made her squeak.
‘You’re a wench-and-a-half, m’ dear!’
‘I’ve told you before, Colonel!’
Seeing Gently sitting in the corner the Colonel gave him the broadest of winks and strode out of the lounge as though he found the heat invigorating. Under his plate, Gently saw, he had left a florin for Rosie.
Outside the sun had slanted but things were really no cooler. Instead a subtle change had occurred in the atmosphere. The heat now seemed to float one, it derived equally from sun and ground; in place of the steady beating one was immersed in a bath of heat.
In going down to the beach Gently had no settled intentions. He had already funked several avenues at which Dyson had fumbled hopefully. So far, he had ignored the bridge players, who might have remembered something. And Maurice, who had seen her last… he had completely neglected Maurice!
To be honest, his approach was the reverse of businesslike. As usual he was following his instinct, or rather an innate feeling. Or, to be more precise, the ghost of Rachel Campion — she had got under his skin, that woman: still he couldn’t exactly place her. She was fascinating him in death as she had done others during her lifetime.
Because… what was it that had struck him, as he sat there munching his toast? Something important though half-recognized, a tiny spurt of revelation. It was that, unlike Alfie Mixer, Rachel had fitted in at Hiverton. Morals, cockney accent, and all, she had not been out of place.
But that wasn’t so much to strain over, as though he were digging for a diamond! By all accounts she had behaved herself and been otherwise acceptable. Why then did it seem important and even curiously significant? It told him absolutely nothing except that Mixer might have underrated her background.
Had she been there before? That seemed improbable. A woman of her outstanding appearance would hardly have been forgotten. She was a stranger to the manager and also to the village: everyone had been intrigued but nobody had recognized her.
He strolled over to the boats, from which most of the fishermen had gone to tea. There remained only the Keep Going’s owner watching his young mechanic at the engine.
‘Police. I’d like to ask you some questions.’
Both turned to look at him expressionlessly.
‘It’s about this woman who was killed. Had you seen her here before?’
They were a fair cross-section of witness, standing there, and shaking their heads. The boat owner was three score, the freckled youngster two-and-twenty. As soon as his question was answered they returned their attention to the engine.
No, it didn’t lie there, the meaning he was trying to fathom. It was nothing so simple, nothing so easy to come at. Perhaps it would appear in Pagram’s report, perhaps it would remain locked up in that photograph.
He turned his back on the boats and, plodding through sand and shingle, came to the firm wet level of the tideline. There were plenty of people about, more than had been there earlier. It was half-day closing in Norchester and Starmouth and his arrival, most likely, had been splashed over the lunchtime papers.
‘Can’t you give us something to go to press with?’
The first reporter had been joined by colleagues: now there were six of them, advancing on him almost menacingly. Two of the newcomers were carrying cameras. They wasted no time in committing his shirt and hat to celluloid.
‘All right — you can print this.’
Notebooks appeared like lightning.
‘As a result of our investigations enquiry has been extended to Starmouth and London. The dead woman is presumed to be a native of the London area and enquiries are being prosecuted at Camden Town.
‘The police are eager to interview any person who was acquainted with Miss Campion. They are asked to get in touch with Chief Inspector Pagram, Central Office, New Scotland Yard (Whitehall 1212), or with their local police station.’
‘You think someone followed her up here?’
Gently made an indefinite gesture.
‘We’ve no positive reason for thinking so.’
‘What are you looking for at Camden Town, then?’
How could he tell them what he didn’t know himself?
After a little more prying they hurried off to phone their papers. A curious group had been attracted by the interview and Gently, irritated, went striding off along the tideline.
He didn’t know himself — that was the worst of it! Without a single logical reason he was letting her personality dominate him. And there was no need to look abroad for people to suspect, when anyone who’d fallen heavily… anyone with a latent streak… Mixer had a motive, but he wasn’t alone in that.
A quarrel after they’d made love, followed by the shock of the limp-fallen body — anger, perhaps, because she had died so treacherously. And indignation with the fear as he tried to cover the deed. A crime he hadn’t meant! A penalty that couldn’t be just!
Why be complicated and subtle with facts which told their own story?
He kicked at the pebbles which came in his way. If only he could start again and begin to see things clearer. Yet could there have been another way except the one he was pursuing? Were the facts so very simple, when they began with Rachel Campion?
After walking till the sweat poured down he turned off into the sandhills. Here one imagined there would be a breeze, but in effect there wasn’t a breath of one. The view, however, was extensive. Inland one could see a broad.
