that. The facts were all before him, he needed only a moment of vision. Esau had done what he could for him. He had given him the hint that mattered. For the rest it was up to Gently to recognize the picture on the canvas.
Only here, unfortunately, his vision wouldn’t carry. The very sharpness of the detail was perplexing his interpretation. The facts might well be there and he seeing them vividly, but as yet they wouldn’t assemble into a revealing viewpoint.
Was he reading too much into his fascination with Esau — was he missing something simple but crucially important?
Twice their odd communion was broken by the passage of other people, and each time the interruption bore an interesting character. The first was when Maurice appeared on an errand into the village. On seeing them he drew back and seemed to debate whether he would continue. Eventually he did, though with some discomposure; he kept his eye on Gently as though he expected him to interfere.
The second intruder was Hawks, who was with them rather longer. It was apparent from a glance that they were his object in coming there. He came unsteadily up the road and stopped about twenty yards short of them; he remained for four or five minutes, staring hatred at one and the other.
A Hawks who had been drinking… But he contented himself with his stare. At the end of the session he lurched away again, probably to buy a last pint at The Longshoreman.
At this juncture Gently did risk a glance at Esau, but the Sea-King remained as unmoved as before. It was when Gently shrugged and felt for his pipe that the fisherman made his solitary gesture. Slowly, he picked up his pouch and offered it to the detective. The action was so unexpected that it seemed to carry a special point. Nothing else went with it, no nod, no inclination: just the extending of the pouch in the steady, gnarled hand.
Was it purely an accident that it happened when it did? Gently could never be certain, either then or afterwards. His reaching for his pipe had given Esau the opening — if he hadn’t chanced to do so, what device would have been used?
The audience was ended peremptorily by the Sea-King getting to his feet. Gently, still in a state of bemusement, let him depart without demur. He was feeling again that uneasy reaction, that suspicion that perhaps the fisherman had fooled him. Oughtn’t he to have cracked down hard on Esau — to have really put some pressure on him?
He grunted and tapped his pipe on his heel — twist had never been a favourite smoke with him. From the direction of the village he could see Maurice returning and with Maurice, at all events, he had no doubts about technique.
‘Where have you just been?’
‘Me? Down to the shop!’
‘After what?’
‘Well, if you’re not going to be allowed to…’
Gently clicked his tongue in caustic admonishment.
‘Come, come! Don’t send me bothering the exchange. You’ve just been phoning Lambeth to let them know what’s coming — and you thought it would be safer to do it in the village!’
The fact that he was right gave him a childish pleasure; it compensated his ego for the inroads made by Esau.
In the guest house trouble waited for him, wearing the face of Inspector Dyson. The County man had been talking to Stock and confirming his belief in Gently’s duplicity. Gently fixed him with a drink and led him out on to the lawn. Dyson’s face had reached the peeling stage: he was treating his arms as though they were made of glass.
‘I’m afraid we still don’t understand.’
He found it difficult to come to the point.
‘The super thinks… since you were on the other case. Mightn’t there be a connection which perhaps, as yet…?’
That infernal connection! What in fact did it consist of? Contiguity was the one sure thing they had to go on. The sandhills body was much too old. It predated Simmonds and probably Rachel. Mixer had been a boy… Maurice a child… Hawks and Esau were the ones if they wanted to show connection. Esau, who had shown it to him, and Hawks, who kept getting drunk.
‘Nothing further with missing persons?’
Dyson gloomily shook his head.
‘I’ve been trying round the village — the postman, vicar — people like that. In a place as small as this you’d expect someone to remember. Everyone knows everybody. They couldn’t disappear for a day. My own idea is that it was a visitor, but where do you start looking then?’
‘A lot of visitors come from Norchester.’
‘Yes, but there’s nobody on their records. Then I had half a notion that it was someone from up here, but the super says you checked, and that as far as you know…’
It was true, Gently had seen the manager before lunch. The Bel-Air, like Hiverton, had a clean sheet of missing persons. They had phoned the manager’s predecessor, who lived in retirement: the clean sheet extended to the Bel-Air’s foundation.
‘So we’re left with a day tripper who didn’t come from Norchester — raped and strangled, no doubt, though she might have been poisoned. And as the super points out…’
The parallel was rather striking: only one thing made a difference — that little matter of thirty years!
‘Do you think it’s just possible that we’re after the same man?’
Gently could hardly keep a smile from straying over his face. Dyson was watching him like a cat, trying to surprise his guilty knowledge. For the Central Office man it was a unique experience.
‘I don’t see why not.’
‘In that case, perhaps…?’
‘I’m simply agreeing in principle. I don’t say I know who did it.’
Yet didn’t he, to be honest; wasn’t he as certain as he could be? Hadn’t Esau drawn up the case for him as plainly as in a written statement? It had all happened before, that was the heart of the matter. Rachel’s murder had been the echo of a crime in the sleeping past. Hawks had been a young man then, he’d been tall, athletic, handsome. The bitter sourness of his face was something still to be contracted.
An Adonis, keen on women! And unlike Maurice, with taking qualities. In the wreck of the man one could see what he had been, one could glimpse the bright flame that tragedy had dimmed. And Esau, he knew what had wrought that change. They had been mates together… brothers… fishermen. He had known of the passionate crime which took place in the marrams, but it was a fisherman’s crime and his mouth was closed.
And the years had passed over it, but they hadn’t washed it clean. The secret had raised a barrier between the two men. It tied them together but also it held them apart: they were married, one to the other, in a fearsome, life-long alliance. And it had set its stamp on them according to their natures. Hawks it had made savage, Esau a solitary. Unacknowledged, unshriven, it had worked its deadly ends; one of them had sunk beneath it and the other found a lonely eminence.
Then Rachel had come with her devastating beauty: Rachel, stirring passions which had slept for thirty years. Had Esau seen it happening, seen the madness begin to gather? Had he tried to watch over her and to prevent the second outbreak?
Yes, at the bottom of him Gently knew it: this was the case which Esau had sketched for him. The fisherman had eased his conscience of the burden which lay on it and done it without providing one atom of proof! How could one broach such a matter to the sharp-eyed, rational Dyson?
‘If you say so, of course, then we’re bound to take your word. But it seemed a bit peculiar, you just finding it like that.’
‘I noticed the shape of that clump. You can put down the rest to a suspicious nature.’
‘And there’s positively no link-up?’
‘Nothing one could prove in court.’
‘Still, a lead of any sort…’
Gently sighed and mopped his brow. He couldn’t very well tell Dyson to stop interfering! The man was doing his duty in spite of the heat and a dose of sunburn. A little professional co-operation wasn’t too much to be
