expected.
‘If anything turns up, I promise you faithfully… at the moment, I could put Simmonds in the dock. I’ve got a hunch, but it may be no more. Just now I’m rather keen to know the identity of those bones.’
Dyson nodded resignedly. ‘Nineteen-thirty’s so long ago.’
‘Nineteen-thirty?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? We’ve had an expert on the shoes.’
Gently had another question but he was prevented from putting it. Maurice came up, sulky faced, with a scribbled note from Dutt.
‘Says to tell you it was urgent — there’s a bloke going to jump off the church tower.’
The note was more explicit. The bloke in question was John Peter Simmonds.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘ That bloody little fool!’
Gently kept on repeating it: the words seemed to put the situation in a nutshell. Since ten o’clock that morning he’d almost forgotten the artist’s existence; he hadn’t wanted to think about Simmonds at all. He’d found a different angle, one a good deal more intriguing. Now, he knew, he’d let it dominate him, let it thrust Simmonds out of his reckoning.
‘It looks as though you were right.’
‘That bloody little fool!’
‘If you can manage to get him down…’
‘I should have locked him up yesterday!’
It was impossible to drive fast because of the helter-skelter of people. From all directions they were running and scurrying towards the churchyard. Shopkeepers, housewives, visitors, fishermen, they paid no attention to the Wolseley’s blaring horn.
‘That bloody little fool!’
Was it his conscience that kept repeating it? If Dyson had said much to him he’d have jumped down the man’s throat. And really he was blaming Esau; Esau who had laid the spell on him. For several hours now he’d been living in a kind of dream.
He slammed the Wolseley on to the verge about a hundred yards from the church. The crowd spread out ahead of him made it pointless to drive further. One caught sight of the artist directly: he had got out on a ledge below the parapet. His white face made a splodge against the dark grey of the flint and his hands, apparently bleeding, were grasping at the rough, sharp-edged stones.
Beneath him everything was in an uproar — the crowd were excited and partly hysterical. Leaving an ominous half-circle at the foot of the tower, they were shoving and pushing together in the churchyard and the road. They scarcely noticed Gently as he shouldered his way through them. They had eyes and thoughts for only one object.
‘Do you really think he’ll do it?’
‘If you were going to be hung!’
And from a slattern carrying a baby: ‘Why doesn’t he get on with it?’
All of Hiverton had collected there or were on the point of arriving. Some were still wearing aprons or carrying tokens of their occupation. In the forefront of the half-circle were stationed the reporters and the cameramen; the latter were studying angles and pointing to the withered turf in front of them.
‘It’s no good sir — he won’t come down.’
Dutt came struggling through the crowd, his streaming face plastered over with grime.
‘I’ve been shouting to him from the belfry. He won’t take a bit of notice. I’m sorry, sir, but he did me. I let him go in the church by himself.’
‘Can’t we get on the tower and grab him?’
‘No sir. He’s fixed the blinking trap door. There’s only a ladder goes up to it, and he’s piled something heavy on top.’
‘The stones… there were some stones left up there.’
Jack Spanton, standing near them, volunteered the information.
‘They were repairing the tower — Sam Nickerson told me. They left the stones up there… too lazy to bring them down!’
‘What about some ladders?’
‘Mears is fetching one from the vicarage.’
‘One! How high do you reckon he is?’
‘According to the vicar, a hundred and thirty…’
Gently twisted on his heel without waiting for Dutt to finish. Across the road, on the verge, he could see a reporter in a phone box. It was the man on the Echo, and he hurriedly fed in some coins: it didn’t do any good — he was yanked out with small ceremony.
‘Starmouth Fire Services — quick!’
He turned his back on the indignant reporter. Through the glass panels of the box he caught a momentary glimpse of Hawks. The fellow was standing behind the others where he thought he was unobserved; his face was a picture of gloating triumph, his eyes seemed to devour the clinging figure.
‘Chief Inspector Gently. I want an expanding ladder at Hiverton.’
The fire officer listened carefully as the situation was described to him.
‘But a hundred feet’s our limit… there’s nothing higher this side of London.’
‘Then send me out a catching net.’
‘From that height, he’d probably go straight through it.’
Outside a silence had fallen: the crowd was stilled, intent and listening. Simmonds was shouting something down to them, his girlish voice sounding thin with hysteria. Gently kicked open the phone-box door and held it ajar with a prodding sandal.
‘You can’t get at me now… I’m out of your power. Hang someone else… you’ll never hang me! Hang someone else!’
At that point they obviously thought he was going to do it. They shuffled and crowded away from the tower. The photographers, combining for maximum coverage, had trained their cameras at three different angles. One would catch him jumping, one falling, one striking: the latter had a reporter by him to give him a slap on the shoulder.
But Simmonds didn’t jump, he remained transfixed against the tower. His bloody hands, spread out each side, still fumbled and clutched at the sun-hot flint. The crowd gave a sigh and a reporter swore:
‘We’ll lose the last editions if he doesn’t make his mind up!’
Now there was a stir from another quarter — Mears and the vicar were bringing a ladder. For some reason nobody thought of its pitiful inadequacy: it was a ladder, a symbol, a token of something being done. Unhesitatingly they fell back to let the two men come through. Mears, in a fury of blind intention, set it wavering against the tower. Then he climbed it — twenty-five feet — and stood panting on the top-most rungs; for an instant, by sheer suggestion, a rescue seemed not entirely impossible.
‘Starmouth! Are you still there?’
‘Sorry. I thought you must have rung off.’
‘Send anything you like — I don’t care what! Just send it quickly or you’ll be too late.’
‘Roger — but you might as well know in advance…’
He buttonholed Dutt, who was standing by helplessly. Dyson he’d lost sight of as soon as they’d parked the car.
‘Show me the way up. I’m going to have a talk with him. And I want to see that trap door, just in case there’s a way…’
The interior of the church was cool and very gloomy, appearing quite dark after the glare without. Their feet rang echoingly on uncovered tiles, there was an odour of oil lamps and slightly-damp plaster. A door with a pointed
