far was only corroborating the Sea-King.
Gently was party to Hiverton’s mystery, but the proof was still out of his hands!
‘You say you couldn’t be sure when it happened?’
‘No… if you want me to be exact. It’s the negative sort of thing that one doesn’t at first notice. It might go on for years before your attention gets drawn to it.’
‘What drew your attention to it?’
‘Some gossip, I dare say. Like every other village, Hiverton is well served in that line.’
‘It was before the war, of course?’
‘Oh yes, a good while before. If you’re pinning me down I would say the early thirties — but don’t rely on my memory too much.’
‘Just after they bought the boats?’
‘Yes, it wouldn’t have been so long after. But I’ve long given up the view that money had anything to do with it. They’d have ironed out their money troubles and have forgotten them by now. Bob, you must understand, has never been unprosperous.’
‘He never married, did he?’
‘No, and that again was peculiar. He used to be fond of the girls, and then he was all the other way.’
‘Dating from this trouble between them?’
‘More or less, now you come to mention it.’
‘Didn’t that ever strike you as significant?’
‘Not before… and I can’t see it now.’
Still it was only corroborative, though the corroboration was growing stronger. Touch it where you would and it gave you solid support for Esau. And surely the proof must come, if one could frame the definitive question — the revealing answer was there, it needed only to be evoked!
‘Did he have any trouble with women?’
‘I believe so. From time to time.’
‘Anything special that you can remember?’
‘Yes… there was scandal about one girl. Her name was Platten, I seem to recall… she was engaged to a fellow at Hamby. Her first child was born rather soon after the wedding and rumour had it that her husband thrashed Robert.’
‘What happened to her afterwards?’
‘She’s still living in Hamby. Her husband keeps the Marquis and her daughter married a Gorbold.’
‘And she’s the child in question?’
‘No, that was a “he”. They christened him Japheth — he’s in the Merchant Navy.’
The vicar gave a little chuckle as though something amusing had struck him. He tapped his pipe on his palm and looked at Gently with a quizzical twinkle.
‘You haven’t asked about Esau. Doesn’t he impress you as being marriageable?’
‘Esau!’
‘Yes — I thought you’d stare! But I assure you that he’s a married man.’
Gently sat very still, his pipe rigid between his teeth. For a second or two he was unable to speak a word. The vicar smiled broadly at the impression he had made — here was something that had astonished the unastonishable chief inspector!
‘You’re quite certain, about this?’
‘My dear fellow, I married him. It was a particular triumph since he was such a stout chapelite. His lady, I’m afraid, had no convictions either way, but I imagine that she felt the church would give a better tone to the occasion.’
‘And his wife — where is she?’
‘He kicked her out, years ago. They were an ill-assorted couple, Esau and his Josephine. She was a foreigner, you know — that’s to say, she wasn’t Northshire. I could have told the skipper he was making a mistake, though, of course, he didn’t ask my advice.’
Gently could only shake his head. The information had struck him like a bludgeon. Almost anything but this he had been preparing himself to hear. It was nudging the whole foundation, the very groundworks of the case — in a moment, he could sense, the structure would crash about his ears.
‘Where did she come from?’
‘Josephine?’
‘From Camden Town, by any chance?’
‘She certainly came from London, though I don’t recall what part. Esau met her on a fishing trip — it was when he was on the drifters. I have a hazy impression that they met in Ramsgate or Margate.’
‘What was her name?’
‘That’s asking too much! But if you want to know we can find it in the register.’
‘Can you remember the year she left him?’
‘Precisely. It was in the summer of nineteen-thirty.’
He was aware of the vicar staring at him gravely, a puckered little frown on the ecclesiastical brow. He had laid his pipe aside and placed the tips of his fingers together: now he was rocking them towards Gently in a manner of gentle reproof.
‘I’m not an idiot, you know, and I can guess what’s in your mind. Your colleague has already told me about that skeleton in the marrams. But it won’t do, Inspector, it won’t do at all. There’s a couple of hundred witnesses that Mrs Dawes really left her husband.’
‘A couple of hundred witnesses!’
Gently couldn’t help his incredulity.
‘A couple of hundred or more, and I was one of them myself. It was a seven-day wonder at Hiverton. The village talked about it for weeks. She went off to the station in Albert Johnson’s hire car, swearing like a trooper and cursing Esau to high heaven. It was a tragedy, I admit, but not the sort that you’re thinking of.’
‘But that was the last that was heard of her?’
‘You’re wrong again. She wrote to her acquaintances. Our maid at the time had a letter from Josephine — it was a shocking epistle, highly ungrammatical.’
‘You saw it, did you?’
‘I did, Inspector. It made me congratulate myself on being rid of such a parishioner. After applying every conceivable epithet to her husband she declared her intention of never again leaving London. And she never did, you can be certain. There has never been a whisper of her. She couldn’t have set foot here without the whole village buzzing of it.’
‘And that was in the summer of nineteen-thirty?’
‘Yes, almost a year from the day on which I married them.’
‘Was there a child of the marriage?’
‘It was unblessed in every way.’
‘If you’ve no objections I should like to use your phone.’
The phone was in a niche under the stairs in the hall, and to use it one was obliged to adopt a semi-crouched position. As always there was a wait before Pagram came on: for what seemed like half-an-hour he was listening to the exchange’s murmur.
‘Pagram? Listen carefully — there’ve been further developments. It’s Campion’s mother that I want you to get a line on. Her name may be Dawes, a Mrs Esau Dawes; and she may have been living with her mother in the summer of nineteen-thirty. The vital thing to know…’
He heard Pagram’s delighted chuckle.
‘This time we’ve beaten you to the punch, old horse! I’ve just taken a statement from an ex-neighbour of Mrs Campion’s. It’s all about the scarlet daughter — would you like me to read it over?’
‘Tell me when she left.’
‘Right… in the November of that year. She had a spat with her mother, if our source is to be relied on.’
‘Was she heard of after that?’
‘Not by this particular informant. She lived next-door to Mrs Campion until the outbreak of war, after she went
