‘So in fact you’ve got nothing material against him?’
Dyson shrugged feebly. Hadn’t he said as much?
‘He fits the pattern and that’s about all — apart from that it might have been anyone.’
‘Anyone at all who was jealous enough to murder.’
The super sighed regretfully. ‘You see where it gets us. Unless we can show something quick I daren’t hang on to the case. I talked to the C.C. I asked him for a couple of days at least. Between you and me this heat makes him irritable.’
‘We aren’t homicide experts.’
‘That’s just what he’s been telling me. I’m afraid you’ve had this one, Dyson, unless you can suggest something else.’
Dyson finished his coffee in silence. He had had a presentment of the outcome all day. At one point in the afternoon, when he had been questioning Mixer, he had realized with a bitter clarity that he was straying out of his depth. For homicide you needed a specialist: one couldn’t be two people.
‘On the whole it would be a relief.’
The super nodded at the flickering fan-blades.
‘We don’t see much of homicide, not enough to signify.’
‘It’s the only way to look at it, Dyson. Murder’s an unreasonable responsibility.’
‘And in this weather too! Anyone can have it, for me.’
Above the roofs now a moon was rising, a fisherman’s moon. It lay big and pale over the housetops of Wendham. At Hiverton it would be looking down on seven boats on an empty beach. And soon would come the fishermen with their nets over their shoulders.
CHAPTER TWO
It was the eighth day of the heat wave, and hotter than it had ever been. The sun was like a baleful presence nailed to a merciless sky. With both windows down the train compartment had been sweltering, and here and there, beside the track, one had seen black patches of spark-ignited grass. Gently, who never stood on ceremony, had stripped to his braces before the train reached Chelmsford. At Norchester Thorpe he had dived through the barrier for a hasty glass of beer. It had tasted insipid and only made him sweat the more, while Dutt, sprawled in his seat, seemed to have remained the cooler of the two.
‘But when we get to the sea…’
That was what he had kept telling himself. In his mind’s eye he had seen the pastelled marrams stir in the breeze. And the sea itself, the long falling combers; once get down to that and it would have to be cooler!
Only at Hamby there was no sea to be seen, and certainly nothing suggestive of a breeze. The little station lay blistering in a heat still untempered, its asphalt platform soft to the foot. The porter, who picked up their bags, shed sweat. His face was the colour of a freshly boiled lobster.
‘But when we get to the sea…’
It couldn’t be so far away. Beyond the line of dusty trees, perhaps, beyond the air dancing over the pantiles.
‘Morning Chronicle — can you give us a statement?’
They had warned him that the press was taking a keen interest in the affair. A reporter in a printed play shirt was shoving a notebook under Gently’s nose, while in the background a photographer manoeuvred for a shot.
‘As you see, we’ve just arrived.’
‘Have the police got a theory?’
‘It was probably a man who did it.’
‘Hasn’t Mixer been inside?’
‘If you check the records…’
‘Isn’t it a fact that she was his mistress?’
A thin-faced man with prominent teeth hurried up just as the photographer was immortalizing Gently’s deshabille.
‘Sorry I’m late… the car broke down! It’s all right now, I’ve got it outside.’
‘Are we fixed up at the Bel-Air?’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t easy. They’ve had to turn two of the staff out of their rooms.’
He had met Dyson before, about six months previously. The county man wasn’t really surprised to see Gently in braces and trailing his jacket. The photographer, however, couldn’t get enough of it. He ran ahead into the station yard and took two more candid shots.
‘Was it like this in town?’
Above the bonnet of the police Wolseley the air simmered as though the engine was boiling. When you opened a door the heat spilled out, carrying along with it a smell of warm leather.
‘Yesterday it was ninety-one. Today, so they tell me…’
Steeling himself, Gently plunged into the oven-like interior.
Once they were moving things became more tolerable. The air that rushed in wasn’t cool but it was moving. They were driving through flat country along a narrow coastal road. To the right, although the sea was invisible, one could see the pale marram hills which marked the boundary of the land.
‘We sent you the file by despatch.’
‘I looked it over coming up.’
‘Naturally, with only one day…’
‘I thought you’d done a pretty sound job.’
Dyson looked relieved rather than pleased. He was driving, Gently noticed, with text-book care and attention.
‘What about the photographs?’
‘You’ll find some in that briefcase.’
‘I want to know what this Campion looked like before she was killed.’
‘There’s a couple there I got from Mixer. He was carrying them about in his pocket.’
Gently delved in the briefcase, pausing only briefly over the official post-mortem photographs. The two which had belonged to Mixer were post-card enlargements a little soiled at the edges. One was a full-length and the other a three-quarter profile. The full-length print showed the victim in a bikini.
‘Some dish, wasn’t she?’
Dyson threw Gently a curious side glance.
‘From what I’ve been hearing she was everything she looks. She made a stir in Hiverton during the short time she was there.’
‘Went round with several men, did she?’
‘No, but not because they didn’t try!’
‘Because her boss kept an eye on her?’
‘You’ll never get him to say so.’
Gently held the two photographs side by side, staring from one to the other. A ‘brunette bombshell’ was how one of the morning papers had described her. Slender, rather tall, she had the feline type of gracefulness. Her bust and hips were large and there was a misting of down on her calves. Her features were strong and the nose a little prominent. Her black hair, perfectly straight, flowed down her back like the mane of a horse. But it was the eyes that held the secret, the pulsating key to the woman. They were large and very dark and set a long way apart. They didn’t have a smile, and neither did the ripe-lipped mouth. Instead they suggested a smile, a smile compact of sensual intelligence: in a moment one seemed to have penetrated all the promise of the passionate body.
‘Do you think he’d introduce her to his wife?’
Gently grunted and dropped the photographs back into the briefcase. They had come to a string of houses reaching out down the dusty road; just beyond them, at a crossing, was the flint tower of an enormous church.
‘Is this the village?’
