conduct a telephone conversation with some caterers.
Gently took his drink on to the lawn, where he found a vacant deckchair. A maid, not Rosie, was collecting glasses, and several guests had woken up to give her fresh orders. Mixer came by from the beach; he clenched his hands and stared at Gently. The tennis players, who had been sprawling on the grass, suddenly all chased indoors to fetch their swimsuits and towels.
‘They tell me in the office…’
Gently was almost in a doze. The dead woman’s image was hypnotizing him, he wanted to do nothing but puzzle and brood over it. In his mind he had been fitting to it one alternative after another.
‘They tell me you’re the bloke sent down to take charge here.’
He opened his eyes, frowning, and found that Mixer had come back. The man was still clad in his trunks but with the addition now of a flowered beach shirt. The shirt was unbuttoned to reveal a hairy chest: Mixer was tanned all over, though some of it was probably stain.
‘Aren’t you Chief Inspector Gently?’
‘What was it you wanted?’
‘I want to have a talk — don’t say you don’t know who I am!’
Gently nodded indifferently. Several pairs of eyes were watching them. Mixer was using a blustering tone as though to challenge everybody’s attention.
‘I’ve got a right to have a word with you — this is a serious matter for me! Already people have got the idea…’
‘You made your statement, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but that’s different.’
‘You mean you want to add something to it?’
‘It isn’t that either. You know what I mean.’
Gently grunted. Yes, he knew! In his briefcase he had brought with him the thing that was worrying Mixer. It was headed ‘Mixer, Alfred Joseph (alias Thomas Beaumont)’. It had been typed out for him by Records less than twelve hours before.
‘Put yourself in my position. When it comes to a thing like this.’
The perspiration was trickling down through the hair on Mixer’s chest.
‘Now I want to get things straight. There’s nothing I have to hide. Otherwise I’d have had my solicitor down — as yet I haven’t bothered him.’
Not many of them were sleeping now, or even pretending to. The maid had come up with a fresh tray of drinks but her customers had mostly forgotten their orders.
‘You want to talk about it here?’
Mixer dashed a furious glance at the audience.
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t, when everyone’s so concerned! Right from the start they’ve picked on Alfie — that Inspector Dyson, too! Do you think they’d have called you in if there’d been half a case against me?’
‘Let’s go into the house.’
Gently rose from his deckchair. Mixer was sweating so much that his whole body seemed to run with it. Behind them, as they crossed the lawn, they heard a faint stir and murmur. Mixer clenched his fists convulsively and breathed heavily through his nostrils.
‘Where is what they call the reading room?’
‘This way — I shan’t forget it in a hurry.’
‘Suppose we get a drink?’
‘Blimey, I could stand a dozen.’
In the bar the girl with her recorder was playing a treacly love song. Maurice was leaning across the counter and they were gazing into each other’s eyes. The rest of the teenagers it seemed, had gone off somewhere.
‘So I’ve been inside! Does it make me a crook?’
Mixer had a whining note in his voice which grated with Gently. The reading room was a gloomy place but not unsuited for interrogation. An architectural accident, it was remote from the rest of the ground-floor rooms; one reached it by a passage leading off near the main entrance.
‘I made my mistake and I paid for it, didn’t I? Since then I’ve gone straight, and nobody can say different.’
There were two mahogany bookcases and a varnished one with glass doors. The single window faced north and the atmosphere, strangely, had a schoolroom smell.
‘All the same, you know how it is — once you’ve got a record you might as well hang yourself! That’s why I kept quiet about it when big teeth was asking questions. Just let him get on to that, I thought, and I’ll be inside before you can say “knife”.’
‘You must have realized.’
‘That he’d get on to you blokes? That’s just why I kept my trap shut — you and me talk the same language!’
Mixer pulled out his handkerchief and patted himself down with it. Gently had never seen a man in such a muckwash before. The fellow’s skin was coarse and granular and he had tattoo marks on both wrists; his eyes, besides being small, were set so close that they gave a malformed appearance.
Yet this was the man whom Rachel Campion…
‘Are you sticking to your story that she was just your secretary?’
‘How do you mean — story? I’d like to see you prove different!’
‘She was living at your flat, wasn’t she?’
‘I don’t care if she was. I’m in business, see? I need a secretary. If they’re not around all the time what good are they to you?’
‘Even when you’re on holiday?’
‘That’s just when things crop up.’
‘What sort of things crop up?’
‘Never mind — I wanted her around!’
Was it possible that he wasn’t lying? Gently took a long pull at his clouded glass. When they had come in the window had been closed and still the air seemed completely stationary. Beyond the window was a view which included some of the council houses.
‘Tell me something about her.’
‘Eh? What do you want to know?’
‘You’ve been living with her for a couple of years. You ought to know what she was like.’
Mixer looked puzzled.
‘You’ve had a peek, haven’t you? She was a classy bit of stuff, a proper lush girlie. She had all the charlies falling over their feet — not that they ever got anything out of her! And if you ask me-’
‘Didn’t she have a boyfriend?’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘She wasn’t exactly a virgin.’
Mixer began dabbing again with his unfortunate handkerchief. As fast as he mopped it away the sweat came beading out afresh.
‘How should I know? Perhaps she did — I didn’t follow her about the whole time.’
‘You were living in the same flat.’
‘That’s not to say I kept an eye on her.’
‘You would know if anyone slept there with her, or if she stayed out at night.’
‘She had her own key, that’s all I can say. You can think what you like about the rest.’
‘I think that she was your mistress.’
‘And I say she wasn’t! Can’t a man have a pretty secretary without going to bed with her?’
Mixer seized his glass and gulped down about half the contents. He had a voracious way of drinking which made his small eyes bulge at each swallow. When at last he lowered the glass he exhaled his breath in a panting gasp.
Had Rachel Campion noticed it, or didn’t she pay attention to such things?
