‘Now if you’ll bring your book to the desk here,’ Gently said, ‘I’d like a transcript of Bixley’s answers.’
Baynes took a chair to the end of the desk, scuffed through a notebook, laid out three pencils.
‘Good,’ Gently said.
‘Like what’s going on?’ Bixley broke out again.
Baynes immediately seized a pencil and commenced a ferocious scribble.
‘I think,’ Gently said, ‘you’d better listen to me and simply answer my questions, Bixley. That way you won’t go saying things you wouldn’t like to see in a report afterwards. Do you understand me?’
Bixley glared at the light. His pupils were contracted and he was sweating.
‘Like tell me, screw,’ he said, ‘and tell me straight. What’s this jazz all about?’
‘Take it down,’ said Gently unnecessarily.
‘Take nothing down!’ Bixley bawled. ‘I ain’t done nothing and like you know it, so why am I hung up in here?’
‘Have you finished?’ Gently asked.
‘No I haven’t,’ Bixley said. ‘I’m asking you, screw, and I want an answer. You ain’t got no right to keep me down here.’
‘When you have finished,’ Gently said, ‘I’ll do the talking if you don’t mind, Bixley. And just remember that this is a police station. It’ll be to your advantage not to forget it.’
Bixley swore at him obscenely.
‘Take it down,’ Gently said.
Baynes went scribbling down the page, flipped it over and scribbled some more.
‘Now,’ Gently said. ‘Is that all?’
It apparently was. Bixley only glared.
‘Right,’ Gently said. ‘You’re being sensible. Let’s see if you can answer a few questions. Where were you this morning?’
‘You know where I was,’ Bixley snarled.
‘I think I do,’ Gently said. ‘You were in Castlebridge, weren’t you?’
‘Like I wasn’t, then,’ Bixley said. ‘I wasn’t nowhere near Castlebridge. I was out riding like you said. And nobody can’t prove different.’
‘Where were you riding?’ Gently asked.
‘I was out on the heath,’ Bixley said.
‘Where out on the heath?’
‘Just out on the heath,’ Bixley said.
‘Then you couldn’t have been recognized,’ Gently said, ‘by a man you talked to in Castlebridge?’
‘I wasn’t there,’ Bixley said.
‘Make sure you’ve got that answer,’ Gently said to Baynes.
He gave Baynes time for plenty of scribbling.
‘Do you know a man named Leach?’ he asked.
‘Like suppose I do,’ Bixley said. ‘He only keeps a cafe, don’t he?’
‘He used to keep one,’ Gently said. ‘Just at this moment he’s keeping a cell warm. He was arrested at about nine a.m. this morning, around the time when you weren’t in Castlebridge.’
‘So what’s that to do with me?’ Bixley said.
‘We’ve been asking him questions,’ Gently said. ‘And we’ve been going through some of his records. Did you know that Leach kept records?’
‘He wouldn’t have said nothing,’ Bixley said.
‘He,’ Gently said, ‘couldn’t help it. And he wasn’t quite quick enough hiding his records. I got hold of a notebook I shouldn’t have seen.’
‘He’s a stupid git,’ Bixley said.
‘He knew quite a lot about Tuesday.’
‘He didn’t know-’ Bixley began. He stopped, tried to pierce the haze beside the lamp.
‘What didn’t he know?’ Gently asked. ‘That some of his chocolates had gone astray?’
‘Like I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Bixley said. ‘What’s this jazz about chocolates?’
Gently turned in Baynes’s direction. Baynes’s pencil scuttered, halted with a dab.
‘Yuh, what’s it about?’ Bixley demanded. ‘I don’t know nothing about his chocolates. Like he used to give chocolates for prizes, he did. Put a spot on someone, that sort of action.’
‘And you used to win them,’ Gently said.
‘Yuh,’ Bixley said. ‘I sometimes won one.’
‘Every Tuesday,’ Gently said. ‘Including the Tuesday of last week. Only last Tuesday you had some trouble with them. Maybe Lister thought it was his turn for a prize.’
Bixley was silent. He kept blinking in the lamp-glare. His eyes had puckers round them. The puckers were twitching. At first his hands had been clenched into fists but now they lay hot and thick-looking on his knees. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
‘You’d been a little careless,’ Gently said. ‘You put those chocolates on a table for a moment. Then when you looked for them they weren’t there. And Lister wasn’t there. They’d gone off together. And you’re telling me Leach didn’t know about that?’
‘He didn’t know nothing about-’ Bixley jerked.
‘Not about Lister being the culprit?’
‘He was bleeding guessing!’ Bixley said.
‘If he said that Lister had taken the chocolates?’
‘Yuh — no!’ Bixley said. ‘I keep telling you I don’t know nothing about it. I didn’t have no chocolates pinched, nor nothing like that happened at all.’
‘You collected a box on Tuesday, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ Bixley said. ‘I never did.’
‘So nobody could have seen you with a box?’
‘It ain’t a crime, is it?’ Bixley said. ‘Being given a box of chocolates?’
‘But you had one?’
‘All right!’ he said. ‘So Leachy give me a box of chocolates.’
‘And you gave Leachy forty quid.’
‘No!’ Bixley shouted. ‘I never.’
‘Even though he says you did?’
‘The bloody rat!’ Bixley said.
‘Verbatim,’ Gently said to Baynes. ‘I don’t want any of this lost.’
He sat back in the chair, a dark presence, concealedly studying the sweating Bixley. Bixley was breathing very heavily, he’d stopped trying to see Gently through the light.
‘Of course,’ Gently said smoothly, ‘you’d want those chocolates back again, wouldn’t you? After you’d spent forty quid on them and had a chocolate-monopoly here in Latchford. You could afford the forty quid, but not Lister muscling in on your racket. So you had to get that box back from him. I can see how important that was.’
‘I didn’t go after him,’ Bixley said. ‘I got an alibi, I have.’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ Gently said. ‘Let’s do some thinking about this, shall we? There’s Elton, he left soon after Lister, he could have caught him up easily. And no doubt Elton had his reasons for doing what you might ask of him. When you’ve acquired a taste for chocolates you have to toe the line, don’t you? So you might have sent Elton after Lister. It seems a reasonable assumption.’
‘I tell you I never-!’ Bixley howled.
No,’ Gently said. ‘I’m coming to that. You didn’t send Elton after Lister because you couldn’t trust him to do the job. He’d have to stop Lister as well as catch him, and after stopping him he’d have to get the chocolates. But Elton wasn’t an expert rider, nor was he a very formidable person. Not like you yourself, Bixley. You fit the bill much better.’
Bixley was halfway to his feet. Gently crashed his fist on the desk.
‘Keep your seat, please,’ he said mildly. ‘We’re coming to the interesting part now.’
‘But it’s a bleeding lie!’ Bixley shouted.
