Alan Hunter - Gently in the Sun

For a good hour past he had been wandering about the village, staring at everything and gaping at everybody: why, he would have been perplexed to answer. One hadn’t to go far to see the whole of Hiverton. It was huddled together like a misplaced hill village. On one side was the sea, on the other stony fields. From a little distance it had the appearance of a watchful, red-brick citadel.

He had plodded along the terraces which formed the northerly ramparts, turning deliberately from one to another until he had covered every yard. Here jerry-building had flourished in the years between the wars. The houses were sullenly ugly, needed plaster, needed paint. They were served by unmade-up roads. The yards behind them were small and slummy. In front they had patches of scuffed grass or anaemic flower beds edged with bottles. The paths to them, almost without exception, were of trodden earth, cinder, and cockleshells.

And the people who lived in these places? At the thought he had hunched his shoulders. Yet something about them had struck him, difficult though it was to put it into words. He had met them coming out, seen them trudging up to their doors; here one had passed a civil word, there one plucked a curtain to stare at him. But in total, what was the impression? It was escaping him, for the moment. Unconsciously, intuitively, he had made a judgement, which later would reappear in the guise of inspiration.

Now he was standing at the crossways, at the physical heart of the village. Three other shops besides the Beach Stores each faced the irregular plain. A butcher’s — wasn’t that the place where Simmonds had bought his sausages? — a baker’s which dabbled in groceries, and a grocer who dabbled in bread. In fact, all the elements of a satisfying focal centre, helped out by the bus turnround, a chapel, and the post office. Then why did it fail, as if put together by an inept artist? Why did one’s eye go perpetually roaming after a factor that wasn’t there?

It was meaningless — that was the word! But one was checked directly by the paradox. There was plenty of meaning to be found in Hiverton, it was active and busy in its peculiar way. Only the word, once hit on, began to haunt Gently. It had an uncanny aptness which wouldn’t let him alone. In some sense to be decided he knew it was applicable: to someone, somehow, Hiverton was devoid of meaning.

Still puzzling, he went up the steps to the Beach Store. Mrs Neal gave him a smile and a nod over her bacon slicer. By now, like everyone else, she would know his identity, and was probably expecting an official visit from him. Gently had read her statement, which confirmed that of Nockolds. There was plenty of routine that he had studiously neglected.

‘Heard from your husband yet, Mrs Betts?’

A neat, drab woman stood waiting with a partly-filled rush bag.

‘I had a letter from him this morning. They’ve done with the mackerel. They’ll be working round this way for the season before long.’

‘They’re usually back at Starmouth by the first week in September

… let’s hope it’s a better herring-fishing this year than last.’

‘The Scots boats are coming for all they said last time.’

Bacon, tea, and the latest gossip, and you could supplement the news with a copy of the local ‘evening’. Gently picked one up from a pile on the stationery counter. It wasn’t carrying his picture although his arrival had made the headline.

‘My boy Tommy was telling me that the police are properly stumped.’

Mrs Neal hissed something in a whisper and her customer turned to stare at Gently.

‘Well, I suppose one can speak!’

‘That’s five-and-seven, Mrs Betts.’

The drab woman stalked out offendedly with the air of a hen driven from its hopper.

Mrs Neal came round the back of the counters. She beamed at Gently as though it were a great joke. She had a twinkle of transparent malice in her eye: it was this that gave point to the plump good nature of her face.

‘I suppose you get used to being gawked at and talked about? It’s just a job, like everything else, though I wouldn’t want it myself.’

‘Aren’t you in the same position?’

‘Here, you mean, behind the counter?’

‘I should have thought they talked about you.’

‘Oh, they do! Don’t you live in a village?’

Again that flash of unconscious malice, drawing a smile of response from Gently. He knew now what it was that attracted him to Mrs Neal. She was someone who understood Hiverton and understood it with detachment. More, unless he mistook her, she understood it with affection; he felt a twinge of surprise that such a thing was possible.

‘Of course, when you came in here I didn’t know you from Adam. It took half-an-hour for the word to get round. I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you. It’s about Fred Nockolds. There’s no harm in Fred, you know, but this business has got him worried.’

‘About what he was doing there?’

‘Yes… exercising his dog!’

‘It’s a bit thin, isn’t it?’

‘Go on! He’s up there regular.’

Gently brooded a moment, mentally reviewing Dyson’s file. In effect he had long dismissed Nockolds from his thoughts. The poacher, who worked at a farm a mile outside the village, had been assisting in a calf delivery at the critical period. The vet and two witnesses had established this fact. ‘I think we can accept his story.’

‘He’ll be relieved. Can I tell him?’

‘You can if you like, but I’ll be seeing him myself. By the way wouldn’t he have had a gun and stuff on him?’

‘There you are again! But he reported to Ferrety, didn’t he?’

Her husband came in, a smooth-faced man with a bald patch. He related afresh how he had accompanied Nockolds to the beach. Gently listened, his eyes closed, trying to visualize the scene. Had the body then been there two hours, or was it only one?

‘Did anyone get to the beach before you?’

‘If so I didn’t see them. But we couldn’t shut the dog up and they soon started coming. It’s a rum thing, that, how a body can upset a dog.’

‘Did you notice any tracks?’

‘It’s all tracks unless there’s been rain.’

‘What about the fellow in the tent?’

‘I didn’t see him come down till later.’

‘He’s a queer one, if you like,’ Mrs Neal interrupted them. ‘Not that I think any ill of the lad, though there’s nasty talk going round.’

‘What sort of talk is that?’

‘Why, that he’s the one you’re after. But I say it’s all nonsense, and I see as much of him as anyone. There’s nothing wrong there that a good home wouldn’t put right.’

‘You know about him, then?’

‘Of course. He’s often in for a chat.’

‘Did he ever mention Miss Campion?’

‘No. It’s his mother I usually hear about.’

It was still hot enough for ice cream and Gently took a cornet out with him. From the steep-roofed buildings long shadows were falling, but a thermometer on the wall had only just sunk below eighty. One of the village children had got a bike and they were all having fun with it. As he raced across the open space they tried to catch him and pull him off. Two or three of the older ones sat apart on a bench. They glanced sideways at Gently, muttered furtively to each other.

He paused outside The Longshoreman, before which were parked several cars. The windows were open upstairs and down and one could hear the chatter of the bar from the road. Some young men, probably farm workers, sat drinking on two outside seats. They wore white shirts and their tanned flesh looked hard and healthy. Although they had only been talking cricket they, too, subdued their voices.

It was the same when he entered the bar: a lively scene seemed suddenly to hesitate. At the end of the room a game of darts was in progress and above the quick hush one could hear their soft thumping.