Alan Hunter - Gently in the Sun

‘Dawes is the name, isn’t it?’

‘Were you born in the village?’

Did they really think he was going to answer their pitiful stock of questions? He paid no more regard to them than to the fluttering black flies — perhaps a little less, because the flies told him something.

‘There’s a storm coming up.’

To himself he murmured it. They were the only words that Gently had heard pass his lips that day. A storm was coming up! — he turned his steps towards the beach. The reporters, still to learn wisdom, hurried after him in a pack.

But the drama wasn’t quite finished under that lowering, blind-eyed tower. By the gate was standing Hawks with a look of murder on his face. He waited till Esau drew level, then he spat, full at the other: all the hate in his warped being was concentrated in the action. Esau’s arm swept in a gesture, as though he brushed away an insect. Hawks went rolling in the dust. There was no more to it than that.

For a long time Gently stood still beside the spot where Hawks had fallen. The fisherman had scrambled to his feet and gone off after the others. A good few of the crowd still remained there, talking, and the vicar was turning some small boys out of the churchyard. Dutt had accompanied Simmonds — he still felt responsible for him, and Mears, who had returned the ladder, was now pedalling off on his cycle.

It was over — it was calming down; things were getting back to normal. Why, then, did he have this feeling that in reality they had just begun? Something had clicked as he saw Hawks go sprawling in the road, a premonition, an unconscious warning, you could call it what you liked. A climax was being reached: he couldn’t get any closer to it. A climax of a tragic nature, coming up like the storm, Yet what, excepting imagination, was suggesting this present catastrophe? What harm could come to the Sea-King, with his rout of subjects about him?

He stood a long time, vaccillating! His instinct was to follow Esau. His whole being seemed to pulse with a blind necessity for it. Against that there was feeble reason and some questions he had for the vicar: Dyson, no doubt, had asked the wrong ones, or he hadn’t known what to ask.

It was the vicar who finally settled him, coming over to Gently voluntarily. Would the inspector step across the road for a glass of home-made lemonade? Gently, went, though with grave misgivings. He couldn’t conquer his foreboding so easily. But there were no rational grounds for it and the vicar was on the spot… what else could he do but seize time by the forelock?

The vicar was a widower who lived with his youngest daughter. She was a plain-faced but smiling girl of two- or three-and-twenty. The vicarage was a large one and bore affinities to the Bel-Air; it was sparsely furnished with old, worn furniture, and yet, all the same, had an air of negligent comfort.

‘A terrible, terrible business, Inspector.’

The vicar had taken him into what was obviously his den. A roll-top desk occupied a space by the window and the other three walls were lined with bookshelves. The books themselves were cheerfully dilapidated. Quite a number of them were innocent of backstrips and covers. The desk was littered with papers, some of them weighted with lumps of amber. Above the desk, in a frame of maple wood, hung a photograph of a college eight.

‘That poor young man! What in the world constrained him to do it? Upon my word, it was a mercy that Skipper Dawes…’

Gently shrugged and looked for an ashtray in which to scrape out his pipe. Had the vicar called him in to see what he could pump from him? Soon the daughter re-appeared carrying the lemonade on a tray. While he poured it the vicar continued his musings and exclamations.

‘In your business, Inspector…’

‘We don’t see a lot of suicide.’

‘But to a certain extent you must be innured to these things. I understand that the young man…’

‘He is a material witness.’

‘I had heard, perhaps, incorrectly…’

‘There’s always gossip in these cases.’

The vicar nodded his head gravely. It was probably wrong to suspect him. He was shocked by what had happened and wanted to talk it over with someone.

‘I feel that if ever prayer was answered…’

‘You did more for him than I did.’

‘You, too, have the conviction?’

‘Didn’t you make him change his mind?’

He was afraid he had earned a lecture by this hint of unbelief. Over his tumbler of lemonade the vicar was staring at him solemnly. Then he sighed, and took a pull from it. This wasn’t, perhaps, the time! Gently, poker-faced behind his pipe, looked less than apt as a subject for lectures.

‘I had a visit from your colleague.’

‘Yes.’ Gently puffed a ring of smoke.

‘I couldn’t help him much, I’m afraid, unless it was help of a negative nature. These have been truly distressing days, Inspector. We live in an atmosphere of doubt. The sin of one man can infect a community — in a sense, we are all of us sharers in his guilt.’

‘You are referring to society?’

‘Every one of us, Inspector. The commission of a crime is like a ripple in a pond. We have impulses of good and impulses of evil, and both can be excited by the presence of their like. Those people out there! They are good souls, all of them. Many of them I have known all the days of their lives. Yet in the presence of sin they become themselves sinful, they feel guilt in themselves and their hearts become as stone. And when you find your culprit and bring him to the gallows their guilt, I’m afraid, not their justice, will rejoice.

‘The most tragic two words in the language are “Crucify him!” There, Inspector, lies the shipwreck of the human spirit.’

Gently nodded without comment — he hadn’t come to discuss the morals of it. At the moment he wanted something more directly germane. ‘All the days of their lives’ was the phrase which had struck him… the vicar was an observer who might hold vital information.

‘How long have you been in Hiverton?’

‘Don’t ask me, Inspector!’

He pointed to his short grey hair with a smile.

‘I came here from Tuthill — that’s a parish in Dorset. It was winter at the time and I thought I’d come to the North Pole.’

‘Many years ago, was it?’

‘In twenty-seven, to be exact. I ought to remember it because poor Mary was having John. We were snowed up for three weeks — no hope of a midwife. John was our first, you know. I shall never forget it.’

‘Things have changed, I expect.’

‘Yes. Even in Hiverton.’

‘And people, no doubt.’

‘They change, but they stay the same.’

‘The fishermen too?’

‘Especially the fishermen! They haven’t altered, Inspector, since Peter cast his nets in Galilee.’

‘What about Robert Hawks?’

‘Are you interested in Bob?’

‘I’d like to hear anything you can tell me about him.’

The vicar, rather to Gently’s surprise, himself produced a pipe. It was a pleasant little briar with an apple-shaped bowl. He tapped it once or twice fastidiously before filling it from a tin — the mixture, Gently noticed, was a mild-flavoured blend.

‘You’ve been using your eyes, haven’t you?’

Gently offered his matches, shrugging. The vicar lit his pipe attentively, letting the match burn almost to his fingers.

‘In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me… how much do you really know about them? Because Dawes comes into it, all along the line. If you’re interested in one then you’re interested in the other.’

‘In both if you like. I was going to ask about Esau.’

The vicar nodded wisely and adjusted his pipe with his thumb.