Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

‘He might have bought it all for a blind, sir.’

‘You’re overrating his intelligence.’

Taylor wouldn’t have left his toys behind — toys he had spent a good proportion of that sixteen hundred on. ‘There’s a couple of points arising, though.’

Gently tapped the bank book.

‘First there’s the sum itself — what does that suggest to us?’

‘Well, sir, it could be a share.’

‘Exactly, Dutt. Which gives us the probable sum involved. It was five thousand pounds — Taylor banked sixteen hundred and kept the balance of sixty-six in his wallet. Then there’s the date of the deposit.’

‘You mean he didn’t go to the bank the day after he got here, sir.’

‘He didn’t… which barely suggests that they didn’t bring the money with them.’

‘May I make a third point, sir?’

Gently shrugged. ‘The floor’s all yours!’

‘Well, sir, from the way they was spending it — not to mention what they says to the bartender — it seems to me that they was expecting some more. And that business wiv the list of bets sounds a cert for a system.’

‘But it didn’t pay off, Dutt — at least, there’s only one deposit in Taylor’s book.’

‘Could’ve been an accumulator, sir, and they never seemed worried about it.’

Apart from swearing, of course, when a good thing failed to come up…

They went through the rest of Taylor’s effects without fording anything to show for their pains. There were no documents except the bank book and some receipted bills; everything was new and without doubt purchased locally.

Down in the manager’s office Gently recalled Hayward.

‘This spending of money… was it the same all the time?’

‘Yes, sir, just the same.’

‘Even when they first arrived?’

Hayward thought for a moment.

‘They may not have been quite so flush… the quid tips came later. But they were never close-fisted, I will say that for them.’

Which might mean that they didn’t have the money or simply that they hadn’t got into the way of spending it…

A strange business, altogether, and somehow rather a pathetic one. You caught the childish joy of these three rogues and their dream come true: money, safe if not honest, and almost respectability.

Wasn’t that why Taylor had banked his share? Wasn’t that perhaps his biggest luxury?

‘Better take this to the bank and see what you can get from them.’

Gently handed the bank book to Dutt.

‘Until we rope in Ames and Roscoe I can’t see us making much headway… but we’ll just have to keep on going through the motions.’

‘Anyway, we’ve got somethink to show them, sir!’ Dutt couldn’t help feeling bucked by his success at The Roebuck. ‘We’ve found out that they stopped here, which is more than the local boys did. And we know about the lolly, sir. We was only guessing before.’

Gently grunted and hunched his shoulders as they turned a corner into the grey east wind. He had a sensitive nostril for leads, and he couldn’t smell one here.

What racket worth five thousand a squeeze could ever have taken root in Lynton?

‘ Coffee or tea, sir?’

‘Coffee!’

Gently almost growled at the middle-aged waitress, who in turn looked sullen. And to be truthful, there had been nothing to grumble at in either the food or the service.

He had had onion soup, which he liked, followed by a very good sole with sauce tartare. Then had come apple charlotte, which again he was fond of, and now he was eating Stilton cheese with biscuits. An excellent meal, served deftly and with promptness. Surely a smile should have rewarded the waitress?

Across the road another sort of lunch was being taken. Four of the mill workers were sitting on the pavement, their backs to the office wall, each with an open tin beside him. Their jaws worked slowly and they watched the passers with a naive interest. Sometimes one of them would venture a remark, when the others would laugh raucously.

Earlier, Fuller had gone home in his neat Ford Consul. Then Mrs Blythely had slipped the latch of the shop door, trying it twice before she was satisfied it had caught. Next Blacker had come loping across, giving Gently a queer look, and finally Ted Jimpson, who had finished work for the day.

Ted had met a girlfriend, a sturdy little country wench. When a car passed Gently could see them reflected in the window-pane where they were sitting behind him. They, too, were glancing at him queerly, and apparently in a close conference together…

‘Black or white, sir?’

‘White — not too much milk.’

This time he made up for his surliness with a wink, and the waitress forgave him as far as to smile bleakly.

‘Not a very nice day, sir.’

‘At least it isn’t raining.’

‘Very dull, it’s been, ever since Good Friday.’

Over the way a mill worker had seen him and was nudging his neighbour. Gently studiously avoided catching any of their eyes. He wanted them to see him, everyone connected with the mill. It never did any harm to let people feel you were still keeping an eye on them.

Nevertheless, he realized that it fell into the category of ‘going through the motions’ — he wasn’t following a lead, or even, for that matter, a hunch.

A grudge, perhaps — that was another matter!

After getting a frozen reception at headquarters when he gave them the news about The Roebuck, he was feeling a perverse desire to hang Taylor’s murder on Lynton’s door.

They had been so smug, all of them, police and laity alike. And Press, though he hadn’t actually torn him off a strip, had delicately rapped his knuckles for shouldering Pershore aside so roughly.

‘You don’t know what it’s like, being in a small town like this one…’

He was wrong. Gently did. But it would have been pointless to have said so.

‘In London Mr Pershore might not cut very much ice, but in Lynton I assure you…’

In Lynton you were a big-shot as soon as you started paying supertax.

Then there was Griffin, listening intently, and coming up with a cautious theory. ‘Suppose he’d gone out to meet a woman, and her husband happened to find them?’

The trouble was that it was a tenable theory and one which ought to have crossed Gently’s mind. The Blythelys were who Griffin was thinking about, and certainly the cap seemed to fit… if Taylor had been a Casanova, and setting aside the subsequent reactions of Ames and Roscoe.

Press, however, had sat down firmly on this scandalous interpretation of the facts. The mayor-elect had suffered enough without having further enormities fathered on him…

‘Waitress, I’d like another cup of coffee!’

He had drunk the first one at a single gulp and was surprised to find the empty cup in front of him.

Blythely had come out into the mill yard and was standing staring at the pigeons. A van which momentarily hid the baker from view showed Ted Jimpson shaking his blond head and looking distinctly unhappy. What were they talking about, with their furtive glances at Gently’s broad back?

Well, then, he had had a long talk over the phone with the assistant commissioner, the latter, no doubt, still twiddling his glasses and peering at the slice of Embankment across the courtyard. There hadn’t been much comfort in that. The A.C. was still nursing his idea of a glorious, gilt-edged racket going on in Lynton.

‘Have you thought of the docks, Gently? There’s a lot of dope getting in these days…

‘What about that chemical works outside the town? I see in the gazetteer that Lynton produces three per cent of the national supply of commercial sulphuric acid…’

It was too easy, sitting there in the Yard and turning over maps and reference books. One had to be in the place and get the feel of it