Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

They were standing round the sleeve, which had been emptying into the wooden hopper-trolley. None of them seemed to know what to do, not even Blacker.

From the mouth of the sleeve protruded that single, terrible foot. It was wearing a cheap stamped-leather shoe and had completely obstructed the flow of sour-smelling flour.

‘One of you… get some tools. You, Charlie — don’t stand there gaping!’

Charlie Savage gulped and ran to go down the steps.

‘Shut the flour off, one of you — Fred, get a ladder. We’ll have to take the sleeve off. We’ll never get him out the other way!’

He was in command, he was dispelling the panic, but the nausea in his stomach continued to grow. The precipice he had felt beginning to yawn at his feet that morning had suddenly opened wide below him. He had a strange impression of not being responsible for himself.

‘Set the ladder against the beam. Sam, get in the trolley with Fred and take the weight of it.’

They went about his orders with a sort of plaintive eagerness, glad to make a show of normality in the business. ‘Ease it down now — ease it! He can’t be all that heavy.’ Dead men were heavy, though. During the air-raids, he remembered…

Reverently they disencumbered the corpse of the canvas sleeve. The stiff foot persisted in sticking in the mouth of it, and Fred Salmon had to unlace the shoe, breathing through his teeth the while. Then they brushed the sour flour off it and laid it on the floor. It had stiffened in a crouched position and looked tiny and unnatural.

‘Anybody know him?’

They made a pretence of studying the floury features. The man had died with a snarl on his face, showing the teeth like those of a beast.

But no, nobody knew him. In life and death he was a stranger.

‘All right then — carry him down to the sack-store. I’ll get on to the police and see what they make of him.’

Wordlessly they picked it up and went shuffling and clumsy towards the steps.

Fuller remained standing there, aware of the pallor showing beneath his eyes. And he was sweating, too, though it was a day with a chill breeze. Why… how? Why did he feel as though reality were slipping away from him? So some illicit prowler had taken a tumble into a flour-hopper!

He knew the police inspector who came to make enquiries. Griffin, his name was, and they had several times gone round the links together. But now there was a subtle change in the man. He was quieter, more watchful, he had no casual words to exchange.

‘The mill buildings are locked, are they?’

‘I always lock them myself.’

‘Who would have the keys, sir?’

‘I have, naturally… and Mr Blythely.’

‘You wouldn’t have noticed any forced entry, sir?’

‘No… but there are plenty of windows with broken panes.’

There was nothing offensive about him, just a damnable persistence. He kept on asking questions long after a reasonable man would have left off.

‘And you’re sure you don’t know him, sir?’

Three times he had asked that question.

‘And you lock the mill buildings yourself?’

It was as though his mind couldn’t grasp things and so you had endlessly to repeat them.

Fuller usually lunched at home, but today he felt unable to face his wife and the two younger children. On the phone he was cowardly and gave business as an excuse. In effect he joined Mary, who took her lunch across the road.

‘A fine way to start Easter, Mary-!’

He wanted his voice to sound flippant, but he could hear the strained note in it. Neither could he fancy the food offered by the cafe.

‘I’ve got that bad flour on my stomach…’

Only he knew it wasn’t the flour.

Over in the shop, where the rush had long since ceased, he could see Blythely and his wife in a long and earnest conversation. On a bench in the mill yard Fred Salmon and Sid Neave sat eating their sandwiches and drinking cold tea.

It was more and more like a dream. He wondered how long it would be before he was unable to continue acting the part expected of him.

Mary, for instance… wasn’t she already beginning to look at him a little queerly?

The inspector came back in the middle of the afternoon. He had with him Geoffrey Pershore, the man who leased Fuller the mill, and a leading light in Lynton society. Pershore had a grave expression on his self-consequential features.

‘Hullo, Fuller… could we have the office to ourselves?’

Mary took the hint and said she would go to fetch the tea. Pershore sat himself familiarly on the corner of Fuller’s desk, taking care, however, to hitch up his finely creased trousers.

‘This fellow you pulled out of the flour-hopper, Fuller…’

Fuller nodded automatically from the part of himself that was listening.

‘I’m afraid it’s more serious than it seemed. He didn’t, it appears, die from suffocation in the flour.’

What ought he to do? How should he react?

‘No,’ continued Pershore, staring heavily at the varnished screen. ‘According to the inspector, Fuller, that poor devil was strangled.’

The assistant commissioner was standing by his window when Gently tapped and entered. He might have been watching the courtyard or the segment of Embankment beyond, but Gently knew from experience that this was the A.C. s way of chewing over a problem. He rustled the folder he was carrying and dropped it noisily into the in-tray. The assistant commissioner turned to survey him through heavy tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

‘Ah, there you are, Gently. Is that the report on the Meyerstein business?’

Gently murmured inarticulately, never being one to waste his words.

‘Well, take a pew there, will you?’

The assistant commissioner came slowly over from the window.

‘There’s a curious little matter which has turned up from the country… it’s intriguing me a good deal, and I think it’s right up your street.’

Gently sat as he was bid but with rather less than enthusiasm. Twenty years in the Central Office had taught him to be wary of cases which A.C. s found intriguing…

The assistant commissioner sat down also and took up an envelope which lay on his blotter. He shook out three photographs and pushed them across for inspection.

‘Do you know these fellows?’

Gently nodded, spreading out the prints in front of him.

‘They’re a Stepney lot, aren’t they… go around working the racetracks?’

‘Mmn.’ Gently nodded again. ‘They’ve all got records. That’s Punchy Ames, the rough-looking one… he’s an ex-boxer who’s been in for assault. The rat-faced one is Steinie Taylor… Roscoe, I think the other one is called.’

‘Just so, Gently.’ The assistant commissioner had removed his glasses and was dandling them in a distracting manner. ‘And if you didn’t find them in Stepney, where next would you look?’

‘Well… any town with a racetrack, I suppose.’

‘But if they weren’t in Stepney and nowhere near a racetrack?’

Gently made a face. ‘In stir — unless they’d cooked up a different racket for themselves!’

‘Exactly.’

The assistant commissioner swung his glasses through a complete circle.

‘And that looks like being the situation, Gently, as far as I can make out.’

He paused, making the glasses pause with him.

‘You’ve seen the papers over the weekend?’

‘Mmn… I glanced at them.’

‘You noticed that curious affair at Lynton — the body being found in a flour-hopper?’

‘It was all over the front page.’

‘Well, then.’ The glasses commenced to swing again. ‘This is where we get the connection. Because the body in the hopper happened to belong to Steinie Taylor. The Borough Police have sent the prints up, and there’s no possible doubt about it.’