Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

‘Yes, but he’s dead. The county police have pulled him out of the river a couple of miles upstream. They think he’s Ames and we’re sending our print man. I thought you’d like to get out straight away.’

He could see his watch now. It was seven minutes past five. The car outside was firing jerkily, probably on only three cylinders.

‘What happened… how did he die?’

‘They think he was stabbed.’

‘Send round for me, will you? I’ll be ready in five minutes.’

Automatically he dropped the receiver and began feeling for his clothes. Another one of that fated trio — dead, and making sixes and sevens!

For the moment he couldn’t react to the information, it was so unexpected and cataclysmic. He pulled on his clothes stupidly, entirely forgetting his collar and tie.

Down below he found a sleepy-eyed maid and got from her a strong, sweet cup of tea. The refractory car, an ancient Morris, got going just in time to make an incoming police Wolseley pull up with a squeak of tyres.

Gently was never at his best at that hour in the morning. Now, huddled into his clothes without washing or shaving, he felt somehow out of things, as though he were being dragged along as a spectator.

Griffin, on the other hand, was looking particularly smart and sharp. He had both washed and shaved and his hair was sleek with brilliantine smelling of eau de Cologne. Also, he was wearing a clean shirt. Out in the country, Gently had to make a shirt go a couple of days.

‘I was riding on my beat from Cuffley to Morton, taking in Long Lane and Five Mile Drain.’

The constable who had landed the body was young and hard-eyed. He was obviously enjoying being the centre of attraction.

‘I arrived here at the sluice at three minutes to three a.m., when I was accosted by William Harmer, by profession a drainage maintenance inspector. He informed me as how he was making his customary round when he caught sight of something white down in the water by the sluice-gate. On directing his torch upon this object he came to the conclusion that it was a human body…’

If it was bleak and dismal now, at half past five, what had it been like at three minutes to three o’clock! The rain was spitting on the slow-flowing surface of the wide, muddy stream and darkening the brickwork of the lonely little pump-house.

Across the marshes one could just see Lynton, a gloomy stain against the reluctantly lightening sky. Apart from this nothing broke the monotonous flatness except the river reaches and the improbable straightness of the drain. Drawn to infinity, it exercised a curious fascination on the eye.

But at three minutes to three one wouldn’t have seen much of that

…

‘I approached the sluice-gate and looked where Harmer showed me. Being in no doubt that it was a human body, I requested Harmer to fetch the grapnels which are kept in the pump-house, and with his assistance embarked in the rowing-boat which is moored here.’

It was still moored there, in the relief channel beside the sluice. A weathered double-ender, it could have done with a bail with the chipped enamel saucepan lying in the bows.

‘After several attempts we succeeded in catching hold of its shirt and getting it up into the boat. Leaving Harmer in charge of it, I proceeded to the nearest telephone at Coldharbour Farm and reported the occurrence.’

That was all, in official parlance, but one could easily imagine the rest. It had been raining steadily at three o’clock and the constable was probably wet through. And how long had Harmer had to wait with the corpse at that desolate spot, smoking perhaps, watching eagerly for a light on the lonely fen lane?

Gently glanced towards him with curiosity. A tough, leathery-looking little marshman, he had probably been on these vigils before…

The Lynton police surgeon came out of the pump-house where the corpse had been deposited.

‘He was stabbed all right — a proper amateur’s job. Sixteen stab-wounds scattered about the left side of the back and three ribs fractured. Only about two of the stabs would have done for him directly. Nothing elsewhere and there doesn’t seem to have been a fight.’

‘When was he killed?’

‘Not long ago, taking into account the low temperature of the water. About midnight, I’d say, or a little before.’

‘What about the weapon?’

The police surgeon shrugged.

‘I’ll tell you more about that after I’ve had him on the slab. Guessing roughly, I’d say it was an ordinary sheath knife. The blade would be about an inch in width.’

Gently was asking the questions, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that he was somehow supernumerary. If only he’d remembered to put on his collar and tie! Of the group on the riverbank he felt nearest akin to Harmer. The marshman, sopping wet in a shapeless old coat of Derby tweed, looked as though he had never been near a collar and tie in his life.

‘We’d better take a look at his clothes.’

They followed him into the pump-house. Inside there was very little room, except that taken up by the machinery. A couple of hurricane lamps, impressed from the farm, were beginning to grow pale in the dull light of day.

The body lay on the floor, a tarpaulin sheet pulled over it. A pile of clothing beside it consisted only of trousers, shirt and underclothes. Gently stirred them up disinterestedly.

‘New — no markings. Was there anything in the pockets?’

One of them was turned inside out, and a frayed edge showed where a maker’s label had been torn away. The shirt was of a popular make which might have been bought anywhere.

‘That ties it in.’

Griffin pointed to the frayed edge.

‘The labels were torn off Taylor’s clothes, too. You can see how it works. This bloke was too big to strangle, so chummy took a knife to him.’

‘And he wasn’t an expert with that, either.’

Nevertheless he had done his job with it, stabbing frantically till his victim collapsed. And then, coolly enough, he had sought to conceal the identity… naively, perhaps, but efficiently as far as it went.

Griffin’s print-merchant got up laboriously from a corner where, by the aid of a powerful torch, he had been making a rough check.

‘It’s him all right…’

Gently, after a glance under the tarpaulin, had never been in doubt. There was no mistaking the ex-pug’s battered features, which sported three separate scars in any case.

But if only they could have got to him six hours sooner!

‘How long has the tide been ebbing?’

He turned to Harmer.

‘Set in near midnight, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘How fast does it run?’

‘’Bout four or five here. Farther up it’s slower.’

‘Anyone got a map?’

Somebody fetched a one-inch Ordnance Survey from the locker of one of the cars and Gently spread it out over a convenient part of the machinery. Griffin handed him a hurricane lamp, though it wasn’t strictly necessary.

‘Ten or twelve miles… less, probably, since it wasn’t floating. This is your district — have you got any ideas about it?’

Griffin examined the map keenly, not to be rushed into a hasty judgment. One idea was as good as another, but Gently felt somehow compelled to defer to the spruce inspector.

‘There’s not much up that way for miles. It’s all fen and grazing marshes till you get to Beetley.’

A glance could tell you that.

‘But there’s the main south road there — that runs close to the river near Apton. And there’s a lane down here to one of the old drainage mills.’

‘Let’s get down there and see if we can find anything.’

It was going to be a wet day. Already the interval of spitting was over and the rain reverting to a steady, measured rhythm. It hissed in the wheels of the Wolseley as it sped along the level highway, rising in sheets where puddles had collected.