Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

Before lunch he went into the bar and warmed himself with a hot rum. From the menu he chose the most solid-sounding dishes, beefsteak pudding followed by treacle tart and custard. Then he topped it all off by having a liqueur with his coffee, and had ordered an expensive cigar to be brought to him.

‘Have you got anything yet?’

There had been singularly little news from headquarters. He had phoned them twice while he had been at the mill.

‘There’s been two more reports in… both negative, I’m afraid.’

Could he have been wrong all along the line about that confounded bicycle?

His morning’s work had done nothing to clarify the situation. He could almost have predicted the result in advance. Fuller had an alibi which checked where it touched — he’d taken a van into Cambridge to pick up some spare parts. But Blythely! — well, he was running true to form. If it was a lie it was such a thin one that it almost compelled belief.

‘Don’t you remember my wife telling you we were going to the pictures?’

Likely, that, wasn’t it — after the emotional crisis Gently had provoked by his visit!

But the baker had stuck to the story, even elaborating it a little. And Mrs Blythely, whom Gently had cornered on her own, sullenly agreed that they had gone to the Ambassador.

‘Very well — describe the programme,’ Gently had challenged the pair of them.

Mrs Blythely had made a fair hand of it, her husband had been vaguer. And neither of them could remember meeting anyone they knew. Once again, by using sheer dead weight, as it were, the baker had shouldered Gently aside…

‘How about that bike — aren’t they through going over it yet?’

‘We’ve only just got Larkin’s prints back, and being in the river

…’

‘There’ll have been grease on the frame.’

‘He seems to have kept it washed down with petrol.’

‘That’s a damn silly thing to do! What about the lot who’re dragging the river?’

‘They rang up half an hour ago and we sent out some thermoses of hot soup.’

He hung up impatiently and dragged at his cigar, which tasted damp. All the leads he’d got his hands on seemed to be frittering themselves away. In the lunchtime paper had appeared a chaste paragraph about a body taken from the river, and if Roscoe hadn’t skipped already, then he would as soon as his eye fell on that.

Meanwhile this rain, boring down like the commencement of some fresh deluge…

‘Do you reckon these could be something, sir?’

Dutt, coming in on his lunch relief, found Gently still brooding by the phone. The cockney sergeant’s boots were squelching and his clothes sagged wetly, but nothing could quite upset the chirpiness of his manner.

‘Have you come into money, Dutt?’

It was a pad of fivers that was proffered to him.

‘I’ve only got it official, sir, pending what you thinks about it.’

‘Where did you pick this up?’

‘At the Central Garage, sir. This Blacker goes in there just now and buys himself a brand new motor scooter, and being as we’re so interested, I thought I’d take charge of the lolly.’

‘A motor scooter!’ Gently whistled. ‘That’s quite an item to be paying cash for.’

‘Yessir. And those notes is new ones — got the same letters, one or two of them.’

Always it seemed to come out of the clouds, but always you had had to work for it. This time he had been squandering Dutt on what seemed a pointless tailing stint, and now, when he was stuck for a move…

‘Get some dry clothes on and have your lunch, Dutt. I’ll take these round personally.’

‘Yessir. And do I go on tailing him?’

‘No — I’ve got a hunch that we’ve got what you were after!’

Abandoning the cigar, he set off on his tour of the banks. It wasn’t a long job in Lynton, where the principal branches were grouped together in streets near the market square. At the third one he made the contact he was looking for.

‘Four of these notes were paid out by us recently. We probably issued the others also, but we haven’t got a definite record.’

‘Who did you pay them to?’

‘Would you mind stepping into the manager’s office?’

The manager was a spare, gaunt-faced individual with cropped grey hair and tired-looking eyes. He seemed a little put out by Gently’s request.

‘I suppose it is absolutely essential, Inspector…?’

‘You are aware that I am investigating a homicide.’

‘At the same time, we try to guard the interests of our clients… publicity, in this case, could be cruelly damaging.’

‘Unless the party is implicated there should be no publicity.’

‘That’s out of the question! He’s our largest private depositor. After twenty years with us I think I can answer for his character. In Lynton his reputation is of the highest.’

‘The less he has to fear, then, from an enquiry of this sort.’

The manager frowned at the documents which lay on his blotter. Plainly, he would like to have given Gently a flat refusal. Homicide was a phrase to toy with, certainly, but when it came to annoying his largest private depositor…

‘The notes in question formed part of a substantial withdrawal. They were collected by our client in person at rather short notice, though of course we were happy to oblige.’

‘How much exactly?’

‘Ten thousand pounds.’

‘When were they collected?’

‘On the twelfth, following notice on the eleventh.’

‘Is it usual for him to withdraw large sums in cash?’

‘Once or twice, it might be… I would have to examine the back records, perhaps correspond with headquarters.’

‘When was the last such withdrawal?’

‘I’m afraid I must have notice of that question.’

‘Let me know as soon as you can, please. And the name and address of this client?’

The manager sighed and gestured helplessly with his narrow shoulders.

‘It is Geoffrey Pershore, Esq., of Prideaux Manor, Prideaux St John. And may I beg, on his behalf, that this matter is withheld from the press?’

But Gently had already taken his hat.

The maid who let him in was a country girl with chubby dimpling features. She left him standing in the lofty but austere hall with its graceful painted stairway at the side.

Coming up the drive, Prideaux Manor had looked a rather chill and forbidding place. The blank, white Regency front with its double row of tall windows struck a desolate note among the dripping and leafless elms.

Seen at closer quarters it was more friendly. The windows came to life, there was warmth in the ornate stone porch; a comfortable proportion established itself among the rectangles which, at a distance, seemed dreary.

Now, inside, one was obliged to acknowledge a graciousness about the house. The stairway alone was a gem of airy elegance. Lit by a high, round-topped window, the hall had a chapel-like atmosphere of peace. The chequered tiles of the floor had not been covered, a solitary bust in a niche gave point to the wall facing the stairs.

‘Will you come this way?’

The maid led him along a white-panelled corridor on the walls of which hung a number of flower paintings in oil. At the end of it he was ushered through the door of a small, period-furnished drawing room.

‘Ah, good day, Inspector!’

Pershore was waiting for him by the hearth, in which a brisk fire was burning. Legs astride, he might have been consciously studying the part of a landed proprietor at home. To his right was a low table bearing a decanter of whisky and an open box of cigars. He was smoking one of the latter, and a half-empty glass stood by the carriage clock on the mantelpiece behind him.

‘What a day we’ve been having…!’