Alan Hunter: Gently through the Mill

Gently stared impassively at the three photographs on the desk. So that was the end of Steinie Taylor… ignoble, just as had been the man!

‘What about the other two?’

The A.C. made a disclaiming wave.

‘They disappeared from their haunts at the same time as Taylor, which as near as we can make out was a fortnight ago.’

‘Have Lynton had their description?’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t seem to have helped them. They’ve got nowhere since Friday and now they want us to carry it.’ Gently shrugged indifferently. It was the usual way of things. The locals tried their hand, and then passed the mess over to the Central Office.

‘Killed about midnight Thursday, wasn’t he?’

‘That’s the pathologist’s estimate.’

‘Much force used?’

‘The usual fracture. Taylor was a little man.’

‘Yes… I’ve had to do with him.’

The assistant commissioner twisted his glasses like a diviner’s twig and appeared to be studying the set of them.

‘You know what puzzles me — and it is a puzzle — is what the deuce those fellows were doing in a quiet little place like Lynton. What game were they up to? That’s the star question. It was dangerous enough to get one of them murdered.’

Gently nodded agreement. ‘Criminals work to a pattern.’

‘There’s that again… how did they get on to a different line?’

‘It must have seemed worth the risk.’

‘True — there’d be money in it. But what goes on at Lynton offering that sort of opening? And even if it did, how did they come to hear about it? There’s your angle of attack for you, Gently. If you can find the racket I think you’ll find your man.’

Gently grunted as he shuffled the photographs together. There was nobody like the A.C. for making the obvious sound inspiring.

At the same time he had been overlong in town, and a trip to the country was something he had been wishing himself.

‘I’ll have Dutt with me, will I?’

‘Certainly, Gently. I know you make a good team.’

‘He’s working with Jessop just now.’

‘I’ll have him taken off directly.’

Gently went back to his office feeling that things might be worse in this second-best of all possible worlds.

It was teatime at Lynton when the slow, stopping train from Liverpool Street eventually pulled in at the station. Over a cup of what the British Railways facetiously termed coffee Gently examined the evening paper and grunted his satisfaction. There was yet no mention of the Yard having been called in.

‘We’ll check in the cases and stroll across to look at the mill… it may give us some ideas to talk over with the locals.’

‘Are we going to have a meal, sir, before we report?’

‘I think so, Dutt. Not knowing their canteen.’

‘I missed me lunch, sir, that’s why I mention it… got shoved on this job in such a blinking hurry.’

Outside the station a grey road led them to the narrow streets of the town centre. At this hour they were thronged with workers returning from the big chemical works and other establishments on the town outskirts. Some afoot, many on cycles, they created an unwonted appearance of populousness, and the shops were busy with people making last-moment purchases.

A small town… what had three petty criminals found to do here which had ended in the death of one of them?

On a wide square a few brightly awninged stalls were selling off vegetables cheaply. In the distance the quarter chimed from the twin flint-faced towers of St Margaret’s Church.

As they passed the Abbey Gardens they noticed a group of youths in drainpipe trousers lounging about the gates, opposite to them a few expensive cars parked in front of an old coaching inn called The Roebuck.

A bit of shop-breaking or rowdyism, that was the style of Lynton. If you got a murder here it would be an amateur job, somebody batting their wife and sticking their head in the gas oven…

‘This is Fenway Road, sir.’

And over there would be the mill, an untidy yet somehow attractive jumble of buildings in a mixture of timber, brick and slate.

Gently came to a stop while he let the impression of it sink into his mind. It gave one the idea of irrational complexity, as though a simple idea had been carelessly embroidered upon.

At the front was the bakehouse and shop, a stark rectangular group in pinkish-yellow brick, three storeys high with the baker living over the shop. At the back it dropped a storey and became stores, outhouse, anything.

Behind this and nearly touching it rose the main block of the mill. It was quite a skyscraper, seven storeys at least. The brick here was dark red beneath blue-black tiles. The numerous square windows looked dusty and obscured, with sacks stuffed into frames which had lost their glass.

Much lower, but adjoining it, came a tiled and weatherboarded structure on a brick lower storey, and then a similar but higher erection with a shallow gable and an outside hoist.

A tall brick chimney sprouted from somewhere in the middle, a small office by the gate had low windows directly on to the road.

‘A useful place to hide a body, sir!’

Dutt was also appraising it with a professional eye.

‘I’ll bet they don’t use half of it… then look at all those outbuildings and things.’

‘There’s a yard or something at the back there, Dutt. You can see the tops of some trees over the roofs of those old cottages.’

‘Our geezer was unlucky, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes… it might have been weeks before the corpse turned up.’

They moved along as far as the cafe, the sight of which provoked less professional thoughts in the mind of the hungry Dutt.

Some last few customers were being served in the shop by a talkative, fair-haired woman. In the office a middle-aged man with dark, bushy locks sat staring at some papers on his desk. As they watched a younger woman came through to him and her sudden appearance made him start perceptibly.

‘Would that bloke be the miller?’ muttered Dutt.

‘It seems a fair bet.’

‘Looks as though he’s got something on his mind.’

‘So would you have if you were on the wrong end of a homicide investigation…’

Gently sighed to himself and felt aimlessly about in the pockets of his raincoat. There was nothing suggestive here at all, nothing in the town, nothing in the mill.

Almost, he began to think, the whole circumstance was accidental… Steinie Taylor had got bumped off in some more promising venue, and his body was dumped at Lynton the more thoroughly to confuse the issue.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s try this cafe before it closes.’

But Dutt was already turning the handle of the door.

Lynton Borough Police H.Q. had been burned down by incendiary bombs during the war and had since arisen, a tribute to contemporary style, from its literal ashes.

It stood facing the market square where it created no disharmony. The big, frameless windows, pastel brick, and supporting columns of varnished wood blended naturally with the Georgian setting, proving, if it were necessary, that good taste never quarrels with itself.

The super’s office was in keeping with the architectural promise. It was lofty and light and discreetly furnished with chairs, desk, and filing cabinet in two-toned wood, while the carpet, by police-station standards, was unashamedly vivacious.

It had the smell of somewhere new: it smelled of linseed and dyed fabrics and fresh cement.

‘Well, gentlemen, you know the outline of the case.’

Superintendent Press was sitting uneasily behind his desk, his hands moving restively as he talked to the Central Office men.

‘This fellow Taylor and his associates are nothing to do with Lynton. I don’t mind telling you that in our view the culprit will be found elsewhere.’