Alan Hunter: Gently through the Mill

None of them could be truthfully described as suspects, and all of them had reasonable alibis.

‘Any bad hats amongst them?’

It seemed that there were not. Blacker, perhaps, had a taste for low company, but it had never run him into any cognizable trouble.

‘Fuller for instance… has he got any money troubles?’

Another blank there — the miller was mildly prosperous.

The super was listening to it all with an expression of benignity. His man had done a good job and the rider was self-evident.

‘I think you’ll have to admit, Inspector, that Taylor’s associates are your men. There’s nobody here who even knew the fellow, let alone had a motive.’

Yes, it was getting plain enough. The more you listened, the more you probed, the less probable did it seem that Lynton had any more than a proprietary interest in the crime which had been fathered on it.

On the roof where they had retired the pigeons cooed their complacent innocence.

‘Fuller and Blythely were the only ones with keys?’

‘Yes, but several ground-floor windows are broken.’

‘You checked them, of course?’

‘I was unable to come to any definite conclusion.’

‘Who knew that the hopper of sour flour might go undisturbed for a week or two?’

‘Almost everyone… it was an odd job which would get done only when the routine work was held up.’

Back and forward went the shuttlecock, with Griffin never at a loss for his reply. He had thought of it all and checked it all; one could picture him going his rounds, quiet, alert and ruthlessly pertinacious. He had wanted the facts and he had got them; where Griffin had been, Scotland Yard must follow suit.

‘And there’s no trace of any of these three having stayed in the town?’

As the conference progressed Gently was hunching ever deeper into his comfortable chair.

‘We’ve talked to all the lodging-houses and cheap hotels. A man disappeared on that date from one address, but we managed to trace him and he was only bilking his landlady.’

‘What about the other hotels?’

‘Would these men be likely to stay in them?’

‘Not in the usual way, but it’s just possible that they were in the money.’

Griffin hesitated and for once looked put out. But he quickly recovered his stride.

‘We are always informed, of course, if anything irregular has occurred. Nobody could disappear from a hotel in the town without us hearing about it.’

‘His pals might have paid his bill.’

Griffin looked as though he thought it were unlikely. Gently thought so too, but he lingered over the point. It was the only time he had caught the efficient inspector napping…

Outside the shadows were lengthening in the square. A few knots of people had emerged from the Corn Exchange, where a concert was in progress. They were spending the interval talking and smoking cigarettes.

‘Well, I suppose that covers the case in outline.’

Relief showed in Griffin’s face, and the super could not repress an audible sigh.

‘If you’ll let me have the reports I’ll go through them this evening. Tomorrow, perhaps, we can do a little checking.’

They rose and shook hands, the super now cordial in his expressions of goodwill and offers of cooperation. A car would be at their disposal, an office was set aside for them. The super personally had booked them rooms at the St George Hotel, which they could see across the square.

Gently thanked him and left clutching Griffin’s well-stuffed file. Dutt tagged along behind him, a gloomy expression on his cockney features.

‘They certainly pick them for us, don’t they, sir?’

Gently grunted and tapped out his pipe on his heel.

‘Everythink cut and dried — except they haven’t got the leading suspects. So they calls us in to produce them out of a flipping hat.’

Gently pocketed his pipe and paused in the cobbled centre of the square. Such a quiet, quiet town! The bells of St Margaret’s sounded like a complacent benediction, the pigeons had settled finally to roost on the tower of a little church.

It might have been an artist’s picture of provincial peace and lawfulness.

‘We’ll check the hotels though… you can do it tomorrow. There’s an outside chance of a lead on Ames and Roscoe.’

‘Yessir. But if I don’t find nothink?’

Gently shrugged. ‘You know as well as I do. We’re here to scrape the barrel. After that it’s just a question of waiting for those two to turn up… it’s difficult to hide for ever in a country as small as this.’

The St George Hotel was one of those modest paragons of innkeeping virtue which, where they occur, are usually played down and kept quiet about; it was unmistakably a good thing.

Another example of the coaching inn, it had an unimpressive plastered front no larger than the average public house. But when you went through into the courtyard you saw the extent of the four sides, and heard without surprise that there were forty rooms available.

Gently lingered at the desk as he and Dutt booked in.

‘Did you have any guests who left hurriedly on Good Friday… they would probably have been here a fortnight or so?’

The receptionist, a dark, strong-faced woman, looked thoughtful and then shook her head.

‘As you see from the book, sir, we had nobody leave over the weekend.’

‘What about these people?’

He showed her the photographs.

‘I can’t be certain, but I don’t think we’ve ever had them here.’

They had roast pork for supper and after it a liqueur brandy with a cigar. Gently leafed through Griffin’s file while they sat in the lounge. It gave chapter and verse for everything the inspector had told him, but added nothing which struck one as being the least bit suggestive.

‘All well — we’ll sleep on it!’

That was often a good recipe. One’s mind sometimes sorted things out during the dark hours.

They retired to spacious rooms with enormous sash windows, and beds so large that you hardly knew where to start on them. And after London, the quietness seemed almost uncanny.

The morning showed grey with a chilling east wind. Gently had ordered three papers and he had got a press notice in each of them. At breakfast he was warned that there were reporters waiting in the hall, and he put on his most wooden expression when he went down with Dutt.

‘Are you expecting to make quick progress?’

‘I can’t say at this stage.’

‘Do you think Ames and Roscoe are in Lynton?’

‘We have no indication.’

‘Taylor double-crossed them, did he?’

‘On the facts the theory is feasible.’

They took some photographs which he knew would portray him villainously, and hastened away to catch the lunchtime editions.

‘Phew!’ Dutt scratched his head and made an expression of comical disgust. ‘They aren’t half keen on this one, sir — we’re going to be in the flipping headlines.’

He despatched Dutt to Headquarters to get a list of the hotels and himself set off in the direction of the mill. It was Wednesday, one of the two market days, which brought an influx of country people. There were more stalls in the square than had been there on the previous evening.

In the Abbey Gardens the east wind was chopping off the cherry blossom, scattering it in drifts about the gravel walks. The dull sky made the town seem frigid and unfriendly. People went about with faces which were glum and set.

An exception was the mill itself, which somehow exerted an air of benevolence. It may have been the jolly thumping of the naphtha engine or the sweet, warm smell of grain; and then there were whiffs of new bread from the bakehouse, and the general disreputable appearance of the whole.