Alan Hunter - Gently through the Mill

‘Of course, neither of you keeps a horse…?’

‘Not since Blythely bought a van — and that was before the war.’

With a sort of violence Fuller crossed to the stable and threw open the doors. Inside was a collection of rubbish which plainly precluded recent equine occupation. The horse-collars and harness hanging from pegs were gaping and perished with age.

‘No horses — you see?’

Gently nodded gravely.

‘I watch them and bet on them, but I was never fool enough to own one… now if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to get on with showing you the mill.’

Gently followed him back into the passage and through the door beneath the bridge. Inside the smell of grain and flour was so strong as to be almost overpowering.

‘It’s just shafting down here — watch yourself as you go under! On the next floor are the rollers, then the purifiers. The bolters are right at the top.’

All the building was a-shudder with the thud of the engine. Hidden machinery murmured and rumbled about them. On a wide wooden floor, polished smooth by the passage of grain, lay a spreading pile of reddish wheat; two men with wooden shovels were feeding it into a shute.

‘This stuff’s Canadian.’

Fuller was having to raise his voice.

‘We mix it with the English to get a proper blend. People talk about the home-grown product, but they’d soon complain if they got it unblended.’

They kept going up by means of heavy wooden steps. It was not until the third floor that they came to the open mouths of the flour-hoppers. Four in line, protected by a single wooden rail, they descended like tapering wells to the sacking-room on the first floor.

One of them was full, one of them half-full. For a moment the snowy contents amazed one with their innocence…

‘Drop anything in there and it simply keeps going. It’s not like water. There’s no support at all.’

‘Which one did you find him in?’

‘That one at the end. Some diseased grain had gone through, and it turned the whole hopper foisty — we were busy at the time, so I left it just then.’

‘Wouldn’t you say the person who dropped him in there had some idea about mills?’

Fuller flushed as he said: ‘He knew where to find the hoppers, didn’t he?’

They went down past the rolling machinery to the sacking-room with its dust-hazy atmosphere. Here the mouths of the hoppers, each provided with a damper, were extended by sleeves of canvas to a convenient level. Four men were filling sacks from the two charged hoppers. A fifth, a tallish, heavily boned fellow, was leaning against an upright and smoking a cigarette.

‘This is Blacker, my foreman.’

Fuller scowled at the cigarette.

‘This is Chief Inspector Gently of the Yard, Blacker. He’s in charge of the case now, so you’ll no doubt be seeing more of him.’

Blacker eased himself off the upright and slowly stubbed out his cigarette. He had a long, humourless face with green-grey eyes, a wide, weak mouth and stick-out ears. When he spoke his voice sounded harsh and clumsy.

‘I thought they’d finished with us…’

‘Well, they haven’t, it seems.’

‘Shouldn’t think there’s much left here to find out.’

‘Let’s hope there isn’t. We’ve had enough trouble.’

What was it between them, the master and his foreman? Gently sensed it directly, that slight, fraying edginess.

Blacker stared at him insolently as though he were some odd exhibit. The fellow had an expression of cunning mixed with derision in his eyes. He kept his cigarette in his hand, ready to light it when their backs were turned.

‘I want the whole of this lot sacked up before lunch.’

‘Daresay you’ll get it if we aren’t held up.’

‘After lunch you can start putting the oats through.’

‘So you told me when I came in.’

Fuller turned on his heel and went down the steps into the yard. The pigeons, scattered for a moment, settled again with a soft music of wings.

At the bakehouse door a blond-haired youngster in a white apron was filling a bucket from a tap. He looked up curiously as the miller went by with Gently.

‘Your foreman been with you long?’

‘Yes… no, not as a foreman, that is.’

‘You mean you’ve just made him up?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Though it was probably a mistake.’

‘When would he have been appointed, Mr Fuller?’

The miller made a gesture of exasperation. ‘Does it really matter? I gave him the job on Good Friday. Some time or other I’d like to forget that day!’

Gently nodded his mandarin nod and fumbled for his pipe. Fuller was standing by grimly with his hand on the door to the office.

‘One point more… touching those hoppers. Did any of the others have flour in them on Thursday night?’

‘Number one at this end had flour in.’

‘That’s the one nearest the steps?’

‘Yes. It was three-quarters full.’

‘Thank you for being so helpful, Mr Fuller.’

The miller banged into his office, letting the door slam behind him. The pigeons made to rise again but then thought better of it. Each one, nevertheless, kept a bright eye fixed on Gently.

From somewhere, everywhere it seemed, came the chirrup of a cricket. It was as though the moist, savoury heat were making itself audible. At the same time one doubted if one was really hearing it at all: the note was so high-pitched that a subtler sense seemed called for.

There was only one window to the bakehouse, and that was by the door. For the rest, it was lit by a row of four 150-watt bulbs under plain conical shades.

All the dough was mixed by hand. There were two kneading-troughs of scoured wood in the centre of the room.

Blythely, a spare, balding man with a small pale moustache, was beating up a mixture in an earthenware bowl; his assistant, the blond-haired youth, was extracting flat tins of teacakes from one of the deep wall-ovens.

Both of their faces looked colourless and shone with sweat. A lock of the youngster’s hair hung damp and limp over his forehead.

But most of all it was the heat that one noticed.

You walked into it as into a heavy liquid, surprised by it and temporarily thrown off-balance. For a moment your body stayed quiescent, unable to react. Then it prickled and began to perspire, after which the heat was real and could be accepted.

And the cricket, that was certainly a part of it.

The cricket’s rattle sounded like the taunt of a heat-demon, the more mocking because you were unable to place it.

From everywhere and nowhere it chinked its jeering notes.

Blythely looked up but didn’t cease beating his mixture. Perhaps he had seen Gently with Fuller and had guessed that he was a policeman. The assistant, now alternately sucking and shaking a burned finger, had obviously decided that the intruder was none of his business.

Gently moved deprecatingly down the bakehouse, unfastening his raincoat as he went.

‘This is a hot shop you’ve got in here!’

Blythely sneaked another foxy little glance at him and kept on with his beating. His features were far from being attractive. He had a retrousse nose and a seamed, porous skin; his chin was small, his lips thin and colourless. He had given his age to Griffin as fifty-two, but he might easily have been ten years older.

‘Is it always like this in here?’

‘I should think so — in a bakehouse.’

‘Doesn’t it get you down sometimes?’

‘I’m a baker, not a snowman.’

His voice was high-pitched with a note of querulousness. He spoke into his mixing-bowl, as though he were talking to himself.

‘Anyway, you don’t notice an east wind in here!’ Blythely said nothing.