Alan Hunter - Landed Gently

‘Yes — he was.’ Mrs Page was staring at Gently with something like fear in her large eyes.

‘Mmn… and after that… when you were leaving, and the deceased accompanied you to the door?’

The eyes jumped open wide. ‘My cousin didn’t tell you that! I didn’t — I-’ She broke off, turning imploringly to Sir Daynes. ‘He didn’t accompany me to the door — I left him talking to my cousin. Ask him, Sir Daynes, he’ll tell you that it’s true!’

Nobody in the room could have mistaken the baronet’s slightly delayed reaction. He weighed in quickly, but not quite quickly enough.

‘’Course it’s true, m’dear — suggestion’s downright preposterous!’

‘You’ve only to ask my cousin-’

‘Not necessary, m’dear. Take your word any day.’

‘The inspector is entirely mistaken.’

‘The inspector,’ said Sir Daynes feelingly, ‘has been a mistake all along — hrmp, hrmp! I mean, we’re all human, m’dear, always have to allow a margin for error!’

Mrs Page left the room hastily, and the baronet glared warningly, first at Dyson and then at Gently. By the latter he was met with a far-away smile, and the Central Office man’s lips formed a word which only Sir Daynes could hear: ‘Touche!’

‘What are we waiting for?’ bawled Sir Daynes. ‘Fetch in that feller Johnson, and let’s see if we can’t get a grip on this business!’

The lights had been on all the afternoon; the atmosphere, grown mild and expansive, was pleasantly tinctured with the smoke of cigars. Before they had drawn the curtains patterns had appeared on the single panes, and the brightness of the fire corroborated this wintry phenomenon.

‘Damned pond’ll get frozen,’ muttered Sir Daynes to Gently, forgetting his antagonism as he remembered their common addiction. ‘Don’t suppose you skate, do you? I can fix you up with a pair. Gwen likes to have her twiddle on the ice, but I’m not much of a skating man myself.’

‘We can fish through a hole, perhaps…’

‘Ha, ha, not on this pond, m’boy. When the ice gets set it’s sacred to Gwen. Woman would never forgive me if I started knocking holes in it.’

‘You can fish more often than you can skate, I suppose.’

‘That’s the argument I’ve had used against me for the past thirty years.’

‘There’s more frost on the way, sir,’ put in Dyson through his teeth. ‘I heard the one o’clock news, sir. There’s a cold airstream moving in from Siberia.’

‘Blasted Russians again… stoke up that fire! D’you reckon the Cold War’s a plot to make us use up our coal reserves?’

The fire was built up to its teeth by the time Johnson arrived. The Welshman gave it an appreciative glance, as though the rigours of a trip through the state apartments had immediately preceded his entry. He was a man of medium height, and his build was that of a boxer. He had broad, slightly rounded shoulders tapering quickly to narrow hips, his arms were long in proportion to his height, and his hands were bony and hard-looking. His head, of which the skull belonged to the long, narrow variety, sat closely on his shoulders; his hair was dark, his eyes darker, and there was a livid blue tattoo-mark on his weathered-looking forehead.

‘Hugh Llewellyn Johnson, thirty-eight, and my family lives at Merthyr.’

‘You are a tapestry-weaver, Mr Johnson?’

‘Aye, that I am, though I was ten years in the mines.’

‘That’s where you got that birthmark, eh?’ interpolated Sir Daynes, with suspicious casualness.

‘Oh yes, I did — you can always tell a miner. I got that one in Gwrw Pit in 1940.’

‘Hit on the head, eh?’

‘Man, I was bloody well buried — did you never hear of the Gwrw? Two days we were down there, and never heard a sound. The dead men were lying with us. There’s some who lies there yet.’

‘Hmn. Nasty experience, what?’

‘It’s one I won’t forget.’

‘Sort of thing to give you dreams, and that?’

‘Sometimes I dream I’m down there still, and wake up tearing the clothes off my limbs.’

Sir Daynes rubbed his hands with a sort of grisly satisfaction, and leaned back comfortably in his chair.

‘Suppose you never get blackouts — that sort of thing?’

The ex-miner shook his head.

‘Ah well… get on with your statement, man. Tell the inspector what you know about the “deceased”.’

Johnson’s statement followed the now-familiar pattern in its early stages. He had been working at his loom when Earle had been brought into the workshop for the first time. Johnson, who was an artist as well as a weaver, was at work on a tapestry from his own cartoon picturing the Glaslyn and Yr Wyddfa, and Earle, with his customary tactlessness, had taken it upon himself to assure Johnson that the colour-values were incorrect. Johnson had thereupon catechized Earle on his knowledge of colour-values, more especially as applied to tapestry and the uncertain art of dyeing. Earle had been obliged to admit his profound ignorance, at least touching the two latter.

‘Took him down a peg, did you?’ enquired the subtle Sir Daynes.

‘Oh yes, a good peg or two. He knew nothing whateffer of dyeing and sunlight tests.’

‘Sent him off with a flea in his ear, eh?’

‘Well, no, not exactly, he wasn’t a man you could handle like that. But I read him a good sermon, that I’ll warrant you. By the time I had done he knew a good deal more about tapestry than when I had started.’

Nevertheless, Earle had got off on the wrong foot with Johnson. It was easy to see that the Welshman found it difficult to forgive the reckless strictures on his expert art. When he found himself being neglected by Brass, till then his constant admirer and teacher, the grudge, already in being, was fanned into active dislike.

‘I don’t mind admitting I could neffer get on with the man. Americans within reason, I say, but this one was a plain nuisance about the place. He was always upsetting the womenfolk, man; there wasn’t half of the work done when he was around. And he had no respect for his betters at all. You would think he was a Royal Tudor at least, the way he carried on.’

‘Not so big, either, but you could have put him down, eh?’

‘Do you doubt it, man, when I have been in the ring with Tommy Farr himself, down there in Tonypandy?’

‘Boxing man, are you, Johnson?’

‘Good gracious yes — I have my cups to prove it. Five years I was the Area Middleweight Champion, and not far past it now. I have fought the best, I tell you. There are many good men with the mark of Hugh Johnson’s glove on their jaw.’

‘Wonder you didn’t clip this Yank one.’

‘I have wondered myself too, before today. But you could never get him fighting, man, that was the whole trouble. You could say what you liked to him, it would never get him mad. Some men are made that way. They haven’t got the wickedness to play on. I tell you, it would have been like meat and drink to me sometimes to see that young man with my blood in his eye!’

Sir Daynes angled a bit further, but there were no fish to be caught, so he handed the questioning back to Dyson.

Johnson, at all events, hadn’t received the news of Earle’s Christmas visit with enthusiasm. Had he known in time, he would have arranged to spend his Christmas in his home town, along with a married sister. But the uncertainty had prevented that. Christmas leave had been cancelled at Sculton, and was only restored at the last moment. Sullenly, the Welshman had brooded over the prospect of what he considered to be a spoiled Christmas.

‘You will say I was no true Christian to take against the man that way, and after what has happened, now, I may be sorry that I did. But God help us, man, there are some people who just get in our bowels and blood — Christian it may not be, but by St David, it is human!’