Alan Hunter: Landed Gently

‘I have served art!’ cried Somerhayes. ‘Give me that at least — creation absolves the greatest of crimes!’

‘You serve yourself,’ retorted Gently. ‘You have never served anything else. And as for crime, it has no absolution but punishment.’

‘Personally,’ said a third voice behind them, ‘I prefer his lordship’s version, Inspector!’ And Leslie Brass stepped suddenly out of the unlit saloon.

‘Keep your voices down, children… I’m getting to be somewhat de trop around here.’

Brass had a gun in his hand, a small automatic that Gently recognized as a. 22 Unique of French manufacture.

‘I don’t want to raise my bag unnecessarily, but you see how I’m placed, my chickens. As I take it, his lordship is just about to rat on me — you used the right weapon, Inspector. Flattery would have got you nowhere!’

Gently shrugged expressionlessly. ‘I was wondering when you’d come out…’

‘Of course you were, my son.’ Brass waved the gun deprecatingly. ‘It’s your business to notice things, isn’t it? If X was listening in on two consecutive occasions, the odds are pretty bright that he would be there the third time. And here he is, toying with his lordship’s gun… What does that suggest to the trained police mind?’

‘You’d never get away with it.’

‘I might, you know, all things considered.’

‘At the moment, Brass, you could get off with manslaughter… It’ll be a different tale if you fool around with that thing.’

‘You visualize the whole plot I take it, my maestro?’

‘You’re thinking you could shoot the pair of us and leave the gun in his lordship’s hand.’

‘Distinctly workable, y’know.’

‘The police aren’t fools.’

‘But they’re thinking along certain lines, Inspector. They would rush to jump at the wrong conclusion. What could be more natural than for his lordship, being taxed, to draw his gun and shoot you — and then to put an end to things? There’s only my conscience really to worry about… and it’s a pretty elastic article. The first job is the worst, sonny. After that it gets to be routine.’

Gently grunted and turned to Somerhayes. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘You see what you’re protecting? This is crime, not creation. Art doesn’t kill, but greed does.’

Brass gave his cynical laugh. ‘Too true, Professor, too true. I thought you might have been harbouring the idea that I killed Earle for Janice… I did, of course, but only in an incidental way. It’s filthy lucre that makes the world go round.’

‘Don’t say that!’ gasped Somerhayes, still supporting himself by the balustrade. ‘I won’t hear it from you — it’s nothing but your way of talking.’

‘And as I talk I am — just get that into your befuddled brain!’

‘The spirit is there… you cannot blaspheme the spirit!’

‘The spirit my backside — I killed him for the cash!’

Gently never had a chance to stop it. Without warning Somerhayes came flying off the balustrade like a galvanized frog. The inevitable had to happen. He went spinning sideways to the crash and blaze of the gun. At the same second Gently hurled himself on the artist and sent the gun flying over the rail…

‘Traitor!’ cried Somerhayes, clutching his bloody shoulder on the floor. ‘You should have killed me — why didn’t you kill me?’

‘I would have done, you stupid bastard!’ shouted Brass, dodging Gently. ‘Take it as an omen — your number was on that bullet!’

He dived through the north-west door, slamming it in Gently’s face. When the Central Office man got it open it was to see the door to the staircase slamming a few yards ahead. He burst it open with his shoulder. Brass was tearing up the spiral stairs. A couple of turns behind, Gently panted up after him.

‘Come back!’ he bawled. ‘You’re cornered, Brass. You’ll never get off the roof!’

The artist wasted no breath in reply, but continued his flight down the attic corridors.

Along there it was black as the inside of a hat. Gently could hear his quarry stumbling and bumping up ahead as he plunged after him, similarly handicapped. The door to the hatch slammed, and then the door of the hatch itself. Out in the whining gale that cut over the leads he could just make out Brass sliding and slipping towards the south-east wing. At the angle he must get him — there was no way back from there! But then, at the angle, Brass went over the coping like a monkey, and when he got to it Gently found a fire-ladder leading down to the wing-roof below. He went down the ladder. Brass was already on the far side of the wing. Another ladder took them down to the coach-house roof, and then another one to the garage-yard…

Outdistanced, Gently came to the last ladder just as Brass was reaching the bottom. With a mental prayer he lowered himself over, hung poised, and let himself go… He got Brass all right. He bowled him over like a nine-pin. But unfortunately he got himself as well, and it was some few moments before his wind came back and he was able to renew an intelligent interest in events.

When at last he was able to scramble to his feet, a dazzling beam of light stabbed at him and made him throw up his arm defensively.

‘Waal, waal!’ exclaimed a well-remembered voice. ‘If it isn’t the chief inspector doing gymnastics off the roof! And who is this other athlete, Inspector — would he be somebody who I ought to know?’

The torch beam lowered and reversed. It revealed Colonel Rynacker, USAF. It also revealed a couple of snowdrops supporting a sick-looking Brass, a Brass who had patently had most of the bounce knocked out of him.

‘Guess I brought these boys along to give a hand to your cops… When we ran across this guy he seemed to think we were hostile. But what goes, Chief Inspector? How come the schemozzle?’

Gently grimaced and felt himself over tenderly. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s just my night for these things…’

Brass made his statement, and a very clever one it was, too. Its sheer, reckless audacity compelled admiration for the man. Undeterred by Gently in his window seat, or Somerhayes, pale from the loss of blood and with his arm in a sling, the artist rolled off a story that either one of them could have punctured in a dozen places. And all the while his green eyes twinkled ironically from one to the other…

He was returning to the north-east wing to fetch his lighter, that was the tale. On entering the great hall by the south-west door to the gallery, he had heard the voices of Mrs Page and Earle raised in the saloon. Naturally, he had been unable to avoid overhearing what was being said, and the purport of it had made him hesitate by the door in case Mrs Page needed assistance. In the event, Mrs Page succeeded in breaking away from Earle. With the final injunction to him that he had better leave in the morning, she had hastily departed in the direction of her own apartment. For some moments Earle had remained in the saloon, and Brass was about to pass on under the impression that the American had given up his intentions. Before he could do so, however, Earle rushed out of the saloon in obvious pursuit of Mrs Page, and Brass had siezed his arm and attempted to remonstrate with him. The American had refused to listen. He had grappled with Brass and attempted to throw him down. In the course of the struggle Brass was hurled against the wall under the panel of truncheons, and as Earle turned to continue his pursuit of Mrs Page, Brass had seized one of the truncheons and struck the American on the back of the head.

It went without saying that the blow was not intended to be fatal. Brass’s sole object had been to disable Earle and to prevent him carrying out what appeared to be a criminal purpose. Unfortunately he had struck not wisely but too well, and Earle, after tottering a few steps, had toppled lifelessly down the great stairs. Brass, shocked and alarmed at the result of what he had done, but realizing that it would probably pass as an accidental fall, had wiped and replaced the truncheon and left the affair to develop as it might. He had not been apprehensive when suspicion fell on Johnson, since he felt that the police were proceeding on grounds palpably insufficient (here he was obliged to pause while Sir Daynes baronetized once or twice), but in a recent interview with his lordship and Chief Inspector Gently it had been represented to him that his lordship was now under suspicion; he therefore felt it incumbent on him to confess. He realized that he had done wrongly in attempting concealment. He deeply regretted the trouble and unpleasantness it had caused. If any part of his statement were not quite clear, he would be happy to supply every detail that might assist complete clarification.