Alan Hunter: Landed Gently

Christmas… that was the subject! On the back page of The Times was a large photograph of King’s Cross looking like an illimitable bargain-basement at a peak period. The local paper, not to be outdone, had contrived a panoramic shot of Norchester Thorne Station in a similar state of chaos. QUEUES AT ALL THE LONDON TERMINI — Biggest Exodus Ever; LARGEST TEMPORARY POST OFFICE STAFF; STILL SOME TURKEYS LEFT — Consignment from Eire; 100-FOOT XMAS TREE; BRITISH RAILWAYS RUN 200 EXTRA TRAINS; T ROOP-SHIP ARRIVES FROM MIDDLE EAST… Gently surveyed it all with a benevolent smile. Up here, it was like a well-calculated performance laid on for his especial benefit. No longer was he a part of it. No longer was it an anxious time of probable trial and tribulation. Sipping his tea, he could savour the whole business as an idle spectator, with undercurrent thoughts of a day to be spent pike-fishing…

‘It’s all ready for you, sir.’

‘Thank you… what’s your name?’

‘Gertrude, sir. Gertrude Winfarthing.’

‘That’s a nice name, Gertrude. Well, thanks again!’

She bobbed out, still smiling, and Gently, setting the tray on a bedside table, lowered his feet on to the gratifying pile of a Wilton carpet. He paused there a moment, letting his eye run round the gracious room. By and large, this was how things ought to be. A wide, lofty, well-lighted chamber, with a moulded drop-ceiling, panelled walls, a great sunken sash window and white enamelled woodwork. The carpet went flush to the walls; the velvet curtains hung from ceiling to floor. The bed, disdaining the beggarly excuse of functionalism, spread extravagant panels of natural oak at head and foot, and the matching wardrobe standing near it seemed quietly to rejoice in its spreading amplitude. What was wrong with idle riches? There were times when one deserved them. Man, as the ancient writer had shrewdly noticed, could not live by bread alone.

Disdaining his slippers, Gently plodded across to the bathroom and was soon up to his chin in delicately scented water.

He had seen Sir Daynes the night before, but Lady Broke had already retired, and he met her now at breakfast for the first time. She was a tallish, large-framed woman of something over fifty, with greying hair, quick, green-brown eyes and a Roman nose, which gave her a quite unmerited appearance of severity. One expected to hear her bark in the manner of her formidable husband, but she did not, she had a soft, confiding voice; one saw very quickly that a great deal of sensitivity lay behind the austere countenance.

‘Good morning, Inspector. I hope you’ve forgiven me for not being up to welcome you last night.’

She smiled at him as she gave him her hand.

‘I’d been very busy, you know — you’d be surprised at the preparation that goes on here! Even now the children have grown up and left us, there seems as much to do as ever. Were you properly looked after?’

Gently liked her straight away. They were soon chatting together like old friends. Before Sir Daynes put in an appearance she had shown him letters from her son Tony, a young officer in the Malaya Police, and her daughter Elizabeth, who had married a Canadian and was now living in Toronto.

‘There’ll be cables from them too, either today or tomorrow. It’s so strange, Inspector, to think that both my youngsters should be at the ends of the earth, while I go on here just the same, getting ready for another Christmas. This is the first time we’ve been quite on our own, you know. I was so glad when Sir Daynes thought of asking you down.’

‘I am honoured to be invited, ma’am.’

‘Oh, that was inevitable. My husband has got a “thing” about you, Inspector. But be frank — weren’t you a little annoyed by his high-handed way of getting you down here, right on top of Christmas? Personally I should have been furious if he’d done something like that to me.’

Gently grinned amiably. ‘Of course, knowing Sir Daynes-’

‘Enough said, Inspector. My husband has been a chief constable for too long, isn’t that what you’d say? But do sit down and begin your breakfast. It’s quite useless waiting for Daynes.’

Sir Daynes joined them at the marmalade stage, looking very crisp and new-minted. To Gently, he had always been the type par excellence of a county chief constable. Going six feet, he was still, at sixty, a strong, commanding figure without one of his grey hairs missing. His face was powerful, a large, straight nose, heavy grey brows, cropped moustache and distinguished lines about the eyes and mouth. There was a great deal of width across the cheekbones and jaw. The large head looked patriarchal and ripe with sapience. Though case-hardened supers had been known to wince when Sir Daynes was in full cry, Gently had several times had occasion to notice the absence of bite behind the baronet’s bark.

‘Morning, Gwen, morning, Gently.’

Sir Daynes was carrying a deckle-edged sheet of writing paper, over which he was frowning absentmindedly.

‘Hmn.’ He sat down, still staring at it. ‘Henry Somerhayes. Wants us to go over there.’

‘Henry?’ queried Lady Broke, pouring coffee into his cup.

‘Hmn. Informal party. Tonight at seven thirty. Why couldn’t the blasted feller have thought about it earlier?’

He dropped sugar into his coffee and shot a sharp look at Gently. ‘You wouldn’t be the reason, I suppose? He’s made a special point of mentioning you.’

Gently began to shake his head, but then he remembered Lieutenant Earle.

‘I travelled down with a guest of Lord Somerhayes… my name may have been mentioned to him.’

‘Ah, that explains it. You’re a blasted lion in these parts, man. Well, what do you say to a Christmas Eve with his lordship?’

Gently acquiesced, and Sir Daynes drank his coffee. From his attitude it seemed that he did not approve too highly of his neighbour.

‘Henry Somerhayes is a curious person,’ ventured Lady Broke. ‘We think it is a great pity he didn’t marry, inspector. He’s very much alone in the world.’

‘Curious!’ snorted Sir Daynes. ‘Damned unhealthy, I’d call him. But there you are, a man’s got a right to do what he thinks fit with himself.’

‘Oh come now,’ returned his wife, ‘you’ll give the inspector a totally wrong impression of him. I’m sure that if Henry could find himself the right woman he’d be quite a different sort of person. When you’ve lost all your family, as he has, it makes you broody and apt to take things to heart. And really you’ve nothing against him, Daynes, except his retreat from politics.’

‘It’s enough,’ said Sir Daynes, ‘that and the crowd he’s got up at the Place these days. But I won’t say any more. Gently can take him as he finds him. Let’s talk about the fishing, and forget Henry until this evening.’

They talked about the fishing. Sir Daynes was a live-bait practitioner, and Gently a spoon-man, and between them they managed to consign Lord Somerhayes to oblivion inside five minutes. An hour later, booted and armed, they set off through the December gloom for Merely Pond, where Gently had the good fortune to prove the efficacy of the spoon up to the hilt.

‘Damned detectives ought to make good fishermen!’ observed Sir Daynes enviously as Gently gaffed his sixth fish. ‘But I tell you, man, you’ve struck a lucky day. Blasted pike aren’t looking at live-bait, for some reason. Another day they wouldn’t look at a damned spoon.’

Gently smiled agreeably as he inserted the disgorger.

The frost was setting in sharp as they returned to the Manor. Redbrick Georgian, it glowed warmly in its setting of tall beeches, smoke rising straight from its twisted stacks, lights shining comfortably in the high windows.

‘Wish we hadn’t got to shift…’