Alan Hunter - Landed Gently

‘Of course you damned well couldn’t! What would you expect to find after a feller falls downstairs?’ Sir Daynes rubbed his hands with the air of one who was restoring rationality where madness had reigned. ‘Let’s be cool about this, Henry. We’d all been making merry last night. If that young feller wasn’t used to hard liquor, it’s ten to one he finished up a bit uncertain on his pins. Do you remember him drinking after we’d gone?’

‘Yes,’ assented Somerhayes, after a pause.

‘Hah! And strong stuff at that?’

‘The last drink we had was an 1905 cognac.’

‘There you are — what more do you want? A vintage cognac, on top of all the other stuff we’d been putting away. The wonder is you didn’t have to carry him to bed, not that he tripped over his feet at the top of the stairs. No, no, Somerhayes, I appreciate your anxiety about this. You’ve tackled the business like a good feller and a conscientious magistrate. But I assure you you’re making too much of it. The shock of the thing has unsettled you, man. Now I’ll just get an ambulance along and give the coroner a tinkle, and we’ll try to get this affair out of our minds…’

Sir Daynes came to a halt, his eye falling on Gently. The forgotten Central Office man had apparently been doing some exploring, for he was now in the act of descending the great marble stairway. He looked woodenly at the baronet and then at Somerhayes, and Sir Daynes, who knew his Gently, felt a sudden uneasiness creep over him.

‘This hall… is it cleaned out often?’

For some reason, a pin might have been heard to drop.

‘Not at this time of the year.’ Somerhayes’s voice sounded flatter than ever. ‘In summer when the visitors come it is cleaned several times a week, but now, perhaps not more than once a fortnight.’

‘Would it have been last cleaned recently?’

‘Yes, I think two days ago, in preparation for Christmas.’

Gently nodded his mandarin nod. He seemed quite unaware of the pregnant silence.

‘So that if, out of six objects in the hall, five had a thin layer of dust and one had not, you would say that that one had been wiped at some time less than two days ago?’

Somerhayes’s head slowly sank in acknowledgement.

‘Damn it, man, what is all this?’ erupted Sir Daynes fiercely. ‘What the devil six objects are you talking about?’

Gently pointed up the stairway. Seven pairs of eyes followed his outstretched finger. On two oval panels, hung on each side of the marble doorway, were displayed six antique japanned-and-gilt truncheons.

‘It’s the lowest one on the left-hand side… Do you think we might have it sent to the lab?’

‘Blast you, Gently!’ roared Sir Daynes. ‘I thought I asked you to keep out of this business?’

Gently hunched his shoulders and looked down at the sprawling figure at the foot of the stairs.

‘There was somebody else who asked me to keep in,’ he replied expressionlessly.

Dr Shiel estimated the time of death at between one and three a.m. The ambulance had arrived and departed; Earle’s belongings had been collected and examined by curious policemen. The best part of them were comprised by a pile of variously shaped packages wrapped in silver foil and tied up with gold tinsel… Each one was labelled, and it was a nice legal point whether the labels did or did not have the force of a last will and testament. Sir Daynes, with the air of one gripping a nettle, had phoned Earle’s unit at Sculton and conservatively reported the details of the lieutenant’s demise.

‘That’ll mean trouble before we’re very much older,’ he forecast gloomily as he pressed down the receiver.

They had returned to the Manor for lunch, which was, of course, dinner; but the flavour had gone out of the festivities for that day. Sir Daynes was like a bear with a sore head. Even now he was unwilling to relinquish the comfortable theory of accidental death — surely that was a bad enough condiment for the turkey, without invoking the ultimate in misfortunes.

‘I suppose that damned truncheon of yours clinches the matter,’ he grumbled over his pudding. ‘No other reason why it should be wiped… People don’t go around wiping odd truncheons.’

‘We’ll know when we get the lab report.’ Gently was no more in love with life than his host.

‘Could have been something else… some fool using it to poke the fire, or something. Or what about the feller himself? It’s shaped like a baseball bat. Might have taken a swing or two with it, just to see how it was balanced…’

‘Daynes,’ sighed his spouse, ‘you’ll almost certainly get indigestion. Why don’t you let Inspector Dyson get on with it, and stop fretting like a broody hen?’

They were smoking cigars when the lab got through. Sir Daynes was in the hall almost before the phone began ringing.

‘Well — that’s settled that! The lab confirms it was the weapon. Among other things it has his brilliantine on it, and some impacted human skin.’

‘There weren’t any prints?’

‘No — wiped off clean.’

‘Someone didn’t panic after the body went down the stairs.’

‘I think this is horrid,’ exclaimed Lady Broke reprovingly. ‘Daynes, I really will not have you discussing homicide in my lounge.’

‘All right, m’dear!’ Sir Daynes found a smile for her. ‘Come on, Gently, let’s get back. Dyson is waiting the interrogations for us.’

The Place seemed as empty and as frigid as a gigantic sepulchre on that grey afternoon. Except for the constable, reinstalled outside the door, and the servant who led them through the interminable dust-sheeted rooms, they met nobody until they arrived at the little blue drawing room in the north-east wing. Here Inspector Dyson was impatiently warming his posterior at a newly lit fire, and two constables stood gleaning what they could, one on either side of him.

‘Hah!’ said Sir Daynes, by way of inspiring the atmosphere with his presence. The monosyllable had its effect. A reluctant Dyson unbonneted the hearth, which was immediately reinvested by the shameless baronet. The two constables shrank yet further away from the centre of comfort, and their places were taken by Dyson and Gently.

‘Hah!’ repeated Sir Daynes with satisfaction. ‘Don’t know how they got on in the eighteenth century, but this blasted great barn has been an ice-house ever since I can remember. Must have bred ’em tougher in those days, Dyson. Must have had circulations like double-action pumps. No wonder the confounded females wore eighteen petticoats, eh, eh?’

Dyson essayed a polite laugh, and Sir Daynes rubbed his hands genially.

‘Well now, about this business. You’ve had the lab report, have you?’

‘Yes, sir. It came half an hour ago.’

‘What are your ideas, man? I suppose you’ve got some?’

Dyson looked uncomfortable, as though he were a bit low in that department.

‘We’ve been all round the outside of the house, sir, just in case there’d been a break-in. And Lord Somerhayes and some of his staff checked through the inside to see if anything was disturbed or missing.’

‘Did y’get any results?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Pity, Dyson.’

‘Looks like an inside job, sir.’

‘You don’t have to blasted well rub it in, Dyson.’

Sir Daynes knitted his brows, which were splendidly adapted to the purpose, and swayed forward slightly to adjust matters in his rear.

‘And you’ve got some ideas?’

‘Er… nothing concrete, sir.’

‘You mean you haven’t got any?’

‘At this stage, sir, I thought it best to keep an open mind.’

Sir Daynes grunted meaningfully, but refrained from a sarcasm that had obviously occurred to him. ‘Well, let’s get on with it,’ he said. ‘Ask Lord Somerhayes to come in.’