Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘No, that’s ridiculous! Linda is a cultivated woman. Hicks is just a — well, a yokel.’

‘Hmn.’

Gently seemed lost for a short spell, as though his mind had wandered elsewhere. He picked up a pencil and doodled vaguely with it on his pad. Then, just as Hansom was beginning to jiffle, he asked:

‘If your father didn’t go away with Miss Brent, where did he go

…?’

‘My father-?’ Pauline Lammas stared uncomprehendingly.

‘Yes… just lately he’d made some mid-week trips somewhere. If they were on business you ought to know about them.’

She shook her head. ‘He didn’t always tell us.’

‘You agree that he made these trips?’

‘Oh yes. Why not?’

‘And Miss Brent did not accompany him?’

‘No. She was at the office as usual.’

‘Did he use his car?’

‘… No. I think he went by train.’

‘And neither you nor the office knew where he went… he was just On Business if anyone inquired?’

‘If you don’t believe me, inspector, you can always check at the office.’

Hansom scribbled a little sketch on his pad, tore it off and pushed it across to Gently. It depicted a cottage with a ‘To Let’ notice, and the ‘To Let’ crossed out. Hansom grinned modestly all over his face. Gently crumpled it up and let it drop in the ashtray.

‘Well, Miss Lammas… that seems to be all we can accomplish for the moment.’

‘Thank you, inspector. I wish I could have been more helpful.’

‘So do I, Miss Lammas,’ returned Gently without expression, ‘but we do our best, don’t we…?’

She flashed him her brightest smile and made an impeccable exit.

‘Har, har,’ said Hansom unhumorously, ‘she was always a one for acting, indeed to goodness!’

Gently got up and went over to the french windows. ‘But it’s the casting that’s the problem, isn’t it…?’

‘What about my little house — that explains a few things.’

‘It might, if it exists.’

‘How do you mean — if it exists! It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Lammas is working on a vanishing act, so he buys himself a hideaway. His little train trips are spent furnishing it and maybe establishing a nice new character for himself.’

‘And that’s where we’ll find the secretary?’

‘You can bet your life on it!’

‘Then why hasn’t she come forward? She must have read the newspapers.’

Hansom waved his hands exasperatedly. ‘Can’t you use some imagination? She’s probably sitting tight with the deeds of the place and maybe the cash too. Handing them over isn’t going to resurrect Lammas — so what would you do, chum?’

Gently nodded a grudging assent. ‘But if he sent her off with the cash, what motive had Hicks to bump him off?’

‘He needn’t have known the cupboard was bare. And I’m still not convinced there wasn’t anything between him and the secretary.’

‘But why did Lammas send for Hicks — if he did? He knew full well that whatever Hicks was party to would go straight back to Mrs Lammas.’

‘If he did — that’s the number one query!’ Hansom brooded brilliantly. ‘If he did, then my guess is he was aiming to lay a false trail of some sort, like getting Hicks to take him some place where the hideaway wasn’t.’

‘Why should he bother?’

‘Well, he seems to have been a pretty crafty planster so far.’

Gently shook his head with slow decision. ‘The bit that doesn’t fit in anywhere is the week he spent on the yacht… it just wasn’t necessary on the facts we’ve dug up. His false trail started at the beginning of that week. What made him hang around the neighbourhood till the end of it?’

‘Christ! Let him be human. He was having a honeymoon.’

‘There were safer places to do that. It was a risk, however little he was known.’

‘Perhaps that’s why he sent for Hicks. Someone recognized him, so he had to cover his tracks again.’

‘No… it doesn’t sit square in the picture. We haven’t got the reason yet.’

Hansom sniffed meanly and tore off a light for his second whiff. ‘Anyway, you won’t mind me following up this hideaway angle just in case I’m being right somewhere?’

Gently grinned and blew out his colleague’s match.

‘It’ll keep you out of mischief, won’t it?’ he replied.

Paul Lammas wasn’t quite so petite as his mother, but otherwise he was very, very like.

Dark, slender, he had the same big brown eyes and fragile features, the same low, clear voice. And he moved the same way, quickly and nervously, though always with grace. The difference about him was difficult to pin down. It was something in his manner rather than his appearance. Mrs Lammas struck one as icy, Paul as though he concealed a secret fire; her emotions were rigidly controlled, his seemed at the point of spilling over. He was wearing a dark-red linen sports shirt with ash-grey jacket and trousers in gaberdine. His rope-and-canvas sandals matched his shirt. He came into the room so quietly that nobody could have sworn to seeing him enter.

‘I am Paul Lammas. My sister informed me that you were ready to question me.’

Gently turned round from the veranda where he had been basking and watching the yachts.

‘That was kind of her. I hadn’t really made up my mind.’

‘If you want Mother I will go and fetch her.’

‘No, don’t bother. I daresay your sister knows best.’

He came back out of the veranda. Paul Lammas stood quite still, watching.

‘Sit down, Mr Lammas, if you please…’

‘Thank you. But I’d rather stand.’

‘We may be some little while, you know…’

‘All the same I’d rather stand, if it isn’t breaking immutable regulations.’

Gently shrugged and seated himself heavily at the table. He seemed in no hurry to begin. He emptied his pipe in the ashtray, filled it slowly and expertly, sucked it once or twice to test the packing and then lit it at some length. Even then he appeared to hesitate before getting down to business.

‘You’re a poet, they tell me…?’ he remarked, patting down the ash on the pipe with a yellowed forefinger.

The young man flushed.

‘I don’t see how that comes into it.’

‘It doesn’t; there’s nothing culpable about it. I’m just one of those people who read poetry from time to time.’

Paul Lammas looked at him as though he thought it unlikely.

‘Of course, you wouldn’t have seen anything of mine. It’s only been published in Panorama and the Eastern Daily Post, and a little book I brought out myself.’

‘Did it sell?’ inquired Gently naively.

‘I suppose you’d say it didn’t — and judge it entirely from that point of view!’

‘Oh, I don’t know… the provinces are hardly the place to peddle poetry.’

‘It’s not a question of whether it sells, anyway. And one doesn’t peddle poetry, as you’re kind enough to put it.’

‘Then how do people like me get to see it?’

‘They don’t — and it doesn’t matter. Creation is the only thing that signifies.’

Gently nodded. ‘I heard it in a play somewhere… but the author wasn’t sad because it pulled in some audience.’

‘That’s the cynical view one would expect!’

‘It struck me that the other view was the cynical one… but we’d be all day arguing about it!’

He felt in his baggy pocket and pulled out a small package, which he laid on the table. Hansom rocked back out of a fit of ennui to examine it. But Gently left it wrapped up in front of him.

‘Well… we’d better check off that motorbike ride of yours, I suppose. Why aren’t you at Cambridge, by the way?’

‘I was sick. Mother wanted me at home.’