Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘Through the broad, sir?’ enquired Dutt, nodding towards the Little Entrance.

‘Don’t be absurd, Dutt. As though he would parade right under his wife’s nose!’

The launch continued to race downstream.

… And they had met, these two, the rich young widow and the pushing young businessman; they had met and decided that each had what the other wanted. She wanted another husband from life — a secure one this time, no being dragged away for sacrifice on the altar of Colonialism! And he wanted a superb specimen of the female, an outstanding woman — better still if well-bred, best of all if rich as well!

Wouldn’t it be easy to imagine they were in love? Wouldn’t it be easy to be reckless, when there were so many advantages in the match?

Only of course they weren’t in love… that was something they had to discover later. In twenty-odd years. In two decades of slow division. Beginning — with what subtle modification of attitude did it begin? — in those hopeful, optimistic days of the early thirties; and ending when a disillusioned businessman, now no longer young, set out on a pleasure cruise with his secretary and all his realizable assets, heading for… what?

Gently’s head shook slowly at the riotous jungle of the carrs. That was the crucial question which preceded all theory.

Only, it helped to keep that picture firmly in view. Unless it was there one could easily overlook a detail which might be the very one.

The launch slid up to the quay at Eccle and Gently jumped out without waiting for Dutt to make fast. Eccle Bridge was a little yachting community on its own, solitary in the wide marshes. A mile away was the village. Against the bridge clustered a boat-yard, a store, and at some distance a public house. For the rest it was a long, straight reach with good mooring on scrubby raised banks.

Gently poked his way into a boat-shed.

‘Hi, you! Where’s the gaffer?’

He was a tall, pale-eyed man of fifty, with a stoop and the calloused hands of a carpenter.

‘Police… Chief Inspector Gently. Is it right that Sloley’s Harrier moored here yesterday week?’

It was. The tall man had seen it himself. They had come in at about 7 p.m., when the moorings were already crowded, and tied up about halfway down the opposite bank.

‘Did you know who it was?’

‘No… it’s the boats one notices.’

‘You wouldn’t know what they did that evening?’

The tall man simply shrugged.

It was the same at the pub — nobody knew Lammas, or knew if they’d seen him. Neither did they at the store, though they had a small piece of information for him.

‘Of course I never knew Mr Lammas, but we’ve always done business with him. He’s our wholesaler for a lot of lines… a lot of us deal with him round the Broads.’

‘You do, do you? And who’s his representative?’

‘It’s a traveller called Mr Williams.’

‘Did you owe him any money?’

The store proprietor looked hurt.

‘We keep a small account, naturally.’

‘Nobody’s tried to collect it — say first thing last Monday morning?’

But they hadn’t, of course. That wasn’t going to be the answer. Whyever else Lammas had spent his week on the Broads, it wasn’t to square up his odd accounts. At the same time… wouldn’t there be any of his customers who knew him personally? And if so, wasn’t it getting riskier and riskier, that honeymoon trip in the Harrier?

Gently sat like a carved idol beside his colleague all the way up the Thrin to Hockling. Lammas couldn’t have kept that trip secret! Somewhere, sometime, he must have blundered into someone who would recognize him; even, perhaps, his own traveller. And then what had happened? Had they got on to Mrs Lammas? Or did they represent a mysterious extra element which so far hadn’t come into his calculations?

And then once more… who knew better than Lammas the risk he was taking?

He might have spent that week anywhere else in the wide world!

‘Stop here.’

They were passing the village of Petty Hayner.

Dutt fumbled with Old Man Sloley’s list.

‘It ain’t one of the places, sir.’

‘I know it isn’t, but he’d stop for lunch, wouldn’t he?’

And so it went on through the burning afternoon and the endless evening, stopping, checking, throwing out leading questions — and getting nowhere. It was only the Harrier people had seen. It was a chronic complaint with them — they noticed boats, but they didn’t notice people. And, they would always add, if they had seen Lammas they wouldn’t have known him… it was like inquiring for someone from another planet. Was it barely possible he had come through that week unscathed?

‘Well, sir, it’s been a nice little houting!’ observed Dutt as they throbbed back upstream through the white smoke-mist. ‘I never did get round to one of those holidays afloat before, but I reckon I’ve seen it all now, sir.’

Gently bit on the end of a dead pipe and reached automatically for a match.

‘I’ve got an odd feeling, Dutt.’

‘Yessir. That sun was bleeding fierce, sir.’

Gently grinned. ‘I don’t mean sunstroke! The feeling I’ve got is that I’ve learned something about this trip of Lammas’, and I don’t know what the blazes that something is.’

‘You mean as how you can’t see the wood, sir.’

‘Exactly, Dutt — I can’t see the wood.’

He scratched the match, which lit cheerily in the dank vapour curling past them.

‘The further we go, the more it grows on me… but it’s no use harping on it. What’s this place we’re just coming to?’

‘Halford Quay, sir, ’cording to the map.’

‘It isn’t on the list, but we’d better give it a whirl.’

‘You’ll have covered the lot then, sir,’ returned Dutt, with the merest tinge of bitterness.

Halford Quay was a popular spot. There were yachts and cruisers moored two deep all along its not-very-great expanse. At one end it was blocked by the gardens of a brightly-lit hotel, at the other chopped off by the cut-in of a boat-yard. Into this Dutt directed the launch. As they came alongside the staithe an elderly, bearded man in navy cap and sweater ambled across to them.

‘Now don’t yew know this is private properta… or dew yew think yew can buy petrol at this time of night?’

Gently shrugged and tossed him the painter.

‘We shan’t worry you long… and maybe you can tell us what we want to know.’

‘Ah… maybe I can an’ maybe I can’t.’

He weighed up the launch with a professional eye, then cast a shrewd glance at the occupants.

‘Tha’s old Slola’s boat, now, i’nt’t? And I reckon I can guess who yew are without strainin m’self.’

Gently nodded briefly and climbed out on to the staithe.

‘I was wonderin how long yew’d be gettin round here… thought that’d be a rummun dew yew missed me out!’

‘You know why we’re here then?’

‘Blast yes — I can read the paper.’

‘And you’ve something to tell us?’

‘W’either I dew, or else yew don’t hear it.’

Gently considered this ambiguous reply for a moment.

‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Me! I’m Ole Sid Crow — Ole Sid’ll dew round here.’

‘You work at the yard here?’

‘I dew, when I aren’t idle.’

‘Go on then — what’ve you got to tell us?’

Sid Crow came a little closer, as though afraid that a precious word might go astray.

‘He dropped her here — tha’s what I’ve got to tell yew. Now say I’m a blodda liar an’ don’t know what I’m talkin’ about!’

He did know what he was talking about. He proved that up to the hilt. Of all the interviewees they had tackled on that trip, Sid Crow was the single one who knew Lammas by sight — he had worked at the Yacht Club on Wrackstead Broad and seen Lammas pull in there on his half-decker. And he could describe the clothes Lammas was wearing. And also Linda Brent.