Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘Here, bor… dew yew come an have a look at this!’

It was Thatcher, who, quietly satisfying his curiosity about Annie’s wherry, had poked his nose into a cardboard box he had found lying with other junk on the cabin-top.

‘What is it… the crown jewels?’

‘No… but it might blodda-well buy a set!’

Gently stepped aboard and went over to him. The old sinner’s eyes were almost staring out of his head. Packed in the box, and completely filling it, were ten crisp bundles of one-pound notes… bundles which an experienced eye would estimate at a hundred apiece. And on the lid of the box was written in sprawling block letters: For Annie’s kids.

‘Blast!’ barked Thatcher. ‘Cor rudda blast!’

And it was not, Gently felt, putting it too strongly.

They found him a sheet of brown-paper in which to wrap the box. The box itself was easily identified. It had been taken from the communal rubbish-heap and was a shoe-box which had been discarded by one of the river-dwellers. Thatcher watched him mournfully as he tied the package up.

‘I ’spose them kids aren’t never goin to see that again.’

Gently shrugged. ‘If my guess is right this money has been stolen.

‘But dew your guess is wrong, what happen to it then?’

‘That’s a nice point of law… I don’t think I’m qualified to answer it.’

‘That must be wunnerfiul to be a copper an turn up evidence like this here!’

Gently tucked the package under his arm and went down the wherry’s plank. At the rubbish-heap he paused, measuring distances with his eye. Then he stooped and picked up something. It was a tiny tube wrapped in gold foil.

‘Blast!’ exclaimed the disgusted Thatcher. ‘He’s even pickin’ gold sovereigns off our blodda rubbish dump!’

An exuberant Dutt had ridden in with the first load of the super’s search-party. He found Gently picking at his lunch in Mrs Grey’s parlour and wearing the wooden expression which told of much and significant ratiocination. In front of him on the table lay the little gold-wrapped tube, one end closed, one end ragged. It appeared to be filled with a darkish, greasy substance.

‘Here we are, sir. How are things at your end?’

Gently grunted over a forkful of salad.

‘I’ve bought a new corpse and been torn off a strip!’

‘Yessir.’ Dutt curbed his enthusiasm. ‘I heard all about it up at H.Q., sir. Flippin’ cheek it was, popping the old girl off right under our bedroom window. And why didn’t we hear the shot, sir — that’s what I can’t make out!’

‘A “Parker-Hale”, Dutt.’

‘You got the gun, sir?’

‘No… but I’ve got four witnesses and they all describe the same thing.’

Dutt whistled softly. ‘But how did he get hold of that, sir…?’

‘I don’t know, Dutt, unless he picked up one second-hand and screwed the barrel himself.’

‘He’d need tools, sir.’

‘There’s a set of dies in the garage.’

‘Then you reckon it was Hicks?’

‘No, Dutt. It might have been anyone. Lammas might have fitted one himself without knowing he ought to have his licence endorsed.’

‘All the same, sir… it doesn’t half point towards the shover.’

Dutt brooded a few moments to show a proper respect for the problem, but he was obviously impatient to impart his own especial findings.

‘Well sir, I takes a squint at the corpse on account of you hadn’t seen it, but what I really has to tell you-’

‘You’ve seen the corpse, Dutt?’

‘Yessir. Bullet went clean through, forehead to top-back. But-’

‘Anything strike you about the night-dress?’

‘No sir, ’cept a bit might’ve been torn off the hem-’

‘Ah!’ The far-away look came into Gently’s eye. ‘I’d just got round to that angle when you came in…! Now just hold on a minute, Dutt — I’ll be right back with you!’

And still clutching his fork, he dived out of the room.

Dutt sighed and cut himself a generous slice of pork-pie. There were times when his senior was a little less than appreciative.

The fork was still in Gently’s hand when he returned ten minutes later, but in his other hand he now held a sodden strip of rayon.

‘There! Would that be the bit torn off the hem?’

‘Yessir. Daresay it would. It’s the same material.’

‘Exactly, Dutt… and it answers a pressing question. He’d had the corpse in a dinghy at one stage and that corpse would have bled. But it wouldn’t have bled with a bandage tied round its head… that’s why I can’t find any blood in the dinghies. At the same time, it must have bled somewhere before he bandaged it… and then again, why should he bother about the blood…?’

‘Yessir. Very true, sir.’

There was a plaintive note in Dutt’s voice that succeeded in penetrating Gently’s abstraction. He grinned at the sergeant’s expression of injury.

‘All right… let’s have the story.’

‘Ho, hit will wait, sir. I ham a bit peckish.’

‘Go on, you old so-and-so!’

‘Don’t want to hinterrupt your cogitations…’

He thawed out, however, as he remembered the glowing details of his discoveries. Fortune had smiled on Dutt in his investigations at the bus station. At first it looked like being a frost. The conductor who had been on the six-twenty bus from Halford remembered nobody of Linda Brent’s description, neither did an inspector who had got on down the road. Dutt had persisted with odd members of the station staff who might have seen the passengers leave the bus, but he got precious little encouragement until he chanced to see a Wrackstead bus pull in. And there he struck oil. Because the romantic young conductor cherished a secret passion for Pauline Lammas and her unexpected presence on the six-fifteen on Friday lingered sweetly in his memory.

‘Saw the whole thing, he did!’ related Dutt excitedly. ‘Couldn’t want a better witness, sir. When they comes in after a run they goes and gets their money and tickets checked in a glass-fronted booth affair, and Miss Pauline, she goes and stands in the bay right next door. Of course, this charlie keeps his mince-pies on her, and being as how there was a couple of blokes ahead of him, he’s still there when the Halford bus gets in. And sure enough there’s a fancy dark piece gets off it with her baggage. Up goes Miss Pauline and helps her off with her things, then she fishes in her bag and hands something over.

‘And this is the juicy bit, sir — he saw what it was! ‘It was a Yale-type key on a ring with a white tag.’

‘A Yale-type key…!’ Dutt had the pleasure of at last seeing his senior sit up and take notice. ‘And what does that suggest, Dutt?’

‘Well sir — after giving the matter me best attention-’

‘Go on, Dutt.’

‘It occurs to me, sir, that Mr Lammas couldn’t have had any hideaway like Hinspector Hansom was led to believe.’

‘You mean that otherwise there would have been no need for Linda Brent to collect a key from Miss Lammas.’

‘Well, would she, sir? Mr Lammas would’ve give it to her himself. But no — she has to pick it up! So we deduces that the key wasn’t available when Mr Lammas sets out on the preceding Saturday, but was so on the Friday. And from that we further deduces that it’s the key to a rented property, and that Miss Pauline knows where Miss Brent is at this living minute!’

Gently nodded soberly. ‘And we also deduces something else — that wherever Lammas went on his mid-week trips, it wasn’t to prepare and furnish a hideaway.’

Dutt wriggled impatiently. ‘She might know a whole lot else, sir!’

‘She might, Dutt, and she might not. Don’t forget that she’s on her father’s side in this. If she knew enough to put the finger on someone there’s no reason to suppose she wouldn’t do it… even if it were someone in the family.’