Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘Then we’re back with her and the chauffeur.’

‘We always was, sir, ’cording to the way I reckon.’

Gently frowned in the evening sunlight. Why did nothing ever fit together in this confounded case? But Dutt was right, as far as that went. Guilty knowledge was written all over her. Once more you had to ditch a theory and accept a hard, unwelcome fact.

‘Come on… let’s take this bungalow apart. If the money’s here we might as well find it.’

Excepting the bedroom, they took it apart. The poor little place was singularly unadapted for concealing secrets. Even the floor, that historic receptacle for caches, was rendered innocuous by the building being raised on piles, while an Elsan in the closet ruled out another favourite hiding-place.

‘It’s the bedroom or nothing!’

Gently snorted his disappointment. He didn’t want Linda Brent scared like that — it was making hay of any intuitive feeling he might have had about the case. Unconsciously he had been ruling her out. Unconsciously, he had accepted a certain pattern that didn’t require her as a principal. And now the wretched woman insisted on obtruding herself in his calculations — making bad worse, and the perplexing baffling.

He pounded ferociously on the warped panel of the bedroom door.

‘Miss Brent! Have you dressed yet?’

Miss Brent did not reply.

‘Miss Brent — be good enough to answer!’

A faint whispering sound was all that could be heard.

Struck with sudden apprehension, Gently seized and rattled the handle. The door was bolted. He wasted no more time. The bulkiest shoulder in the Central Office crashed through the flimsy woodwork and sent the door reeling inwards.

‘Gawd!’ exclaimed Dutt, ‘she’s been and gorn and done it!’

On the floor, her head against a portable-gas fire, her beach-wrap draped over both, lay Miss Brent. And the gas fire was unmistakably turned on.

They carted her outside. She wasn’t dead. A bout or two of artificial respiration brought her round, shuddering and moaning. She kept her eyes tight closed, but tears were streaming down her cheeks. Her mouth worked continually in sobs that didn’t come.

‘Why didn’t you let me die… why didn’t you… why didn’t you…!’

‘You must try to pull yourself together, Miss Brent.’

‘I want to die… why didn’t you let me die!’

‘You have behaved rather foolishly. There’s no need for this sort of thing.’

‘I don’t want to be hung… why didn’t you let me die!’

Dutt saw the tired expression that came over Gently’s face.

‘Shall I run down and phone for an ambulance, sir?’

‘Yes, Dutt… she’ll have to have a check-up.’

‘And a man to keep an eye on this place?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

They carried her back into the bungalow and Dutt went off in the Wolseley. She lay quite still on a couch, tucked up in a couple of blankets. Gently went into the kitchen. ‘A mild stimulant’, the textbook said. He filled up the kettle and brewed a pot of the stimulant in question.

‘Here… do you think you can manage this?’

She put out a shaking, automatic hand.

‘You shouldn’t have done this, you know… it isn’t going to help you.’

She sipped the tea without replying, almost as though what he said didn’t register. Her eyes were still glazed with tears. Her lips twisted and trembled over the edge of the cup.

‘At the worst, it was worthwhile to see it through.’

Now she was looking at him.

‘There’s a lot you wouldn’t have to answer for. That’s absolutely certain! Whatever the rest is, you don’t have to throw in the sponge yet.’

Big, staring eyes looking at him from a frenzied inner world, a lonely world, a hopeless world. Eyes which saw nothing but horror.

‘Tell me!’

The words seemed to be spoken for her.

‘Have you got him?’

It was hard to believe she knew what she was saying.

‘Who?’ whispered Gently. ‘Who is it you’re referring to?’

In some way there was a shift of expression in the very depths of those haunting eyes. A shutter closed somewhere. He had lost a momentary contact with her naked confidence.

‘You don’t know!’

A sort of ethereal triumph was welling up.

‘You don’t know, and I shall never tell you!’

‘Miss Brent!’ Gently cursed himself for the slip he had made. ‘Miss Brent… it is in your vital interest to tell us all you know!’

She wasn’t listening.

‘Unless you cooperate, you will be in a very serious position.’

A fey smile shone through her tears like hectic storm sunshine.

‘It doesn’t matter now. You may hang me, if you like. I shall never, never tell you!’

‘Please consider what you are saying.’

‘You may hang me, if you like!’

It was too late. He had let her know what she wanted. There was a positive radiance in the beautiful, tear-flooded face. And as she saw him about to frame another question her lips tightened and she feebly shook her head.

He didn’t know — and she wasn’t going to tell him!

Gently covered quite a lot of ground up and down that meagre lounge during the half-hour it took the ambulance to arrive. Never had a case seemed such an unholy mess to him. There was so much that was coherent, if you shut it up in airtight compartments. But once you took it as a whole… Then it stopped being coherent. Then it became like a job-lot of pieces out of several different puzzles, with odd bits everywhere that wouldn’t fit at all. Yet there was a governing principle somewhere. There had to be! However square the facts looked, one knew that at a certain moment on Friday evening they formed a complete and unbroken circle.

What wasn’t he seeing, in all that hotch-potch of motive and opportunity? What was the dynamic factor that he kept passing over, time and again?

Right at the beginning he had had a hunch that something obvious was staring him in the face. It was time now he saw it! Hadn’t he got all the facts?

‘There’s only the shover to pick up now, sir,’ Dutt reminded him soothingly. ‘We must get him soon — it only stands to reason.’

Gently grunted without conviction. Somehow, the chauffeur had never impressed him as being more than a cipher in the business.

‘He’s got the worst motive of the lot of them. He may have guessed that Lammas had some money on him!’

But that was no reason. As often as not it wasn’t the motive that made the murder. People kill for the most pitiful of motives, often so petty and obscure that one could hardly believe in them. Lammas had once checked Hicks and that was quite enough for motive. It could rankle for years until it found an opportune moment.

‘Anyway, this is too clever. There’s intelligence and character behind what went on here.’

Such intelligence as Marsh had, for example. Or Paul. Or Mrs Lammas. Or all three in conjunction… what sort of murdering conference had taken place at ‘High Meadows’ that evening, while the ‘loyal and discreet’ Hicks stood by, the perfect tool, the perfect fall-guy? Marsh, to gain a rich bride! Mrs Lammas, to foil an escaping husband! Paul, to lay for ever the spectre of National Service and an honest job! It was just a happy coincidence that killing Lammas would be pleasant work for Hicks also.

But then there was this damned woman here, somehow up to her neck in it. Gently cast a none-too-friendly glance at the still, apparently sleeping form on the couch. In what possible capacity could she have been of the faction? And which was the ‘him’ she was carrying the torch for? Not Marsh, that was certain. It rested with Hicks and Paul. And Paul was the one you were compelled to cast for the part. And if she knew it was Paul, then Paul must have communicated with her… it was the only way she could possibly know.