Alan Hunter: Gently Down the Stream

‘What stuck out like a sore thumb was that week on the yacht. It couldn’t be explained — there was no adequate reason for it. Lammas had carefully planned things so that he had a week of grace before inquiries began, yet here he was, openly hanging about, almost making certain that someone took notice of him. You can argue that not many people on the Broads knew him and that he kept well clear of Wrackstead — but against that you’ve got to remember that he hired a Wrackstead boat and gave his own name and address to the boat-yard. Then, at the end of the trip, he phones for his chauffeur! What sort of madness was that, from a long-sighted man like Lammas?

‘That’s where I started going wrong. He had me fooled with the telephone call. Instead of accepting it and drawing an inference, I began looking for an accomplice in the family, somebody who could have traced Lammas to Ollby and then tipped off Hicks.

‘And I didn’t have to look very far. Both Mrs Lammas and Paul were absent from “Willow Street” at the time of the murder and neither of them had an alibi. What was more, their comings and goings were oddly mixed up with one another’s — especially by the row at the end of them! As for motive, that’s always a tricky business. You and I know, if judges don’t, that nobody’s quite sane when they come to do a murder. Mrs Lammas was the predatory type of woman who never lets go of the people she gets in her power. Paul Lammas had National Service hanging over his head — with his father standing by to kick him well and truly into it! To this you had to add their relation to Hicks. He was a confidential retainer whom either might influence. And when it came to finance, they had that too.

‘Hicks, of course, was the perfect tool. We know more about him from Lammas’ statement. He was a spy, a liar and what you might call Mrs Lammas’ creature — Lammas suspected he was something more, but we’ve no proof of that. At all events, he’d been a wedge between them. Lammas hated him and he hated Lammas. I got enough of this out of the early interrogations to convince me that Hicks was a likely man.

‘To complete the picture, there was the shadow of a fourth person — I made a certain pass at Mrs Lammas and her reaction suggested I was on the right track. We know now who it was, but then it was just something to be kept in mind. And it was the same with Linda Brent. She wasn’t really impressive as a candidate for the murder of the man she loved, so… I’d just keep her in mind and see what turned up.

‘Now the first thing to get at was whether Mrs Lammas or her son knew what Lammas was up to and the second — this was vital — whether they knew where to find him. But I was so much impressed by the oddness of that trip on the yacht that I felt compelled to tackle it before anything else. Unless I could get a reason for it, I felt I should miss the significance of other things which might turn up. And I was right… though it isn’t much comfort to me.

‘At the time my investigation of the trip seemed a complete waste of energy. I learned nothing of the motive for it except that it apparently had none. Lammas had behaved exactly as holidaymakers do behave. He had visited the same places, done the same things as the others, and it didn’t seem to have worried him that he might have been recognized. His only departure from routine was when he went up Ollby Dyke — to get murdered! There was nothing else remarkable about the whole itinerary.

‘Well, I ought to have seen it. I could kick myself now for not seeing it. Rouse… Tetzner… Saffran and Kipnik — I’d studied all their trials at one time or another. And yet I was still in the dark! Lammas had really nulled the wool over my eyes. And just to keep me well off the trail, I happened on some of the evidence I was looking for relating to Mrs Lammas.

‘If only people wouldn’t lie to the police!

‘The next morning I was hard at it, proving that Mrs Lammas knew what her husband was trying to do. I had just succeeded in doing that when I heard about Annie Packer.’

Gently broke off, ostensibly to fill his pipe. But the super was well aware of the reason for that delicately-timed little pause. He shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly.

‘I suppose I ought to apologize…’

‘Admittedly, I was being a fool.’

‘You couldn’t have saved Annie Packer.’

‘No, even Lammas couldn’t have foreseen…’

‘And I should know you better by now!’

Gently lit his pipe forgivingly. A gesture was all he asked for. He breathed a long stream of smoke into the darkening room and prepared to take up his tale again.

‘Anyway — it brought me up with a jolt!

‘It needed a fantastic theory to cover it. If Hicks had been the tool he must have been packed off into hiding — they wouldn’t have left him dodging about the neighbourhood. And if someone else had done it, then it could only have been for a blind… but what sort of blind was this, which involved the murder of an innocent person? People don’t kill so lightly, not even people with blood on their hands. There were a dozen ways short of murder to make us think that Hicks was still around — and all of them a good deal less risky.

‘Yet murder had been done. Right there, on my very doorstep. And to make it artistically right, somebody had circulated a rumour of Hicks having been seen there before the murder took place.’

‘Of course, we know now there was no connection,’ the super interrupted. ‘The rumour was Lammas’ red herring. Packer’s murder was purely fortuitous.’

Gently nodded.

‘We know it now… but we didn’t guess it then. I could see it only as an incredibly cold-blooded manoeuvre. And it seemed to indicate that somebody was getting scared, very scared indeed — a fact which pointed in only one direction.

‘But before going into that I had to learn what I could about Annie’s killing. There were several curious points connected with it, not the least being the one you noticed about the origin of that rumour. How could it have been started by a stranger in a place like Upper Wrackstead? Everyone knew everyone, and strangers drew attention. Yet if a stranger hadn’t done it then a native must have done… or else somebody actually had been seen who might have been taken for Hicks.

‘You can judge how far I was out of my depth. I actually accepted the latter alternative — at least as a working hypothesis. I was so taken up with the idea of Mrs Lammas and Paul being in on it that I was looking at everything from their angle… you don’t know how hard it is for me to admit that.’

Dutt cleared his throat sympathetically. He knew how hard it was!

‘But to get back to the killing.

‘Up to a point, I could reconstruct it. I could understand how Annie slipped out to visit Thatcher, how she was intercepted on the way, how she was shot with a silenced revolver and how her body was disposed of. What I couldn’t understand was the absence of blood-stains. There had to be some, unless she’d been shot where she would fall into the Dyke. But that would have made a splash and there wasn’t any splash — so there had to be some blood… and there wasn’t any blood!

‘Looking at it now, I can’t think how I could have been so dense. Certainly, I got part of an answer when I discovered that the wounded head had been bandaged. But the major fact was unexplained — some blood had been shed somewhere — and it was sheer, blind prejudice that stopped me from going to the right spot. You see, I was assuming that Annie’s killer came from outside. He had waited for a victim to emerge, and of course Annie was shot on the bank. Was there ever such a classic example of an investigator preferring a theory to a fact?’

The super frowned uneasily at his blotter. He’d harboured a theory or two himself in this case.