Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘I don’t see what else you could have thought at the time,’ he observed cautiously.

‘I could have followed that fact up. The answer wasn’t far away. If I’d been on top of the situation just then we might have arrested Lammas twenty-four hours sooner than we did.’

The super held his peace. It wasn’t entirely displeasing to hear Gently admit himself at fault. At the same time, he couldn’t help feeling that Gently aimed at impossibly high standards in criminal investigation…

‘Then there was the stub of greasepaint liner that I picked up off the rubbish-heap. Naturally, I was too bemused to see the significance of that right away. It seemed to connect somewhere. The Lammases were mixed up with amateur dramatics. But all I could think of was that Paul may have got hold of some of his sister’s greasepaint and doctored himself to pass for Hicks… he could have dropped that stub out of his pocket while he was busy with Annie Packer.

‘Anyway, I went after Paul in the best way I could, which was by showing him how near his mother stood to a murder charge. That took me to Marsh, and probably to the truth of what went on on Friday night. Only I didn’t know it was the truth… and it might so easily not have been. At that point I was almost ready to back the Paul-Marsh-Mrs Lammas combination. It seemed too tempting to pass over. We hadn’t got enough proof, and it might take some digging up, but we hadn’t quite exhausted the possibilities — and there’s such a thing as luck.

‘And then I was checkmated again. Dutt, here, found us Linda Brent. We picked her up — you know what happened. It seemed past doubt that Linda Brent had guilty knowledge of l’affaire Lammas. And if she had, or even thought she had, then what became of a conspiracy which couldn’t have been hatched till just before the murder? No — it went back further! It must have been plotted before Mrs Lammas discovered what her husband was doing and probably before the trip on the Harrier.

‘There was the further factor of Miss Brent being in love with whoever she supposed did it. This seemed to point to Paul, and certainly Paul might have got at Hicks after he had paid his visit to “High Meadows”. But how could Paul have planned what took place on Friday in advance?’

‘This Brent woman might have let him know what his old man was up to,’ suggested the super, intrigued.

‘Yes — as far as the trip went. But how could she have known that Lammas would go up Ollby Dyke in such a convenient way, setting her off first at Halford Quay?’

‘She might have been able to fix it…’

Gently nodded eagerly.

‘That’s where I began to smell the scent again. Because I couldn’t think of one single way in which she or any of the others could have fixed such a thing!’

He eased back on his chair to give them time to appreciate the proposition. It was clear enough now, when one knew the denouement!

‘You’ve got to remember how Lammas was placed. He’d cut his ties with his past, there was nothing there for a motive. It wasn’t his business or his family which could draw him into a secret rendezvous. And if it wasn’t these, what was it? What else could have been used to get him up Ollby Dyke just as he was about to fade away?

‘There isn’t an answer, but there is a corollary. If Lammas wasn’t enticed up the dyke, then he must have gone there on his own initiative — and if that was the case, who could have known he was there?

‘Mrs Lammas couldn’t. She only knew he had set out towards Wrackstead. Paul couldn’t. He didn’t even know as much as that! And as for Marsh, he only knew what Mrs Lammas told him.

‘Lammas was the only one who could have phoned Hicks and told him to come to Ollby Dyke.’

‘You’re forgetting Linda Brent,’ the super interrupted. ‘She may have known about Ollby Dyke and tipped Paul off.’

‘No.’ Gently shook his head. ‘Paul couldn’t have been tipped off. If he’d known what he was going to do, he’d have fixed the chauffeur before he left. He didn’t need to phone unless his father hadn’t arrived at Ollby, which was not the case.

‘I’d got to this stage last night when we brought in Linda Brent. It still wasn’t making sense, in fact I seemed to be back at the beginning again. If nobody else was involved, then Hicks must have killed him for the money… and if Hicks had done that, he was at once the cleverest, stupidest and luckiest criminal I had ever had to do with. In addition to which Linda Brent was violently in love with him!

‘It was a round dozen of contradiction. I knew I must be seeing it cock-eyed. And it only seemed to make matters worse when I saw the cap and jacket and heard about the shack in the carrs…

‘For instance, why would Hicks leave them there, of all places, when he might have stuffed them in the next ditch? If he’d been hiding there himself it would have been a reason. But you could tell me there were no signs of the shack being inhabited and an intensive manhunt had failed to turn up Hicks… so what was it all about? And as you asked me, if Hicks was around, where was he?

‘I did the only thing I could think off. I cooked a charge against Linda Brent. If she were right about what she knew then it ought to worry someone, and a murderer getting worried has been known to put a foot wrong.

‘Next, I was interested in the shack. It was too handy for Upper Wrackstead… and it did occur to me that Annie might have been lured aboard a dinghy.’

Gently broke off a little hoarsely. He wasn’t used to speaking at such length. And his pipe kept going out, with all this persistent monologue.

‘Is there any coffee left?’

The super kindly poured him some. It was cold and tasted of grounds, but it slaked a thirsty throat. Outside some stars were sparkling and the traffic was getting thin. Hansom was deciding to risk a cigar, even though he didn’t come from the Central Office.

‘I had a hunch about that shack.’

Gently’s pipe was going again.

‘I felt it would make or break me — I’d got into that state of mind! At first it looked like the latter, though I discovered a couple of things you’d missed. One of them suggested that a dinghy had been kept there, and the other that somebody had been using the place long before last Friday. But that didn’t ring a bell. The dinghy fitted a surmise, the other simply added to the mystery.

‘I stood in the shack by the nettles literally wrestling with those facts. I knew there must be a right way of seeing them and that I’d got the wrong way. I thought back over everything I’d done, everything which had come to light — odd little things, like the way Lammas had changed his shirt, or the way the jerrican disappeared from the garage, or the way we only found his and Mrs Lammas’ prints on the gun-drawer. And always there loomed up the incredible folly of that week on the Harrier — against so much careful planning, so much able implementation! And after it the dismissal of Linda Brent to her hideaway and the inexplicable rendezvous at Ollby Quay.

‘Just there, my mind seemed to be wandering. It kept reverting back to an interview I’d had with your County Drama Organizer. Every time my ideas seemed to be building up to something my thoughts slipped away to that smiling little man and whatever it was he was trying to tell me.

‘Psychology is a curious business. I’m tempted to think that had the solution worked out in my unconscious when I got that hunch about the shack… Anyway, I discovered the local reason why my mind kept slipping — I was looking straight at a strip of paper which had been torn from a carmine greasepaint liner! And then I had it, all in a flash. From then on it was simply a bit of routine. There’s a lot of mystery about a substitute corpse when you don’t know what it is… once you do, the murderer hasn’t got much time ahead of him.’