Alan Hunter: Gently Down the Stream

‘He must have known the country pretty well…’ brooded Gently. ‘How did he get a yacht up there?’

‘It’d go in all right if he had the mast down.’

‘There’s a keel on a yacht.’

‘Ah, but there’s a spring up Ollby Dyke… that keeps plenty of water in it. Shall I take her in?’

‘No — wait just a moment.’

A couple of hundred yards further down on the other bank the carrs fell away and there, just visible among the bushes, was an old houseboat pulled out. And there was a ribbon of grey smoke rising above it.

‘Someone live there?’

‘Only old Noggins, the eel-catcher.’

‘Let’s go and see him first… we should have something in common.’

Obediently Rushm’quick spun his wheel and sent the launch weaving downstream again.

The eel-catcher sat on an eel-chest in front of his make-shift lodging. He was a little man of indeterminable age, dressed in a drab jacket and trousers out of which the rest of him seemed to grow, as though it were all part of him. He eyed the launch unfavourably as it pulled in alongside.

‘Yew be careful where yew’re comin — I got a pair of eel-trunks down there!’

‘Think I didn’t know that?’ growled Rushm’quick.

‘Well I’m tellin on yew — jus to make sure!’

He got up reluctantly and came over to them. Gently introduced himself briefly.

‘You didn’t happen to be here Friday evening, I suppose?’

‘Frida evening — w’yes! I had m’nets up Frida.’

‘You were here all the evening?’

‘Ah, most of the day asides.’

‘And do you remember seeing Sloley’s Harrier go by?’

‘Thatta dew, and saw the bloke what was on it tew.’

‘Tell me,’ said Gently simply.

The little man’s face puckered up. ‘W’… that was about eight o’clock time, I reckon. There’d been all sorts goin past — I shoonta noticed in the ordinara way. But this bloke fetches up on the bank here to pull his mast down… naturalla, I keep an eye on him.’

‘And then?’

‘W’ then he start his ingin and slide off again, an the last I see of him was goin up the Deek.’

Gently hesitated. ‘Did you know who he was?’

‘Blast no! Woont know him from Adam.’

‘Or the woman with him?’

‘He ha’nt got no woman.’

‘What was that?’

‘I say he ha’nt got no woman. That was jus him on his lonesome.’

There was a moment broken only by the throb of the idling motor and then Hansom exploded angrily:

‘Of course he had a bloody woman — we know all about it!’

‘I tell yew he ha’nt,’ retorted the little man obstinately.

‘You mean you didn’t see her — she was in the cabin.’

‘No she wa’nt. He was moored starn-on, an I could see down into the cabin. Sides, why di’nt she help him get the mast down? That wa’nt easa for him, on his own.’

‘She could have been in the WC!’ snarled Hansom.

‘Then she musta been wholla bound up, tha’s all I can say…’

He wasn’t to be shaken — there was only Lammas on the Harrier that evening. Neither Hansom’s bullying nor Gently’s more subtle methods would make him modify his statement.

‘What was he wearing?’ queried Gently at the end of it.

‘W’one of them sports shuts an some white trousers.’

‘You’re sure it was a sports shirt?’

‘I aren’t blind, ama? That was a red one.’

‘A tall, heavily built man, was he?’

‘No, that he wa’nt, jus midlin’ an a bit on the lean side.’

Gently nodded absently and signed to Rushm’quick to push off.

‘We may be back for another chat later on, Mr Noggins.’

‘The old fool’s got his lines mixed!’ grunted Hansom as they chugged back towards the Dyke. ‘The woman was out of sight and he’ll swear blind she wasn’t there.’

‘What about his description of Lammas?’

‘That tallies all right… the bits of trouser we recovered were white flannel.’

‘And his build?’

‘Like he said — medium height and spare.’

‘Which leaves the sports shirt, doesn’t it…?’

‘Sports shirt?’ Hansom stared.

‘Yes… didn’t you find the cuff-links with the body? It looks as though Lammas changed his shirt.’

‘Christ yes — he must have done!’ The divine light of ratiocination appeared in Hansom’s eye. ‘Yeh — there might be something in Noggins’s story at that. Suppose he put the female off somewhere down-river — he brings the yacht up here to hide it and kill the trail for a day or two — changes into his city clothes and rings his chauffeur, the chauffeur being paid to keep his mouth shut-’

‘You’re forgetting one thing, though…’

‘What’s that?’

‘He’d got his trail covered for the whole week. He might just as well have lit out on the previous Saturday, saying nothing to nobody.’

Hansom sniffed in a deprived sort of way. ‘We’ve got to make sense of the facts, haven’t we?’

They ducked as Rushm’quick sent the launch slicing through the drooping boughs and bushes that concealed the mouth of the Dyke. On the other side they seemed to be in a different world. Overhead the tangled twigs of blunt-leaved alder closed out the sky, on either hand the stretching rubbish reached out to brush the launch as it slid past. A green-lit tunnel it was, thrusting remotely into a forgotten land.

Hansom snatched a dead alder burr out of his hair.

‘Thirty years ago there were wherries up and down here every day of the year.’

It was only half a mile long, but there seemed no end to it. One hemmed-in reach followed another with bewildering monotony. And then, just as Gently’s sense of direction was irretrievably lost, the alders parted overhead and they swung out into blazing afternoon sunlight.

They were in a little pool, grown up and almost choked with reeds, water-lilies and a myriad-flowered water-plant. On the far side, against the rotted remnants of a quay, lay the fire-blasted yacht. And by the yacht sat a Police Constable smoking a cigarette, his tunic and helmet hung on a willow-snag.

‘Jackson!’ bawled Hansom, in a voice to wake the dead.

The Constable jumped as though he had been stung.

‘What the blue blazes do you think you’re supposed to be doing — having the day off?’

‘I–I wasn’t really expecting anyone…!’ blurted the Constable, struggling into his tunic.

‘Oh, you weren’t, eh?’ commented Hansom nastily. ‘Thought we’d come by car and you’d hear us in time, didn’t you…?’

Rushm’quick eased the bows of the launch against the rotten quay and they jumped down gingerly on to shaky green turf. The yacht lay well in under the trees, which bore silent witness to the fierceness of the blaze. It was completely gutted. From end to end the interior showed a blackened mass of ash, nothing remaining of cabin, deck or fitments. Only the engine jutted up near the stern and the charred ribs preserved a pathetic symmetry.

Gently sniffed at the acrid smell of burned varnish.

‘Was the body this side of the engine or the other?’

‘The other.’

‘Was the petrol-tank that side?’

‘Yes — you can see where it blew out.’

‘There must have been a lot of petrol used to do a job like this… is it safe to go aboard?’

He stepped cautiously on to the hulk and was directly up to his ankles in ashes, which still seemed warm. He kicked them away from the engine and stooped to examine it.

‘Did you find the carburettor?’

‘No, it was too bloody hot to look for carburettors the last time I was here!’

Gently poked about in the ash with his foot and was eventually rewarded.

‘Looks as though it was unscrewed. The cap’s off it, too.’