Alan Hunter - Gently Down the Stream

‘Reckon he took the cap off first,’ put in Rushm’quick knowingly, ‘then it wasn’t coming through fast enough, so he took the carb right off.’

Gently nodded and continued to probe with his foot. Towards the fore part of the hulk his shoe caught something which sounded hollow and metallic. The twisted remains of a jerrican came to light.

‘Is this part of the yacht’s equipment?’

Rushm’quick shook his head.

Gently handed it out and clambered back on to the bank.

‘Well… there’s a nasty job for someone, going through those ashes. We’d better have it towed back to the yard and gone over there. How do you get a car into an outpost like this?’

Hansom led the way along a doubtful track which plunged through the thick of the surrounding wilderness. But a few yards saw them on higher, drier ground and the track widened into a lane.

‘Here you are — you can still see the tracks where he turned the car.’

‘Where does the lane go?’

‘It joins the Lockford-Wrackstead road about a mile from Ollby. The phone-box is at the junction.’

‘No houses about there?’

‘There’s a bloke called Marsh lives in a house a quarter of a mile towards Panxford, but the house stands back amongst trees. He didn’t see anything… no bastard’s seen anything! All we’ve got is the village idiot.’

Gently tutted. ‘You can’t manufacture witnesses. Have you searched the area round here?’

‘We didn’t get time to be really clever.’

‘Then you mightn’t have noticed… that… for instance?’

He pointed to the bole of an alder a few yards off the track. A white flake was showing up against the dark, gnarled bark.

Hansom glared at it as though it were a personal insult. ‘And what’s that supposed to be — the answer to a detective’s prayer?’

But Dutt had already grasped the significance of the white flake and was making his way carefully through the rough grass. Gently waited patiently, Hansom impatiently, while the sergeant performed his operation. Eventually there was a little cluck of triumph from Dutt and he returned to drop something small in his superior’s hand. Gently examined it expressionlessly.

‘Spot any blood, Dutt?’

‘Yessir.’

‘Much or little?’

‘Not much, sir.’

‘Head, I expect. They’d have noticed it lower down.’

‘What I was thinking, sir… about the angle, too.’

‘Would it be too much,’ enquired Hansom with biting sarcasm, ‘would it be too much to ask what all this is about?’

Gently extended his hand gravely and revealed the shapeless chunk of metal Dutt had dug from the tree.

‘It’s about the way Lammas was killed… you can let your pathologist off duty. He was shot through the head with a bullet from a. 22 gun.’

It was a pleasant run from the village to ‘Willow Street’, lately the home of James William Lammas. After traversing the beech avenue, the road ran along the edge of the upland just where it fell into the shallow river valley and one caught glimpses of the winding stream low down amongst billowy trees and later of the broad.

‘All this and the best coarse-fishing too…’ murmured Gently at the wheel of the Wolseley. At breakfast that morning he had watched Thatcher fairly scooping bream out of the mouth of the Dyke.

‘You know, it’s rum, sir,’ began Dutt beside him, and stopped.

‘What’s rum, Dutt?’

‘Well sir, it stuck in me loaf what you said about the woman.’

‘What was that?’

‘About her not having to go off with the shover.’

‘It’s a point that needs elucidating.’

‘I mean, sir, it’s pretty obvious that this geezer and her were planning to fade together… it don’t seem natural for her to get the shover to do him in. What’s she going to get out of it what she didn’t have in the first place?’

‘Only the chauffeur… he might be quite a guy.’

‘No sir.’ Dutt shook his head. ‘If she’d been took with the shover there wasn’t nothink in their way… he wasn’t married. And she wouldn’t be carrying on with Lammas.’

‘Unless it was a deep, dark plot.’

‘No sir. It don’t seem right.’

‘What’s the theory, then, Dutt?’

‘Well, sir… I’d say the shover did for both of them and hooked it on his own. It’s the only way what makes sense, the way I looks at it. He knows about the money — it’s got to be on the boat — he goes there ready to do for them and make it look like an accident. When he gets there he finds there’s only Lammas, but if he shoots him first-off down by the car he isn’t going to know that till it’s too late.’

‘And then, Dutt?’

‘And then he goes through wiv it, sir — what else can he do? But somehow he runs across the woman again — maybe Lammas was aiming to pick her up somewhere close — she’s seen the fire — she sees the shover coming away from it — so he has to do for her, to keep her mouth shut. And then he dusn’t go back and shove her in the yacht, so he gets rid of the corpse somewhere else.’

‘Which is why he flitted, eh, Dutt? The second corpse wasn’t looking like an accident.’

‘That’s right, sir. Otherwise he’d be sitting tight and knowing nothink.’

Gently grinned feebly at his subordinate. ‘It’s a nice little theory… all it needs to set it up is a bunch of facts and a fresh corpse.’

‘Well, sir… it isn’t to say they won’t turn up.’

‘No, Dutt — but until they do we’d better be good policemen and keep a wide-open mind.’

‘Yessir. Of course, sir.’

‘We’re only halfway into the picture… it’s the other half we may be finding now.’

They had come to the ornate iron gates of ‘Willow Street’. The narrow country road turned sharply to the right, the gates being set in the corner. Beyond them a gravel drive screwed steeply down between luxuriant rhododendrons, now in full bloom, their giant salmon, white and heliotrope flowers seeming to explode against the sombre leaves.

‘Willow Street’ from the landward side presented a different picture to ‘Willow Street’ seen from the broad. It was not entirely a high-built bungalow. The land at this point dropped down to the carrs in a knoll, so that while the front of the building was piled the rest of it was niched into the slope, and the floor was at ground level where the drive came sweeping out of the rhododendrons. It was built in the traditional timber and white plaster, its reed thatch humping over semi-circular loft-windows. A golden vane surmounted the high cone of thatch rising at the broad end.

Hansom had already arrived from Norchester. His car stood parked near the capacious garage and he was to be seen chatting to a tiny dark woman who scarcely came up to his elbow. A Constable stood at a little distance. Gently parked and went over to them.

‘Chief Inspector Gently, ma’am, in charge of the case… this is Mrs Lammas.’

Gently extended his hand.

She was a woman of forty or a little more, but so delicately beautiful that her age seemed to adorn rather than detract from her. Slight in build, her features were pale and small, like those of a Dresden figure, her brown eyes appearing by contrast large and curiously penetrating. She wore a plain black dress too simple to be cheap and on her finger a ring of diamonds and emeralds. Her voice, when she spoke, was low but ringingly clear.

‘I am pleased to meet you, inspector… Inspector Hansom has just been telling me about you.’

‘We are sorry to have to intrude upon you, ma’am, at a time like this.’

‘It cannot be otherwise, inspector… I do not wish it otherwise. Will you come into the house?’