Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir!’

Withers pulled out the chair and lowered himself dubiously on to the edge of it. He had the unhappy air of someone who had bitten off more than he could chew. Gently crumbled some roll into his Brown Windsor and tested a mouthful. It seemed up to a fairish standard in provincial Brown Windsors.

‘So he came here first on Thursday, Withers. Or it might have been Wednesday.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘You haven’t any preference.’

‘N-no, sir… I just don’t remember.’

Gently nodded intelligently and tried another spoonful of soup. ‘Did he have any name that chanced to leak out?’

‘He said to call him Max, sir.’

‘Max, eh?’ Gently rolled the word round his tongue. Now he’d even got a name for the fellow! ‘Max anything or just Max?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Just Max, sir.’

Gently sighed. ‘I felt it had to be. He had an accent, though, this Max?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘What sort of an accent… did you recognize it?’

The waiter stirred tormentedly. ‘Foreign, I’d say, sir.’

‘Was it French, for instance?’

‘Yes, sir, it might have been.’

‘Or German?’

‘No, I don’t think so, sir.’

‘Russian, maybe?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say it wasn’t, sir.’

‘You couldn’t imitate something he said?’

The waiter shook his head and sent a haunted look towards the rear of the cafe. Gently shook his head also and reapplied himself to his soup. But why should he complain, he asked himself, why look such a regal gift-horse in the mouth? Ten minutes ago he had begun to despair and now he actually knew the dead man’s name…!

‘Describe it,’ he said, ‘describe Max coming in here and having lunch.’

‘H-how do you mean, sir?’ faltered the waiter.

‘Tell me, man! Tell it as though he were just coming in at the door.’

The waiter twisted his hands together agonizedly and cleared his throat. ‘H-he’d come in…’ he began, ‘he’d stand for a moment looking about… as though he expected to see somebody he knew…’

‘Did he ever see that somebody?’

‘No, I d-don’t think so, sir.’

‘What was he wearing?’

‘He’d got a light grey suit, sir. On Sunday he wore a darker one, but the other days it was the light grey. And he had a blue bow tie.’

‘Go on.’

‘He carried an attache case, sir, he had it with him every day except the last day… then there was his beard, that struck me as being funny… and the way he spoke…’

‘What did he say?’

‘When he first came in he asked me my name, sir. Then he sort of laughed and told me to call him Max.’

‘Was there any reason for that?’

‘It was because I called him “sir,” sir. He said they didn’t call people “sir” where he came from, and then he laughed again and patted me on the arm.’

‘He was a friendly type, was he?’

‘Oh yes, sir, quite a gent.’

‘So he patted you on the arm. What happened then?’

‘He ordered the chicken, sir, and sent me out for a bottle of wine … we aren’t on the licence here, sir.’

‘And what day were you serving chicken last week?’

‘Wednesday, sir.’

‘Ah!’ said Gently with satisfaction. He laid down his spoon. ‘We’ll pause for a moment on that happy note… just pop along and see what the roast beef is doing.’

‘Certainly, sir!’

‘And fetch me a lager, Withers. The occasion seems to justify it.’

The waiter slipped from the chair and resumed his function with obvious relief. Gently smiled distantly at a paddling child. Another time Withers wouldn’t be quite so forward in accosting chief inspectors who got their pictures in the papers…

And the name was Max. Max, in a light grey suit with a blue bow tie. Max, who came from somewhere where they didn’t ‘sir’ people. Max, who was friendly. Max, who was quite a gent. Max, who had sat at that same table from Wednesday till Tuesday, eating his chicken, his Dover sole and chips, and drinking the wine Withers brought him from over the road… and Max, who had finished up as Exhibit A on the mortuary slab exactly a week after his first appearance. He was getting into focus, that one. Gently was beginning to see him, to fit him in. And over all there was his foreign-ness, pervasive and misty, his Franco-German-Russo-what-have-you foreign-ness…

Withers returned with Gently’s roast beef and the lager. He seemed to have been gone a good deal longer than was strictly necessary, even allowing for the trip across the road. Gently raised his eyebrows to the unhappy man.

‘Talked it over with the boss, Withers?’ he inquired affably.

‘I–I beg your pardon, sir!’ stammered Withers, spilling some lager.

‘Never mind, Withers… and don’t be well-bred about the vegetables.’

The waiter served, and Gently picked up his knife and fork. It was odd, but he hadn’t been feeling hungry when he came into the cafe…

‘Sit down,’ he mumbled to Withers, ‘you’ll give me indigestion, jiffling about like that.’

‘I b-beg your pardon, sir, but really I ought to be getting on with my work… there isn’t n-nothing I haven’t told you, honest…’

Gently beamed at him over a mouthful of lager. ‘Nonsense, Withers, we’ve only just begun…’

‘It’s making extra work for the others, sir,’ persisted Withers, encouraged by the beam.

‘Sit down!’ retorted Gently with a slight touch of Bogartesque.

Withers sat down at great speed.

‘… Now,’ continued Gently, after a certain amount of plate-work, ‘we got to him ordering the chicken and sending out for some wine. What sort of wine did he send for?’

‘Just red wine, sir. I got him a brand they specialize in over the road.’

‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. Did he express his satisfaction?’

‘N-no sir, not really.’

‘Did he order the same wine the next day?’

‘He asked if they hadn’t got another brand… I couldn’t understand the name he gave it.’

‘What did it sound like?’

‘It just sounded foreign, sir…’

‘Like what sort of foreign?’

‘I d-don’t know… just gibberish.’

‘Did you ask if they’d got it?’

‘No, sir. I couldn’t say the name.’

‘So what did he have?’

‘I got him Burgundy, sir, when he wanted a red, and Sauternes when he wanted a white.’

‘And that was satisfactory?’

‘He seemed a bit surprised at the price, sir.’

‘He was a foreigner, Withers.’

‘Yes, sir, I dare say that had something to do with it.’

Gently brooded a moment over a roast potato. Then he halved it meticulously and transported one half, suitably garnished with gravy, to a meditative mouth. ‘What did he have for sweet, Withers?’ he asked through the potato.

‘Ice-cream, sir.’

‘Not much to be deduced from that… was his coffee black?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Did he smoke…? Cigarettes…?’

‘He bought a box, sir.’

‘A box, Withers?’

‘Twenty-five Sobranie, sir.’

Gently raised an eyebrow. ‘And what particular variety?’

‘Just Balkan Sobranie, sir. He bought a box every day after that …’

‘He seems to have been a well-heeled foreigner, Withers.’

‘Yes, sir. He never tipped less than half a crown.’

Gently finished his roast beef and motioned to have his plate removed. Withers took it adroitly and produced a cold sweet from a side-table. It was a trifle, a robustly constructed affair involving sliced pineapple, and Gently inserted a spoon in it with unabated gusto.

‘Of course, he asked a few questions,’ volunteered Withers, beginning to feel that Gently wasn’t so bad after all. ‘He wanted to know if we got many foreigners in Starmouth.’