Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

Copping laughed harshly. ‘When you know that you’ll have solved the case,’ he said. ‘Let’s get out of here. The smell gets on my stomach. You’ve done me out of my tea, bringing me to this place just before I knock off.’

BODY ON THE BEACH: YARD CALLED IN, ran the headline of the evening paper, Chief Inspector Gently To Take Charge, New Move In Riddle Of The Sands. It continued: ‘There were fresh developments today in the murder mystery which has come to be known as “The Body On The Beach Murder”. The Starmouth Borough Police acknowledged the gravity with which they view the case by calling upon the services of Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector Gently, well known in Northshire for his handling of the Sawmill Murders, has been assigned the task and this afternoon he arrived in Starmouth to take over the investigation. Superintendent Symms told our reporter in an interview today that sensational developments in the near future are not expected and that the arrival of Chief Inspector Gently was purely a routine step.’

There was also a photograph of Gently which the Norchester Evening News had kept in cold storage from his last visit, but fortunately it wasn’t recognizable…

All along the Front they were talking about it, from the bowling greens in the north to the funfair in the south. It was really making the week for them, holidaymakers and residents alike. Publicity it was, Publicity with a capital P — it dragged in excursionists to be plucked and made the holidaymakers feel that their stay would be truly memorable. For how often does a first-class murder turn up on one’s doorstep during a holiday? A classic murder with stabbing, mystery, the Yard, and all that? They even had the spot marked X for them, thought Gently, as he turned away from the crowd which still milled excitedly on the beach: the Starmouth Borough Police, nothing if not thorough, had set up a ponderous post to mark the site of the discovery. Nobody took it seriously, that was the trouble… the police had already written it off as unsolvable, and everybody else looked on it as a bigger and better side-show. Even Gently himself was being infected by the feeling. He had been practically tipped off that he didn’t have to exert himself.

And yet it was still there, up in the mortuary. That shrunken husk of what had once been a man. A foreigner, they all said, as though it were something subhuman — a foreigner whom they couldn’t really care about, though he had been tortured, killed in cold blood and thrown into the sea, to be washed up, troublesome and unwanted, on their holiday shore… just a foreigner: one didn’t bother too much about him.

But suppose one did bother, thought Gently, where did one begin on such an impossible business? He had taken the only step that suggested itself. He had got Dutt to phone headquarters to have the prints transmitted to Paris. Where did one go from there — what was one to try that the so-efficient Starmouth BP hadn’t tried already? He sighed, and sat down heavily in a deckchair which still remained on the evening sand. He was still baulking, and he knew it. He still couldn’t get his shoulder under the thing. There was something about just being in Starmouth, quite apart from anything else, that sapped his power of concentration. Those tight-fitting knickerbockers, for instance… And where were the donkeys…?

Behind him the lights blazed and jewelled as far as the eye could see, outlining buildings, flashing on signs, revolving on the sails of the windmill which reared further down. The two piers presented a strong contrast. The virile Albion seemed to burn and throb with illumination, to assert itself by sheer candlepower; the Wellesley contented itself with graceful and glittering outlines, making it appear, with its Winter Gardens, like an iced-cake shored-up above the sea. And there was the great evening medley of the Front, the undertone of the traffic, the beat of ten thousand feet, the shrieks and cries of ragamuffin children, the tinkle and soughing roar of mechanical music and the intermittent spang and crash of a shooting saloon not far away.

And then, of course, there was the sea, the sea that knew the secret, the heavy-looking evening sea that hissed and chuckled near that solitary post.

Gently took out his pipe and lit it. There had to be something, he told himself obstinately. After all, that man must necessarily have been murdered not very far away and murder under the best conditions is apt to leave traces. He blew out the match in a gust of smoke and held it poised in the air beside him. Except if it were done at sea, of course… but one mustn’t begin by assuming that.

Suddenly, the match disappeared from his fingers. It went so quickly and so silently that for a moment Gently simply sat still in surprise. Then he jerked his head round to see by what agency the match had taken flight. But there was nothing to be seen. There was nobody within yards of the back of his chair. The nearest people to him were two uniformed Americans with their inamoratas and they were patently occupied with quite other things. Puzzled, he returned to his meditations. He puffed at his pipe, his empty fingers taking up the same position as before. And then, just as suddenly, with the lightest of twitches, the match reappeared in its former situation.

This time Gently got up. He got up with an alacrity unexpected in a bulky man of fifty summers. But his haste was quite needless, because the worker of these miracles was merely crouching behind the chair and it made no attempt at flight when Gently pulled away the chair and exposed it.

‘And who may you be?’ demanded Gently, realizing then whom it could be no other.

‘I’m Nits — I’m Nits!’ piped the halfwit, staring up painfully with his bulbous eyes. ‘I know who you are, they told me who you are! I know — I know!’

Gently released the chair slowly and reseated himself, this time with his back to the sea. ‘So you do, do you?’ he said, ‘and who did they tell you I am?’

‘You’re a policeman!’ chattered Nits, ‘you’re a policeman, though you haven’t got a hat. I know! They told me! You want to know about my man who wouldn’t wake up.’

Gently nodded profoundly, keeping his eyes fixed on the halfwit’s. ‘And what else did they tell you about me?’ he queried.

‘They said I mustn’t talk to you — ha, ha! — they said you might take me away and lock me up. But’ — Nits assumed an expression of exaggerated cunning — ‘I know you won’t do that.’

‘And how do you know I won’t do that, Nits?’

‘Because I haven’t asked for any money. That’s why they locked me up!’

Gently puffed at his pipe, still keeping the staring green eyes engaged. This was it, the solitary link — an idiot who ought to be in a home. Not even a rational creature, however stupid. Just an idiot, someone who couldn’t testify anyway. As he sat there, smoking and brooding and watching the ragged Caliban crouched in the sand, he seemed to hear a mockery in the tinkled outburst of music and a laughter in the shuffling of feet on the promenade. What was the use of it? And who cared two hoots, really?

‘So you found the man who wouldn’t wake up…’ he murmured.

Nits nodded in energetic glee.

‘Just there, where they’ve put the post.’

Nits’s head bobbed ceaselessly.

‘And you tried to wake him up… then you went and told a policeman

… and the policeman tried waking him up too.’

The head never wavered.

‘You’ve no idea how he got there?’

The head changed direction agreeably.

‘You didn’t see anybody around before you found him?’

‘My part,’ said Nits, his features twisting into an absurd mask of aggression, ‘nobody come on my part of the beach.’