Alan Hunter: Gently by the Shore

The sporty-looking type favoured Gently with a bloodshot leer. ‘Nice bleedin’ company we get here these days…’

Gently quaffed on imperturbably. He might have been entirely alone in the bar, so oblivious did he seem. He took out his pipe and emptied it with care into the ashtray; then he took out his tobacco and stuffed the bowl with equal care.

‘’E’s set in for the night,’ said the sporty-looking individual, ‘blimey, you’ll have to look sharp with them shutters at closing-time …’

‘Why don’t you offer him a light?’ quipped his neighbour.

‘What, me — and him a busy? Give us another nip, Artie… there’s a smell round here I don’t like…’

Gently, however, lit his own pipe, and having lit it he entertained his audience with a scintillating display of smoke-rings. He could blow them single, double and treble, with combinations and variations. He had infinite patience, too. If one of his airy designs went wrong he had all the time in the world to try it out again…

The private door beside the bar opened and a man in seedy evening-dress appeared. He was a heavily built type of about forty with dark hair, a parrot-shaped face, and little pale eyes set very close together, and he smoked a cigarette in a gold-plated holder about as long as his arm. Gently surveyed him with mild interest through a pyramid of smoke. Faces of that shape must at all times be rarities, he thought.

‘Oi — Peachey!’ yipped the sporty-looking individual, and made a cautionary face while he thumbed over his shoulder in Gently’s direction. Artie also hastened to breathe a word in the newcomer’s ear. The man’s two pale eyes reached Gently, paused and strayed uneasily away again. Gently’s own slipped round to Frenchy. She was sitting up straight and shaking her peroxide head.

‘Louey wants a fresh bottle,’ said the newcomer hoarsely, ‘gimme a white-label.’

Artie produced one from under the counter and handed it to him. He dived clumsily back through the door. Artie returned to his business of serving drinks without a further glance at Gently; there was an expression of satisfied malice on his face…

‘You loog lonely for a big man,’ said a voice at Gently’s elbow, and he turned his head to see that Frenchy had slunk over to his table. She was smiling, at least with her mouth. Higher up it didn’t show so much — by the time one got to her rather pretty warm-brown eyes it had gone completely. But she was smiling with her mouth.

Gently smiled too, somewhere between the South Lightship and Scurby Sands.

‘I’m not lonely,’ he said, ‘there’s too many people around who know me.’

Frenchy laughed, a throaty little gurgle. ‘Thad’s because the big man is famous… he geds his picture in the paper.’

‘You think that makes people notice? Such a bad picture?’

‘But of course… nobody talks about anything else except whad the police are doing.’

She pulled up another chair and sat down, not opposite Gently but to the side, where the table didn’t hide anything. She slid forward and crossed her legs. They weren’t terribly attractive, he noticed. The skin was a trifle coarse and the contours inclined to be knobbly — they were designed for strength rather than quality. But she managed them well, they were crossed with great competence. And the hobble skirt contrived to lose itself somewhere above the knee.

‘Id musd be exciding,’ she crooned, ‘hunding down a murderer…’

Gently breathed an unambitious little smoke-ring.

‘And difficuld too… especially one like this.’

Gently breathed two more, one exactly inside the other.

‘I mean,’ she continued, ‘where does one begin to loog if one doesn’d know his name…?’

‘What’s your name?’ inquired Gently suddenly; ‘all they call you round here is Frenchy.’

The brown eyes opened wide and the smile tailed off: but it was back again in a moment, and wider than ever.

‘Surely you don’d suspecd me, Inspecdor…’

‘I’m just asking your name.’

‘Bud why should you wand to know thad…?’

‘I’m curious, like all policemen.’

Frenchy seemed to consider the matter between half-closed lids. Gently stared at the table and smoked a few more puffs.

‘If you wand to ask questions…’ she began.

Gently favoured her with a glance.

‘There are bedder places than this to ask them…’

She leaned forward over the table and balanced her chin in the palm of her hand. In effect the green silk blouse became an open peep-show.

‘Afder all, it’s your dudy,’ she melted, ‘and you know when girls dalk the besd…’

Gently sighed and felt in his pocket for a match. ‘You’re not local,’ he said, ‘you’ve had West End training… who brought you down here?’

For a moment he thought her scarlet nails were going to leap at his face. They angled for a strike, and the brown eyes burned with the merciless ferocity of a cat’s. Then the fingers relaxed and the eyes narrowed.

‘You filthy b- cop!’ she hissed, all accent spent, ‘I wouldn’t let you touch me if you were the last bloody screw on God’s earth, and that’s the stinking truth!’

Gently shrugged and struck himself a fresh light. ‘Where do you live?’ he asked.

‘Bloody well find out!’

‘Tut, tut, my dear… it would save unnecessary police-work if you told me.’

‘Well I’m not going to…!’

Gently held up a restraining hand. ‘It doesn’t really matter… now about our friend with the beard.’

She stopped in mid-flow, though whether on account of his casual remark or not Gently wasn’t able to decide.

‘Where did you meet him — here or in London?’

‘Who?’ she demanded sullenly.

‘The deceased — the man who was stabbed.’

‘Me!’ she burst out, ‘what have I got to do with it?’

‘I don’t know,’ murmured Gently, ‘I thought perhaps that was what you came across to tell me…’

Frenchy riposted with a stream of adjectives that fairly blistered the woodwork.

‘Still, you might like to tell me about your movements on Tuesday night…’ added Gently thoughtfully.

There was a pause, pregnant but not silent — silence was a strictly comparative term when only a pair of swing-doors separated them from the uproar without — and Gently occupied it usefully by prodding around in his pipe, which wasn’t on its best behaviour. Over at the counter, he noticed, they were straining their ears to catch a word of what was taking place. And in Frenchy’s nook two figures in the shadows leaned intently in his direction…

‘You can’t drag me into this, and you bloody well know it!’ seethed Frenchy, with the aid of two other words. ‘I never knew him — I didn’t do nothing — I don’t know nothing!’

Gently tapped his refractory pipe in the ashtray and drew on it tentatively.

‘It’s true!’ she spat, ‘why do you pick on me — who’s been lying about me?’

‘Who might lie about you?’ inquired Gently absently.

‘How should I know? — anyone! A girl’s got enemies. And I’ve got a right to know, haven’t I? If someone’s been making accusations-!’

‘Nobody has accused anybody… yet.’

‘Then what’s it all about?’

Gently shrugged and forked about in his pipe again. ‘If you’re so far in the clear you shouldn’t be afraid to tell me what you were doing on Tuesday night…’

‘It’s got nothing to do with it — I can’t tell you plainer than that, can I?’

‘Of course, if it’s something you’d rather not officially acknowledge…’

Again the scarlet nails flexed and a flicker went over the brown eyes. But once more Frenchy controlled herself.