Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘No, Inspector.’

‘Nor while you were in the study?’

‘No, I didn’t hear it at all till Mr Peter came.’

‘Because of that you were surprised to find that she had, in fact, gone out?’

‘It surprised me at the time, Inspector, but after I’d thought about it I realized she must have gone out through the kitchen.’

‘Why should she have done that?’

‘We-ell, I don’t think she would want her father to know she had gone to the pictures.’

Gently broke in: ‘Was it unusual for Miss Huysmann to go to the pictures?’

Susan embraced him in a smile of melting intensity. ‘Mr Huysmann didn’t think it proper for girls to go to them. But she went when Mr Huysmann was away on business and sometimes she pretended to go to bed early and I would let her out by the kitchen.’

‘Wasn’t it unusual for her to slip out in the afternoon, when her father might enquire after her?’

‘Ye-es… she’d never done that before.’

‘You have no doubt that she did go out?’

‘Oh no! I saw her come in with her hat and coat on.’

‘You heard nothing during the afternoon to suggest that she might still be in the house?’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘Miss Huysmann deceived her father over the matter of the pictures. Do you know of any other way she may have deceived him?’

Susan placed a smooth, conical finger on her dimpled chin and appeared to consider deeply. ‘He was very strict,’ she said at last.

‘You haven’t answered the question, Miss Stibbons.’

Susan came back with her take-me smile. ‘We-ell, she used to read love-stories and other books that Mr Huysmann didn’t know about…’

Gently shrugged and extended an open palm towards Hansom. In his mind’s eye the figure of the deceased timber-merchant began to take form and substance. He saw the foxy, snarling little face, the sharp, suspicious eyes, the spare figure, the raging, implacable temper of a small man with power… the man whose son had kicked free at any price, whose daughter was in league with the maid to deceive him: who declared the cinema improper while he ruffled Susan in his study… An alien little man, who had spent most of his life in a new country without making friends, shrewd, sudden, tyrannical and hypocritical…

Hansom continued with the questioning. ‘What did you do after you had taken Mr Huysmann his coffee?’

‘I cleared away the lunch things and washed up, Inspector.’

‘What time would that be?’

‘I couldn’t say, exactly. I finished washing up about quarter past three, because there was a change of programme on the wireless just then.’

‘What programme was that?’

‘It was a football match.’

‘At what time did it finish?’

‘It was just before four, I think.’

‘Who won?’ put in Gently curiously. Susan flashed him another smile. ‘The Rovers beat the Albion two-nought,’ she said. Hansom snorted.

‘Did you hear the whole programme?’ he proceeded.

‘We-ell, I had to go and let Mr Peter in.’

‘What time was that?’

‘It was just as the Rovers scored their first goal.’

Hansom drew his fingers wearily across his face. ‘And what time would that be, if it isn’t too much to ask?’

The constable with the notebook cleared his throat. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the Rovers scored their first goal in the twenty-ninth minute.’

Hansom stared at him.

‘If the kick-off was at three, sir, it would make the time exactly 3.29 p.m.’

‘Ah,’ said Hansom heavily, ‘so it would, would it? Thank you very much. Make a note of it. You’re a credit to the force, Parsons.’

‘I’m a student of soccer, sir,’ said Parsons modestly.

‘So am I,’ said Gently.

Hansom drew a deep breath and looked from one to the other. ‘Why don’t you get your pools out?’ he yapped. ‘Who am I to butt in with my homicide? Send out for the papers and let’s get down to a session!’

Parsons retired to his notebook, crushed, and Gently took out his peppermint creams.

‘Now!’ said Hansom, ‘you appear to have let in Peter Huysmann at 3.29 p.m. Greenwich. Who did he ask to see?’

‘He said he’d come to see his father, Inspector, and asked if he was in.’

‘Was there anything unusual in his aspect?’

‘He did seem a little off-hand, but Mr Peter is like that sometimes.’

‘Did you show him into the study?’

‘I told him his father was there, and then I went back to the kitchen.’

‘It must have been an exciting match,’ said Hansom bitterly. ‘What happened then?’

‘I got on with washing the salad for tea.’

‘How did it come about that you heard Mr Huysmann and his son quarrelling?’

‘Well, there wasn’t a salad bowl in the kitchen, so I had to fetch one from the dining-room. I heard them at it as I was passing through the hall.’

‘Time?’

‘I don’t really know, Inspector.’

‘Nobody scoring any goals?’

‘Not just then.’

Hansom rolled his eyes. ‘I wonder if I could pin anything on those boys for withholding assistance from the police… Was it much before the end of the programme?’

‘Oh yes… quite a long time before.’

‘Did you go down the passage to listen?’

Susan gave him a well-taken look of sad reproof. ‘No, Inspector.’

‘Why not? It should have been worth listening to.’

‘But there’d been so many of them before.’

‘And then, of course, the Albion might have equalized. Did you hear anything at all of what was said?’

‘We-ell, I heard Mr Peter say his father hadn’t got any human feelings left.’

‘And what did Mr Huysmann say?’

‘He said something that sounded nasty, but he had a funny way of speaking. You couldn’t always understand him.’

‘And that was positively all you heard of a quarrel following which Mr Huysmann was stabbed to death?’

Susan frowned prettily and applied her finger to the dimple in her chin again. ‘We-ell, when I was coming back from the dining-room I heard Mr Peter say something about he’d take it, but there’d be a time when he’d give it back.’

‘Have you any idea to what he was referring?’

‘Oh no, Inspector.’

‘You didn’t,’ mused Gently, ‘you didn’t hear anything to suggest that the object referred to… wasn’t… a five-pound note?’

Susan looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

Hansom breathed heavily. ‘So you went back to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘Well — what did you do then?’

‘I finished the salad and cut some bread and butter.’

‘Did you hear nothing unusual while you were doing that?’

‘No, Inspector.’

‘Nothing resembling cries or a struggle?’

‘You can’t hear anything from that side of the house in the kitchen.’

‘How about the warning bell on the front door?’

‘I didn’t hear it ring.’

‘After the sports interlude — did you turn the wireless off?’

‘Oh no, it was dance music after that. I had it on all the while. It was Mrs Turner who switched it off when she came in.’

‘How long did it take you to finish preparing the tea?’

‘I’d done by ten past four. After that I made a cup of tea and some toast, and sat down for a bit till Mrs Turner got back at five. It should have been my evening off,’ she added glumly.

‘What happened when Mrs Turner got back?’

‘Well, she took her things off and looked to see if I’d done the tea properly, then she went to ask Mr Huysmann when he’d be wanting it.’

‘And then?’

‘She came back a minute or two later looking as white as a sheet. “Oh God!” she said, “there’s something terrible happened to the master. Don’t go near the study,” she said. It was awful, Inspector!’