Alan Hunter - Gently Does It

‘What time did lunch finish yesterday?’

‘It was about two o’clock.’

‘And what did you do after lunch?’

‘First, I have a wash. Then I go and fetch my coffee from the kitchen, which I take up to my room. As I am drinking it, I get ready to go out to the pictures.’

Gently said: ‘Your visits to the pictures were clandestine, I understand.’

‘Pardon?’

‘You were obliged to go secretly — your father did not approve.’

Gretchen looked down at the two pale, plump hands twisted together in her lap. ‘It is true, I go without his permission. He think the pictures are… all bad. And so, I must not go.’

‘Did you feel that your father was being severe in forbidding you to go to the pictures?’

‘I think, perhaps… he did not know how they were. It was safer that I should not go.’

‘You thought, at least, that he was being unreasonable.’

‘I cannot say. No doubt it was very wrong of me. It may be that this is a judgment, because I do wrong.’

‘Did your father ever find out that you had been to the pictures?’

‘Once, he caught me.’

‘What steps did he take?’

‘I was not to leave my room for two days and must not go out of the house for a month.’

‘And after that, I take it, you were more cautious?’

The pale hands knotted and pulled apart, but came together again immediately. ‘At first, I went only when he was away on business. Then, Susan helped me. I used to pretend I had a headache and go to bed, but I creep downstairs again and out through the kitchen. It was very wrong of me to do this.’

‘Miss Huysmann, when you planned to go to the pictures in the afternoon yesterday, you were surely taking an unusual risk?’

‘I do not know — my father is usually in the study all the afternoon.’

‘But he might easily have asked for you.’

‘Oh yes, it could be so. But if Susan came to my room and find me not there, she tell him I am not feeling well, I am lying down and asleep.’

‘Following the occasion on which you were caught, had you ever ventured out previously on a Saturday afternoon?’

Her small mouth sealed close. She shook her head forlornly.

‘And yet yesterday you did so, without even taking the precaution of first warning Susan. Why was that?’

‘I do not know. There is a film I very much want to see… all at once, I think I will go.’

‘When did you decide that?’

‘Oh… during lunch.’

‘But after lunch you went to the kitchen to fetch your coffee. Why didn’t you tell Susan then?’

She shook her head again. ‘Perhaps I do not really decide till later, till I take my coffee back to my room.’

‘At what time did you leave the house?’

‘I think it is twenty-five past two.’

‘And you left through the kitchen?’

‘It was the only way, if my father is not to know.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Susan when you passed through on your way out?’

‘I do not know… perhaps I did tell her.’

‘Miss Huysmann, Susan was in the kitchen till half-past two, but she did not see you go out. She was surprised to find that you were out. Yet you claim to have left the house at twenty-five past two.’

Gretchen’s dark swollen eyes fixed upon him, pleading and fearful. ‘Perhaps it was later when I left… perhaps it was after half-past two.’

‘How much later?’

‘One minute… two minutes…’

‘It was not as late, say, as four-fifteen?’

‘Oh no! I was not here, no, no!’

‘You were not in the house at all between, say, 2.35 and 5.10?’

‘During all that time I was at the pictures.’

‘Ah.’ Gently sighed, and directed her back to Hansom with an inclination of his head. Hansom picked up the questioning neatly where it had been taken away from him.

‘You dressed to go out while you were drinking your coffee. You left the house by the kitchen at a few minutes after 2.30. What did you do then?’

‘I went straight to the Carlton cinema.’

‘What were they showing there?’

‘The big film is called Scarlet Witness.’

‘Is that what was showing when you entered the cinema?’

‘Oh yes, but I came in at the end, I saw only the last twenty minutes. Then there was the interval and the news, and then the other film.’

‘What was that called?’

‘It was Meet Me in Rio, with Joan Seymour and Broderick Davis.’

‘When did that finish?’

‘At five o’clock. I wanted to stay and to see the big film through, but it was already late, I was afraid that my father had already begun tea. So I bought an evening paper in order to pretend I had been out for one and went in through the front door.’

‘This film, Scarlet Witness,’ murmured Gently, ‘is it the same one as I saw in London a fortnight ago? How does it end?’

Gretchen turned towards him, her hands snatching at each other. ‘I did not see much of it… I do not remember. It was not very good.’

‘But you saw the end of it?’

‘It was… complicated.’

‘Was it the one where they get taken off the island in a helicopter just as the volcano erupts?’

The two hands gripped till the knuckles whitened. ‘No! It wasn’t that one… I was worried about whether my father would find out, I did not see it properly.’

‘They made an appeal after the one I saw — some fund for the maintenance of an aerial rescue force. Did they make an appeal here?’

‘Yes — yes! There was an appeal for something. A man spoke from the stage and they sent round boxes. I put something in.’

She bent her head away from him as though his eyes reacted upon her physically. Gently shrugged and felt in his pocket for a peppermint cream. She continued, without looking at him: ‘The big film came on at a quarter to two and finished at a quarter past three. The other film started at half-past three and finished at five.’

Gently said: ‘Thank you, Miss Huysmann, for such precise information.’

Hansom said: ‘When you re-entered the house, whom did you see?’

‘It was Susan. She was coming out of the passage from the kitchen.’

‘What did she say to you?’

‘She said, “Oh, I did not know that you had gone out,” and then she told me that something was wrong with my father.’

‘Did you go into the study?’

‘No, after I was told I did not feel that I could. I sat down in the kitchen and Mrs Turner gave me some brandy to drink.’

‘Then it wasn’t you who hid the knife in the trunk?’ demanded Gently suddenly. Gretchen writhed in her chair. ‘I know nothing, nothing about that!’ she exclaimed.

‘And you wouldn’t know if Fisher the chauffeur was in the house during the afternoon?’

A shiver ran through her dark-clad form, her eyes widened and her mouth opened. For a moment she stared at Gently horror-struck. And then it was over, as quickly as it had begun: the eyes narrowed, the mouth closed, the lips were forced deliberately into a tight line. ‘I do not know, I was not here,’ she said.

Gently sagged a little in his chair. He looked tired. ‘How long has Fisher been chauffeur here?’ he asked.

‘Oh… three or four years.’

‘Would you describe him as being honest and trustworthy?’

‘Otherwise, my father would have got rid of him.’

‘I am asking for your personal impression.’

‘He is honest… I think.’

‘What are your personal relations with Fisher, Miss Huysmann?’

‘I do not see him, very much. Sometimes he is in the house to move things about. One day, he drove me to service at the cathedral, because I has a poisoned foot and could not walk there.’

‘He is respectful and obedient?’